Archiving Web-published materials: A needs assessment of librarians,researchers, and content providers

The Web-at-Risk project is a digital preservation project funded by the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The project is developing a Web archiving service to enable curators to build, store, and manage archived collections of Web-published materials captured largely from U.S. federal and state government agency Web sites. In 2005 the project’s 22 curators, as well as librarians and archivists working primarily in academic libraries (n = 43), university researchers (n = 7), and content providers (n = 7) participated in a study to identify their needs in relation to Web archiving. This paper summarizes the issues and challenges these groups face and discusses the need for collaborations among libraries and government entities for preserving Web-published materials.     

Thinking Aloud Together: A Test of an Intervention to Foster Students' Collaborative Scientific Reasoning

This study addressed the question of how to increase students' competencies for regulating their co‐construction of knowledge when tackling complex collaborative learning tasks which are increasingly emphasized as a dimension of educational reform. An intervention stressing the metacognitive, regulatory, and strategic aspects of knowledge co‐construction, called Thinking Aloud Together, was embedded within a 12‐week science unit on building mental models of the nature of matter. Four classes of eighth graders received the intervention, and four served as control groups for quantitative analyses. In addition, the interactions of 24 students in eight focal groups were profiled qualitatively, and 12 of those students were interviewed twice. Students who received the intervention gained in metacognitive knowledge about collaborative reasoning and ability to articulate their collaborative reasoning processes in comparison to students in control classrooms, as hypothesized. However, the treatment and control students did not differ either in their abilities to apply their conceptual knowledge or in their on‐line collaborative reasoning behaviors in ways that were attributable to the intervention. Thus, there was a gap between students' metacognitive knowledge about collaborative cognition and their use of collaborative reasoning skills. Several reasons for this result are explored, as are patterns relating students' outcomes to their perspectives on learning science. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 1085–1109, 1999.     

Considering teaching's consequences

The development of reflection is a concern to many teacher educators and the consideration of consequences is an important aspect of critical reflection. In this paper we report the results of a study that looked at if and how computer conferencing can be used to help prospective teachers become aware of the consequences of action. The findings indicate that as students of teaching discuss diverse educational issues within a structured computer conferencing activity they explore, explain, and justify their positions and interpretations by considering the consequences of action. Four ‘levels’ of consequences were apparent in the students' discussions. In addition, questions framing the discussions influence the consequences addressed.     

Representing students' thinking about nutrient cycling in ecosystems: bidimensional coding of a complex topic

This study addresses the question of how to represent students' thinking about a complex topic in a way that is most useful to guide curriculum development, instructional decisions, and assessment of student learning. The development of a coding scheme that represents students' ideas along two dimensions, compatibility with expert propositions and elaboration of ideas, is described and applied to the analysis of interviews with four pairs of urban fifth- and sixth-grade students. Results indicate that decomposition is a linchpin concept for building an understanding of nutrient cycling, and that ideas which relate to children's natural framework theories provide a generative foundation for further learning. Finally, it is suggested that the elaboration dimension of the bidimensional coding scheme provides an indication of students' possession of valuable scientific habits of mind. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Professional coach educators in-situ: a social analysis of practice

Professional coach educators are key to the success of coach education and play a crucial role in developing coaching practice. However, coach education research remains remarkably coach centric with little attention paid to the coach educator or the broader role of the socio-cultural context that frames the learning process. Four professional coach educators working for a Sport Governing Body in-situ with twenty five professional clubs took part in interviews and focus groups over the course of a year. In addition, interviews were undertaken with nine academy managers and thirty two coaches as well as observations in eight of the clubs. This paper focuses on the coach educators specifically and aims to understand the nature of coach educators' social reality and practice by examining something of the relational nature of the coach educators and their practice in context. Using the work of Bourdieu the paper engages in epistemic reflexivity and attempts to uncover coach educators' social and intellectual unconscious embedded in and reflected through their social practice. Findings show the operation of a number of socially constructed legitimating principles where the success or failure of the coach educator's practice and learning was inextricably linked to power. Each club (field) was a field of struggles, and coach educators had to play a symbolic and relational game being defined by and, at the same time, struggling to define these relations. Hence practice for the coach educators was both social and embodied.     

Career Success in Training & Development: Is It What You Know or Who You Know?

A model illustrating the relationship between mentoring and job competency was developed and tested in a sample of 82 members of a local chapter of a national association for training and development professionals. Human capital was conceptualized in terms of job competency attainment and social capital in terms of mentoring and protégé relationships. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were run to test the path model. Although a positive relationship was found between acting as a protégé and job satisfaction, acting as a mentor had a negative relationship with income. The results showed a strong relationship between career competence and income, promotion, job satisfaction and career choice satisfaction. For training and development professionals, job competency is the key factor in their career success.     

Development of Scientific Reasoning in College Biology: Do Two Levels of General Hypothesis‐Testing Skills Exist?

The primary purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that two general developmentally based levels of hypothesis‐testing skills exist. The first hypothesized level presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses about observable causal agents; the second presumably involves skills associated with testing hypotheses involving unobservable entities. To test this hypothesis, a hypothesis‐testing skills test was developed and administered to a large sample of college students both at the start and at the end of a biology course in which several hypotheses at each level were generated and tested. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis‐testing skill and performance on a transfer problem involving the test of a hypothesis involving unobservable entities was found. The predicted positive relationship between level of hypothesis‐testing skill and course performance was also found. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 81–101, 2000     

Curriculum-based assessment of reading skills: Considerations and caveats for school psychologists

General dissatisfaction with commercial norm-referenced tests and global ability measures and the need for more specific achievement measures due to changes in special education have led to an increased interest in the curriculum-based assessment of reading. We argue that a curriculum-based assessment (CBA) of reading provides relevant information for instructional interventions only if the content of the curriculum and instruction are grounded in the cognitive skills underlying the domain of reading. If CBA is based on valid cognitive constructs, it may assist greatly in the identification of younger readers at risk for reading problems, older students with reading problems, and provide the most sensitive measure of continuous progress. We discuss the implications of our review for the training of school psychologists and for consultation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.