School Organization and Persistent School Absenteeism: An Introduction to a Complex Problem

This article is concerned with the development of provision for pupils in a comprehensive school with special educational needs. Its main focus is on the organization and administration changes which were undertaken in connection with the recommendations of the Warnock Report, the 1981 Education Act and the development of knowledge and expertise within the school in helping such pupils.

It concentrates on five aspects: the communication of information about those pupils within the school, the curriculum available to them in the upper school, the deployment of staff, the name of the department to best fit its changing role in the school and the issues which need to be taken into account in monitoring those developments.     

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

Strengthening educational programs requires a coordinated set of supporting activities. This article describes the infrastructure of the Educational Centre for Aging and Health of McMaster University (ECAH). This center seeks through professional education to enhance the quality of life and self‐determination of older persons, by increasing the number of skilled health professionals to care for aging individuals and by developing educational models concerning aging and health. We describe the clinical settings, technical and developmental support, and a system of data collection that provides feedback about health needs and the establishment of educational priorities. This center is attempting to meet the challenge of changing community needs for education for aging and health. Because of ECAH, aging and health has become more salient within this university. This article illustrates an infrastructure that other institutions can adapt to their own purposes in order to enhance gerontology and health education.     

Cognitive load in algebra: element interactivity in solving equations

Central to equation solving is the maintenance of equivalence on both sides of the equation. However, when the process involves an interaction of multiple elements, solving an equation can impose a high cognitive load. The balance method requires operations on both sides of the equation, whereas the inverse method involves operations on one side only. In an experiment, middle school students (N?=?71) were randomly assigned to the balance and inverse methods to complete a pre-test, an acquisition phase and a post-test. Pre-test and post-test comparisons found that the inverse group outperformed the balance group for those equations that involved high element interactivity. Instructional efficiency measures further confirmed that the balance method imposed higher cognitive load. The inverse method was capable of reducing cognitive load due to the interacting elements.     

Educational quality in economic development: Ten propositions and an application to the South Pacific

Over the last two decades, research into the role of education in economic development has begun to pay attention to educational quality and its effect on learning outcomes. In this paper recent research on educational quality is reviewed and its application to the island economies of the South Pacific is assessed. While there is considerable variation among the countries, the paper demonstrates the pervasive nature of school quality problems in the region. Those factors which have the greatest bearing on school quality in the region are isolated. These factors are: the quality of teachers; the availability of learning materials; initial instruction in the mother tongue; the quality of educational management; and curriculum reform. The paper concludes by arguing that strategies to improve quality will fail unless they recognise important complementarities between the factors determining quality.

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Zusammenfassung In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten hat man begonnen, die Forschung über die Rolle des Bildungswesens in der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung eines Landes auf Bildungsqualität und ihren Einfluß auf die Lernergebnisse auszudehnen. In diesem Artikel werden die neuesten Forschungen über die Qualität der Bildung aufgegriffen und eine mögliche Anwendung für die Inselwirtschaften im Südpazifik diskutiert. Dieser Artikel weist auf die überall gegenwärtige Problematik der Schulqualität in dieser Region trotz erheblicher Unterschiede zwischen den Ländern hin. Man fand folgende dafür verantwortliche Gründe heraus: Lehrerqualität, Erhältlichkeit von Lernmaterialien, Erziehung in der Muttersprache, Qualität der Schulleitung und Reform der Curricula. Der Artikel schließt mit dem Argument, daß Strategien zur Verbesserung der Qualität keinen Erfolg haben werden, solange wesentliche Zusammenhänge zwischen den qualitätsbestimmenden Faktoren nicht erkannt werden.

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Résumé Au cours des vingt dernières années, la recherche sur le rôle de l'éducation dans le développement économique a commencé à prêter attention à la qualité de l'éducation et à ses effets sur les rendements de l'apprentissage. Dans le présent article, on procède à l'examen de la recherche entreprise récemment dans ce domaine et à l'évaluation de son application aux économies des îles du Pacifique sud. Tandis qu'on note une variation considérable entre les pays, on démontre la nature diffuse des problèmes relatifs à la qualité des écoles dans cette région. Les facteurs qui ont la plus grande influence sur la qualité de l'école dans la région sont isolés: qualité des enseignants, existence de matériels d'apprentissage, enseignement initial dans la langue maternelle, qualité de la gestion de l'éducation, réforme du curriculum. Cet article conclut en arguant que les stratégies devant améliorer la qualité dans ce domaine échoueront à moins qu'elles reconnaissent les complémentarités importantes entre les facteurs qui déterminent la qualité.

     

Creatine kinase activity weakly correlates to volume completed following upper body resistance exercise

In the current study, we examined the relationship between serum creatine kinase (CK) activity following upper body resistance exercise with a 1- or 3-min rest between sets. Twenty men performed two sessions, each consisting of four sets with a 10-repetition maximum load. The results demonstrated significantly greater volume for the 3-min condition (M = 4156 kg, SD = 867, for 3 min; vs. M = 3503 kg SD = 759, for 1 min; p < .001), with no significant differences in delta CK activity between conditions (p = .574). Nevertheless, there was a weak correlation between the delta CK activity and total volume of exercise completed (r = .55 with a 1-min rest, and r = .45 with a 3-min rest). Therefore, the volume following upper body resistance exercise correlates weakly with serum CK levels, irrespective of rest interval length between sets.     

Relations between intelligence and the development of metaconceptual knowledge

Across two studies, we developed and tested a declarative metacognitive interview to investigate the effects of developmental level and verbal intelligence on children's metaconceptual understanding of processes related to concept use and object categorization. Metaconceptual knowledge developed throughout elementary school, with near ceiling scores for adults. IQ scores correlated positively with metaconceptual interview scores for all groups of children. Study 2 confirmed a relationship between scores on the metaconceptual interview and performance on a Twenty Questions task for which strategic performance was presumed to depend on such knowledge, though metaconceptual knowledge was most important when IQ was lower. Implications for theory development and hypotheses about how metaconceptual knowledge develops are discussed.     

Example-Based Learning in Heuristic Domains: A Cognitive Load Theory Account

One classical instructional effect of cognitive load theory (CLT) is the worked-example effect. Although the vast majority of studies have focused on well-structured and algorithmic sub-domains of mathematics or physics, more recent studies have also analyzed learning with examples from complex domains in which only heuristic solution strategies can be taught (e.g., troubleshooting, mathematical proving). Is learning by such examples also effective, and do the same instructional design principles apply? We discuss the main findings of an own research program and of related studies that addressed such questions. We found that CLT’s basic design principles also hold true for heuristic domains: Reduce extraneous load by employing examples, maximize germane load by fostering self-explanations, prevent cognitive overload by pretraining in the case of difficult learning materials, and by focusing attention on the most relevant aspects. Other typical CLT assumptions (e.g., better provide information for novice learners) were not confirmed in its generality. The present findings extend the applicability of CLT but also identify some potentially too simplistic assumptions.     

Robust block second order sliding mode control for a quadrotor

This paper presents the design of a controller based on the block control technique combined with the super twisting control algorithm for trajectory tracking of a quadrotor helicopter. A first order exact differentiator is used in order to estimate the virtual control inputs, which simplifies the control law design. In addition, the wind parameter resulting from the aerodynamic forces is also estimated in order to ensure robustness against these unmatched perturbations. The stability and finite time convergence of the exact differentiator have been recently proved by means of Lyapunov functions, and therefore the stability analysis of the proposed controller has been carried out along the same lines. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed controller are tested in a simulation study taking into account external disturbances.