Use It or Lose It! Results of a Use Study of the Print Sources in an Academic Library Reference Collection

This article describes a use study of a reference collection, which found that 7.1% of total volumes in the reference collection were used over the course of the fall semester.     

Experiments with Industry's “Pair-Programming” Model in the Computer Science Classroom

Anecdotal evidence from several sources, primarily in industry, indicates that two programmers working collaboratively on the same design, algorithm, code, or test perform substantially better than the two working alone. Two courses taught at the University of Utah studied the use of this technique, often called pair-programming or collaborative programming, in the undergraduate computer science classroom. The students applied a positive form of “pair-pressure” on each other, which proved beneficial to the quality of their work products. The students also benefit from “pair-learning,” which allowed them to learn new languages faster and better than with solitary learning. The workload of the teaching staff is reduced because the students more often look to each other for technical support and advice.     

Early Childhood Education as Development: Critique of the Metaphor

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the recent call for developmentally appropriate practices from the perspective of the sociology of the curriculum. A brief examination of this orientation toward curriculum studies is presented in the first section of this paper. Next, a discussion of curriculum theory as metaphor is presented and used to evaluate early childhood education as development on the basis of ethics, as well as disclosure value. Finally, two alternative metaphors are suggested as possible lenses for viewing the content of the early childhood curriculum: early childhood education as caring and early childhood education as schooling for democracy. Early childhood educators are urged to consider the potential of these two metaphors as ways of orientating discourse about what should be taught in early childhood and primary school classrooms.     

Correcting Biased Cohen’s Kappa in NVivo

This study demonstrates that NVivo, a popular research tool for content analysis, produces biased Cohen’s kappa as it calculates the reliability statistic at the character level, which is unsuitable for most content-analytic studies adopting a higher unit of analysis (e.g., sentence, paragraph). Based on empirical data and a statistical simulation, this study proposes a method of bias correction applicable to situations where two independent raters conduct binary coding.     

Measures of Kindergarten Spelling and Their Relations to Later Spelling Performance

Learning the orthographic forms of words is important for both spelling and reading. To determine whether some methods of scoring children’s early spellings predict later spelling performance better than do other methods, we analyzed data from 374 U.S. and Australian children who took a 10-word spelling test at the end of kindergarten (M age = 6 years 2 months) and a standardized spelling test approximately 2 years later. Surprisingly, scoring methods that took account of phonological plausibility did not outperform methods that were based only on orthographic correctness. The scoring method that is most widely used in research with young children, which allots a certain number of points to each word and which considers both orthographic and phonological plausibility, did not rise to the top as a predictor. Prediction of Grade 2 spelling performance was improved to a small extent by considering children’s tendency to reverse letters in kindergarten.     

Evaluation of an innovative hands‐on anatomy‐centered ultrasound curriculum to supplement graduate gross anatomy education

Ultrasound (US) can enhance anatomy education, yet is incorporated into few non‐medical anatomy programs. This study is the first to evaluate the impact of US training in gross anatomy for non‐medical students in the United States. All 32 master's students enrolled in gross anatomy with the anatomy‐centered ultrasound (ACUS) curriculum were recruited. Mean Likert ratings on pre‐ and post‐course surveys (100% response rates) were compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the ACUS curriculum in developing US confidence, and gauge its impact on views of US. Post‐course, students reported significantly higher (P < 0.001) mean confidence ratings in five US skills (pre‐course versus post‐course mean): obtaining scans (3.13 ±1.04 versus 4.03 ±0.78), optimizing images (2.78 ±1.07 versus 3.75 ±0.92), recognizing artifacts (2.94 ±0.95 versus 3.97 ±0.69), distinguishing tissue types (2.88 ±0.98 versus 4.09 ±0.69), and identifying structures (2.97 ±0.86 versus 4.03 ±0.59), demonstrating the success of the ACUS curriculum in students with limited prior experience. Views on the value of US to anatomy education and to students' future careers remained positive after the course. End‐of‐semester quiz performance (91% response rate) provided data on educational outcomes. The average score was 79%, with a 90% average on questions about distinguishing tissues/artifacts, demonstrating positive learning outcomes and retention. The anatomy‐centered ultrasound curriculum significantly increased confidence with and knowledge of US among non‐medical anatomy students with limited prior training. Non‐medical students greatly value the contributions that US makes to anatomy education and to their future careers. It is feasible to enhance anatomy education outside of medical training by incorporating US. Anat Sci Educ 10: 348–362. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Group treatments for women sexually abused as children: a review of the literature and recommendations for future outcome research

OBJECTIVE: Adults with a history of sexual abuse often suffer many long-term consequences. It is important that therapists be able to provide effective treatment to address the host of issues that are presented in therapy by adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). In order to provide the best possible treatment, therapists should know which treatments are most effective. METHOD: This paper provides a critique of the outcome research of 13 studies (six uncontrolled and seven controlled) on the treatment of adults who suffered childhood sexual abuse and discusses specific methodological strategies that can enhance the quality of such research in the future. RESULTS: Although many of the studies contain methodological limitations, the results generally indicate that group treatment helps reduce symptomatology in the short-term and at follow-up. CONCLUSION: Although outcome research has not been published on specific individual or conjoint treatment approaches for adult survivors of CSA, several outcome studies have found group treatment to be effective in the recovery of female CSA survivors.     

Linking the shapes of alphabet letters to their sounds: the case of Hebrew

Learning the sounds of letters is an important part of learning a writing system. Most previous studies of this process have examined English, focusing on variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names as a reason why some letter sounds (such as that of b, where the sound is at the beginning of the letter’s name) are easier to learn than others (such as that of w, where the sound is not in the name). The present study examined Hebrew, where variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names are minimal. In a study of 391 Israeli children with a mean age of 5 years, 10 months, we used multilevel models to examine the factors that are associated with knowledge of letter sounds. One set of factors involved letter names: Children sometimes attributed to a letter a consonant–vowel sound consisting of the first phonemes of the letter’s name. A second set of factors involved contrast: Children had difficulty when there was relatively little contrast in shape between one letter and others. Frequency was also important, encompassing both child-specific effects, such as a benefit for the first letter of a child’s forename, and effects that held true across children, such as a benefit for the first letters of the alphabet. These factors reflect general properties of human learning.