e-Government readiness: Does national culture matter?

e-Government readiness varies significantly across nations. This research explored the relationship of national culture values and practice to e-Government readiness. Eighteen hypotheses were formulated and tested. With the exception of performance orientation and assertiveness, national culture values and practices correlated negatively and positively with e-Government readiness. In addition, gender egalitarianism, institutional collectivism, performance orientation, and uncertainty avoidance values were found to be key determinants of e-Government readiness. The findings of this research provide a foundation for culturally-based policies and strategies aiming at enhancing e-Government readiness across nations.     

Teacher Accommodation of Academic Language During Head Start Pre-Kindergarten Read-Alouds

Abstract

Little analytical scrutiny has been devoted to teacher accommodation of academic language at the early childhood level, despite being a critical school-level factor to consider when addressing at-risk learners’ academic needs. The present study investigates how fifteen Head Start teachers support three components of academic language during whole-class read-alouds of narrative storybooks: academic vocabulary, conceptual knowledge, and complex syntax. Pairing a corpus-based analysis of linguistic features and content analyses of teachers’ extratextual utterances, we describe teachers’ strategies for accommodating at-risk children’s early experiences with linguistically and syntactically complex texts. Our findings indicate that teachers simplified the language of the texts to accommodate student need, while also providing examples of academic talk through defining terms and providing conceptually-rich talk. Although teachers provided rich support for academic vocabulary, less accommodation was made for complex syntax. Practical and theoretical implications are addressed.     

The Lived Experiences of Clinical Mental Health Counseling Internship Students Providing Home-Based Therapy

Home-based therapy has become an ongoing trend within the mental health field. This transcendental phenomenologically designed study explored the lived experiences of clinical mental health counseling internship students (N=8) who provided home-based therapy as their primary method of gaining required clinical experience for the completion of their master’s degree. The overall personal and professional development of the students providing therapy in this setting was explored. Insights of the internship students regarding their experiences and challenges in providing home-based therapy were revealed. Recommendations based on the experiences of the students providing home-based therapy were offered. Implications to students, counselor educators, and supervisors have also been provided.

     

Extensional flow of hyaluronic acid solutions in an optimized microfluidic cross-slot device

We utilize a recently developed microfluidic device, the Optimized Shape Cross-slot Extensional Rheometer (OSCER), to study the elongational flow behavior and rheological properties of hyaluronic acid (HA) solutions representative of the synovial fluid (SF) found in the knee joint. The OSCER geometry is a stagnation point device that imposes a planar extensional flow with a homogenous extension rate over a significant length of the inlet and outlet channel axes. Due to the compressive nature of the flow generated along the inlet channels, and the planar elongational flow along the outlet channels, the flow field in the OSCER device can also be considered as representative of the flow field that arises between compressing articular cartilage layers of the knee joints during running or jumping movements. Full-field birefringence microscopy measurements demonstrate a high degree of localized macromolecular orientation along streamlines passing close to the stagnation point of the OSCER device, while micro-particle image velocimetry is used to quantify the flow kinematics. The stress-optical rule is used to assess the local extensional viscosity in the elongating fluid elements as a function of the measured deformation rate. The large limiting values of the dimensionless Trouton ratio, Tr ∼ O(50), demonstrate that these fluids are highly extensional-thickening, providing a clear mechanism for the load-dampening properties of SF. The results also indicate the potential for utilizing the OSCER in screening of physiological SF samples, which will lead to improved understanding of, and therapies for, disease progression in arthritis sufferers.     

Growth and body composition in Brazilian female rhythmic gymnastics athletes

Abstract

The aim was to analyse the physical growth and body composition of rhythmic gymnastics athletes relative to their level of somatic maturation. This was a cross-sectional study of 136 athletes on 23 teams from Brazil. Mass, standing height and sitting height were measured. Fat-free and fat masses, body fat percentages and ages of the predicted peak height velocity (PHV) were calculated. The z scores for mass were negative during all ages according to both WHO and Brazilian references, and that for standing height were also negative for all ages according to WHO reference but only until 12 years old according to Brazilian reference. The mean age of the predicted PHV was 12.1 years. The mean mass, standing and sitting heights, body fat percentage, fat-free mass and fat mass increased significantly until 4 to 5 years after the age of the PHV. Menarche was reached in only 26% of these athletes and mean age was 13.2 years. The mass was below the national reference standards, and the standing height was below only for the international reference, but they also had late recovery of mass and standing height during puberty. In conclusion, these athletes had a potential to gain mass and standing height several years after PHV, indicating late maturation.     

“Kindergarten, can I have your eyes and ears?” politeness and teacher directive choices in inquiry-based science classrooms

This study explores elementary teachers’ social understandings and employment of directives and politeness while facilitating inquiry science lessons prior and subsequent to their participation in a summer institute in which they were introduced to the scholarly literature on regulative discourse (directives used by teachers to regulate student behavior). A grounded theory analysis of the institute professional development activities revealed that teachers developed an increased awareness of the authoritative functions served by impolite or direct directives (i.e., pragmatic awareness). Furthermore, a comparative microethnographic analysis of participants’ inquiry-based classroom practices revealed that after the institute teachers demonstrated an increased ability to share authority with students by strategically making directive choices that were more polite, indirect, inclusive, involvement-focused and creative. Such ability led to a reduced emphasis on teacher regulation of student compliance with classroom behavioral norms and an increased focus on the discursive organization of the inquiry-based science learning/teaching process. Despite teachers’ increased pragmatic awareness, teacher–student linguistic relationships did not become entirely symmetrical subsequent to their participation in the summer institute (i.e., teacher authority was not completely relinquished or lost). Based on such findings, it is argued that teachers need to develop higher levels of pragmatic awareness to become effectively prepared to engage in language-mediated teacher–student interaction in the context of inquiry-based science classroom discourse.     

From professional development to classroom instruction: addressing issues related to science inquiry discourse

In this rejoinder, I first provide a more detailed account of the discourse-focused professional development activities facilitated as part of the SMIT’N program, specifically addressing issues raised by van Zee with regard to the institute’s overall format, goals and development strategies. Next, I resort to Peter Medawar’s metaphorical view of inquiry as scientific storytelling to reflect about Bencze’s expressed opposition to “politely guided quasi-inductive science inquiry instruction” and highlight the need for science educators to give more careful consideration to oral classroom discourse. I then conclude by describing how guided science inquiry teaching can be conceived in terms of the theoretical notion of negative politeness.     

Curriculum translation and environmental education: considering issues of discursive intentionality, interpretation, and validity

We would like to thank our commentators Reis, Ercikan and Alper for their insightful comments on our research study and respond in brief to a few of their criticisms. More specifically, we would like to address what we consider to be the three main issues they raise with regard to the practices of curriculum translation and implementation across languages, namely viewing speakers’ intentions as a mode of signification in discourse analysis, exploring curriculum translation through an interpretive research approach, and establishing the validity of research on curriculum translation.

Global real-time optimization by output-feedback extremum-seeking control with sliding modes

This paper addresses the design of a sliding mode based extremum-seeking controller for a class of single-input–single-output (SISO) uncertain nonlinear systems with unmatched and state-dependent strong nonlinearities. We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve an arbitrarily small neighborhood of the desired optimal point using only output-feedback. The key idea is the combination of a periodic switching function with a norm state observer. As an important advantage, we show that the proposed scheme achieves extremum-seeking for all initial conditions, i.e., the real-time optimization algorithm has global convergence properties. An application to a simple nonderivative optimizer illustrates the viability of the proposed approach.     

Strong delay-independent stability of linear delay systems

This paper presents a new necessary and sufficient condition for testing the strong delay-independent stability of linear systems subject to a single delay. The proposed method follows from the use of matrix polynomials constraints and the Kalman–Yakubovich–Popov lemma. The resulting condition can be checked exactly by solving a feasibility problem in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI). Simple numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.