A sentence-combining intervention for struggling writers: response to intervention

Reading and Writing - Children who struggle with writing are a heterogeneous group and may experience difficulties in a range of domains, including spelling, reading, and oral language. These...     

Establishing the Role and Impact of Academic Librarians in Supporting Open Research: A Case Study at Leeds Beckett University,UK

ABSTRACT

This practical article presents findings of a small scale study undertaken at a large U.K. University. The purpose of the study was to encourage academic engagement with Open Access (OA) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) mandate with the measurable impact being increased engagement with the Repository and dissemination of research while circulating information to the wider community. In order to promote research, a series of “Focus on” webpages were created aligned to a particular theme and were then disseminated via social media. It was anticipated that by potentially increasing access to research outputs, academic staff would be motivated to make their work available following OA models and use the institutional repository (IR) as a means to achieve this. The main drivers for the study were the Finch Report, the HEFCE Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework and the institutional strategy for research. Data was collected through a statistical analysis of both the “Focus on” pages and journal article downloads via the IR, with results indicating increased engagement with the IR making research openly accessible.     

Boys’ educational ‘underachievement’ in the Caribbean: interpreting the ‘problem’

Education ministries in the Caribbean countries have directed considerable attention over the last decade to ‘solving’ the ‘problem’ of boys’ underachievement. Rather than considering such interventions, our central concern in this paper is to revisit debates about the interpretation of the issue, to explore whether boys’ underachievement is indeed a ‘problem’, in the sense of both an empirical reality and an issue requiring political attention. In this paper, we explore contestations over the reality and complexity of educational underachievement and whether this relates to broader political–economic marginalisation (or privileging) of boys. We turn then to explore the relationship between material realities and gendered subjectivities. Overall, we argue that boys’ underachievement should neither be ignored nor be the exclusive focus of attention and that a move from ‘boys’ underachievement’ to a broader analysis of ‘gender and education’ is needed, to place the debate in a gender relational context.     

Academic feedback in veterinary medicine: a comparison of school leaver and graduate entry cohorts

This study analysed the expectations and experiences of students on a five-year undergraduate (n?=?91) and four-year graduate entry (n?=?47) veterinary medicine degree programme relating to academic feedback. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used to explore new students’ expectations and prior experiences of feedback and capture experiences across one academic year. The majority of the students expect no less feedback at university than at school. Students’ experiences of the course highlighted themes of not knowing what was expected of them, a perceived need for more guidance and the importance of timely feedback. The impact of the staff–student relationship on how students obtain and perceive feedback and the emotional impact of positive and negative feedback were also highlighted. In addition, a recurring theme was the social context of veterinary medicine with issues relating to high academic achievers, competition between students and the need to gain professional and clinical skills. This study confirms a mismatch in student expectations versus experience. The paper draws on a rich data-set based on both quantitative and qualitative methods and is the first study of this type to be carried out in the context of students of veterinary medicine.     

Infants' developing appreciation of similarities between model objects and their real-world referents

Previous research suggests that model competence does not emerge until relatively late in infancy (20-26 months). Development was systematically analyzed within 3 key areas--count noun learning, dual representation, and categorization-hypothesized to support the emergence of model competence in the second year. In an object-handling preferential looking task, 21- to 26-month-olds matched model objects to referents only when count noun knowledge was high. When dual representation demands were reduced through the use of pictures in place of model objects, 20-month-olds with low count noun vocabularies succeeded in relating symbols to referents. Finally, change in infants' construal of a model object as a member of a category was documented between 14 and 20 months of age.     

“Try to Walk With the Sound of My Footsteps”: The Surveillant Body in Contemporary Art

While the prevailing artistic response to surveillance has been sousveillance, the turning of surveillance against itself, this paper suggests that the usefulness of such responses depends upon granting power to the surveillance video camera as the roving eye of an elusive disciplinary body. This paper analyzes contemporary art works where the surveillant eye is met not with the returned gaze, but with interpersonal and embodied responses that challenge the dichotomized relationship between viewer and viewed.     

An exploration of stakeholder values: In search of common ground within an international sport and development initiative

The purpose of this study was to uncover the values of the Commonwealth Games Association's of Canada's international sport and development (IDS) initiative. Interviews were conducted with 39 key program stakeholders (e.g., IDS organizational leaders, host organizational leaders, intern alumni) involved in the management and operations of the initiative. Certain values were espoused by the organization through written documentation while others were perceived by stakeholders and were described as instrumental toward achieving desired end-states. In general, evidence of both congruent and incongruent values emerged through interview data. Nuance between stakeholder groups was also found, which in turn exposed areas of operations requiring further managerial attention. The complex interplay of values uncovered in this study contributes to the research on values in sport management and the emergent area of using sport as a means toward various developmental goals.     

Credit where credit's due: plagiarism screening in scholarly publishing

Plagiarism is not a new problem in academic publishing, but in the age of the Internet and digital publishing it would appear that it may be a growing one. Not only is there more literature available, but it has never been easier to search online databases, publisher websites, and institutional repositories. And as the content and its availability grows, so the ability of the reviewer to have read everything in their field diminishes, and detecting unoriginal content becomes harder. In response to this problem, CrossRef has launched CrossCheck ( http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck.html ), a plagiarism detection service for scholarly publishers.     

Book Reviews

Growth, creativity and collaboration: great visions on a Great Lake – proceedings of the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. 19th annual conference, June 17–20, 2004, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 2005 Ed. P. S. French and M. Mering The Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY, ISBN 0‐7890‐2976‐6 US $34.95 Communicating in style by Yateendra Joshi The Energy and Resources Institute, India, 2003, 81 7993 016 5, £7.50 Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production by Marshall Lee W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 2004, hardback, ISBN 0393730182 The Institutional Repository By Richard Jones, Theo Andrew and John MacColl Chandos Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1 84334 138 7, 237pp.