Impressions of ICOTS II

The following short contributions are from people who attended the Second International Conference on Teaching Statistics held in Victoria, August 1986     

Evaluation of reflective practice in teacher education

Teacher education based on ‘reflective practice’ consists of observing, analysing and reflecting on teacher performance in order to improve professional practice. This article presents the results of an evaluation of a programme on mathematics teaching carried out using reflective practice. It was targeted at 284 teachers in various stages of the education system, using an approach that combines quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (interviews and reports) methods. While the study shows that the education programme generates high levels of satisfaction, pedagogical appropriateness and learning, its achievements in effectiveness are moderate. Although, in general, what is learned through teacher education is implemented in the classroom, it is done so in an isolated fashion, in other words, individually and without becoming a part of the culture of the school. The results show little evidence of its impact on student learning. The article offers proposals for improving the education programme, while, at the same time, analysing the usefulness of the approach and evaluation tools employed.     

Developing a Model of Medication Adherence among Filipino Elderly

While adherence to medication remains a problematic area in the care of chronically ill elderly, an extended model that incorporates the interaction of studied variables remains a blank spot. Anchored on Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior, this article details our efforts to develop and test a model of medication adherence among Filipino elderly relative to their medication belief, follow-up visits, consultation satisfaction, memory task, trust with physician, perceived stress, memory strategies, social support, memory load, depression, length of time taking the medication, number of conditions, and self-efficacy with medication adherence. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to study causalities among all parameters. With the participation of 325 older adults located in District IV, Sampaloc, Manila, data needed were gathered through a multiaspect questionnaire consisting of a robotfoto, a memory strategy usage measure, an eight-scale Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, a 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale, a General Self-efficacy Scale, a Consultation Satisfaction Questionnaire, and a Perceived Stress Scale. Data were analyzed using AMOS version 19. Results revealed that depression, trust with physician, and number of conditions affect adherence positively, while event-based memory, consultation satisfaction, memory load, and external memory strategy affect it otherwise. Some suggested variables were found to have no impact at all. As this study reveals, careful consideration should be given to multiple factors, and their interrelationship should be examined well. Because many factors can influence medication adherence behavior of the elderly, and because the reasons for their noncompliance are also varied, multifaceted solutions must be developed.     

Cognitive Processes,ICT, and Education: A Critical Analysis

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have brought about renewed spaces for the societies of today, full of possibility and transformation. Bordering on the infinite, these spaces have generated new activities and behaviors. This technological scenario is now commonplace, an everyday reality that has taken root in our lives with remarkable speed. Now would therefore be an appropriate time to open up a line of inquiry into how this is shaping educational practice and how it is affecting our cognitive structures. We have chosen to conduct a review of relevant literature that will enable us to adopt a critical analysis to our subject: education and, above all, the learner, seen from the perspective of neuroscience and social analysis. However, the principal aim of this paper is to lay bare the disparities between research findings and current educational practices that use ICT.     

Guidance and counseling in Catalonia (Spain)

The author of this article attempts to set out the efforts that have been made in Catalonia (autonomous nationality within Spain) to regulate rationally the guidance and counseling services of fered to that part of the student population that has the greatest needs. She describes some models of services that have been created under the auspices of different institutions and analyzes their functions. Finally she draws a series of critical conclusions.University of Barcelona     

Hidden connections: Network effects on editorial decisions in four computer science journals

This paper aims to examine the influence of authors’ reputation on editorial bias in scholarly journals. By looking at eight years of editorial decisions in four computer science journals, including 7179 observations on 2913 submissions, we reconstructed author/referee-submission networks. For each submission, we looked at reviewer scores and estimated the reputation of submission authors by means of their network degree. By training a Bayesian network, we estimated the potential effect of scientist reputation on editorial decisions. Results showed that more reputed authors were less likely to be rejected by editors when they submitted papers receiving negative reviews. Although these four journals were comparable for scope and areas, we found certain journal specificities in their editorial process. Our findings suggest ways to examine the editorial process in relatively similar journals without recurring to in-depth individual data, which are rarely available from scholarly journals.     

Entrepreneurial Community College Presidents: An exploratory qualitative and quantitative study

Tertiary Education and Management - This study examined the entrepreneurial, nontraditional fundraising behaviors and activities of 23 community college presidents using interview and survey data....     

Queering communication studies: a Journal of Applied Communication Research forum

ABSTRACT

Genders and sexualities continue to remain underexplored in the field of communication studies and the academy in general. This essay examines possibilities for incorporating queer perspectives into communication studies. At the invitation of the Journal of Applied Communication Research editor, 9 communication scholars who use queer theory or queer perspectives in their own work responded to a series of questions addressing how queer theory and perspectives can be used in the discipline, both by those who are new to queer theorizing and those who are looking to expand their knowledge and practices. The answers to these questions provide an understanding of what queer theory is and its relationship with LGBT studies; allow practical considerations for incorporating queer perspectives into communication scholarship in multiple methodological areas; offer considerations for welcoming queer voices in the classroom, the communication discipline, and the larger academy; and indicate several scholarly resources for those who want to learn more about queer theory and LGBT studies.