Building strategy

This issue's editorial is by Tony Rich, Registrar and Secretary of the University of Essex and a long‐time supporter of AUA. He draws out themes arising from the major funding and policy changes affecting higher education, and implications for the services provided by administrators and managers to the academic community. Ed.     

Distribution of influence,communication, and relational mentoring in the US superintendency

We report on how fifty superintendents (chief executive officers of public school systems, each invited by a researcher to participate) from seven states in the US talked in eight focus groups of their perspectives on their influence as leaders, their efforts to communicate with stakeholders, and how they learn from these stakeholders. We maintain that our participants’ revelations suggest that three definitions must be expanded to fit their work. First, influence or authority must be seen not merely as vested in the superintendent; rather, these superintendents described their leadership in terms of working with and through others. Second, organizational communication for these superintendents is more than the district’s leader communicating his or her perceptions and wishes to others; it is more relational, in which a variety of actors communicate their perspectives to one another. Third, this type of inter‐professional leadership leads logically to relational mentoring, where learning does not pass merely from expert to novice; rather, superintendents described their roles in terms of various parties learning from and teaching one another. We discuss implications of these insights for practice, research, and preparation.     

Yoga for the prevention of depression,anxiety, and aggression and the promotion of socio-emotional competencies in school-aged children

Children and youth coming from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are at risk of developing behavioural problems. This study examined the efficacy of a Yoga programme implemented in a low-socioeconomic status school, for the prevention of depression, anxiety, and aggression. After-school workshops were delivered twice a week during 12 weeks to 125 students in 5th, 8th, and 9th grades, enrolled in a school in Bogotá, Colombia. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention and to a control group. Children's anxiety, depression, aggression, and some socioemotional competencies (specifically empathy, anger management, and prosociality) were quantitatively assessed before and after the intervention, by means of self- and peer-reported questionnaires. Qualitative data were also collected to assess children's perceived benefits from the workshops. Results suggested a potential of the programme to reduce children's anxiety problems, in particular. Results are discussed in terms of recommended improvements to the programme and its future evaluation.     

Out in school: talking about sexual orientation and challenging homophobia across the Key Stage 4 curriculum

Rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancy amongst the under-16s are causing increasing concern. There is limited evidence about the sexual behaviour and sex education preferences of this age group, especially of those from Black and minority ethnic groups. This study aimed to provide data on early heterosexual risk behaviour, and to examine preferences for the content and delivery of sex and relationships education (SRE), across ethnicity, gender and school year to inform priority setting and sex education strategies. A cross-sectional study of 3334 13–17-year-olds from 10 English urban and suburban secondary schools was conducted. Multivariate analysis was performed to examine the independent effect of demographic variables on sexual experience and preferences for sex education. A number of important differences in the sexual experience and condom use of males and females across the ethnic groups were identified. Differences in preferences for the content and delivery of sex education were also identified, particularly between male and female pupils. The findings indicate the potential for quite wide variation in sexual experience and preferences within school classrooms. The challenge for educators is therefore to develop SRE curricula that are inclusive within the constraints of school teaching.     

引进国际职业标准升级传统会计专业的若干思考——以青岛职业技术学院中爱合作会计专业为例

作为直接服务于经济建设和社会发展的教育类型,高职教育必须与经济社会发展接轨,在人才培养理念、内容和标准上同步做出适应性的改革与升级。就传统会计专业而言,随着行业发展趋势和经济发展形势的要求,在人才培养的目标、规格定位和培养内容、方式等方面同样需要适应性的转型和升级。青岛职业技术学院采取以中外合作办学项目为平台,引入国际先进会计标准等优质教育资源升级改造传统会计专业课程体系和标准,实践证明,这是一条直接可行、经济有效的路径。     

从薄弱到优质——以大连市第71中学和西岗区大同小学转化经验为例

在大连市西岗区教育局"新优质学校"项目推进过程中,涌现出大连市71中学和大同小学两所典型学校。这两所学校实现由薄弱到优质的成功经验,对于薄弱学校又快又好发展,推进区域教育均衡发展,促进教育公平,具有启示和借鉴作用。     

Bridging memory-based collaborative filtering and text retrieval

When speaking of information retrieval, we often mean text retrieval. But there exist many other forms of information retrieval applications. A typical example is collaborative filtering that suggests interesting items to a user by taking into account other users’ preferences or tastes. Due to the uniqueness of the problem, it has been modeled and studied differently in the past, mainly drawing from the preference prediction and machine learning view point. A few attempts have yet been made to bring back collaborative filtering to information (text) retrieval modeling and subsequently new interesting collaborative filtering techniques have been thus derived. In this paper, we show that from the algorithmic view point, there is an even closer relationship between collaborative filtering and text retrieval. Specifically, major collaborative filtering algorithms, such as the memory-based, essentially calculate the dot product between the user vector (as the query vector in text retrieval) and the item rating vector (as the document vector in text retrieval). Thus, if we properly structure user preference data and employ the target user’s ratings as query input, major text retrieval algorithms and systems can be directly used without any modification. In this regard, we propose a unified formulation under a common notational framework for memory-based collaborative filtering, and a technique to use any text retrieval weighting function with collaborative filtering preference data. Besides confirming the rationale of the framework, our preliminary experimental results have also demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach in using text retrieval models and systems to perform item ranking tasks in collaborative filtering.     

“I Fell into Librarianship”: Experiences of Post-Soviet Librarians at the National Academic Library in Astana,Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the attitudes of librarians in post-Soviet Kazakhstan regarding their roles at the new National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NAL). Using ethnographic observation, interviews, and surveys of library staff (n = 24), we find that Kazakhstani librarians either sensed a “calling” to librarianship or “fell into” library careers given life circumstances, and value their library for its contribution to cultural preservation and digital access on a national scale. This pilot project presents NAL to an international community, sharing the voices of Russian- and Kazakh-speaking librarians to highlight the role of libraries in the development of the post-Soviet nation.