NEGOTIATING POLITICIANS’ RESPONSIBILITIES IN NEWS INTERVIEWS

News interviews are contexts in which political responsibilities are articulated and negotiated. Although the accountability interview is recognized as a commonsense practice in journalism, and the research on political interviews is substantial, it partly remains to explore how responsibilities are negotiated in different forms of questioning in journalism. This study investigates three generic forms of questioning: accountability questioning, the clarifying of promises, and the principal assessments. Key features of the different forms are specified. The empirical study investigates how the questionings are performed in news on industrial crises in Sweden, in the different political regimes in the 1970s and the 2000s. The data consist of 27 news interviews with the formally responsible Ministers. The method is based on Conversation Analysis and includes detailed analyses of questions and answers. The study shows (1) how the forms of questioning differ when it comes to the action agenda and in how responsibilities are invoked and negotiated; (2) how the questionings tend to reproduce particular expectations of Governmental interventions; (3) how increased assertiveness and adversarialness in interviewing coincide with reduced expectations of political responsibilities.     

Exteroceptive cues in taste-aversion learning,no artifact: Reply to Holder

Holder (1988) has raised several objections to our work on the role of exteroceptive contextual stimuli in taste-aversion learning by rats. Our main conclusion from that work is that tongue-tactile stimuli from the drinking spout constitute the likely basis for findings of contextual bottle control over learned taste aversions. Holder suggests that our results are confounded by taste cues from the fluid containers. We refute this suggestion by presenting data from two experiments showing contextual bottle control, even though potential taste cues from the drinking bottles were eliminated. We also point to the fact that some of Holder’s criticisms are based on misreadings of our various reports.     

Adaptive progressive download based on the MPEG-4 file format

In this paper we describe how progressive download and adaptive streaming can be combined into a simple and efficient streaming framework. Based on the MPEG-4 file format (MP4) we use HTTP for transport and argue that these two components are sufficient for specifying an open streaming architecture. The client selects appropriate chunks from the MP4 file to be transferred based on (1) the header information (i.e. the “moov” box) in the first part of the file and (2) his observation of network throughput. The framework is completely client driven which allows for better server scalability and reduces signalling overhead. We discuss architecture and implementation issues such as complexity, interoperability and scalability and compare to 3GPP PSS Rel-6 adaptive streaming when appropriate. Measurements from a simple MP4/HTTP streaming client are presented showing that appropriate chunks are selected such that increased reliability is achieved.     

Der Internationale Beirat der Unesco für Lehrplanfragen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Relative Efficiency of Departments at a Turkish Engineering College: A Data Envelopment Analysis

In this study, Data Envelopment Analysis is used to measure relative efficiencies of academic departments of an engineering college. Input and output criteria are determined and measured utilizing the academic personnel performance measurement scheme of the College. New measures are developed to compare departments of different disciplines. The discriminating power of the measurement models is improved by restricting criteria weights directly and by using a multiple criteria decision making approach. Sensitivity of the results to exclusion of a criterion and changes in relative importance of the criteria is analyzed. Evaluation of the results jointly by the college administration and the departments is explained for a successful efficiency improvement mechanism.     

Teaching Foreign Languages at a distance

This paper is about how to teach a foreign language at a distance, i.e. how to support the learning of a foreign language by students who are not taught by teachers face‐to‐face. Much experience about this has been collected by correspondence schools and similar organisations. Among the public bodies of importance here should be mentioned the state‐owned and state‐run French Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondence and Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada. Little seems to have been published about teaching and learning foreign languages at a distance, although Rousseau 1977 and contributions to ICDE and EHSC conferences (in 1982 and 1979) have surveyed essential problem areas. Experiences of teaching English as a foreign language provide the basis from which many considerations are examined.     

Learning How (and How Not) to Weld: Vocational Learning in Technical Vocational Education

This article focuses on vocational learning in technical vocational education in upper-secondary school, with a special focus on the object of learning to weld. A concrete teaching situation where the learning object to weld is the focus of the interaction between a vocational teacher and an upper-secondary student was documented by a video camera and then analysed from two different perspectives: a conversation analytical perspective and a variation theory perspective. The combination of the two perspectives allows a study of learning that deals with issues regarding both form and content, which may increase our understanding of vocational learning in technical vocational education in upper-secondary school.     

Validity of Holland’s theory in adolescence: evidence from a Slovak sample

The underlying calculus assumption of Holland’s theory was tested in two samples of primary school students (N₁ = 400 and N₂ = 250) with an average age of 13.86 and 14.14 years, respectively. Both exploratory and confirmatory multidimensional scaling and Hubert and Arabie’s randomization test of hypothesized order relations were calculated. The circular spatial arrangement of RIASEC types was not confirmed in either of the two samples. The study discusses possible causes of the inappropriateness of using Holland’s model in an adolescent sample.