Notes on Classroom Practice and the Ownership and Use of Personal Computers Amongst Egyptian Science and Mathematics Teachers

This paper reports a study of the acquisition and use of personal computers by Egyptian science and mathematics teachers. Self-report data was collected from the same teachers on how they had changed their classroom activities and professional practice since their return to Egypt following a twelve-week in-service course in the United Kingdom. The data from this sample of teachers is compared with that from a second sample, who also attended the same in-service programme, but did not report the purchase of a personal computer. Analysis indicates that the Egyptian teachers with personal computers have tended to concentrate on improving the quality of current practice, through better preparation and student testing, rather than introducing major, paradigmatic, changes to their teaching.     

How Effective is Stemming and Decompounding for German Text Retrieval?

Information retrieval systems operating on free text face difficulties when word forms used in the query and documents do not match. The usual solution is the use of a “stemming component” that reduces related word forms to a common stem. Extensive studies of such components exist for English, but considerably less is known for other languages. Previously, it has been claimed that stemming is essential for highly declensional languages. We report on our experiments on stemming for German, where an additional issue is the handling of compounds, which are formed by concatenating several words. The major contribution of our work that goes beyond its focus on German lies in the investigation of a complete spectrum of approaches, ranging from language-independent to elaborate linguistic methods. The main findings are that stemming is beneficial even when using a simple approach, and that carefully designed decompounding, the splitting of compound words, remarkably boosts performance. All findings are based on a thorough analysis using a large reliable test collection.     

Digital Technologies for Book Publishing

This paper is based on an Australian government-funded research project looking at the implications of digitization for the book publishing industry, which was originally completed in 2008 and later extended to cover up to the present day. Although Australian-based the project and subsequent research has wider implications for application elsewhere. The paper initially provides a snapshot of Australian book publishing in a global context, and then summarizes our findings on the current and potential future impact of digital technologies. The original research employed an interpretive research paradigm, using a mixed methodology design, including an online survey of book publishers and the conduct of 14 case studies. The extension of the original research project led to its being given a more global dimension. In reporting this new research, the paper discusses in detail the diverse range of technologies, their limitations and the risks and opportunities they offer to the book publishing industry. This includes insights into the business as well as technical issues confronting the industry.     

Construct validation of the Behavior and Instructional Management Scale

Beliefs related to classroom management vary among teachers and play an important role in classrooms. Despite the importance of this construct, valid measures have proven difficult to develop. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Behavior and Instructional Management Scale (BIMS), a short but valid measure of teachers' approaches to behavioral and instructional management. Results revealed a two-factor solution that possessed a good model fit, with large estimated factor loadings using confirmatory factor analysis. Evidence of validity was obtained with the Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale. Internal consistency for both subscales was adequate. Implications for future research are discussed.     

The impact of peer collaboration on teachers’ practical knowledge

Due to changes in Dutch mathematics education, teachers are expected to use new teaching methods such as enquiry-based teaching. In this study, we investigate how teachers design, implement and evaluate new methods for statistics teaching for 7^th-graders during a professional development trajectory based on peer collaboration. We monitored teachers’ development in a network of four mathematics teachers from the same school. By using a mixed-methods approach in which we combined data from interviews, concept maps and classroom observations, we describe changes in teachers’ practical knowledge. We found how the nature of these changes highly depends on teachers’ personal concerns that emerge during the trajectory. Some teachers considered their concerns as challenges stimulating their learning, while other teachers experienced their concerns as a reason to fall back to previous teaching methods. Based on our results, we give some recommendations for organising teacher networks.