Improving teacher prediction of children at risk for reading failure

Whether screening tests or teacher ratings best predict children at risk for reading failure continues to be an area of disagreement in the early identification literature. Our early studies confirmed low positive identification rates (30%) when kindergarten teachers were asked to predict future reading achievement using a traditional rating scale, while a project-developed, theory-based screening battery correctly identified 81% of poor readers. Construction of a teacher rating scale of current skill levels on research-validated precursors to reading improved prediction in the current study, although results were still inferior to the screening test (64% and 80% valid positives, respectively). Combining test results and teacher ratings resulted in 88% identification of those who failed in first, second, or third grade, suggesting that both teacher ratings and screening tests should be used to identify the largest number of those who will later fail in reading. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Computerization and e-Government implementation in Jordan: Challenges, obstacles and successes

With the latest revolution of technology in information, communications, and media, the need for computerization has been identified in most countries. Many social and technical advantages and problems come along with it. As a result, the Information Society concept has been created. There exist certain principles for building such a society, but in Arab regions it has unique challenges and obstacles. Jordan, responding to a royal vision, has established the goal of becoming a leader in information and economic developments among other countries in the region. Several plans and initiatives have been developed for this purpose. One of these initiatives is the implementation of e-Government, which offers several benefits for both the government and society. e-Government has five building blocks to achieve the expected results and the process of implementation involves passing through certain stages. Jordan, as an Arab country, faces several obstacles in the area of implementation. A readiness study for Jordan has been accomplished and implementation and achievements have been made in Jordanian e-Government.     

A Framework to Understand Students' Differentiation Between Heat Energy and Temperature and its Educational Implications

The main objective of this article is to investigate whether students' understanding of heat energy and temperature forms part of a 'hard-core' (Lakatos, 1970) of epistemological beliefs and the degree to which it affects their ability to learn thermodynamics in the classroom. Results obtained based on science major freshman students (n = 99) show that even after having responded correctly in one context that approximates the kinetic view of heat energy students fall back on the caloric theory of heat in a different context. It was also found that there is little relationship between the ability to differentiate between heat energy and temperature and performance on a problem of thermodynamics. Students in this study had been exposed to the kinetic theory in the previous semester and yet some of them had no problem in consistently using the caloric theory, while others switched between the two conceptualizations. It is concluded that an epistemological belief in the caloric theory of heat forms part of the hard-core of students' framework and that the conceptual shift to the kinetic theory requires radical restructuring (Chinn & Brewer, 1993). The question we need to ask is not only what are the students' prior epistemological beliefs, but as to what are the conditions under which the hard-core could crumble. A framework that could facilitate conceptual shifts is formulated.     

Research Productivity and Social Capital in Australian Higher Education

This study investigates the role of social capital in raising research productivity in academic institutions. Social capital as a strategic resource embedded in social relationships can be utilised towards decreasing pressures from external environmental conditions, such as the global financial crisis. A survey was sent to academic staff in five universities in Victoria, to collect data regarding their frequency of communications and research productivity. The findings indicated that there is a significant and positive correlation between social interactions and research productivity. Regression analysis demonstrated that social interactions as an independent variable predict research productivity of academics.     

Pritchard,Alan (2014) Ways of learning. Routledge (London & New York) isbn 978‐0‐415‐83493‐3 143 pp £19.99 https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415834933

Written for teachers, who generally lack a sufficient knowledge of how people learn, Pritchard's book aims at enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of education through raising teachers' understanding of learning theory. However, it does not do so very effectively: even if you are a keen teacher, you will probably find only parts of much interest or use. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan     

Who Pays for Online Content? A Media Dependency Perspective Comparing Young and Older People

This study examines predictors of online content purchases through media dependency theory and comparing young and older people. It focuses on actual online content purchases instead of willingness-to-pay used in previous studies. The effects of two dimensions of media dependencies are compared: intensity and referent scopes. Social media dependency and mobile media dependency are examined specifically, in addition to general Internet dependency as new media dependency. Our results show young people make more actual purchases of online content than older people. Predictors of online content purchases include age group, online shopping habits, ownership of mobile applications and mobile devices, Internet referent dependency, and social media intensity dependency. New media referent dependency is more important than intensity dependency for predicting online content purchases.     

Partisan Media and Discussion as Enhancers of the Belief Gap

This study examines the roles of partisanship, partisan media use, and political discussion in the development of belief gaps. Using national survey data, we construct models of political identity, media use, and discussion factors predicting beliefs on five contested political issues and find that ideology and partisanship are generally stronger predictors of beliefs than is education. Notably, each has independent effects on belief outcomes. Contrary to some concerns that the Internet especially promotes partisan clustering, use of partisan traditional media—television and radio—is by far the strongest information-related predictor of belief outcomes, whereas partisan social media use and partisan discussion are relatively weak and inconsistent. These findings suggest that political elites continue to exert significant influence over the perceptions of rank and file partisans.     

Personalized recommendation of learning material using sequential pattern mining and attribute based collaborative filtering

Material recommender system is a significant part of e-learning systems for personalization and recommendation of appropriate materials to learners. However, in the existing recommendation algorithms, dynamic interests and multi-preference of learners and multidimensional-attribute of materials are not fully considered simultaneously. Moreover, these algorithms cannot effectively use the learner’s historical sequential patterns of material accessing in recommendation. For addressing these problems and improving the accuracy and quality of recommendation, a new material recommender system framework based on sequential pattern mining and multidimensional attribute-based collaborative filtering (CF) is proposed. In the sequential pattern based approach, modified Apriori and PrefixSpan algorithms are implemented to discover latent patterns in accessing of materials and use them for recommendation. Leaner Preference Tree (LPT) is introduced to take into account multidimensional-attribute of materials, and learners’ rating and model dynamic and multi-preference of learners in the multidimensional attribute-based CF approach. Finally, the recommendation results of two approaches are combined using cascade, weighted and mixed methods. The proposed method outperforms the previous algorithms on the classification accuracy measures and the learner’s real learning preference can be satisfied accurately according to the real-time up dated contextual information.     

Challenges and policies for promoting internationalization—The case of Iranian public universities

The global knowledge economy has turned higher education into a key player in societal development. Internationalization benefits higher education institutions in several aspects, such as improvement and visibility in international rankings, revenue generation via tuition fees and external funding, improvement of research and teaching quality, integration with academic communities and familiarization with scholarly attitudes. In this study, we provide insights into the challenges of internationalization faced by higher education institutions in Iran as a developing country. Several policies and practices have been adopted in Iran to improve internationalization efforts; however, these activities have had little impact on the quality of research and educational programs at Iran's universities. Understanding the challenges they face in a systematic way can help identify different factors and develop a set of suggestions to increase the quality and quantity of international cooperation. We formulate our suggestions based on the opportunities provided by the digitalization solutions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing importance of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in both global and national environments. We interviewed 15 faculty members in Iranian higher education institutions and 14 managers in charge of international affairs at universities in Iran. In addition, data extracted from three forums on Iranian higher education internationalization are analysed. Using a grounded theory approach, we group the challenges into macro-, institutional and individual levels and then suggest a number of practices and policies to increase the quantity and quality of internationalization efforts.     

A qualitative inquiry of doctoral students' herding in education and validation of ‘herding in educational decisions’ scale

Fresh PhD recipients are experiencing restricted career opportunities yet the enrolment of PhD Scholars is increasing rapidly. Perhaps, doctoral students lack conscious educational decision-making. Building on such a perspective of doctoral students' unconscious educational choices, we explored their educational choices throughout their life trajectory. We started with a qualitative inquiry of 18 different PhD scholars in Pakistan. The findings helped us in developing a measure to determine the extent of herding in doctoral students' educational decisions. We ‘benefitted from’ this opportunity and validated the scale in two separate quantitative inquiries for conducting an exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The study concluded a 3-dimensional scale (consisting of 15-items) for measuring ‘herding in educational decisions’. The study offers certain implications for conscious educational decisions.