线性时态逻辑的决策问题复杂性

不同的时态逻辑能够适应不同的推理任务.为了符合应用,关于时间的模型从离散的自然数和整数,延伸到稠密的线性实数,甚至扩展到区间代数和树代数.如果简单的时态连接词的表达力已经足够,就只需使用这些简单的时态连接词来构造的时态逻辑.在能够承担降低运算速度的风险下,我们可以为实现更强的表达力而使用更多的连接词,也可以加上度量信息或者固定点.作者近期提出了一个令人惊讶的结论:建立在实数时间上的具有足够表达力的语言和基于自然数离散时间流的传统简单算子,它们推理的计算复杂性是一样的.在这篇论文中,作者试图对建立在标准时态连接词和线性时间流的普通类上的时态逻辑中所有决策问题的计算复杂性作新的说明.尤其是,文中指出,所有标准逻辑在PSPACE中都存在决策问题.     

Countering the Critics: Responses to Recent Criticisms of School Effectiveness Research

Criticisms of school effectiveness research (SER) from recent books are addressed. Fourteen criticisms are presented, followed by counterpoints, including: (1) many criticisms are based on simplistic/skewed readings of SER; (2) there is a wide diversity in SER; no single viewpoint prevails, as implied by critics; (3) many SER researchers have reported the direct/indirect impact of social class on student achievement, instead of ignoring it as implied by critics; (4) SER researchers believe schools have an impact beyond that of social class, and educators should influence what they can in their schools/classrooms; critics pessimistically focus on the social class/student achievement relationship; (5) pragmatism is a valid paradigm for studying schools; indeed, it has advantages over “critical” theory employed by other commentators. Resolution of these issues is unlikely given differences in commentators' world views.     

Things I've Learned from My Pupils

In this article, the authors, students in an instructional technology graduate course, describe a process to create an online tutorial for teaching software. They created the tutorial for a cyber school's use. Five tutorial modules were linked together through one menu screen using the MenuBuilder feature in the Adobe Captivate program. The separate modules allowed the cyber school's students to customize their learning, whereas the entire tutorial allowed teachers to concentrate class time on teaching lesson objectives, rather than software.     

Overexcitabilities and ADHD in the Gifted: An Examination

Gifted children and adolescents can display behavioral characteristics similar to those exhibited by children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), leading to potential issues with misdiagnosis. The overlapping characteristics between giftedness and ADHD are often seen as anecdotal or to only exist in theory, such as that explained by Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and his notion of overexcitabilities. There is a paucity of empirical data to support this perceived relationship between ADHD and overexcitabilities. This study provides empirical support for a relationship between ADHD and overexcitabilities within a sample of gifted adolescents. Implications are discussed.     

Honoring and Suffering the Thorn: Marking,Naming, and Eldering Depth Psychology II

This is the second article advocating and explicating a depth psychological approach to the education of the talented. In this analysis we take the “thorn” on the Piirto Pyramid of Talent Development and relate it to the processes of marking, naming, and eldering/mentoring as teachers practice them. The article presents 20 ways that the imaginal, symbolic aspects of life can be acknowledged and brought forth in students, thus invoking the educare within education.     

The impact of curriculum change on health sciences first year students’ approaches to learning

This study aimed to use a learning inventory (the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students, ASSIST) to measure the impact of a curriculum change on students’ approaches to learning in two large courses in a health sciences first year programme. The two new Human Body Systems (HUBS) courses were designed to encourage students to take a deep approach to learning. ASSIST was completed by 599 students enrolled in a biology class in 2006 that was part of the old curriculum, and by 705 students at the beginning and end of the new HUBS courses in 2007. Changes in students’ approaches to learning over time were examined. The ASSIST scores for both HUBS courses reflected the dominance of a surface approach, followed by a strategic and then a deep approach. However, by the end of the year, students were taking a deep and strategic approach to their studies to a greater extent, and a surface approach to a lesser extent. Moreover, students enrolled in the new course adopted a deep approach to their studies to a significantly greater degree than those studying the old curriculum. Despite the predominance of a surface approach, the results suggest that it is possible to bring about small but significant positive changes in students’ learning behaviour in a very large class through curriculum change. The proportion of students preferring a surface approach, and results showing that high performance on the final exam was significantly correlated with a surface approach, probably reflected contextual factors, including assessment, and is the focus of ongoing curriculum development.     

A prototype Semantic Web-based digital content exchange for schools in Singapore

Singapore has many large and educationally valuable digital collections and is planning the development of many more. These digital collections contain historical, cultural and scientific multimedia objects, along with learning objects. At present, school teachers and pupils find it hard to locate many of these resources using traditional search engines. This paper describes a research investigation into the design and subsequent development of a prototype digital resource discovery portal (Digital Content Exchange) based on Semantic Web technologies, and explores some of the educational issues raised. The research project explored how the features of the Semantic Web might offer valuable additional educational benefits and affordances beyond that of those based on existing information retrieval technologies.     

PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF CULTURALLY RELEVANT SCIENCE TEACHING IN AMERICAN INDIAN CLASSROOMS

This study explores the perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching of 35 teachers of American Indian students. These teachers participated in professional development designed to help them better understand climate change science content and teaching climate change using both Western science and traditional and cultural knowledge. Teacher perceptions of practices using culturally relevant instruction were evaluated. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results from the survey analysis show that the teachers’ existing practices of culturally relevant science teaching were limited in choosing topics relevant to American Indian culture. We found three common themes from the teachers’ perceptions of culturally relevant science teaching, meaning of culturally relevant science teaching, teaching strategies, and purpose of culturally relevant science teaching from the qualitative data. We also found that teachers with higher survey scores perceive culturally relevant science teaching differently than teachers with lower survey scores, specifically for the purposes and teaching strategies of culturally relevant science teaching. The results show that teachers with higher survey scores tended to perceive culturally relevant science teaching as a two-way learning process between teachers and students where the teachers can learn traditional science knowledge from the students. They also tend to perceive using concrete traditional science examples as effective teaching strategy for culturally relevant science teaching and building strong relationships with American Indian students as the most important purpose of culturally relevant science teaching. We also discuss common challenges faced by science teachers when trying to implement culturally relevant science teaching with American Indian students.     

Embryonic auditory experience and maternal call recognition

Peking duck embryos respond selectively to the maternal call of their species on the day before hatching, given normal embryonic auditory experience (the sounds emanating from their siblings and themselves which begin late on Day 24 of development). Groups of Peking embryos were subjected to recordings of either the mallard or the Burmese red jungle fowl maternal call beginning on Day 21 of incubation. Responses to these calls were tested on the day before hatching to determine the effects of the prenatal auditory experience. The responses of those birds exposed to the mallard maternal call were neither attenuated nor enhanced (as compared to the controls) when presented that call; those subjects which were exposed to the jungle fowl maternal call later failed to respond to that call or the mallard maternal call.