Autonomous and controlling reasons underlying achievement goals during task engagement: their relation to intrinsic motivation and cheating

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation of autonomous and controlling reasons underlying an endorsed achievement goal to intrinsic motivation and cheating. The endorsement of the achievement goal was ensured by involving 212 (M_age = 19.24, SD = .97) freshman students in a spatial task and asking them to report their most important achievement goal, as well as the reasons for adopting the goal, during the task. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that independent of the achievement goal the students adopted, the autonomous reasons for the endorsed goal were positively related to the indices of intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, the autonomous reasons underlying either performance or mastery-avoidance goals were negatively related to cheating. Alternatively, the controlling reasons for the endorsed goal were positively related to pressure and tension. The importance of considering both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ aspect of achievement motivation are discussed.     

A meta-analysis of the impact of mobile learning on mathematics achievement

Education and Information Technologies - The technological developments of the twenty-first century have enabled the emergence of alternative teaching-learning models and instructional tools. One...     

Stability studies of common biochemical analytes in serum separator tubes with or without gel barrier subjected to various storage conditions

Introduction

The collected and shipped blood samples are exposed to a various extra-analytical factors prior to analysis. The aim of the study was to determine the stability of analytes in serum gel tubes and plain tubes exposed to a range of storage temperatures and times after centrifugation.

Materials and methods:

Fifteen healthy volunteers were recruited and venous blood was collected into four tubes, two with and two without gel separator. Analyzing the baseline samples in 30 min, all were stored at 4ºC or 24ºC for 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48 and 72 hours and 1 week. Sixteen biochemical anaytes were measured on each sample. Variations remained under the desirable bias considered as clinically insignificant.

Results:

On day three, most analytes remained stable including albumin, protein, creatinine, cholesterol, triglycerides, gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LD) regardless of tube types. Glucose concentration decreased markedly (P = 0.001) beginning from the first hours of storage in plain serum. The stability maximized for the analytes including glucose, total bilirubin, urea nitrogen (BUN), uric acid stored at 4 ºC in gel tubes. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) activity increased significantly (P = 0.002) up to 48-h, however bias was not significant clinically. High density lipoprotein (HDL) concentration was stable in gel tubes at 24 ºC, in plain tubes at 4 ºC stored up to 36-h.

Conclusion:

Serum gel or non-gel tubes might be used interchangeably for 11 analytes chilled or at 24 ºC, whereas some restrictions must be applied for glucose, AST, BUN, HDL, and uric acid.     

A Bandwidth expanding scheme for communication channels with noiseless feedback in the presence of unknown jamming noise

This paper treats the problem of transmitting a Gaussian discrete-time Markov process over a time-discrete additive white Gaussian channel with noiseless feedback which is subjected to statistically unknown jamming noise (satisfying a given power constraint). The channel is used more than once during the interval between the production of successive source letters, and the jamming noise is either allowed to be correlated with the encoder output, or forced to be totally independent of it. The complete solution obtained in the paper under a minimax criterion indicates that the optimum encoder-decoder structures are linear,and the least favorable jamming noise is a Gaussian process.     

Effects of axial conduction in laminar tube flow with convective boundaries

Heat transfer in laminar tube flow with convective boundary conditions and axial heat conduction in the fluid is solved exactly. The effects of the external Biot numbers and the axial conduction in fluid on the temperature distribution and the local Nusselt number are determined for both the upstream and the downstream regions. In order to illustrate the effects of velocity profile, the results for the slug flow and the parabolic velocity profiles are plotted simultaneously. The heat transfer characteristics of the flow are found to be rather sensitive to the Péclét number, the external Biot numbers and the velocity profile in the thermal entrance region.     

The process of supervision in the turkish educational system: purpose, structure, operation

The aim of this study is to provide information on the purposes, structure and operation of the process of supervision in the Turkish educational system. In this paper, the historical development of supervision services in the Turkish educational system, as well as the purposes and principles of educational supervision in Turkey and the structure of supervision in the Turkish educational system are defined. Moreover, the organization of sub-systems of the Ministry of National Education and that of supervision at elementary schools, hiring supervisors, their training, duties and responsibilities as well as working principles are presented. In addition, a detailed analysis of the supervision of institutions and teachers by supervisors is included.