Hispanic Student Success: Factors Influencing the Persistence and Transfer Decisions of Latino Community College Students Enrolled in Developmental Education

This study examined the impact of a set of theoretically-derived predictor variables on the persistence and transfer of Hispanic community college students. Early models of student persistence have been validated primarily among 4-year college students. While the constructs have been well-established, the relationships of those relevant factors remain unexamined among community college transfer students, and specifically, among Hispanic students enrolled in developmental coursework and planning to transfer from a community college to a 4-year institution. Logistic regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized conceptual framework on an existing set of quantitative persistence data drawn from a national sample of Hispanic students.     

News Selection Within Customer Magazines

Customer magazines blur the boundaries between journalistic reporting and organizational information. On the one hand, customer magazines are intended to communicate the interests, brands, products, and services of an organization. On the other hand, their topics, style, and layout resemble those of journalistic publications, from which readers expect independent and objective reporting. While customer magazines are distributed in high numbers throughout different industries and play an increasingly important role in the media landscape, they have hardly been the focus of researchers to date. It is therefore quite unclear how editorial decisions are made within these publications. This study investigated the relevance of journalistic news factors for topic selection in customer magazines and the extent to which these factors differ from those of journalistic publications. We conducted a quantitative survey of customer magazines’ editors-in-chief in Germany (N?=?143). We compared their responses on the relevance of news factors to the findings of a survey of senior journalists. The findings revealed clear differences in the use of news factors between the two groups.     

Mazes and Maps: Can Young Children Find Their Way?

Games provide important informal learning activities for young children, and spatial game play (e.g., puzzles and blocks) has been found to relate to the development of spatial skills. This study investigates 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's use of scaled and unscaled maps when solving mazes, asking whether an important aspect of spatial learning—the ability to use scaled representations—is related to children's play with scaled maps. Results show that almost all children used the maps to solve the mazes at least occasionally, and use them consistently across maze difficulty and different types of maps. Map use and more accurate spatial scaling were associated with better maze performance. We suggest that maze activities including scaled maps might provide an opportunity for developing children's spatial scaling through play, and discuss future research directions.     

Croatian survey on critical results reporting

Introduction

Poor harmonization of critical results management is present in various laboratories and countries, including Croatia. We aimed to investigate procedures used in critical results reporting in Croatian medical biochemistry laboratories (MBLs).

Materials and methods

An anonymous questionnaire, consisting of 24 questions/statements, related to critical results reporting procedures, was send to managers of MBLs in Croatia. Participants were asked to declare the frequency of performing procedures and degree of agreement with statements about critical values reporting using a Likert scale. Total score and mean scores for corresponding separate statements divided according to health care setting were calculated and compared.

Results

Responses from 111 Croatian laboratories (48%) were analyzed. General practice laboratories (GPLs) more often re-analyzed the sample before reporting the critical result in comparison with the hospital laboratories (HLs) (score: 4.86 (4.75-4.96) vs. 4.49 (4.25-4.72); P = 0.001) and more often reported the critical value exclusively to the responsible physician compared to HLs (4.46 (4.29-4.64) vs. 3.76 (3.48-4.03), P < 0.001). High total score (4.69 (4.56-4.82)) was observed for selection of the critical results list issued by the Croatian Chamber of Medical Biochemistry (CCMB) indicating a high harmonization level for this aspect of critical result management. Low total scores were observed for the statements regarding data recording and documentation of critical result notification.

Conclusions

Differences in practices about critical results reporting between HLs and GPLs were found. The homogeneity of least favorable responses detected for data recording and documentation of critical results notification reflects the lack of specific national recommendations.Key words: critical results, laboratory testing, quality indicators, survey, post-analytical phase     

English language teaching in public primary schools in Mexico: the practices and challenges of implementing a national language education program

Over the past 15?years, many state governments in Mexico have initiated local programs to introduce English at the primary school level. In 2009, the Mexican Ministry of Education formalized the Programa Nacional de Inglés en Educación Básica (PNIEB) as part of the national curriculum, based on the argument that increasing the number of English speakers in Mexico is necessary for the country to be globally competitive and to follow the trend in other developing economies of augmenting English instruction in public education. This paper focuses on the implementation of PNIEB and the state programs that preceded it. The authors document the practices and challenges associated with the program based on data collected from interviews with the main stakeholders involved (students and parents, teachers, school principals, and program coordinators) and from classroom observations. The total data-set consisted of over 200 interviews and classroom observations spread over several years from 2008 to 2012. Several challenges are described, including the development of materials, the role of English in relation to other subject areas, and the training of teachers who often speak English but have uneven formal preparation. The status of the teachers, both as second-class citizens within the schools and the instability and irregularities with their contracts, was identified as the most significant challenge to the successful implementation of the programs.     

Laboratory policies and practices for thyroid function tests in Croatia: survey on behalf of Working Group for Laboratory Endocrinology of the Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine

IntroductionLaboratory plays important part in screening, diagnosis, and management of thyroid disorders. The aim of this study was to estimate current laboratory preanalytical, analytical and postanalytical practices and policies in Croatia.Materials and methodsWorking Group for Laboratory Endocrinology of the Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine designed a questionnaire with 27 questions and statements regarding practices and protocols in measuring thyroid function tests. The survey was sent to 111 medical biochemistry laboratories participating in external quality assurance scheme for thyroid hormones organized by Croatian Centre for Quality Assessment in Laboratory Medicine. Data is presented as absolute numbers and proportions.ResultsFifty-three participants returned the questionnaire. Response rate varied depending on question, yielding a total survey response rate of 46-48%. All respondents perform thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). From all other thyroid tests, most performed is free thyroxine (37/53) and least TSH-stimulating immunoglobulin (1/53). Laboratories are using nine different immunoassay methods. One tenth of laboratories is verifying manufacturer’s declared limit of quantification for TSH and one third is verifying implemented reference intervals for all performed tests. Most of laboratories (91%) adopt the manufacturer’s reference interval for adult population. Reference intervals for TSH are reported with different percentiles (90, 95 or 99 percentiles).ConclusionThis survey showed current practices and policies in Croatian laboratories regarding thyroid testing. The results identified some critical spots and will serve as a foundation in creating national guidelines in order to harmonize laboratory procedures in thyroid testing in Croatia.