Distinction through visual art

Visual art is one of the fields where, according to Bourdieu, culture is used to reproduce the class structure. Like other items in the cultural repertoire, paintings, as major examples of visual art, imply social divisions in how they are engaged with by artists, critics and audiences. Within the Bourdieusian framework, cultural engagements with paintings are interpreted as indicators of social position, since appreciation depends on a trained capacity in the family and the educational system, which is often inaccessible to less powerful sections of the population. This would imply that the sorts of paintings favoured by working-class people differ from those preferred by the middle or upper classes. More recent studies have contested the view that a gulf exists between the art tastes of different classes in ways that reproduce the class structure. The argument of the omnivore thesis that distinctions between more popular and legitimate tastes have become blurred has predominantly been based on empirical references in the field of music. This article explores this thesis on the basis of data about visual arts in the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project. While some differences continue to be connected to social divisions of income, education and occupational groups, important similarities are found across the board, and certain significant differences appear to relate to factors other than social class, such as ethnicity, age and gender. It is also significant that some people appear disconnected from and disinterested in paintings.     

Self‐efficacy,school resources,job stressors and burnout among Spanish primary and secondary school teachers: a structural equation approach

This study examines the relationship between school resources, teacher self‐efficacy, potential multi‐level stressors and teacher burnout using structural equation modelling. The causal structure for primary and secondary school teachers was also examined. The sample was composed of 724 primary and secondary Spanish school teachers. The changes occurring in the Spanish teacher role in the last decade were taken into account to select job stressors. The results obtained revealed that external (school support resources) and internal (management classroom self‐efficacy and instructional self‐efficacy) coping resources have a negative and significant effect on job stressors. In turn, job stressors have a positive and significant effect on teachers’ burnout considering it as both a unidimensional and multidimensional construct. Furthermore, the hypothesised structure of burnout dimensions revealed that emotional exhaustion plays a key role in explaining Spanish school teachers’ burnout. Practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Reading difficulties in Albanian

Albanian is an Indo-European language with a shallow orthography, in which there is an absolute correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. We aimed to know reading strategies used by Albanian disabled children during word and pseudoword reading. A pool of 114 Kosovar reading disabled children matched with 150 normal readers aged 6 to 11?years old were tested. They had to read 120 stimuli varied in lexicality, frequency, and length. The results in terms of reading accuracy as well as in reading times show that both groups were affected by lexicality and length effects. In both groups, length and lexicality effects were significantly modulated by school year being greater in early grades and later diminish in length and just the opposite in lexicality. However, the reading difficulties group was less accurate and slower than the control group across all school grades. Analyses of the error patterns showed that phonological errors, when the letter replacement leading to new nonwords, are the most common error type in both groups, although as grade rises, visual errors and lexicalizations increased more in the control group than the reading difficulties group. These findings suggest that Albanian normal children use both routes (lexical and sublexical) from the beginning of reading despite of the complete regularity of Albanian, while children with reading difficulties start using sublexical reading and the lexical reading takes more time to acquire, but finally both routes are functional.     

西方国家教师知识研究的演变与启示

西方国家对教学的研究从教师的行为转向了教师的认知,而对教师认知的研究也从对教师决定、感知、思维等的研究转向了对教师知识的研究。教师的知识并不是抽象的、孤立的、离散的,而是各种类型的知识复杂地交织在一起的。目前,我国教师教育的课程改革不仅仅是课程数量的增加或减少,更重要的是通过课程内容的改革,加强学科专业课程之间的联系,通过教育实践性课程和教学案例学习实践性知识,从而整合职前教师所学的各种课程知识,使其更好地在教学中发挥作用。     

Amerikanische „Elitehochschulen“

The system of higher education in the USA comprises the undergraduate programs of the colleges and the graduate programs in research universities. This distinction has no equivalent in Germany. The idea of elite education is connected exclusively with the colleges. Its meaning and functions are demonstrated with an analysis of the criteria which are used for the ranking of higher education institutions. The ranking of the colleges is addressed to the students and is based on indicators, which give expression above all to the educational priorities of the students and the alumni. The ranking of the graduate programs focuses on specific academic programs and is addressed to the members of the various academic fields and to their prospective students. A few rankings cover whole educational institutions and serve to inform the higher educational management. We use these data to identity the specifics of outstanding research universities and their role in American higher education.     

Does regional disadvantage affect health-related sport and physical activity level? A multi-level analysis of individual behaviour

This study examines the role of regional government quality in health-related participation in sport and physical activity among adults (18–64 years) in 28 European countries. The importance of the analysis rests in the relative autonomy that regional and local governments have over policy decisions connected with sport and physical activity. While existing studies have focussed on economic and infrastructural investment and expenditure, this research investigates the quality of regional governments across 208 regions within 28 European countries. The individual-level data stem from the 2013 Eurobarometer 80.2 (n?=?18,675) and were combined with regional-level data from Eurostat. An individual's level of participation in sport and physical activity was measured by three variables reflecting whether an individual's activity level is below, meets, or exceeds the recommendations of the World Health Organization. The results of multi-level analyses reveal that regional government quality has a significant and positive association with individual participation in sport and physical activity at a level meeting or exceeding the guidelines. The impact is much larger than that of regional gross domestic product per capita, indicating that regional disadvantage in terms of political quality is more relevant than being disadvantaged in terms of economic wealth.     

The evaluation of faculty development programs

This article reviews literature pertinent to the evaluation of faculty development programs and presents data from several studies conducted at two institutions. These data were consistent with those previously reported in that faculty participants consistently expressed satisfaction with development services. In addition, one study found that most faculty members voluntarily took some action to improve their instructional effectiveness, though only a minority pursued these efforts in depth. Volunteers who worked intensively with a faculty development consultant improved more on objective measures of effectiveness than did those who were only superficially involved in improvement efforts; those who received no consultative assistance failed to improve significantly. Evidence from a final study provided a control for faculty motivation and led to the conclusion that improvement was contingent both on faculty desire to improve and on the availability of professional assistance.     

1-甲氧基环己硅烷类液晶物的理论研究

运用AM1和PM3两种SCF-MO方法,通过能量梯度全优化计算,给出5种1-甲氧基环己硅烷类液晶化合物(联苯基乙烷类系列)的稳定几何构型、电子结构和生成热、偶极矩、前沿轨道能级等性质,并结合有机电子理论进行了分析和讨论。