A stochastic approach to the relation between the impact factor and the uncitedness factor

Empirical analysis of the relationship between the impact factor – as measured by the average number of citations – and the proportion of uncited material in a collection dates back at least to van Leeuwen and Moed (2005) where graphical presentations revealed striking patterns. Recently Hsu and Huang (2012) have proposed a simple functional relationship. Here it is shown that the general features of these observed regularities are predicted by a well-established informetric model which enables us to derive a theoretical van Leeuwen–Moed lower bound. We also question some of the arguments of Hsu and Huang (2012) and Egghe (2013) while various issues raised by Egghe, 2008, Egghe, 2013 are also addressed.     

Attending to Diversity Representation Among Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Master’s Programs: A Pilot Study

Extant research has neglected to explore the diversity representation of counselor education programs. This pilot study sought to examine the extent to which CACREP-accredited master’s-level programs attend to the representation of people of color, individuals with dis/abilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB), and transgender persons within admissions, enrollment, and graduation data. The findings indicated little consistency in the maintenance of students’ demographic characteristics among participating programs. The authors contend that counseling programs need to critically analyze their policies and procedures to ensure a responsive milieu for students from diverse backgrounds. Implications for the counseling field are presented.     

Preparing Biology Graduate Teaching Assistants for Their Roles as Instructors: An Assessment of Institutional Approaches

The inconsistency of professional development (PD) in teaching for graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is a widespread problem in higher education. Although GTAs serve an important role in retention of undergraduate science majors and in promotion of scientific literacy in nonmajors, they often lack preparation and ongoing support for teaching. Given the recent national focus on instructional quality in introductory courses, our goal was to use an online survey to identify current practices of teaching PD for biology GTAs and compare these results with the last national survey on this topic. In responses from 71 participant institutions, 96% reported some mandatory teaching preparation for biology GTAs; however, 52% of these programs required 10 or fewer hours per year. Respondents wanted to change their programs to include more pedagogical information and teaching observations with feedback to their GTAs. Programmatic self-ratings of satisfaction with GTA PD were positively correlated with the number of topics discussed during PD. Although more schools are requiring GTA PD for teaching compared with the last national survey, the lack of program breadth at many schools warrants a national conversation with regard to recent calls for improving undergraduate instruction.     

Forced Disruption of Anatomy Education in Australia and New Zealand: An Acute Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Australian and New Zealand universities commenced a new academic year in February/March 2020 largely with “business as usual.” The subsequent Covid-19 pandemic imposed unexpected disruptions to anatomical educational practice. Rapid change occurred due to government-imposed physical distancing regulations from March 2020 that increasingly restricted anatomy laboratory teaching practices. Anatomy educators in both these countries were mobilized to adjust their teaching approaches. This study on anatomy education disruption at pandemic onset within Australia and New Zealand adopts a social constructivist lens. The research question was “What are the perceived disruptions and changes made to anatomy education in Australia and New Zealand during the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic, as reflected on by anatomy educators?.” Thematic analysis to elucidate “the what and why” of anatomy education was applied to these reflections. About 18 anatomy academics from ten institutions participated in this exercise. The analysis revealed loss of integrated “hands-on” experiences, and impacts on workload, traditional roles, students, pedagogy, and anatomists' personal educational philosophies. The key opportunities recognized for anatomy education included: enabling synchronous teaching across remote sites, expanding offerings into the remote learning space, and embracing new pedagogies. In managing anatomy education's transition in response to the pandemic, six critical elements were identified: community care, clear communications, clarified expectations, constructive alignment, community of practice, ability to compromise, and adapt and continuity planning. There is no doubt that anatomy education has stepped into a yet unknown future in the island countries of Australia and New Zealand.     

Standing in need of justification: Michael Apple,R.S. Peters and Jürgen Habermas

Curriculum decisions are increasingly seen as technocratic or bureaucratic problems, rather than democratic issues that must be deliberated over. As such, curriculum decisions are placed in the hands of a small minority of bureaucrats and business elites who assume the only purpose of education is to prepare children for college and/or the labour market. Within these times, it is essential to revisit classics works in order to move forward a critical theory of the curriculum. To develop a critical theory of the curriculum, I shall revisit two classic books in curriculum studies—R.S. Peters’s Ethics & Education and Michael Apple’s Ideology and Curriculum. I place Michael Apple and R.S. Peters in conversation with each other because both believe, albeit differently, that the curriculum ‘stands in need of justification’: both agree the curriculum must be publically justified through democratic deliberation. Furthermore, Apple and Peters develop different sets of tools for a critical theory of the curriculum—Apple provides tools for critique and Peters tools for the normative standards. However, both inadequately develop the normative standards for determining when the curriculum is democratically justified. These normative standards, I argue, are developed by Habermas’s critical theory of discourse ethics which is capable of building upon and expanding the insights of Apple and Peters.     

Aboriginal non-attendance at school: Revisiting the debate

Non-attendance at school among significant numbers of Aboriginal students has been officially recognised as a major problem since at least the mid 1980s. This article reviews the findings from recent literature on non-attendance within the context of a case study in Perth, Western Australia. Data for the study was obtained from a questionnaire of service providers and district-wide statistics on non-attendance. From this data the following have been identified: the various forms of non-attendance, causal factors associated with non-attendance, and limitations in service provision. Implications relating to policy development are also discussed.     

The Relationship Between Vocabulary and Word Reading Among Head Start Spanish–English Bilingual Children

In this study, we investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between vocabulary and word reading across Spanish and English. One hundred and seventeen 4- to 5-year-old Spanish–English bilingual children attending Head Start programs in the United States were tested for their Spanish and English word reading twice, 5 months apart. We also tested the children’s Spanish and English vocabulary and phonological awareness at Time 1. We used multiple regression models to examine the predictive value of vocabulary to word reading cross-linguistically and longitudinally. Results showed that within (Spanish or English) language and concurrent predictions were stronger than cross-language and longitudinal predictions; however, Spanish vocabulary was a significant and unique predictor of English word reading longitudinally. Spanish phonological awareness also played an important role in the relationship between vocabulary and word reading. Our results suggest that helping Spanish-speaking children build their Spanish vocabulary can also improve their English word reading ability.     

Modeling citation behavior in Management Science journals

Citation rates are becoming increasingly important in judging the research quality of journals, institutions and departments, and individual faculty. This paper looks at the pattern of citations across different management science journals and over time. A stochastic model is proposed which views the generating mechanism of citations as a gamma mixture of Poisson processes generating overall a negative binomial distribution. This is tested empirically with a large sample of papers published in 1990 from six management science journals and found to fit well. The model is extended to include obsolescence, i.e., that the citation rate for a paper varies over its cited lifetime. This leads to the additional citations distribution which shows that future citations are a linear function of past citations with a time-dependent and decreasing slope. This is also verified empirically in a way that allows different obsolescence functions to be fitted to the data. Conclusions concerning the predictability of future citations, and future research in this area are discussed.     

The Politics of Opting Out in the Age of Neoliberal Cynicism

Within the past several years, parents, teachers, students, and community members have vociferously debated the value and importance of opting out of standardized testing. The debate has been sparked by an increasing number of parents, dubbed “opt-out activists,” who refuse to have their children participate in federally mandated standards testing. However, an assortment of civil rights organizations and activists have challenged the opt-out movement. Quentin Wheeler-Bell argues that the debate between those in the opt-out movement and the civil rights activists is an example of neoliberal cynicism. While both groups acknowledge (to different degrees) the structural problems inherent to the current testing regime, they both also make educational demands that assume equal educational opportunity is achievable within a capitalist system. In making this assumption that equal educational opportunity is valuable within capitalism, Wheeler-Bell concludes, both sides ultimately reproduce neoliberal cynicism.