Techniques of Online Citation Verification in NLM Databases

This article is an exploration of techniques for identifying items in the health related literature using NLM system databases. Examples used are derived from reference desk and interlibrary loan files, but the techniques should be useful to any medical librarian who needs to verify a citation. A knowledge of NLM indexing practices and system commands is assumcd. Because of mace limitations the TOXLINE. TOXBACK74, TOXBACK65,AVLINE files have been omitted, but other bibliographic files and SERLINE are included. Tables designed for at-terminal use are presented.     

Building citizenship in fragmented societies: The challenges of deracialising and integrating schools in post-Apartheid South Africa

Soon after the collapse of Apartheid, the new government in South Africa set about restructuring the educational system, which was previously segregated by race, class and language. This paper argues that the deracialisation and integration of schools in South Africa has been difficult to achieve and as a process, uneven in different parts of the country and in types of schools.     

Modernism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Korean Art: Implications for Art Education Reform

This paper reports the findings of research into cross-cultural influences on Korean contemporary art and the artists’ aesthetic and cultural values and beliefs. Findings were that predominant Western influences during the Korean modern period have been American-Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, but that these trends have been acculturated rather than assimilated; that Korean Modern Art continues to dominate the Korean fine art world since it is practised by very established artists and master-craftsment; and the work of the younger less-established artists who are absorbing postmodern values, is more representational and eclectic stylistically, and sets out to convey messages and meanings about social problems in contemporary Korean life. The growing concern with Korean cultural identity is interpreted, in part, as a response to the demands of the international art market, but is represented through the artists’ use of traditional Korean content and processes, or pursuit of Korean metaphysical/philosophical ideals.     

Preparing for National Monitoring in Poland

Like many of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Poland is currently in the throes of a major educational reform. The systems of primary and secondary schooling have been restructured, much of the responsibility for education is in the process of decentralisation, new curricula are being introduced into schools and a new school leaving certificate, the Nowa Matura, is to be implemented, along with a new examination infrastructure. A national monitoring programme could play a crucially important role in this context, providing a useful tool for medium to long-term evaluation of the effects of the reform in terms of pupil achievement. To this end, and within the support framework of the EU SMART initiative, pilot pupil performance surveys were carried out on a national scale in Poland in both the primary and secondary sectors. This paper outlines some of the main features of the reform, considers the potential value of a national monitoring programme for reform evaluation, offers some salient results from the pilot monitoring surveys and highlights some important implications of the experience for future programme design and use.     

Learning from our own lessons: pre-service teachers’ narratives of teaching as an experiment

Pre-service teachers need to develop habits of mind that allow them to grow as new teachers. This article describes an elementary mathematics methods course in which teaching as an experiment was used a framework for pre-service teachers to participate in action research by developing learning goals, observing and analyzing student thinking, hypothesizing and enacting teaching strategies, and reflecting on the effectiveness of a lesson. Through analysis of reflections and lesson plans, the article explores three groups of pre-service teachers’ reflections on teaching as well as their confidence across the semester. By treating lessons as experiments, the pre-service teachers were able to develop appropriate teaching responses over time as well as gain confidence in their abilities.     

Relationship between cooperation in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game and the discounting of hypothetical outcomes

A number of authors have proposed that preference for a larger, delayed reward in delay discounting is similar to cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game versus tit-for-tat. This proposal was examined by correlating delay-discounting (Experiment 1) and probability-discounting (Experiment 2) rates for hypothetical monetary gains and losses with performance in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game. Correlations between rate of delay discounting (discounting parameters and area under the curve) and proportion of cooperation in the repeated prisoner's dilemma game versus tit-for-tat were significant across three magnitudes, and correlations were generally higher with discounting for losses than with that for gains. As was expected, correlations between rate of delay discounting and performance versus a random strategy in the prisoner's dilemma game were not significant. Correlations between rate of probability-discounting and cooperation rate in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game versus neither a tit-for-tat nor a random strategy were significant.     

The influence of students' values and educational attitudes on their evaluation of faculty

The study determined the influence of students' values and educational attitudes on their evaluation of faculty. Sixty-five graduate students completed an evaluation form, a value survey, and an attitude scale at the end of an adult learning theory course. Multiple regression and path analysis showed that (a) educational attitudes and selected values accounted for 27% of the variance in student evaluation of faculty, (b) educational attitudes were responsible for 8% of the variance in student evaluation of faculty, and (c) values per se were not significantly related to student evaluation of faculty. A path model suggested that values influenced student evaluation of faculty through educational attitudes. The findings suggested that students' values and attitudes play a major role in their evaluation of faculty and should be recognized by teachers when interpreting the results of such ratings.