Correlates of Citizenship Behaviour of Nigerian Secondary School Students

This paper examined the extent to which gender, academic achievement in social studies and the occupation of the parents of the students may be intervening variables in the citizenship behaviour of students within the school purview. An observational scheme, using Mehlinger's and Okunrotifa's posit, was used to observe 60 students for 3 weeks by trained raters. While the general picture appears satisfactory and gender has no significant influence, academic achievement in social studies and the occupation of parents are significant variables associated with student degree of citizenship behaviour. Therefore, in all school work dealing with civic competence, moral education concepts should be used and students should be associated heterogeneously across sex, intellectual capability and parents’ status.     

Changes in kinematics and arm–leg coordination during a 100-m breaststroke swim

The purpose of this study was to compare arm–leg coordination and kinematics during 100 m breaststroke in 26 (8 female; 18 male) specialist breaststroke swimmers. Laps were recorded using three 50-Hz underwater cameras. Heart rate and blood lactate were measured pre- and post-swim. Arm–leg coordination was defined using coordination phases describing continuity between recovery and propulsive phases of upper and lower limbs: coordination phase 1 (time between end of leg kick and start of the arm pull phases); and coordination phase 2 (time between end of arm pull and start of leg kick phases). Duration of stroke phases, coordination phases, swim velocity, stroke length (SL), stroke rate (SR) and stroke index (SI) were analysed during the last three strokes of each lap that were unaffected by turning or finishing. Significant changes in velocity, SI and SL (P < 0.05) were found between laps. Both sexes showed significant increase (P < 0.05) in heart rate and blood lactate pre- to post-swim. Males had significantly (P < 0.01) faster swim velocities resulting from longer SLs (P = 0.016) with no difference in SR (P = 0.064). Sex differences in kinematic parameters can be explained by anthropometric differences providing males with increased propelling efficiency.     

Let's keep in contact with Europe — a joint European research project about lifelong education for adults with learning difficulties

The authors of this article come from a range of professional backgrounds in agencies across Europe. Samuel Fernandez lectures at the University of Oviedo in Spain; Janos Kovari works at the Kerek Vilag Foundation in Hungary; Paola Vulterini works for Capodarco, a service provider in Italy; and Val Williams is a researcher at the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol. Using funding from the European Commission, the team undertook research into the curriculum provided for adults with learning difficulties in a variety of centres in their four home countries. Fernandez, Kovari, Vulterini and Williams find some interesting similarities and some significant differences in provision. They also seek the views of service users about a common core curriculum derived from their research and present a case for further work in this important area.     

Critically engaging the ethics of AI for a global audience

Ethics and Information Technology - This article introduces readers to the special issue on Selected Issues in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. In this paper, I make a case for a wider...     

Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...     

Academic social bookmarking: An empirical analysis of Connotea users

Three groups of social bookmarking users, namely experienced users, users with moderate level of experience, and novice users, were investigated, in terms of their reported tagging behaviors, perceived usefulness of social bookmarking in information discovery and management, and perceived usefulness of the bookmarking features provided. Based on the empirical analysis of the Connotea users, who are primarily in academia, the study shows that experienced academic users generally prefer to use social bookmarking while moderately experienced and novice users still prefer to use the traditional bookmarking methods, such as creating and using bookmarks on a dedicated computer. Experienced academic users were also found to create more tags per bookmark comparing to the other two groups. Most novice academic users, however, only created one tag per bookmark, which just met Connotea's minimum requirement. Surprisingly different from the collaborative design nature of the social bookmarking systems, the study finds that our participants, particularly experienced academic users, prefer to create and use their own bookmarks rather than sharing bookmarks created by others. In fact, experienced users have significantly higher frequency (once every two weeks) of creating bookmarks than the other two groups (once a month or less). In addition, website design features and functions, such as automatic collection of bibliographic information, are regarded by all participants as helpful for information discovery. The in-depth examination and discussion of the opinions of Connotea users may be useful for further improvement of the design features and usage applications, particularly for academic social bookmarking websites. The results may also have potential implications to the future development of social bookmarking services in general.     

Variability in the age of schooling contributes to the link between literacy and numeracy in Côte d'Ivoire

Literacy and numeracy are correlated throughout development, however, our understanding of this relation is limited. We explored the predictors of literacy and numeracy covariance (i.e., shared fluency between literacy and numeracy) in children (N = 1167, girls = 563) in rural Côte d'Ivoire, with specific focus on how developmental timing of instruction may relate to covariance. Many Ivorian children experience late enrollment and grade repetition, leading to variation in age-for-grade; participants were between grades 1 to 6, but their ages ranged from 5 to 15 (M = 9.19, SD = 2.07). Phonological awareness, numerical magnitude, ordinality, working memory, and inhibitory control were cognitive predictors of covariance. Age-for-grade was negatively related to covariance suggesting that covariance is related to timing of instruction.     

Visual illusions in the baboon (Papio anubis)

Two baboons were trained on oddity problems with sets of stimuli involving parallel lines. When stable discrimination performance had been established, occasional test trials were run with Zöllner illusion figures. Both animals appeared to have been deceived by the illusion.     

You can’t ignore us: what role does family play in student engagement and alienation in a Ghanaian university?

Much of the existing literature on student engagement focuses on what happens within the higher education environment or what the institution has direct control over, restricting understanding of how issues outside of the institution affect engagement. This paper argues that efforts to improve student engagement should be broadened to incorporate issues relating to the family. It employed a case study design in order to develop a broad and more in-depth understanding of how family influences the amount of time and effort students invest in their learning in a large public university in Ghana. It was established that engagement is influenced by family expectation, financial and social support, as well as monitoring of students’ academic performance. The unique contribution of the study is that it broadens current understandings of engagement because it adds an aspect that has not been highlighted in current work on engagement, making a case for institutions to work more with families to get a broader understanding of challenges students face in order to provide comprehensive support.