Consortial Cataloging Guidelines for Electronic Resources: I-Share Survey and Recommendations

In 2009, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) charged a task force to update and revise recommendations that address cataloging practice and catalog access to electronic resources for libraries participating in the I-Share union catalog. This article presents the results of a survey and recommendations developed by the 2009 Task Force that cover all types of e-resources. Issues covered include: single or separate records for electronic and print versions of a title; the use of aggregator-neutral and provider neutral records; the construction and placement of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and notes; and the use of vendor records.     

Play For All at Chicago Children's Museum: A History and Overview

In 2004, Chicago Children's Museum founded the Play For All initiative, which creates a community where play and learning connect for visitors of all abilities. The Play For All team discovered that families with children with disabilities were looking for an opportunity to explore and enjoy the museum without limitations and the fear of being judged. CCM also learned that being ADA compliant was not enough; being accessible and inclusive meant going above and beyond the ADA. Children's museums are a rare treat where almost everything should be interactive and ready to be played with. The Play For All team has made significant changes to the exhibits, staff training, and programming at Chicago Children's Museum by working with local families with disabilities and partner organizations. A culture shift has taken place within CCM. Play For All is now a top priority when decisions are being made.     

Primary teachers conducting inquiry projects: effects on attitudes towards teaching science and conducting inquiry

ABSTRACT

This study used an experimental, pretest-posttest control group design to investigate whether participation in a large-scale inquiry project would improve primary teachers’ attitudes towards teaching science and towards conducting inquiry. The inquiry project positively affected several elements of teachers’ attitudes. Teachers felt less anxious about teaching science and felt less dependent on contextual factors compared to the control group. With regard to attitude towards conducting inquiry, teachers felt less anxious and more able to conduct an inquiry project. There were no effects on other attitude components, such as self-efficacy beliefs or relevance beliefs, or on self-reported science teaching behaviour. These results indicate that practitioner research may have a partially positive effect on teachers’ attitudes, but that it may not be sufficient to fully change primary teachers’ attitudes and their actual science teaching behaviour. In comparison, a previous study showed that attitude-focused professional development in science education has a more profound impact on primary teachers’ attitudes and science teaching behaviour. In our view, future interventions aiming to stimulate science teaching should combine both approaches, an explicit focus on attitude change together with familiarisation with inquiry, in order to improve primary teachers’ attitudes and classroom practices.     

A survey of video game players in a public,urban research university

A survey was conducted in a public, research university located in a large and diverse metropolitan area in the southeastern part of the USA. The purpose of the survey was to determine both the positive and negative personal, educational, social, and work related consequences of playing video games. Nearly two‐thirds of the 203 participants in this study were of Hispanic heritage. A majority of the sample of participants was derived using a school intercept, as opposed to mall intercept, strategy. The remaining participants were obtained using snowball, and convenience sampling techniques. Statistically significant differences between males and females were found in the areas of communication, decision making in daily lives, leadership skills, collaborating, functioning in a team, and giving directions to others. These differences were favorable to males.     

Teacher relationships and educational reform in England and Wales

Collegiality has been advocated as an antidote to the presumed isolation and individualism of teachers. In the main body of this paper, I review British contributions to this debate. Studies suggest that collegiality is more likely to flourish within primary schools than in other settings. Recent developments, especially the introduction of a National Curriculum, promise contradictory results: increasing the press toward collaborative, participatory planning, while simultaneously depriving teachers of their traditional autonomy over curricular content. In the final section, I consider whether there are different questions which should be addressed.     

Living action research: authoring identities through yaya projects

This article examines the authors’ experiences living action research through an art therapy activity known as YaYa that involved creating and sharing visual representations of themselves as beginning researchers. This activity was part of a graduate course on education action research and students in the course found the activity transformative. The article first explores how four students in the course created and presented their YaYas. It goes on to discuss how the activity provided opportunities for students to imagine and re-imagine authored identities in the figured worlds of teaching and research. The role that visual arts play in transforming consciousness is also used to help understand the powerful impact of the YaYa activity. The YaYa as a visual artistic process opened students up to meaning-making and reconstructing identities that involved not only the mind, but also the emotions, body and spirit. The authors claim that learning action research can itself be a process of action research, and that living such practice is about involving and imagining the whole self in multiple figured worlds.     

The Role of Initial Learning,Problem Features,Prior Knowledge,and Pattern Recognition on Transfer Success

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that transfer ability (positive and negative) varies depending on the nature of the problems, using the knowledge transfer matrix, as well as being dependent on the individual differences of the learner. A total of 178 participants from the United States and New Zealand completed measures of prior knowledge, pattern recognition, a positive transfer problem, and a negative transfer problem. Nearly 11% of participants could not successfully solve the base problem after the initial learning phase. The problem condition was a significant predictor of positive transfer success, while no significant differences were found for negative transfer, although, there was ample evidence of negative transfer. Furthermore, prior knowledge was only a significant predictor for problems in which the structural features between the problems were different. Future directions are discussed in regard to the initial learning phase, differences in transfer success, and the need for measures of negative transfer.     

The Civil Contract of Photography

A climate of political repression, formed by the Pitt Government in response to agitation by so‐called “radical” societies, surrounded debate on the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill of 1794. Pitt employed rhetorical tactics such as manipulating evidence and disparaging motives in order to secure passage of this repressive measure. Pitt's tactics appear unjustified in the light of available historical evidence.