The effect of vocabulary knowledge on novel word identification

The study investigated the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and novel word reading. Fourth-grade students were assessed on standardized measures of word identification, decoding, and receptive vocabulary, as well as on an experimental word identification measure using words that students in the fourth grade are unlikely to have seen before in print. In the experimental measure, pairs of words were matched on printed frequency and orthographic pattern (with a variety of spelling patterns represented), but differed in terms of the frequency of expected oral exposure for children (i.e., higher vs. lower). Results showed that students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge was significantly related to performance on both the standardized and experimental measures of word identification, even after accounting for the substantial amount of variance explained by decoding ability. Students performed better reading the words with higher expected oral frequencies on the experimental task than on those items with lower expected oral frequencies. The results point to the benefits, albeit modest, of oral word familiarity for reading words when they are first encountered in print and suggest that this top-down effect is not limited to exception words, as has been suggested, but has a wider scope.     

Ethics for things

This paper considers the ways that Information Ethics (IE) treats things. A number of critics have focused on IE’s move away from anthropocentrism to include non-humans on an equal basis in moral thinking. I enlist Actor Network Theory, Dennett’s views on ?as if’ intentionality and Magnani’s characterization of ?moral mediators’. Although they demonstrate different philosophical pedigrees, I argue that these three theories can be pressed into service in defence of IE’s treatment of things. Indeed the support they lend to the extension of moral status to non-human objects can be seen as part of a trend towards the accommodation of non-humans into our moral and social networks. A number of parallels are drawn between philosophical arguments over artificial intelligence and information ethics.     

The Construction of Masculine Science

The masculinity of science can be studied as a topic in the cultural reproduction of gender. In this paper four distinct, but not necessarily contradictory, accounts of the way in which science comes to be seen as a masculine subject are examined. It is argued that schools could play a transformative, rather than a reproductive, role in the formation of gender identities.     

Academic risk and resilience for children and young people in Asia

Abstract

In studies of academic resilience, researchers seek to identify factors that protect against adverse effects caused by risk and stress, and which ultimately assist students to be academically successful. However, because relatively few studies are conducted in Asian settings, Western-based research may have limited application for policy and prevention in the Asian context. It is therefore important to expand the context and culture in which resilience research takes place. This paper highlights academic resilience factors among Asian students that are located in the multiple levels of the social ecology (including individual, peers, family and school). This is consistent with results from the Western context. However, it also reports on some differences in academic resilience factors that are found both within Asian countries and between Asian and Western countries. From these results, we might thus conclude that alongside pan-human factors, Asian students’ academic success can also be considered in part due to uniquely Asian attributes. This reaffirms the importance of considering culture and national context in studies of academic resilience. Taken as a whole, this collection of papers showcases multiple approaches to building academic resilience and empowering students and their educators and caregivers across the Asian region.     

Students' perceptions of their information literacy skills: the confidence gap between male and female international graduate students

In the 2015 Summer Session I, the information literacy team combined two instruments, the Information Literacy Assessment (ILA) and the Students' Perceptions of Their Information Literacy Skills Questionnaire (SPIL-Q), into one survey and distributed it to the college's international graduate students through a Google Form. It was distributed to 932 international graduate students, and 172 valid respondents completed the survey. The purpose of this research was to compare the confidence gap in information literacy skills between men and women, particularly in international graduate students. Data collected illustrated that female international business students (n = 70) tended to be slightly more confident than their male counterparts (n = 102) regarding their perceived information literacy skills as evidenced by their SPIL-Q average score across all six IL topics, 3.78, vs. male student's average score of 3.58.     

Implementation of a Research Information Management System in a Pediatric Hospital

Faculty publications have been collected in universities, health, and medical institutions for many years, and Cincinnati Children’s is no exception. Since 1949, a yearly list of faculty publications was manually compiled using multiple data sources and disseminated by the Edward L. Pratt Research Library. Products to centralize faculty publication collection and analysis with bibliometric tools are growing in popularity. This article will review the collaborative decision to choose a Research Information Management System and the implementation process including successes, challenges, and future opportunities.