How do secondary students approach different types of division with remainder situations? Some evidence from Spain

Division-With-Remainder (DWR) problems are particularly complex, as suggested in many studies. The purpose of this work was to establish whether students’ difficulties in DWR problems came from an inadequate initial representation or from an inadequate final interpretation of the numerical answers, and whether remainders could be grouped into two blocks depending on the kind of answer, either directly matching the terms of the division or not. Forty-five Spanish secondary students, aged 12–13, were requested to solve two Types of Division Situations (i.e., Equal Groups and Comparison), each one involving four Types of Remainder (i.e., Remainder-Not-Divisible, Remainder-Divisible, Remainder-as-the-Result, and Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments). Our data showed that: (a) the selection of the correct solution procedure depended on the Type of Division Situations, being easier in Equal Groups than in Comparison problems; (b) correct interpretations were higher than the percentages reported in other researches; and (c) success in problems whose answers were the quotient or the remainder was higher than in Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments problems. The results obtained suggest that students’ difficulties originate in the initial representation of the DWR problems and that it would be more adequate to refer to the difficulty of Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments problems in particular, rather than to the difficulty of DWR problems in general.     

Journals and issues of privacy and confidentiality

Considers the protection of personal information and the right to privacy in medical publishing, with the practical difficulties of preserving anonymity.     

Does higher education promote independent learning? A discussion

References are as given in Gow's paper.     

The battle for biotechnology: Scientific and technological paradigms and the management of biotechnology in Britain in the 1980s

This paper is about how institutions adapt and change to accommodate new technologies. Specifically it looks at how one set of institutions, the British Research Councils, accommodated to the emergence of biotechnology in the 1980s, charting the vicissitudes of their relationship and in particular the bitter quarrel which broke out between the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). It suggests that the key factor behind the conflict was not remit (i.e. defence of research territory) but differences in culture, with a lack of symmetry between the scientific paradigm which dominated the MRC's approach and the technological paradigm which drove the SERC's Biotechnology Directorate. Given this difference in cultures, it argues that some plurality of approach was inevitable and that attempts to impose a strong element of co-ordination would not have prevented conflict. However, lighter coordination might have helped, and this could in fact have been achieved had the British government at that time not abdicated from all leadership roles in relation to new technologies and provided no resources to help oil the wheels of change.     

Handedness and the Development of Direction and Sequencing in Children's Drawings of People

The effect of age and handedness on directionality and sequence in drawing was studied in 389 right‐ and left‐handed children aged from 2 to 11 years. Preschool right‐handers were more likely to draw right to left and to produce circles in a clockwise direction. In contrast, preschool left handers drew left to right with anti‐clockwise circle production. By the age of 9 to 11 years right‐handers had switched to predominantly left to right drawing with anti‐clockwise circle production and left‐handers to right to left, drawing and clockwise circle production. Irrespective of handedness, preschool children tended to begin at the bottom of the drawing and work towards the top, whereas the older groups tended to draw from the top to the bottom. It is suggested that these rules of directionality and sequencing may influence how children respond to writing instruction.     

Design observations for interagency collaboration

We present 14 design observations for public safety networks (PSNs) and describe how they may apply more broadly to a wider range of inter-organizational systems within the public sector. A PSN is an interagency collaboration focused on developing and using information systems in support of information sharing and functional interoperability among public safety organizations engaged in law enforcement, criminal justice, and emergency response. We base our design observations upon an analysis of an extensive survey of 80 PSNs plus 6 in-depth case studies. The design observations identify commonalities that can guide agencies participating in interagency collaborations in addressing the interlocking issues they face. Our goal in presenting this set of design observations is to: (1) encourage improved PSN systems design and (2) draw attention to the importance of jointly addressing governance and technological considerations when designing PSNs.     

The transition from a university college to a university: a United Kingdom study

Tertiary Education and Management - As a result of policy changes, nearly all university colleges in the UK have been redesignated as universities. This transition was studied in one such...