Predictors of Localism in Public Television Scheduling in the United States

In the United States, public television claims itself a champion of localism. A prime-time schedule analysis of the Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) member stations establishes localism scores, and discriminant analysis finds variables that predict differences among stations. Market level variables (income, education, ethnic diversity, geographic component) and organizational level variables (Community Service Grants, membership funding, overall revenue) affect localization of member stations' schedules. This is the first empirical study utilizing a structural operationalization of localism, inclusive of all programming genres, applied to PBS member stations.     

Learning achieved in structured online debates: levels of learning and types of postings

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning process exhibited in restrained online debates in terms of to what extent each of Bloom’s six levels of cognitive learning were exhibited among four types of message (argument, critique, evidence, and explanation). Thirty-three graduate students enrolled in an online entry-level course in distance learning participated in this study. The threaded discussion postings from four structured online debates were analyzed. The results indicated that five of the six levels of cognitive learning (except for knowledge learning) were achieved to a certain extent among the four types of postings. Chi square tests indicated that higher levels of learning were most likely to be exhibited in critique and argument postings. Message–response exchanges ending with critiques or starting with argument messages were most likely to elicit higher levels responses. The results were discussed in light of better understanding of student learning and implications for instructional designs of discussion topics and restraints.     

Aging and Text Comprehension: Interpretation and Domain Knowledge Advantage

In this study, young, middle-aged, and elderly adults read two different history texts. In the knowledge advantage condition, readers read a history text about an event that was well-known to readers of all ages but most familiar to elderly adults. In the no advantage condition, readers read a history text about a political situation of a country that no age groups knew much about. After reading the text, readers recalled and interpreted the texts. Comparison of the recall and the interpretation performance showed that while recall was best in the young group and declined with age, interpretation did not. The middle-aged and elderly adults generated interpretations that were equally deep and more synthetic than those of the young adults. They also generated interpretations with more diverse rationale statements. As for the effect of knowledge advantage its effect on text recall was straightforward: although not significant, age-group differences in recall were smaller in the knowledge advantage condition than in the no advantage condition, suggesting that age-related decline in recall can be moderated by older adults' knowledge advantage. The effect of knowledge advantage on text interpretation was less clear-cut. While knowledge facilitated interpretations, the facilitation was not uniform across different measures of interpretations, suggesting a complex interaction between text interpretation and knowledge.     

An XPath-based OWL storage model for effective ontology management in Semantic Web environment

With the rapid growth of the Web, the volume of information on the Web is increasing exponentially. However, information on the current Web is only understandable to humans, and this makes precise information retrieval difficult. To solve this problem, the Semantic Web was proposed. We must use ontology languages that can assign data the semantics for realizing the Semantic Web. One of the representative ontology languages is the Web ontology language OWL, adopted as a recommendation by the World-Wide Web Consortium （W3C）. OWL includes hierarchical structural information between classes or prop- erties. Therefore, an efficient OWL storage model that considers a hierarchical structure for effective information retrieval on the Semantic Web is required. In this paper we suggest an XPath-based OWL storage （XPOS） model, which includes hierarchical information between classes or properties in XPath form, and enables intuitive and effective information retrieval. Also, we show the comparative evaluation results for the performance of the XPOS model, Sesame, and the XML file system-based storage （XFSS） model, in terms of query processing and ontology updating.     

An institutional analysis of an e-government system for anti-corruption: The case of OPEN

E-government is increasingly being used to improve transparency in the government sector and to combat corruption. Using institutional theory as an analytical perspective, this study documents and evaluates the development of an anti-corruption system called OPEN (Online Procedures ENhancement for civil application) in the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Incorporating three distinctive (yet interrelated) dimensions of institutionalization (regulatory/coercive, cognitive/mimetic, and normative), and four anti-corruption strategies embedded in the system, this study investigates how an e-government system for anti-corruption in a local government has evolved and become a prototype of a national system to be used for the same purpose. The findings show that in implementing OPEN, a system for anti-corruption, the regulatory dimension was most effective, and (as in many IS implementations) strong leadership was crucial to its success.     

Critical Perspectives on Colonisation of the Art Curriculum in Korea

This article examines some characteristics of art education in Korea. It takes the form of a historical overview using a postcolonial lens. The findings were that the predominant Western aesthetic concepts and theories as central culture embodied in Korean art education as local culture are: (i) ideas of art as self‐expression developed in Europe and the USA between the 1920s and 1950s; (ii) the concept of art in daily living in the USA in the 1930s; (iii) design elements and principles by Arthur Wesley Dow in the USA in the 1920s; (iv) Bauhaus design theory in Europe in the 1920s; and (v) the appreciation of nature beauty by John Ruskin in the late nineteenth century in England. These educational ideas have been influential on policy‐making in Korean art education, and therefore new concepts are integrated with these elements for curriculum changes. In this way, the characteristic of the colonised Korean art curriculum is so hybrid that it is difficult to understand the concepts and the practical implications of the various policies for art teaching. Consequently, it has not served the issues of cultural diversity and pluralism that are so problematic in twenty‐first century Korean society.     

Towards the Development of Valid (Additional) Selection Instruments for Pre-Service Teacher Education

The search for valid selection instruments to act as a screen for potential teachers is not a new concern. In the past, the concern was not matched by resources diverted to their development or by an adequate fund of knowledge and skill necessary for developing such instruments. Also conventional wisdom has it that the traditional criteria of teacher selection based on levels of educational attainment would be adequate to ensure that candidates selected for teacher education would be able to measure up to the demands of the teaching task.     

Instructional Research in Reading Comprehension: a Preliminary Observation Study of Reading Comprehension Classes Taught by IE Student Teachers

Developments in reading research in the last two decades have led to a fuller understanding of the reading process and enabled researchers and practitioners to address the issue of how to improve the teaching of reading comprehension. This paper reviews some of the studies in general classroom instructional research and reading comprehension instruction. It then reports an observation study of reading comprehension instruction carried out by IE student teachers. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of similar studies reviewed in the earlier section of the paper, and implications for classroom practice and further research are suggested.