Evaluating the strategic plans of public libraries: An inspection-based approach

For public libraries, as with most organizations, effective strategic planning is critical to longevity, facilitating cohesive and coordinated responses to ever present and ever changing political, economic, social, and technological (PEST) forces which shape and influence direction. Strategic planning is widely recognized as a challenging activity, however, which can be both time consuming and unproductive, and there exists limited guidance regarding how to evaluate documented and disseminated strategic plans, particularly within the not-for-profit sector. In response, this research proposes and tests an inspection-based approach to the evaluation of strategic plans, based upon a rubric specifying the key attributes of each of the core components of a plan, combined with an appropriate assessment scale. The rubric provides a method to identify and assess completeness of strategic plan, extending to qualitative assessment of communication aspects such as specification and terminology, and synergistic aspects such as cohesion and integration. In the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, the method is successfully trialed across the devolved Scottish public library sector, with the strategic plans of 28 of the 32 regional networks evaluated. Of the 28 plans, 17, or 61%, were found to be incomplete and/or to contain contradictory or uncoordinated components. It is recommended that Scottish public libraries improve not only completeness of plans, but also their precision, specificity, explicitness, coordination, and consistency, and overall mapping to library services. Recommendations are made for further widespread application of the rubric.     

Using CRTS in Program Curriculum Evaluation

This monograph describes how criterion-referenced tests (CRTs) can be used in program and curriculum evaluations for developing information to form judgments about educational programs and curricula. The material is organized as follows: a brief introduction to the monograph, its purpose and goals, a discussion of the relationship between evaluation and CRTs, pertinent information about program and curriculum evaluation, relevant facts about CRTs, and a summation. A principal goal of the essay is to describe concepts and procedures in terms that are instructionally illuminating. The reader is guided to identify and examine particular points at which decisions must be made about how, when, and why CRTs may aid the evaluation process. These steps are each identified as "An Instructional Step" and presented in separate boxes with pertinent guiding questions. Conciseness is a further aim of this monograph, one consequence of which is that several important concepts are only cursorily described or alluded to. Annotated references are included. Accompanying this instructional monograph is a "Student's Self-Test." An "Instructor's Guide" with expanded references and materials for photocopying or preparing transparencies is available by mail order (see "Teaching Aids" ordering information).     

认知调节:理论、应用与注意问题

从临床心理学和实验心理学的联系及行为矫正技术的发展探讨了认知调节的起源,介绍了认知重建与合理思维、应付技能、思维终止技术、应激接种预防技术、心理澈活技术等认知调节手段的理论基础和应用情况,并指出,认知调节是疑点很多、众说纷纭的争论问题,尚缺乏充分证据证明其有效性。尽管如此,在运动员进行心理调节时,它仍具有巨大潜力,是运动心理学中具有广阔发展前景的领域。     

The Effects of Text Elaboration on Children's Aural Language Comprehension

For the present study it was hypothesised that there would be an effect of media on hierarchical aural comprehension and that older children would. possess the cognitive structures to take advantage of the symbols presented by different media. Eighty kindergarten and third grade children were randomly selected and assigned to three media treatments of a story (text and illustrations; text and flannel board figures; text and animated film) and a control (text alone). The subjects were tested for comprehension of the story using twenty questions which were derived from modifications of the Barrett and Pearson & Johnson taxonomies (10 questions for each of two hierarchical levels). A treatment by age MANOVA was used to analyse the data. Significant main effects were found for both treatment and age. Age accounted for more variance in the higher order questions than in the lower order questions. It is believed that the older children had the cognitive structures to take advantage of the appropriate symbols.

     

Muslim Persecution of Heretics during the Marwānid Period (64–132/684–750)

This article traces the emergence of a systematic approach to combating heresy during the Umayyad period. It argues that the Umayyads sought to silence religious dissent by labelling it as heresy and that the doctrinal boundaries of “orthodoxy” narrowed as the Umayyad period progressed. The article also asserts that Umayyad efforts to impose their vision of orthodoxy were an important precedent for the mi?na under the ?Abbāsids.