The relationship between reading comprehension strategies and reading attitudes

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between levels of reading comprehension strategy use, reading attitudes, and the amount of reading per year among elementary school students. The study was conducted with 1316 students (649 girls and 667 boys) attending the fourth and fifth grades of 15 elementary schools in Denizli, Turkey. Stratified Sampling Method was employed to obtain data using Reading Attitude Scale (RAS) and Reading Comprehension Strategies Scale (RCSS). The analyses indicate that reading attitude is a significant predictor of the level of reading comprehension strategies used by students (R² = 0.44). The findings show that there is a negative and low-level relationship (r = ?0.054) between daily time spent reading and the level of strategy used, and a positive and low-level relationship (r = 0.01) between the level of strategy used and the number of books that a child reads per year.     

Using genetic algorithms to evolve a population of topical queries

Systems for searching the Web based on thematic contexts can be built on top of a conventional search engine and benefit from the huge amount of content as well as from the functionality available through the search engine interface. The quality of the material collected by such systems is highly dependant on the vocabulary used to generate the search queries. In this scenario, selecting good query terms can be seen as an optimization problem where the objective function to be optimized is based on the effectiveness of a query to retrieve relevant material. Some characteristics of this optimization problem are: (1) the high-dimensionality of the search space, where candidate solutions are queries and each term corresponds to a different dimension, (2) the existence of acceptable suboptimal solutions, (3) the possibility of finding multiple solutions, and in many cases (4) the quest for novelty. This article describes optimization techniques based on Genetic Algorithms to evolve “good query terms” in the context of a given topic. The proposed techniques place emphasis on searching for novel material that is related to the search context. We discuss the use of a mutation pool to allow the generation of queries with new terms, study the effect of different mutation rates on the exploration of query-space, and discuss the use of a especially developed fitness function that favors the construction of queries containing novel but related terms.     

Nonaka meets Giddens: A critique

Nonaka's recent incorporation of Giddens into the knowledge movement is superficial and problematic. The incorporation accepts uncritically Giddens's controversial conceptions of structure and agency, avoids his concerns of power and domination, exaggerates his elaboration on contradictions, and shares with him the search for an omelette-like theoretical totalising. Using Giddens as an illustrative vehicle, this paper analyses the pattern of Nonaka’s recent borrowing of others’ work and the consequent tensions built up in his simplistic model of the knowledge creating company.     

Gender Encoding in Gender Diverse and Gender Conforming Children

Previous research suggests that people encode gender starting in childhood. The present research asked whether gender diverse children (i.e., children whose gender identity or expression differs from that expected based on assigned sex) encode gender. Results showed that 3- to 5-year-old gender diverse participants (N = 71), siblings of gender diverse children (N = 52), and gender conforming controls (N = 69) did not significantly differ in degree of gender encoding. These results converge with prior research to suggest that gender diverse children process gender in ways that do not differ from gender conforming children, and provide further evidence that gender encoding may be a common aspect of person perception in societies that support a binary view of gender.     

A Bibliometric Analysis of High Impact Research in the Middle East Using Champion Works

Increasing political and financial support for scientific research in the Middle East requires academic and research communities in the region to demonstrate the visibility and impact of their scientific output. However, for countries with smaller scientific communities or lack of detailed information on their scientific production, the use of common metrics of scientific impact (e.g., number of papers, impact factor, h-index, etc.) may fail to reveal their true ability to produce high quality research, and thus guarantee the wanted societal support. In such cases, identifying and highlighting outstanding papers produced by national institutions or scientists may be another way to demonstrate scientific capacity and impact. In this context, this work aims to provide an overview of champion works (papers that have received over 1,000 citations) produced by Middle East countries. This analysis focuses on science, medicine, and technology papers featured in the Science Citation Index Expanded of Web of Science. The authors identified 213 champion works authored by Middle East scientists published since the 1970s. Israel is currently the leading nation in the Middle East in terms of published champion works, but at least one such work was identified for the majority of countries in the region. Middle East champion works were published on a diverse range of subject categories and often featured in the top journals worldwide (e.g., Science, Nature, etc.). The top institutions in the Middle East authoring champion works and their leading collaborating countries worldwide are listed, and the role of international scientific collaborations in achieving these highly cited papers is highlighted.     

Women’s Sport as a Symbol of Modernity: A Case Study in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey has a distinctive position with regard to its geography and history among Muslim countries. Particular features are its secular system and far reaching modernization processes particularly with respect to the ‘emancipation’ of women. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze sport and body politics as part of the modernization processes in Turkey and to explore in particular the multiple roles of different groups of women in the reforms initiated by the Turkish Governments. A focus will be on the intersecting influences of gender and social class. The famous archaeologist Halet Çambel will be used as an example of the ‘modern’ woman who embodied reformist ideologies. Çambel was the daughter of an elite family; she was born in Berlin where her father was an attaché at the Turkey embassy. She studied in France and participated in the Olympic Games in 1936. She and another Turkish fencer were the first women from a Muslim country to participate in the Olympic Games. Later she became the most famous archaeologist in Turkey and she stayed physically active all her life. In particular, horse riding became a favourite activity as she travelled to archaeological sites on horseback.     

Self and teacher assessment as predictors of proficiency levels of Turkish EFL learners

Although self-assessment of foreign language skills is not a new topic, it has not yet been widely explored in the Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The current study investigates the potential of self-assessment of foreign language skills in determining proficiency levels of Turkish learners of EFL: 239 learners participated in the study. Their receptive language skills were tested with an objective placement test, and the results were compared with the grades assigned by their instructors and the results of criterion-referenced self-assessment scores. Multiple regression analysis revealed that teacher and self-assessment scores were significantly correlated with each other; however, teacher assessment, compared to self-assessment, appeared to be a much stronger predictor of the actual proficiency levels of the participants. In addition to this, participants at lower level of proficiency revealed a common tendency of overestimating their language skills, while with the higher level learners there were clear signs of underestimation.