The Impact of Personality,Goal Orientation and Self-Efficacy on Participation of High School Teachers in Learning Activities in the Workplace

This study examines the influence of personality traits, goal orientation and self-efficacy on high school teachers’ participation in learning activities in the workplace (i.e. experimentation, informal interaction with colleagues, self-regulation and avoidance behaviour). A convenience sample of 95 teachers from six high schools in Flanders (Belgium) participated in this exploratory study. They completed a questionnaire consisting of different instruments to map their personality (NEO-FFI), goal orientation (adaptation of Achievement Goal Questionnaire), self-efficacy (Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale) and participation in learning activities (adaptations from different scales). Results of multivariate regression analyses indicate that conscientiousness, extraversion and openness have a positive effect on teachers’ participation in learning activities in the workplace. However, learning orientation and self-efficacy are found to be better predictors for participation in experimentation, informal interaction and selfregulation. Analysis using structural equation modeling reveals an indirect relationship between extraversion and self-regulation, mediated by self-efficacy. Learning orientation mediates the impact of conscientiousness on informal interaction. As teachers’ goal orientation and self-efficacy can be influenced, school policy makers should reflect upon ways on how teachers’ goal orientation and self-efficacy can further be enhanced.     

The impact of reading material’s lexical accessibility on text fading effects in children’s reading performance

The acceleration phenomenon (AP) is defined by improvements in reading speed and reading comprehension, induced by an artificial text fading procedure corresponding to the previously determined fastest individual reading rate. Recent results, however, indicated that fading that is slower than the self-paced reading rate can produce comparable reading enhancements. As reading performance can be strongly influenced by the reading material, this study aimed at investigating to which extent reading enhancements induced by text fading depend on the reading material’s characteristics. We confronted 39 German third graders with a previously utilized text fading procedure, which was slower than their self-paced reading rate. Included text varied regarding to the lexical accessibility (LA), representing how well information can be accessed from the mental lexicon. Children’s reading rates increased statistically significant due to text fading for all LA levels. However, reading comprehension was sensitive to the text material’s characteristics: Reading comprehension enhancements were observable for easily accessible reading material, but not for material with intermediate or difficult levels of LA. Material that was difficult to retrieve from the mental lexicon even resulted in reduced reading comprehension in the fading condition. Possible influences on immediate lexical access, the impact of working memory capacity and implications for future AP research are discussed.     

Computer vision supported by 3D geometric modelling

This paper suggests four data structures, one based on the other, for a geometric modeller suitable for computer vision. The structures are the key to advance from two-dimensional to three-dimensional automatic picture processing. Three application areas are indicated： one in semisynthetic design of materials, another in measurements of large three-dimensional industrial constructions, and the third one in robotics. There are comments on the software development needed.     

Gender differences in both tails of the distribution of numerical competencies in preschool children

Gender differences in mathematical achievement have been examined in a wide range of age groups but only a few studies addressed this issue in preschool children. We compared preschool girls (n?=?570) and boys (n?=?524) from Germany with regard to numerical competencies. Differences in overall group means and the frequency of representation at low, middle, or high levels of performance were explored for girls and boys. Analysis of overall group means revealed that boys showed a better performance than girls (d?=?.32). The analysis of frequencies showed differences in both tails but not in the middle of the distribution of numerical competencies. While boys were more often found at higher levels of performance, girls were found to be overrepresented in the low-ability end of the distribution. These findings demonstrate that gender differences in mathematical achievement can emerge before school entry and stress the importance of further research looking for gender divides in mathematical achievement in preschool children from different countries as well as possible underlying factors.     

Unwelcome stranger to the system: vocational education in early twentieth-century China

Both in China and internationally, educators and policy makers claim that vocational education and training (VET) is essential for the sound economic development of a country and the physical and social well-being of its population. However, China looks back upon a century-long history of rejection when it comes to popularising VET, despite attempts, both in the present and in the past, to invest in its implementation. Much of the literature attributes this lack of success to the failed, or distorted, transfer of Western educational models or simply to policy drift.

The article approaches this history of rejection by tracing back the original Chinese encounters with Western-style vocational education. After an introductory discussion of different scholarly attempts at explaining failed transfers of VET, I look at how this transfer actually took place when VET was first introduced to China. Therefore, the focus will be on the first decades of the twentieth century and a group of Chinese actors who were pivotal in importing VET models from abroad and building up a nationwide vocational education programme (primarily members of the Chinese Association of Vocational Education). I will argue that vocational education, when introduced to China from abroad, was embedded in an existing framework of systematic and widely practised discrimination and segregation of the population. Therefore, it was less the Westernness of VET that made it undesirable to many Chinese, but its specific – and specifically Chinese – integration into existing practices of allocating cultural capital.     

The Model-Size Effect on Traditional and Modified Tests of Covariance Structures

The integration of modern methods for causal inference with latent class analysis (LCA) allows social, behavioral, and health researchers to address important questions about the determinants of latent class membership. In this article, 2 propensity score techniques, matching and inverse propensity weighting, are demonstrated for conducting causal inference in LCA. The different causal questions that can be addressed with these techniques are carefully delineated. An empirical analysis based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 is presented, where college enrollment is examined as the exposure (i.e., treatment) variable and its causal effect on adult substance use latent class membership is estimated. A step-by-step procedure for conducting causal inference in LCA, including multiple imputation of missing data on the confounders, exposure variable, and multivariate outcome, is included. Sample syntax for carrying out the analysis using SAS and R is given in an appendix.     

How to approximate users’ values while preserving privacy: experiences with using attitudes towards work tasks as proxies for personal value elicitation

Software users have different sets of personal values, such as benevolence, self-direction, and tradition. Among other factors, these personal values influence users’ emotions, preferences, motivations, and ways of performing tasks—and hence, information needs. Studies of user acceptance indicate that personal traits like values and related soft issues are important for the user’s approval of software. If a user’s dominant personal value were known, software could automatically show an interface variant which offers information and functionality that best matches his or her dominant value. A user’s dominant personal value is the one that most strongly influences his or her attitudes and behaviors. However, existing methods for measuring a user’s values are work intensive and/or interfere with the user’s privacy needs. If interface tailoring for very large groups of users is planned, value approximation has to be achieved on a large scale to assign individualized software to all users of the software. Our work focuses on approximating the dominant values of a user with less effort and less impact on privacy. Instead of probing for a user’s values directly, we explore the potential of approximating these values based on the user’s preferences for key tasks. Producing tailored versions of software is a separate topic not in the focus here. In this paper we rather describe a method to identify user values from task preferences and an empirical study of applying parts of this method. We are proposing the method in this paper for the first time except for a preliminary version orally presented at a workshop. The method consists of a research process and an application process. In the research process a researcher has to identify key tasks occurring in a context under investigation which have a relationship to personal values. These key tasks can be used in the application process to approximate the dominant values of new users in a similar context. In this empirical study we show that the research process of our method allows us to determine key tasks which approximate values in the shared context of nursing. The majority of the nurses were found to have one of the three following dominant values: benevolence, self-direction, or hedonism. Data confirmed common expectations: that nurses with the value of benevolence, when compared to all other nurses, had a higher preference for tasks which helped people immediately or improved their circumstances of the treatment. In relation to all other nurses, participants with self-direction disliked tasks which affected their personal freedom, and users with hedonism had a lower preference for tasks which involved physical work and preferred tasks which promised gratification. Our findings advance measurement of personal values in large user groups by asking questions with less privacy concern. However, the method requires substantial efforts during the initial research process to prepare such measurements. Future work includes replicating our method in other contexts and identifying value-dependent tasks for users with other values than the three values our empirical study mainly focused on.     

Attitudes towards school self-evaluation

Research reveals that a positive attitude towards self-evaluation is a pre-condition which favours successful school self-evaluation. This article describes how self-evaluation is regarded in schools and investigates whether school characteristics can explain differences in the attitude of individuals. We report on a survey study conducted among 2716 school principals and teachers in 96 schools. Our research shows that respondents expressed themselves more positively with regard to the possible results of self-evaluation than with regard to the self-evaluation process itself. We also found that school principals exhibit a more positive attitude than teachers. Multi-level analyses demonstrate that the attitude towards self-evaluation is related to the characteristics of the broader functioning of the school where the respondent works (such as school culture and whether or not the school concerned meets the criteria of a professional learning community).