To Read or Not to Read: A Qualitative Study of Students’ Justifications for Document Selection in Task-Oriented Reading

When navigating through the vast amount of information that we encounter in our everyday lives, we constantly make decisions concerning what information to read more closely and what information to disregard. Consideration of the relevance and trustworthiness of information sources facilitates those decisions. In the present study, we interviewed 25 upper-secondary students after they had selected documents to use in completing a task, and we asked them to justify their selections. A qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that students’ justifications could be related to (1) content relevance, (2) source features, and (3) prior topic knowledge. The results demonstrate that students are able to evaluate content relevance and source features as part of their document selection strategies but that perceived prior knowledge seems to influence both selections and justifications.     

The contribution of orthographic and phonological processes to word reading in young Norwegian readers

The dissociation between phonological and orthographic processes in word reading was investigated in a study involving 147 children in grade 3. The criterion measure was a timed word reading test. Two tasks assessed phonological skills and two tasks assessed orthographical skills. Orthographic ability accounted for variance in word reading even after phonological ability had been controlled. Poor readers differed from skilled readers in the way phonological and orthographic factors were balanced. The relationship between the two factors was fairly strong among poor readers, whereas the correlation was low for more skilled readers. Furthermore, phonological factors played a much stronger role in explaining the variance in word reading among poor readers, while on the other hand, orthographic factors were more powerful among skilled readers.     

Early language development and kindergarten phonological awareness as predictors of reading problems: from 3 to 11 years of age

At the end of Grade 4, 481 children on the Danish island of Bornholm were screened using group tests for sentence reading. For 205 of these children, language and speech data from the speech therapist's screening at age 3 were available, as well as language comprehension and linguistic awareness data from the kindergarten year (age 6) and word decoding measures in Grades 2 and 3. A path analysis revealed significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in Grade 2 to sentence reading in Grades 3 and 4. The subgroup of children with parents who had reported a history of reading problems at school entry scored significantly below average on sentence reading in Grade 4. The subgroup of children that were reported to show a very low interest in books and story reading before age 5 also scored low on sentence reading in Grade 4. Statistically significant but weak relationships were also found between parents' educational background, parents' library visits, and number of books at home and the child's reading ability in Grade 4.     

Use of Dewey Decimal Classification by Academic Libraries in the United States

Abstract

Nearly 25 years have elapsed since the last comprehensive measure of the percentage of academic libraries that employ the Dewey and Library of Congress systems of classification. To provide updated statistics, the researchers surveyed all 3793 academic libraries via their online catalogs. The findings indicate that the use of Dewey has declined over the past four decades. Teachers’ Colleges and Community Colleges in particular have higher rates of Dewey use than large research or professional universities. This information may help support academic library reclassification decisions.     

Free kick goals in football: an unlikely success between failure and embarrassment

We develop and use a numerical model to investigate the window of opportunity of free kicks in association football. The planar multibody forward dynamics model comprises a two segment leg model with joint actuations, a football, a wall and the turf. Contact mechanics is defined to model the impact of the foot and the ball’s interaction with the different elements in the environment. The optimum kick is determined using the global optimization algorithm differential evolution, requiring millions of kick simulations. The sensitivity of various solutions to parameter perturbation is investigated. It is concluded that toe kicks are theoretically superior to instep kicks, but are difficult to perform reliably. The results also show that small perturbations in parameters can lead to embarrassingly failed kicks.     

Assessing library topics using sentiment analysis in R: a discussion and code sample

Abstract

This article discusses the use of R programing language for executing a sentiment analysis of tweets pertaining to library topics. This discussion is situated within the literature of marketing and management sciences, which is employing methods of machine learning and business intelligence to make informed decision-making, and library administration, which has expressed great interest in social media engagement within its literature but has yet to adopt these types of analysis. Presented in this article is a sample code with instructions on how users may execute it within R to retrieve and analyze tweets relevant to library services. Two examples created using the code (analysis of top librarians’ tweets and analysis of posts about major book publishers) are used to demonstrate the functionality of the code. The code presented in this article may be used by libraries to analyze tweets about their library and library-related topics, which, in turn, may inform management and marketing design.     

Primary teachers’ experiences with weekly education outside the classroom during a year

The aim of the present study was through semi-structured interviews to explore udeskole teacher’s perceptions of motivational factors and challenges while teaching regularly outside the classroom on a weekly basis during a year. Six females and two male udeskole teachers participated and answered an interview guide containing five themes about their motivations, student relations, teaching experiences, challenges and recognition. Udeskole was perceived to have substantial potentials to improve both academic learning and life skills and ‘the common third’, i.e. teacher–pupil relations, was mentioned as a value added to the indoor teaching. Health and safety issues were not perceived as barriers.