Domestic coalitions in the variation of education privatization: an analysis of Chile,Argentina, and Colombia

Abstract

Education privatization is a global trend that has nonetheless followed multiple trajectories. This article addresses the question of what explains this variation by demonstrating the role that political coalitions play in the re-interpretation of global privatization ideas. A political-coalitional approach helps us analyze from a long-term perspective, the interplay between ideational, political, and economic processes that occurred at the global and domestic levels. Both accumulated benefits and negative consequences of previous reforms realign domestic coalitions that then facilitate or constrain the selection of global ideas and shape the way in which they are implemented at the country level. Based on a comparative historical analysis of three countries, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia, the article identifies three privatization trajectories: marketization, erosion of public education, and dualization of education provision. The long-term analysis of these trajectories also shows that privatization is not a linear process but a complex dynamic with consequences that may trigger unintended changes in the future.     

Communities of Caring: Developing Curriculum That Engages Latino/a Students’ Diverse Literacy Practices

This study investigates the learning and work of a community of practice that engaged in a specific inquiry around family/community literacy and the development of a culture of caring that would connect family/community/school literacies in ways that allowed their mostly Latino/a students to develop positive student identities, enhanced personal connections to their peers, and stronger experiential responses to literacy instruction.     

“Should I let them talk?”: Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems

Preschool and kindergarten teachers must make decisions everyday about how much to allow their children to talk out loud to themselves during various classroom activities. The present study examines the effects of children's private speech use on task performance for a group of behaviorally at-risk children and a group of control children during a speech–action coordination task. Twenty-nine behaviorally at-risk preschool children and 43 control children completed two versions of a speech–action coordination task (motor sequencing version and numeric tapping) two times, once with and once without speech instructions. Results indicated that the behaviorally at-risk children used more speech spontaneously compared to control children and performed just as well, and that both groups of children performed better when given instructions to use speech. Implications of these findings for early childhood educators’ decisions about children's private speech use in the classroom are discussed.     

Developing a community of inquiry instrument: Testing a measure of the Community of Inquiry framework using a multi-institutional sample

This article reports on the multi-institutional development and validation of an instrument that attempts to operationalize Garrison, Anderson and Archer's Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (2000). The results of the study suggest that the instrument is a valid, reliable, and efficient measure of the dimensions of social presence and cognitive presence, thereby providing additional support for the validity of the CoI as a framework for constructing effective online learning environments. While factor analysis supported the idea of teaching presence as a construct, it also suggested that the construct consisted of two factors—one related to course design and organization and the other related to instructor behavior during the course. The article concludes with a discussion of potential implications of further refinement of the CoI measures for researchers, designers, administrators, and instructors.     

Wrist-based cut-points for moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity for the Actical accelerometer in adults

Wrist-based accelerometers are increasingly used to assess physical activity (PA) in population-based studies; however, cut-points to translate wrist-based accelerometer counts into PA intensity categories are still needed. The purpose of this study was to determine wrist-based cut-points for moderate- and vigorous-intensity ambulatory PA in adults for the Actical accelerometer. Healthy adults (n = 24) completed a four-phase treadmill exercise protocol (1.9, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.2 mph) while wearing an Actical accelerometer on their wrist. Metabolic equivalent of task (MET) levels were assessed by indirect calorimetry. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves were generated to determine accelerometer counts that maximised sensitivity and specificity for classification of moderate (≥3 METs) and vigorous (>6 METs) ambulatory activity. The area under the ROC curves to discriminate moderate- and vigorous-intensity ambulatory activity were 0.93 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.90–0.97; P < 0.001) and 0.96 (95% CI: 0.94–0.99; P < 0.001), respectively. The identified cut-point for moderate-intensity ambulatory activity was 1031 counts per minute, which had a corresponding sensitivity and specificity of 85.6% and 87.5%, respectively. The identified cut-point for vigorous intensity ambulatory activity was 3589 counts per minute, which had a corresponding sensitivity and specificity of 88.0% and 98.7%, respectively. This study established intensity-specific cut-points for wrist-based wear of the Actical accelerometer which are recommended for quantification of moderate- and vigorous-intensity ambulatory activity.     

School‐based counseling of abused children

Abused children experience high rates of behavior, emotional, and learning problems but infrequently receive treatment. Most services provided to abused children and their families are not based on any clear evidence that they work. A number of evidence‐based treatments (EBTs), demonstrated to be safe and effective in treating a range of difficulties that present in children exposed to family violence, are appropriate for schools. We briefly review forms of abuse, describe EBTs appropriate for schools, and present a decision tree for deciding who to treat and how. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Differential thermal expansion as a cause of salt decay: literature review,experiments, and modelling of micro and macro effects on Ançã limestone

Salt decay is one of the harshest, most frequent, and more complex types of decay of porous materials in built heritage, including natural stones, ceramics, and mortars. In this article, we address the mechanism of thermal expansion, which is one of the least studied, yet most controversial, of those proposed over time to explain salt decay. We present a review of scientific literature on the topic, followed by a study of the effects of thermal expansion on a specific material, the well-known Ançã limestone. The study included experimental measurement of the linear thermal expansion coefficient of the Ançã, both in its natural state and with varying contents of sodium chloride, sodium sulphate, or sodium nitrate. The results show that this coefficient: (i) is significantly higher when the stone is contaminated with salt; and (ii) scales approximately with the amount of salt contained in the stone pores, regardless of the type of salt. Based on these results and on modelling of damage modes at the microscopic and macroscopic levels, respectively, we conclude that thermal expansion can cause powdering, disaggregation, or other types of decay consisting of internal loss of cohesion. However, it is not likely to cause exfoliation of salt-loaded layers.     

Regularizing query-based retrieval scores

We adapt the cluster hypothesis for score-based information retrieval by claiming that closely related documents should have similar scores. Given a retrieval from an arbitrary system, we describe an algorithm which directly optimizes this objective by adjusting retrieval scores so that topically related documents receive similar scores. We refer to this process as score regularization. Because score regularization operates on retrieval scores, regardless of their origin, we can apply the technique to arbitrary initial retrieval rankings. Document rankings derived from regularized scores, when compared to rankings derived from un-regularized scores, consistently and significantly result in improved performance given a variety of baseline retrieval algorithms. We also present several proofs demonstrating that regularization generalizes methods such as pseudo-relevance feedback, document expansion, and cluster-based retrieval. Because of these strong empirical and theoretical results, we argue for the adoption of score regularization as general design principle or post-processing step for information retrieval systems.

Review of “The State of Open Access,” interviews by Richard Poynder

Abstract

Moves occur due to a variety of reasons. There can be changes in the mission, budget cuts, restructuring issues, changes in the staff, or the changes that technology brings about that are either forced on or desired by the library. Acceptance, helpful participation, and a conscious effort must be made to engage the staff in accepting what will be happening, participating in the areas that affect them, directly or indirectly, and motivating them to buy into the process. This is necessary or the success of the move will be in jeopardy. The level of change that occurs is more than what you might expect. Maneuvering between mission changes and having the collection reflect those changes takes planning, teamwork, use of volunteers, and some hard work.     

Governments as partners: The role of alliances in U.S. cleantech startup innovation

Accelerating innovation in clean energy technologies is a policy priority for governments around the world aiming to mitigate climate change and to provide affordable energy. Most research has focused on the role of governments financing R&D and steering market demand, but there is a more limited understanding of the role of direct government interactions with startups across all sectors. We propose and evaluate the value-creation mechanisms of network resources from different types of partners for startups, highlighting the unique resources of government partners for cleantech startups. We develop and analyze a novel dataset of 657 U.S. cleantech startups and 2,015 alliances with governments, firms, research organizations, and not-for-profit organizations from 2008 to 2012 and analyze short-term firm outcomes from the different alliances. Our findings highlight the importance of governmental partners in technology development alliances to catalyze cleantech startup innovation (the patenting activity of cleantech startups increases by 73.7 percent with every additional governmental technology alliance when compared to those startups that did not engage in such alliances) and as quality signals to private sector investors for licensing alliances (private financing deals increase by 155 percent for every additional license from a government organization). Overall, these findings extend the alliance perspectives on innovation, contribute to the emerging research on entrepreneurial ecosystems, and underline the need to develop empirical evidence in different sectors.