GIL Express in Georgia: An Interlibrary Loan/Circulation Hybrid for Circulating Books

This article recounts the history of the GIL Express initiative in Georgia, from its conception in 1994 to present. It describes the method of delivery and record keeping and discusses the strong points and challenges of the service. It concludes with some possible future plans for the service.     

Fulfilment of the basic psychological needs of student teachers during their first teaching experiences

This study focuses on an under-researched area, namely the fulfilment of basic psychological needs of student teachers during their first teaching experiences. Based on the Self-determination Theory of Ryan and Deci [(2002). Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic dialectical perspective. In E.L. Deci, R.M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3–33). Rochester: The University of Rochester Press] and the work of Epstein [(1998a). Cognitive-experiential self-theory: A dual-process personality theory with implications for diagnosis and psychotherapy. In R.F. Bornstein, J.M. Masling (Eds.), Empirical perspectives on the psychoanalytic unconscious (pp. 99–140). Washington, DC: APA; (1998b). Constructive thinking: The key to emotional intelligence. Westport: Praeger], it could be demonstrated that need fulfilment has a strong influence on student teachers’ teaching experiences, especially in a non-rational way, for instance through feelings and images. Thwarting of the needs appears to be correlated with images showing fight, flight, and freeze tendencies, whereas need fulfilment concurs with flow tendencies. The fulfilment of the need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy in student teachers is considerably less than in experienced teachers. We discuss the consequences for research in this field, and recommendations for teacher education.     

Communication effectiveness of organizational mission statements

An empirical investigation of mission statement communication effectiveness (readability and tone) was conducted using content analysis. All Fortune 500 companies and American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in the United States were contacted by letter asking for a copy of their mission statement. Responses were received from 218 companies and 107 universities. Of these, 135 usable mission statements were evaluated. The results indicate that mission statement developers in both corporate as well as university settings need to improve their readability and the tone of their written statements in order to maximize their organizational image.     

An Embedded and Embodied Cognition Review of Instructional Manipulatives

Recent literature on learning with instructional manipulatives seems to call for a moderate view on the effects of perceptual and interactive richness of instructional manipulatives on learning. This “moderate view” holds that manipulatives’ perceptual and interactive richness may compromise learning in two ways: (1) by imposing a very high cognitive load on the learner, and (2) by hindering drawing of symbolic inferences that are supposed to play a key role in transfer (i.e., application of knowledge to new situations in the absence of instructional manipulatives). This paper presents a contrasting view. Drawing on recent insights from Embedded Embodied perspectives on cognition, it is argued that (1) perceptual and interactive richness may provide opportunities for alleviating cognitive load (Embedded Cognition), and (2) transfer of learning is not reliant on decontextualized knowledge but may draw on previous sensorimotor experiences of the kind afforded by perceptual and interactive richness of manipulatives (Embodied Cognition). By negotiating the Embedded Embodied Cognition view with the moderate view, implications for research are derived.