Using Academic Journals to Help Students Learn Subject Matter Content, Develop and Practice Critical Reasoning Skills, and Reflect on Personal Values in Food Science and Human Nutrition Classes

ABSTRACT:  It has been reported that students learn best when they use a wide variety of techniques to understand the information of the discipline, be it visual, auditory, discussion with others, metacognition, hands-on activities, or writing about the subject. We report in this article the use of academic journals not only as an aid for students to learn about content knowledge needed in an Experimental Foods course, but also as a way to have students think about and reflect on their own personal values. The topics of these journal entries cover several of the core competencies in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Undergraduate Education Standards for Degrees in Food Science. These are basic principles of food science, as well as address several "Success Skills" (written communication, critical thinking, professionalism, life-long learning, interaction skills, and organizational skills). While there are no quantitative "measurements" of gains in learning, comments from the students indicate that learning took place, critical reasoning occurred, and personal values were analyzed. A guideline for writing and grading academic journals and a simple rubric for scoring the quality of the writing are included.     

Applying the structure‐conduct‐performance framework in the media industry analysis

Abstract

This article reviews the application of the Industrial Organization (10) framework of Structure‐Conduct‐Performance (S‐C‐P) in media market research. The constructs and premises of this economic model are restated, and the orthodox economic notions of market performance and the logic that underlies the model are clarified. Alongside these elucidations, this article discusses common conceptualizations and interpretations found in media market studies. Media issues such as content diversity and media concentration, which are often studied through the S‐C‐P approach, are also re‐examined. These deliberations are intended to contribute toward a more consistent framework for the study of media industries and markets.     

A hedonic model of player wage determination from the Indian Premier League auction: Further evidence

A range of cross-sectional models are estimated with a view to establishing the factors that determine the valuation of professional athletes in a highly-specialised sport, with an application to cricket's Indian Premier League (IPL). We distinguish between personal characteristic and playing ability factors, and with respect to the former, between ability in different forms of the sport. We find a number of interpretable variables that have explanatory power over auction values, while decomposition according to batting and bowling specialisations produces very different results depending on the use of either Test or One-Day International (ODI) variables. There is also possible evidence of inefficient bidding, insomuch that overbidding was somewhat correlated with players with higher realised values.     

Male teacher shortage: black teachers’ perspectives

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role models. The study concludes that educational policy attempting to address male teacher shortage would benefit from engaging with both analytic frameworks and empirical research that is capable of unravelling the politics of representation and intersectionality as they relate to addressing questions of male teacher shortage in elementary schools.     

The ABCs of New Zealand Sign Language: Aerial Spelling

Aerial spelling is the term given here for the way many deaf people in New Zealand, especially the elderly, manually represent letters of the alphabet. It is simply a system using the index finger to write letter(s) "in the air" and is an integral part of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). Unfortunately, recent research into NZSL is either dismissive of it or fails to acknowledge it. This article describes aerial spelling and discusses its nature, as well as its indifferent treatment in current literature.     

The precision of data obtained in large-scale science assessments: An investigation of bootstrapping and half-sample replication methods

Powerful computational procedures are now available to better determine the accuracy of statistical estimates derived from data that have unknown distributions or do not meet parametric requirements. These techniques are generally called resampling plans and include the recently developed bootstrap. Science educators often face the problem of nonnormal distributions especially when conducting large-scale assessments or evaluating national curriculum projects that require complex sampling plans. Resampling techniques permit the researcher to make inferences without the strong distributional assumptions needed for more traditional parametric approaches. In this study, the bootstrap and a simplified version of a half-sample replication are used to examine the precision of science test scores obtained in a large-scale evaluation of Scope, Sequence, and Coordination, a national science curriculum project. The resampling plans are described in some detail and the results are compared with those obtained from parametric methods. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 697–704, 1998.