How do secondary students approach different types of division with remainder situations? Some evidence from Spain

Division-With-Remainder (DWR) problems are particularly complex, as suggested in many studies. The purpose of this work was to establish whether students’ difficulties in DWR problems came from an inadequate initial representation or from an inadequate final interpretation of the numerical answers, and whether remainders could be grouped into two blocks depending on the kind of answer, either directly matching the terms of the division or not. Forty-five Spanish secondary students, aged 12–13, were requested to solve two Types of Division Situations (i.e., Equal Groups and Comparison), each one involving four Types of Remainder (i.e., Remainder-Not-Divisible, Remainder-Divisible, Remainder-as-the-Result, and Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments). Our data showed that: (a) the selection of the correct solution procedure depended on the Type of Division Situations, being easier in Equal Groups than in Comparison problems; (b) correct interpretations were higher than the percentages reported in other researches; and (c) success in problems whose answers were the quotient or the remainder was higher than in Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments problems. The results obtained suggest that students’ difficulties originate in the initial representation of the DWR problems and that it would be more adequate to refer to the difficulty of Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments problems in particular, rather than to the difficulty of DWR problems in general.     

Journal coverage of the Emerging Sources Citation Index

The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) was created recently, in 2015, but few assessments of its journal coverage have been made. The present study tries to fill that gap by comparing its coverage with that of other international abstracting and indexing (A&I) databases. Using this measure, it is feasible to benchmark this index against the other citation indexes for acceptance criteria. We analysed 6,296 ESCI‐indexed journals, 8,889 Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), 3,258 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), 1,784 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), and 22,749 Scopus journals as indexed in July 2017 to determine their inclusion in 105 databases. We found that 19.3% of the ESCI journals are not covered by any other A&I databases, a high figure compared with only 0.5% SCIE, 0.3% SSCI, 0.3% AHCI, and 5.5% Scopus journals. This low coverage suggests that the selection criteria for ESCI journals are not consistent with the overall trend in the other classical citation indexes.     

Comments on ＂How to repair the Hill cipher＂

A modification of the Hill cipher algorithm was recently proposed by Ismail et al.（2006）, who claimed that their new scheme could offer more security than the original one due to an extra non-linearity layer introduced via an elaborated key generation mechanism. That mechanism produces one different encryption key for each one of the plaintext blocks. Nevertheless, we show in this paper that their method still has severe security flaws whose weaknesses are essentially the same as that already found in the original Hill cipher scheme.     

The validity and reliability of an iPhone app for measuring vertical jump performance

The purpose of this investigation was to analyse the concurrent validity and reliability of an iPhone app (called: My Jump) for measuring vertical jump performance. Twenty recreationally active healthy men (age: 22.1 ± 3.6 years) completed five maximal countermovement jumps, which were evaluated using a force platform (time in the air method) and a specially designed iPhone app. My jump was developed to calculate the jump height from flight time using the high-speed video recording facility on the iPhone 5 s. Jump heights of the 100 jumps measured, for both devices, were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r), Cronbach’s alpha (α), coefficient of variation and Bland–Altman plots. There was almost perfect agreement between the force platform and My Jump for the countermovement jump height (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.997, P < 0.001; Bland–Altman bias = 1.1 ± 0.5 cm, P < 0.001). In comparison with the force platform, My Jump showed good validity for the CMJ height (r = 0.995, P < 0.001). The results of the present study showed that CMJ height can be easily, accurately and reliably evaluated using a specially developed iPhone 5 s app.     

Elite entanglements and the demand for a radically un/ethical position: the case of Wienie Night

Sociologist Colin Bell pointed out that sociology “can be easily seen as thoroughly implicated in the power structure of society” (1978 Bell, C. (1978). Studying the locally powerful: Personal reflections on a research career. In C. Bell & S. Encel (Eds.), Inside the whale: Ten personal account of social research (pp. 14–40). Rushcutters Bay: Pergamon Press.10.1016/B978-0-08-022244-8.50006-1[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 25). One way in which this implication is expressed is the way that ethical concerns have become institutionalized and regimented. This article puts forward the argument that a true study of elites must be, by default, un/ethical because the taken-for-granted assumptions and common sense that shape ethical decisions protect those with power, including academics themselves. I make such a “radically un/ethical” move by discussing the story of a story I was not supposed to tell about a secret ritual at an elite boarding school. I invite the reader to become implicated in the story to suggest that the ethical responsibility to reveal the hidden dynamics of power and that sustain elites override my ethical responsibilities to the institution.     

Striving 2.0: Faculty Collaboration and Advocacy as Strategies for Overcoming Post-Striving Organizational Priorities

Innovative Higher Education - A case study at a large, public research university was conducted to understand how post-striving environments, defined by those universities that achieved very high...     

Cultural Socialization and Ethnic Pride Among Mexican‐Origin Adolescents During the Transition to Middle School

The relation between cultural socialization and ethnic pride during the transition to middle school was examined for 674 fifth‐grade students (50% boys; M_age = 10.4 years) of Mexican origin. The theoretical model guiding the study proposes that parent–child relationship quality is a resource in the transmission of cultural values from parent to child and that parental warmth promotes the child's positive response to cultural socialization. Results showed that mother and father cultural socialization predicted youth ethnic pride and that this relation was stronger when parents were high in warmth. The findings highlight the positive role parent cultural socialization may play in the development of adolescent ethnic pride. Furthermore, findings reveal the role of parent–child relationship quality in this process.     

UTILITY OF THE STANFORD–BINET INTELLIGENCE SCALES,FIFTH EDITION,WITH ETHNICALLY DIVERSE PRESCHOOLERS

Current research on the use of revisions of intelligence measures with ethnically diverse populations and younger children is limited. The present study investigated the utility of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5), with an ethnically diverse preschool sample. African American and Caucasian preschoolers, matched on age, gender, and parental education, were found to have similar patterns of high and low scores on both the composites and all subtests of the SB5. The present study also found that African American and Caucasian preschool children did not differ on overall cognitive ability as measured by the SB5 Full Scale IQ. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Relative Age Effect,Biological Maturation,and Coaches’ Efficacy Expectations in Young Male Soccer Players

Purpose: The talent identification and selection process in young male soccer players is mainly focused on anthropometrics and physical performance, but social factors are also considered in this process. The purpose of this study was to test the existence of the relative age effect and its possible influence on anthropometrics and physical performance and to analyze coaches’ efficacy expectations. Method: Data for 564 young male soccer players (M_age = 13.7 ± 1.5 years; M_weight = 53.7 ± 11.6 kg; M_height = 160.2 ± 11.6 cm) included their birth quartile, maturity status, anthropometrics, a physical test battery, and coaches’ efficacy expectations. Results: Early-born players were overrepresented (p < .05). Early-born players were not statistically taller, heavier, or better at physical performance (p > .05) when maturation and chronological age were controlled as confounding factors. However, coaches expected more from early-born players (p < .05), and the inferential analysis showed likely to very likely worthwhile differences between the coaches’ expectations for players born in the first quartile of the year and those born in the fourth quartile of the year. Conclusions: Anthropometrical and physical performance variables were not affected by birth quartile, and coaches’ efficacy expectations were related to the relative age effect.     

Modeling of Nonlinear Growth to Improve the Accuracy of Identification Decision Rules

Progress monitoring using curriculum-based measures administered to a student at multiple points in time is common in educational settings. Recent research has demonstrated that common approaches to identifying individuals in need of special services, such as the trend line or median techniques, can be negatively impacted by the nonlinear change in scores over time. The purpose of this study was to test and demonstrate a nonlinear regression model for adjusting the linear trend line for the presence of such nonlinearities, thereby improving the accuracy of common methods for identifying students in need of special services. Results demonstrated that use of this nonlinear model improved the accuracy of common methods for identifying students in need of special services.