The Jewish Educational System—A Plea for Organic Unity

This article analyzes the career commitments and retention patterns among graduates of the DeLeT program (Day School Leadership Through Teaching) who were prepared for day-school teaching at Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Employing t-tests to analyze survey responses, we identify factors that shape and support teachers' career commitments to Jewish day schools. Our findings suggest that those who stay in Jewish day school teaching are likely to do so because of more commitment to the Jewish community, greater perception of effective teacher preparation experience, and better school support in comparison to those who leave teaching in this setting. These findings are consistent with a multi-layered understanding of teachers' lives and career commitments, which is illustrated in the interaction between person, program, and setting.     

Care,thoughtfulness, and tact: a conceptual framework for university supervisors

The pedagogical work of university supervisors has received little attention in teacher education literature. Based on this concern, this paper provides a conceptual framework for university supervisors, recasting their role as teacher pedagogues focused on responding to the particular contextual needs of student teachers as they learn to teach. Using care, thoughtfulness, and tact as a conceptual framework, the author argues for an interactive and responsive pedagogy of field‐based teacher education grounded in the university supervisor’s concern for the development of the student teacher.     

Triggering effects of mobile video marketing in nature tourism: Media richness perspective

The aim of this study was to investigate videos as potential triggers of behavior. Therefore, we applied the theories of triggers and media richness to learn about the triggering efficiency of mobile marketing videos on participants’ behavioral intentions. The experiment involved three distinct test groups, each comprising 41 student participants. From the perspective of media richness theory, we observed that the different kinds of videos had quite similar effects in terms of triggering behavioral changes. However, the mechanisms explaining why triggers were present differed for each video. Further, the results reveal that the consumer's position in the information search process was the most significant reason for the triggering of any kind of effect. In addition, the instructionally designed videos were able to exert an affective triggering effect: the more participants liked the video, the more it affected their participation intention and recall scores. This study extends the media richness research by demonstrating that the effects of media richness can vary within technically similar videos, as they form different logical connections among non-verbal visual cues related to a video's storyline.     

Fateful aspects of aspiration among graduates in New York and Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

This article presents ethnographic research on the aspirations of graduates from a private university in New York City, some of whom move to Los Angeles. Findings depict financial and family pressures exerting a governing force upon the graduates’ futures, often beyond their control. Focusing on the narratives of four individuals, we introduce the language of fate as a means of conceptualising the potential repercussions of aspiration and Higher Education. The premise of both is an increased determinacy over one’s future, yet in the high-stakes U.S. context here examined, this financial investment and articulation of family hope may generate fated (seemingly inescapable) and/or fateful (ominous) outcomes. The dynamic of ‘cruel optimism’ illustrates some of the paradoxical consequences of Higher Education, whereby people may be punished by their aspirations. We discuss what factors affect differing outlooks on the future and imply alternative dimensions to adversity beyond the remit of ‘inequality’.     

The One and the Many: Enduring Legacies of Spearman and Thurstone on Intelligence Test Score Interpretation

ABSTRACT

Charles Spearman and L. L. Thurstone were pioneers in the field of intelligence. They not only developed methods to assess and understand intelligence, but also developed theories about its structure and function. Methodologically, their approaches were not that distinct, but their theories of intelligence were philosophically very different – and this difference is still seen in modern approaches to intellectual assessment. In this article, we describe their theories of intelligence and then trace how these theories have influenced the development and use of intelligence instruments, paying particular attention to score interpretation.     

Product review summarization through question retrieval and diversification

Product reviews have become an important resource for customers before they make purchase decisions. However, the abundance of reviews makes it difficult for customers to digest them and make informed choices. In our study, we aim to help customers who want to quickly capture the main idea of a lengthy product review before they read the details. In contrast with existing work on review analysis and document summarization, we aim to retrieve a set of real-world user questions to summarize a review. In this way, users would know what questions a given review can address and they may further read the review only if they have similar questions about the product. Specifically, we design a two-stage approach which consists of question selection and question diversification. For question selection phase, we first employ probabilistic retrieval models to locate candidate questions that are relevant to a given review. A Recurrent Neural Network Encoder–Decoder is utilized to measure the “answerability” of questions to a review. We then design a set function to re-rank the questions with the goal of rewarding diversity in the final question set. The set function satisfies submodularity and monotonicity, which results in an efficient greedy algorithm of submodular optimization. Evaluation on product reviews from two categories shows that the proposed approach is effective for discovering meaningful questions that are representative of individual reviews.     

Iranian Scholarly Journals 2.0: An Updated Annotated Bibliography

This is an update of the authors’ annotated bibliography of Iranian peer-reviewed scholarly journals that was published in 2010 in the Serials Librarian. The total number of scholarly journals published in Iran increased from 503 to 1,176 journals in 2017. The forty top journals ranked by impact factor from eight different disciplines are presented in this article. The entry for each journal includes the following information: title, subject, date founded, frequency, editor, language, publisher, address, phone number, FAX number, web address, International Standard Serial Number, indexing/abstracting sources, impact factor, ministry, and an abstract/annotation.     

The furniture company: deductive databases and the scheduling problem

In this paper we address the possibility of utilizing a deductive database solution to assist a furniture company to solve its delivery scheduling problems. We first present the company's current approach to scheduling furniture deliveries using their present computing facilities. Then, we discuss their search for an off-the-self solution, resulting in the proposed solution employing the capabilities of a deductive database application. An evaluation of the current state of commercially available deductive database is conducted and presented to assess the possibilities and availability of the technology to focus on an alternative for the furniture company.     

Predictors and outcomes of low-income fathers’ reading with their toddlers

Most studies of parent–child bookreading have focused on mothers reading to their children. Though the role of fathers in children's lives is widely emphasized, we know almost nothing about father–child bookreading, particularly among low-income families. The present study was designed to examine how often low-income fathers report reading to their children and what the predictors and effects of paternal bookreading are. The fathers in this study were participants in the national evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS) and were recruited via mothers enrolled in the EHS study. Participating fathers were interviewed at home and their children's cognitive and language development were assessed using standardized measures from ages 2 to 5. Results demonstrated a wide variety in frequency of bookreading among fathers. Fathers were more likely to read to their children frequently if they spoke English at home, if they had a high school education, and if their children had better language skills. Fathers’ bookreading predicted children's cognitive outcome. Paternal bookreading did predict children's language outcomes but only for children whose fathers had at least a high school education.