Learning to rank with (a lot of) word features

In this article we present Supervised Semantic Indexing which defines a class of nonlinear (quadratic) models that are discriminatively trained to directly map from the word content in a query-document or document-document pair to a ranking score. Like Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), our models take account of correlations between words (synonymy, polysemy). However, unlike LSI our models are trained from a supervised signal directly on the ranking task of interest, which we argue is the reason for our superior results. As the query and target texts are modeled separately, our approach is easily generalized to different retrieval tasks, such as cross-language retrieval or online advertising placement. Dealing with models on all pairs of words features is computationally challenging. We propose several improvements to our basic model for addressing this issue, including low rank (but diagonal preserving) representations, correlated feature hashing and sparsification. We provide an empirical study of all these methods on retrieval tasks based on Wikipedia documents as well as an Internet advertisement task. We obtain state-of-the-art performance while providing realistically scalable methods.     

Effectiveness of public and private sector agricultural extension: Implications for privatisation in Pakistan

Worldwide serious reservations are being expressed about the ability and competency of the public sector to deliver agricultural extension services, especially in developing countries such as Pakistan which is faced with serious financial difficulties. Consequently, the government is looking for alternative extension paradigms that are cost-effective and client-oriented. To this end the government of Pakistan is inclined towards privatizing the provision of agricultural extension services as a means to promote a second ‘Green Revolution’. This study was conducted among cotton farmers in the Punjab Province to examine the comparative effectiveness of public and private sector extension as perceived from the stakeholders. Data were collected from 52 contact farmers of both extension systems. A number of biases were identified in both systems; namely, a preference for farmers with better education and larger landholdings than their noncontact farmer counterparts. Overall, neither system appears to be working for the benefit of the wider farming community.     

Physical and psychosocial aspects of the learning environment in the science laboratory and their relationship to teacher satisfaction

This paper is a report of a survey conducted to determine teachers’ perception of the science laboratory learning environment and the relationship between different aspects of this environment and satisfaction from teaching and learning. Teachers’ perceptions of psychosocial aspects were measured by use of the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), whereas perceptions of physical aspects were measured by use of the Physical Science Laboratory Environment Inventory. The level of satisfaction was measured by use of a satisfaction scale (SC). Data were collected from 800 science teachers in secondary schools in Malaysia. Analysis of findings revealed that teachers have positive attitudes on all SLEI scales, with the exception of the open-ended scale. In terms of physical aspects, teachers regard lighting and technology as highly important but furniture and equipment, space, air quality and safety as of moderate importance only. Results also showed that teachers’ satisfaction from teaching in the laboratory was positive. Subsequent analysis revealed a significant predictive relationship between teachers’ perception of science laboratory learning environments and their teaching and learning satisfaction.     

Event-Konzepte

In view of processes of individualization and pluralization, the requirements for living in modern societies result in significantly increased complexity of social constructions of reality. Especially for individualized juvenile people new forms of communities are a constitutive feature of social lifestyle progression and rearrangement. Within events a specific type of these juvenile communalities emerges. Based on two different cases, a music festival and an improvisational theater performance, this paper emphasizes a crucial similarity of events: the use of (physical) staging as a social mechanism for integration and distinction. The process of ‘eventization’ (i.e., spectacularization) provides a framework for action, in which emotional as well as mental affiliations constitute.     

Telling Them Their Own Stories: Legitimizing sexual and reproductive health education in rural Bangladesh

Most people in Bangladesh are rural, poor and underprivileged. The incidence of sexual disease has increased, but little has been done to educate rural people about sexual and reproductive health. In 1997, a sexual and reproductive health project was initiated within a collaborative research agreement between the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), an indigenous non-governmental organization which pursues integrated rural development strategies. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 65 different women, men, boys and girls revealed significant sexual health problems and a lack of knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. The interviews were transformed into composite problem-solving picture stories and information about sexual and reproductive health. Stories mirrored respondents' interpretations of sexual behavior. Those who had achieved or ascribed legitimacy to talk about sex, e.g. traditional health providers, were trained to utilize the methods and materials. Qualitative evaluations revealed important changes in health providers' self-confidence, business and personal interactions as well as changes in clients' behavior. This project found that sexual and reproductive health education can be integrated into indigenous health activities if the sociocultural context in which sex, relationships, risks, diseases and communication occur is reflected in a program's content and methods. Unquestionably, there is a great need for sex education in rural Bangladesh.     

Editorial: Kompetenzmodelle zur Erfassung individueller Lernergebnisse und zur Bilanzierung von Bildungsprozessen

This special issue comprises eleven articles from the DFG priority program “Competence Models for Assessing Individual Learning Outcomes and Evaluating Educational Processes”. The special issue aims at showing the priority program’s present state of discussion concerning essential concepts and questions related to the modeling of competencies. The first article describes the structure and research areas of the program and gives an overview on the current state of research. The short articles two to eleven discuss questions and problems which proved to be of particular importance during the work of the priority program in the last years. These articles constitute the result of a workshop of the participating scientists of the priority program in terms of position papers.     

Transferwirkungen künstlerischer Tätigkeiten. Ihre kritische Kommentierung durch eine umfassende Theorie ästhetischer Bildung

Transfer research examines how artistic activities can have an impact outside of the realm of art itself. The article concludes that this research can be carried out in a meaningful way, only within the framework of a comprehensive theory of aesthetic education. This theory would encompass the structural analysis of artistic activity, as well as biographical reports about artistic experiences. The elucidation of the concepts or themes relevant to the theory would include the notion of aesthetic experience, the understanding of immediate, aesthetic experiences, the analysis of artistic processes, and the outcomes of scientifically evaluated applications of aesthetic education.     

Wann kann Kompetenzdiagnostik negative Auswirkungen haben?

This paper addresses potential negative effects of systematic external competence assessment on different levels of the education system. We discuss possible sources of misinterpretations of competence assessment feedback, potential consequences of feedback and assessment for different education stakeholders (teachers, students, and educational administration) as well as negative effects of systematic competence assessment on the culture of teaching and learning. The paper concludes with some reflections on possibilities to prevent or reduce the discussed negative effects.     

Wie können Ergebnisse der Kompetenzdiagnostik in Forschungsprojekten sinnvoll zurückgemeldet werden?

Reporting on research results to students, teachers and institutions is a big challenge within competence assessment research: students individually have to be given feedback about how they performed, teachers have to be provided with information about their classes, education authorities are interested in actual research results. For feedback being helpful for students, teachers and institutions, the following questions have to be thought of: (1) Who is the feedback given to? What is the aim of the feedback? (2) Which results shall be reported? (3) How should feedback theoretically look like? And (4) how does feedback depend on the given general framework? The given article discusses these questions and offers a “checklist” to research projects with a focus on competence assessment.     

Skizze zur Historiographie der Ästhetischen Bildung

This article is focussing on a historical approach to the term of aesthetic education from three different angles: as history of ideas, biographies and images. Aesthetic education is thereby understood as performative and reflective involvement with aesthetics and the fine arts such as arts, theatre and literature etc. A first approach is defining the history of ideas as a theoretical reconstruction of aesthetic concepts and their educational relevance; this history is also discussing educational theories and their aesthetic implications. It is more or less an implicit and compensatory history because the important contexts are not visible at first sight; and the aesthetic and pedagogical theories often need a reciprocal addition. A biographical perspective is hereby concentrated on the biography of artists. Thereby the educational science of biographies are highlighting the situation of the arts and the artists, the development of becoming an artist, the progression as an artist and the artistic institutions in a educational-aesthetic nexus. Such a perspective is supplementing the history of ideas concerning cultural and socio-historical dimensions as well as institutional and biographic aspects. Finally, the history of images is focusing on the thesis that every picture also includes a programme of aesthetic education. In pictures the process of productive and reflective visualisation is expressed: paintings refer to their production and their understanding. For the method of the historical-educational iconography of aesthetic education a historicizing matrix from production aesthetics, work aesthetics and reception aesthetics is suggested. This matrix is combined with a theory of education as transformation of self-relation, of relations to other individuals and the world. The three approaches just mentioned are exemplified by Leonardo da Vinci and his famous picture “Vitruvian Man” from 1492.