Child Schooling in India: A Multilevel Approach

It is been widely established that child schooling has far reaching influence on shaping their subsequent living, in particular, and social and economic development of the society, in general. Although the Constitution of India provides free and compulsory education for all children until they reach 14 years, the schooling of children – enrollment and completion of primary school – still remains far below than the expectations. Using data from National Family Health Survey [NFHS], we attempted to understand primary school enrollment and completion in India. Results reveal that household characteristics play a significant role towards child schooling. The study suggests the importance of adult educational programs and opening of new schools, particularly all-girls schools, in needed areas. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The effects of POWERSOURCE© assessments on middle-school students’ math performance

This paper describes results from field testing of middle-school math formative assessments alongside professional development and instructional resources. We employed a randomised, controlled design to address the question: Does using our formative assessment strategies improve student performance on assessments of key mathematical ideas relative to a comparison group? This study also provided data on the instructional sensitivity of the assessments, which is part of the validation needed for formative assessments. Teachers were recruited from two districts and seven middle schools. Nineteen treatment and 17 comparison group teachers and their students were included in study analyses. Scores on extended response and short-answer questions indicated that students in the treatment group performed better than students in the comparison group who received the formative assessments alone. These findings demonstrate both the feasibility and value of including performance task-types in a brief assessment context.     

A Quantitative Analysis of Research Output of Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi,India

This study provides an overview of the research output of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, in terms of number of publications contributed by faculty members and researchers. The study analyzes bibliometric indicators of published research of Jawaharlal Nehru University as indexed in the Web of Science. There were 5,007 research publications from Jawaharlal Nehru University in the four decades from 1971–2010 (70s; 80s; 90s; and 2000s). The study noted encouraging trends in collaborative research work with multiple-authored research papers. International collaboration in research was also observed among the faculty members and researchers. English was the predominant language of communication. The social scientists and humanists of Jawaharlal Nehru University publish books which are not indexed in the Web of Science. Similarly, research work published in regional languages or published in national level journals are seldom included in the Web of Science. It suggests that research needs to be done by collecting data from the Indian Citation Index and books published by the researchers in order to get an accurate and consolidated picture of the research output of the university.     

Code-Switching and Competition: An Examination of a Situational Response

Code switching is primarily a linguistic term that refers to the use of two or more languages within the same conversation, or same sentence, to convey a single message. One field of linguistics, sociocultural linguistics, is broad and interdisciplinary, a mixture of language, culture, and society. In sociocultural linguistics, the code, or language that is selected, can be triggered by a social situation or setting in which the speaker is placed. Code-switching can also apply to behavior. In physical education, teachers may communicate in the language of sport. When teaching a competitive activity in physical education class, the environment changes, becomes competitive, and the teachers often code switch and switch instructional choices unconsciously. This article examines the occurrence of code-switching during competitive activities.