Using an adaptation programme to introduce children to the early years of schooling in Slovakia

The article presents a new adaptation programme entitled ‘With a smile to school’ for pupils of the first year at primary schools. The adaptation programme comprises several methods and measures which are focused on the regulation of pupils’ adaptation process. The efficiency and effectiveness of the adaptation programme were verified through an experiment at selected primary schools in Slovakia in the school year 2016/2017. Based on the experiment results, a proposal for implementation of the adaptation programme to school practice was drawn up. The experiment results were evaluated by means of selected statistical methods.     

Predatory and exploitative behaviour in academic publishing: An assessment

The issue of “predatory” publishing continues to affect many scholars around the world who publish. When one reads the fairly vast literature surrounding “predatory” publishing, there is an erroneous tendency to continue pivoting around Jeffrey Beall's blacklists of “predatory” open access (OA) journals and publishers. However, to be “predatory” involves much more than defining a handful of select behaviours, and it is becoming increasingly important to start defining, or curtailing, the lexicon to avoid referring to any journal or publisher that might display one of the following qualities (exploitative, deceptive, excessive, unscrupulous, abusive, advantageous, manipulative, profit-seeking, or others) as synonymously meaning “predatory”. This paper focuses mainly on the oft-interchangeable terms “predatory” and “exploitation”, and explores the morality of predatory and exploitative actions by applying a deontological ethics approach which implies that certain actions are wrong even if they achieve good consequences, with the understanding that because a predatory entity aims to exploit others, these actions would be considered morally wrong from a deontologist's perspective. In articulating our argument, we attempt to expand the conversation around this important topic, with the hope that it might bring additional clarity to the issue of what might constitute a “predatory” journal or publisher.     

Dynamic profiles using sentiment analysis and twitter data for voting advice applications

Nowadays, political campaigns combine traditional media channels with social media platforms, opening new and promising possibilities for parties and candidates looking for better political strategies and visibility. Voting advice applications (VAAs) recommend parties and candidates that are close to a citizen's political preferences and require the constrution of candidate and party profiles. Profile generation is an essential task in the development of VAAs and requires two steps: an unbiased design of political questionnaires and the collection of all candidates' answers. This paper presents an extension of a VAA, implemented in within the project Participa Inteligente (PI), a social-network platform designed for the 2017 Ecuadorian national elections. This work concentrates on the implementation of dynamic candidate profiling using Twitter data and sentiment analysis as an additional element to the static profile generation of VAAs. The implementation of a dynamic element for VAAs could help mitigate the effect of biased recommendations given during the construction of candidate and party profiles. At the end of this work, the dynamic profile is compared with the classic static elements developed within the PI project. The results show the level of similarities and differences between each of the elements in profile generation. This work provides an ideal basis for future research in the area of VAAs and their interfaces. Additionally, it opens up a broader spectrum of applications for policymakers including decision-making and collaborative working environments toward e-empowerment.     

Twitter as a tool for citizen engagement: An empirical study of the Andalusian municipalities

This paper provides a general overview of the way local governments use Twitter as a communication tool to engage with their citizens. More concretely, it tries to identify factors associated with both the channel activity and citizen engagement, to understand the relationship between media type and citizen engagement and to analyse whether different content generated different levels of engagement. A sample of the 29 most populated Andalusian local governments is examined. The results show that the majority of Andalusian local governments have an official corporate Twitter account with certain level of activity. There is no, however, a significant relationship between the population of a municipality and its citizen's engagement, and there is a significant negative relationship between audience and engagement and between activity and engagement. The findings of the study also show the particular media and content types generate higher engagement than others. This paper contributes to the literature on social media and has practical implications for local governments.     

Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation

Journal ranking is becoming more important in assessing the quality of academic research. Several indices have been suggested for this purpose, typically on the basis of a citation graph between the journals. We follow an axiomatic approach and find an impossibility theorem: any self-consistent ranking method, which satisfies a natural monotonicity property, should depend on the level of aggregation. Our result presents a trade-off between two axiomatic properties and reveals a dilemma of aggregation.     

Do researchers collaborate in a similar way to publish and to develop projects?

The aim of this paper is to establish the similarities and differences between the way of collaboration and the production of researchers when dealing with publications or with the development of projects and whether the collaboration patterns change across disciplines.We have studied the networks of researchers formed through the collaborations in papers or in projects in a research institution (the University of Zaragoza) and we have analyzed a series of individual and global magnitudes. As a general result, we have observed that the laws governing the individual productivity are similar for the cases of publications and projects but, however, the behavior is different when analyzing more complex magnitudes such as the collaborations or other structural variables. We consider also the subnetworks defined by the researchers of the different disciplines and characterize their topologies and compare the corresponding collaboration patterns.Because of the general approach, we expect most of the conclusions to be applicable to other universities or research centers.     

Plants have a chance: outdoor educational programmes alter students' knowledge and attitudes towards plants

Outdoor educational programmes are generally believed to be a suitable alternative to conventional biology settings that improve participants' environmental attitudes and knowledge. Here we examine whether outdoor educational programmes focused solely on practical work with plants influence participants' knowledge of and attitudes towards plants. It was found that mean scores of participants' attitudes towards and knowledge of plants significantly increased after the outdoor programme. These effects remained significant even after three months' post‐testing. No similar patterns were found in the control group. Interestingly, the proportion of participants who liked biology as a school subject also significantly increased after the outdoor programme in the experimental group. Females showed better knowledge of plants than males, but attitudes towards plants were similar between genders. Having a garden at home was not associated with better knowledge or attitudes towards plants. Our results reveal that outdoor programmes significantly relieve ‘plant blindness’ and make biology more attractive to pupils.     

On the hunt for the gene of perspective taking: pitfalls in methodology

In this commentary, we evaluate the methodology of Udell, Dorey, and Wynne’s (Learning & Behavior, in press) experiment in controlling for environmental factors and argue that their conclusion is not supported. In particular, we emphasise that comparative studies on dogs and wolves need to ensure that both species enjoyed the same rearing history, are comparable in age, and have the same experience with the testing conditions. We also argue that the utilisation of shelter dogs does not control for genetic effects on social behaviour. Finally, we propose a synergetic model to account for both genetic and environmental effects on interspecific social behaviour in dogs and wolves.     

Development of self-efficacy towards using alternative assessment scale

Determining the candidate teachers’ opinions regarding self-efficacy towards alternative assessment will be beneficial in that this will improve their competencies while using these approaches in their applications within the classroom. In this article, the development and validation of the “Self-efficacy towards Using Alternative Assessment Scale” (SUAAS) is introduced. The SUUAS is a 26-item scale for assessing candidate teachers’ self-efficacy towards using alternative assessment. Data collected from 424 candidate teachers provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the scale. The results provide evidence for a valid and reliable self-efficacy scale with 3 factors, which are named as “Self-efficacy towards Using”, “Self-efficacy towards Challenges” and “Self-efficacy towards Using Sources”. The Cronbach’s alpha value of the entire scale has been found as 0.89, while those of the sub-factors are 0.88, 0.86 and 0.71, respectively. Followed by additional validation studies, the SUAAS will serve as a valuable tool for both instructors and researchers in education to assess teachers’ and candidate teachers’ beliefs related to their self-efficacy towards using alternative assessment approaches.     

Conception, development and implementation of an e-Government maturity model in public agencies

Governments worldwide are encouraging public agencies to join e-Government initiatives in order to provide better services to their citizens and businesses; hence, methods of evaluating the readiness of individual public agencies to execute specific e-Government programs and directives are a key ingredient in the successful expansion of e-Government. To satisfy this need, a model called the eGovernment Maturity Model (eGov-MM) was developed, integrating the assessment of technological, organizational, operational, and human capital capabilities, under a multi-dimensional, holistic, and evolutionary approach. The model is strongly supported by international best practices, and provides tuning mechanisms to enable its alignment with nation-wide directives on e-Government. This article describes how the model was conceived, designed, developed, field tested by expert public officials from several government agencies, and finally applied to a selection of 30 public agencies in Chile, generating the first formal measurements, assessments, and rankings of their readiness for e-Government. The implementation of the model also provided several recommendations to policymakers at the national and agency levels.