The efficiency of information transmission of sign and spoken language

Rhe study compares sign and oral language in terms of information transmission efficiency. The sample consisted of 36 hearing people with no knowledge of sign language and 36 deaf people reasonably fluent in sign language. (The deaf participants' level of hearing loss ranged from severe to profound.) Oral and sign language comprehension was assessed by means of texts at three different difficulty levels. After being exposed to the texts, the study participants had to tell what they had understood about them, answer a set of related questions, and offer a title for each text. When the hearing group's comprehension of oral versions of the texts was compared to the deaf group's comprehension of signed versions, the deaf group showed better comprehension of the explicit content of the texts but added more invented content and made more errors.     

为教育理念的合理性辩护

本文从构成教育理念的认知、情感两个要素出发,对构成要素和教育理念自身合理性做出证明,特别是指出了它们合理性的限度。随后,文章论述了教育理念和教育行为的复杂关系,通过平等这一教育理念的剖析,指出一般理念和教育理念的区别,这需要我们保持充分的谨慎。     

Surprise and change: Variations in the strength of present and absent cues in causal learning

It is said that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But, when and why does an absent event become salient to the heart or to the brain? An absent event may become salient when its nonoccurrence is surprising. Van Hamme and Wasserman (1994) found that a nonpresented but expected stimulus can actually change its associative status—and in the opposite direction from a presented stimulus. Associative models like that of Rescorla and Wagner (1972) focus only on presented cues; so, they cannot explain this result. However, absent cues can be permitted to change their value by assigning different learning parameters to present and absent cues. Van Hamme and Wasserman revised the Rescorla-Wagner model so that the α parameter is positive for present cues, but negative for absent cues; now, changes in the associative strength of absent cues move in the opposite direction as presented ones. This revised Rescorla-Wagner model can thus explain such otherwise vexing empirical findings as backward blocking, recovery from overshadowing, and backward conditioned inhibition. Moreover, the revised model predicts new effects. For example, explicit information about the absence of nonpresented cues should increase their salience (that is, their negative α value should be larger), leading to stronger associative changes than when no explicit mention is made of cue absence. Support for this prediction is detailed in a new causal judgment experiment in which participants rated the effectiveness of different foods’ triggering a patient’s allergic reaction. Overall, these and other findings encourage us to view human causal learning from an associative perspective.     

MFV-Class: a multi-faceted visualization tool of object classes

Classes are key software components in an object-oriented software system. In many industrial OO software systems,there are some classes that have complicated structure and relationships. So in the processes of software maintenance,testing,software reengineering,software reuse and software restructure,it is a challenge for software engineers to understand these classes thoroughly. This paper proposes a class comprehension model based on constructivist learning theory,and implements a software visualization tool(MFV-Class)to help in the comprehension of a class. The tool provides multiple views of class to uncover manifold facets of class contents. It enables visualizing three object-oriented metrics of classes to help users focus on the understanding process. A case study was conducted to evaluate our approach and the toolkit.     

Exploring the atmosphere with lidars

In Part 1¹, we described the basic principle of the lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), the different scattering processes in the atmosphere and the Mie and Rayleigh lidars. In this part, we describe three other types of lidars: Raman lidar, differential absorption lidar (DIAL) and doppler lidar. A lidar system consists of a pulsed laser which sends out pulses of laser light and a sensor that senses the scattered light from the different molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere. The characteristics of the scattered light are used to determine the nature and amount of the constituents.     

Promoting entrepreneurship education among university students: design and evaluation of an intervention programme / Fomento de la educación emprendedora entre el alumnado universitario: diseño y evaluación de un programa de intervención

For the consolidation of entrepreneurial education as a field of research, a number of challenges must be met, among them, a better connection between pedagogical objectives and the design of programmes, as well as greater methodological rigour in the evaluation of their impact. With this in mind, this paper analyses the results of an entrepreneurial education programme carried out with a group of students from a Spanish university, contrasting the results with a control group. The results indicate that, after this process, the participating students displayed greater entrepreneurial potential than the group of students that had not participated. However, this difference is due more to a loss of entrepreneurial intention in the group not participating in the programme than to an improvement in the participating students.     

Milieuspezifische Bildungsstrategien in Familie und Gleichaltrigengruppe

Zusammenfassung Der Topos Bildungsungleichheit hat in der jüngsten Zeit eine Renaissance erfahren. Wie im Anschluss an den so genannten Sputnik-Schock und die Diskussionen der 1960er-bis 70er-Jahre wird durch den PISA-Schock die Frage nach der Qualit?t von Bildung erneut virulent. Gleichzeitig jedoch scheint die heutige bildungstheoretische Debatte zu eingeengt. Sie reduziert sich auf institutionalisierte schulische Bildung und vernachl?ssigt die zentrale Bedeutung au?erschulischer Bildungsprozesse, die sozialstrukturell variieren. So lassen sich aufgrund der — allerdings trotz sozialwissenschaftlicher Dauerbeobachtungen bis heute leider dünnen — Forschungsbasis deutliche Differenzen in milieuspezifischen Bildungsstrategien von Heranwachsenden und ihren Eltern feststellen. In Familie und Gleichaltrigengruppe herrschen demnach erfahrungsbezogene Bildungsinhalte und Strategien vor, die mit den in der Schule dominierenden Leistungs- und Qualifikationsanforderungen auf sehr unterschiedliche Weise zusammentreffen. Die vorgelegte mesotheoretische Bestimmung von Bildungsstrategien weist auf M?glichkeiten einer differenzierten Analyse von Bildungsprozessen hin, die an die makrostrukturellen Pr?missen des Systems sozialer Ungleichheit ebenso anschlussf?hig ist wie an mikrostrukturelle, lebensweltliche Erfahrungsbezüge der Schülerinnern und Schüler.

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Summary Milieu-specific Educational Strategies in Families and Peer Groups “Educational disadvantage” is experiencing a renaissance as a topic of educational debate. Just as following the so-called Sputnik-Shock and discussions in the ’60s and ’70s, PISA has renewed the debate on the quality of education. At the same time, the perspective of current educational theory seems too narrow. It focuses on institutionalized school education and overlooks the central importance of educational processes outside of the school, which vary according to social structure. Despite continuous observations within this field, scientific research is weaker than might be expected. However, differences in milieu-specific strategies for education are clearly identifiable between young people and their parents. We propose that experience-based educational content and strategies predominate in both families and peer groups, and that these coincide with the achievements- and qualifications-based educational demands within schools in quite different ways. The following meso-theoretic investigation of educational strategies points to the potential of analyses, which can integrate both the macro-structural conditions of systems of inequality and the experiential, micro-structural reference points of pupils.

     

Impact of science-technology learning environment characteristics on learning outcomes: pupils’ perceptions and gender differences

Science and technology are connected to each other and are mutually inspiring. The science-technology curriculum for junior-high school in Israel suggests that teachers integrate these subjects. In addition, this curriculum calls for infusing thinking competencies into the learning subjects and for implementing alternatives in assessment methods in the classes. The current research included three stages: field research, pilot research and expanded research. In the field research, an intervention program was planned and implemented. The intervention program included a three-year inservice training workshop consisting of 224 hours each year. Quantitative and qualitative tools were used to assess teachers implementation of the intervention program. The findings revealed the characteristics of the science-technology learning environment and various learning outcomes. The pilot research enabled the development and validation of a questionnaire called the Science-Technology Learning Environment Questionnaire (STLEQ). The STLEQ was aimed at assessing teachers and pupils perceptions of learning environment. The conclusions from the pilot research showed differences between teachers and pupils perceptions towards the impact of learning environment characteristics on learning outcomes.In the expanded research, two cohorts of pupils participated, namely, the 2002 cohort (N = 207) and the 2003 cohort (N = 159). These cohorts had studied science-technology in junior-high school. The findings of the expanded research partly match the findings from the pilot research, leading to insight into the pupils perspective of the science-technology learning environment. No gender differences were found in pupils scoring of learning outcomes. On the other hand, boys scored higher than girls on Computer Usage. This research enables researchers and teachers to use the questionnaire in order to investigate pupils perceptions of their learning environment.