Psychometric properties and optimizing of the Bracken School Readiness Assessment

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) has been used in large studies such as the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). Important...     

Math Shelf: A Randomized Trial of a Prekindergarten Tablet Number Sense Curriculum

Research Findings: Effective preschool mathematics instruction is especially important for low-income children. Previous research demonstrates that low-income children enter kindergarten behind their middle-income peers. They receive less mathematics support at home and from public preschools. The aim of this study was to test Math Shelf, a tablet intervention designed to improve at-risk preschoolers’ mathematics performance. A total of 100 children participated in a randomized controlled trial in a large urban Head Start center. Intervention students played Math Shelf on tablet computers for 6 weeks, whereas comparison students played the most downloaded and best reviewed preschool math apps on tablets for an equal amount of time. During game play, graduate student researchers supervised intervention and comparison students in separate rooms. Intervention and comparison groups did not differ on pretest assessments. Math Shelf students performed statistically significantly better (Cohen’s d = 0.57) than comparison students at posttest. Practice or Policy: Math Shelf results suggest that teachers can enhance low-income preschoolers’ mathematics knowledge in a relatively short amount of time by incorporating developmentally appropriate tablet interventions.     

Foreign Communications

Masami Ito, et al. Broadcasting in Japan (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978—E4.95/$9.50, paper)

Ibrahim Elsheikh Mass Media and Ideological Change in Egypt (1950-1973) (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1977—about $40.00, paper)

Mass Media and Cultural Relationships by Anthony Piepe, Sunny Crouch and Miles Emerson (1978, 169 pp.—price not given)

Trade Unionism in Television by Peter Seglow (1978, 287 pp.—price not given)

Cuadernos de Comunicaci(5n (Communication Notes) (Comunicolgia Aplicada de Mexico, S.A. Comunal No. 7, Mexico 20, D.F.—about $55 per year/12 issues).

Godwin C. Chu, Syed A. Rahim, and D. Lawrence Kincaid Institutional Exploration in Communication Technology (Honolulu: East West Communication Institute, East-West Center, 1978 —$3.00, paper)

P. Gould and J. Johnson, An Experiment in the Classification of Television Programs, October 1978, $3.00, paper), and the paper written for laymen, #5 (P. Gould, How Should We Classify Television Programs? October 1978, $2.50, paper)

Journalism Training: An Interim Report by Robert Amerson and John Herbst (30 pp. $1.75)

An Analysis of Ten International Radio News Broadcasts in English to Africa by Douglas A. Boyd and Donald R. MacKay (16 pp., $1.25)

A Look at the World's Radio News by Bert Cowlan and Lee M. Love (39 pp., $2.25)

Education for Communication Development: The Global View by Robert Lindsay (27 pp., $1.75)

A Brief Study on News Patterns in 16 Third World Countries by Edward T. Pinch (15 pp., $1.25)

International Telecommunications and the Requirements of News Services by Ithiel de Sole Pool and Stephen Dizard (19 pp., $1.25)

Foreign News in Nine Arab Countries by Gehan Rachty (21 pp., $1.25)

International News Wires and Third World News in Asia by Wilbur Schramm, et al. (79 pp., $4.00)

The Multinational News Pool by Roger Tatarian (19 pp., $1.25)

International Conferences: Process and Effects by Rosemarie Rogers, et al. (March 1978, 53 pp., $3.00)

Hemisphere Communications in Historical Perspective by James Nelson Goodsell (September 1978, 18 pp., $1.25)

Kaarle Nordenstreng and Herbert I. Schiller, eds. National Sovereignty and International Communication (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1979—$21.50)

Rosemary Righter's Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World (London: Andre Deutsch/New York: Times Books, 1978—$12.50)

Frank Barton The Press of Africa: Persecution & Perseverance (New York: Holmes & Meier/Africana Publishing Co, 1979—$29.50)

Godwin C. Chu, ed. Popular Media in China: Shaping New Cultural Patterns (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978—$12.00)     

21世纪人才培养教育课程

一、基本观点 1.准确地判断形势 (1)基于广阔的视野 21世纪,情报通讯技术和生命科学等的科学与技术以前所未有的速度迅速发展,直接联结于世界,情报瞬间即共有,是一个全球化日新月异的时代。以思考伦理道德问题为例,大从宏观宇宙问题着眼,小就微观克隆等遗传因子及细胞问题进行思考,迄今的规范概念和思考方式可以说是不充分、不适当的。     

Net efficiency of roller skiing with a diagonal stride

The aims of this study were: (a) to determine net efficiency during roller skiing with a diagonal stride at various speeds; (b) to assess the development of net efficiency across speeds; and (c) to examine the characteristics of efficiency in diagonal roller skiing. Two-dimensional kinematics and oxygen uptake were determined in eight male collegiate cross-country ski athletes who roller skied with the diagonal stride at various speeds on a level track. Net efficiency was calculated from rates of internal and external work and net energy expenditure. Individual net efficiency ranged from 17.7% to 52.1%. Net efficiency in the entire group of athletes increased with increasing speed, reached a maximum value of 37.3% at 3.68?m?·?s(-1), before slowly decreasing. These findings indicate that roller skiing with the diagonal stride at high speed is a highly efficient movement and that an optimal speed exists at which net efficiency can be maximally enhanced in diagonal roller skiing.     

创建无障碍支援体系推动残障大学生就业创业

无障碍是社会发展的目标,支援是尊重个人特点的支持和协助,无障碍支援体系是一种全新的理念,而高校承担着将这种理念推广到全社会,使这种理念成为社会常态的伟大使命.理念指导行动,如果整个社会的理念发生根本性变化,各类法规制度也都会按照共同的理念来制定,服务到每个社会成员,残障人就业创业也就真正实现“无障碍”.     

Similarities and differences in constraints and constraint negotiation among Japanese sport tourists: a case of masters games participants*

ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study were to examine (a) similarities and differences in constraints to and constraint negotiation for masters games (MG) participation, and (b) the relationships among constraints, constraint negotiation, and intention to participate in the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai, across international sport tourists, domestic sport tourists, and sport excursionists. An online survey was conducted with 449 Japanese people who participated in MGs within the last three years. Our results indicated that international sport tourists experienced higher levels of psychological, physiological, interpersonal, financial, tourism, commitment, MG-specific constraints than domestic sport tourists and sport excursionists, although physiological constraints did not differ between international and domestic sport tourists. Conversely, international and domestic sport tourists utilized tourism and MG-self-adaptation negotiation strategies more than sport excursionists. Lastly, constraints to and constraint negotiation for the past MG were not related to the intention of participation in the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai across the three groups. These results suggest that this typology of sport tourists – international, domestic, and excursionist – is an effective framework to understand constraints and negotiation as well as other behaviors and experiences of Japanese sport tourists.     

The writing center and international students in a Japanese university: a language management perspective

ABSTRACT

One of the institutional challenges of taking in large numbers of international graduate students is supporting their academic literacy skills. To accommodate a large population of international students, Japanese universities offer various services to support their academic studies and life-related issues, such as hiring international student advisors, offering Japanese language courses, and implementing peer-support programs. As a type of academic support for writing for international students, writing centers have caught the attention of universities in the last decade. To examine the institutional role of the writing center at a Japanese university, this study employs a language management lens to compare the beliefs and interests among administrators, tutors, and international students in improving international students’ Japanese writing. Interviews with the three groups of participants displayed incongruences between the administrators’ interests aligned with institutional goals, the educational philosophy of the writing center, and international students’ language learning needs. The findings point to the tutors' crucial role as language specialists who inform organized language management, and the necessity for collaboration between academic support units and faculty members in providing sufficient academic socialization environments for international students.     

Enhancing children’s activity in browsing/reading together by the installation of the BrowsReader in the children’s room of a library

Reading together draws much attention as a societal concern for children not only to yield emotional reaction but also to gradually advance intellectual thinking. We here aim to build a new environment, in which children’s browsing and reading of picture books together with families and/or friends is steadily enhanced, by installing the BrowsReader in the children’s room of a public library or a kindergarten. The original BrowsReader was a system to assist children in finding and reading picture books. The children, by gathering around the BrowsReader, can browse picture books and then choose and read a book by flipping pages on it. After reproducing each printed, digitized or web picture book as a surrogate picture book consisting of the front-cover image followed by the page images, we first introduce two basic notions: (i) an abstracted bookshelf, which presents the front-cover images of the surrogate picture books in the form where all are linearly arranged, with some of the images bundled in places, and (ii) a unified view, which presents each page of any surrogate picture book in a form that seems like a printed picture book’s page. We then specify, based on these notions, the improved version of the BrowsReader which can be installed in each children’s room so that children together with families and/or friends can easily browse a large number of surrogate picture books as if they are browsing in the physical bookshelves of the children’s room, and can read a wide variety of surrogate picture books as if they are reading ordinary printed picture books on a table. The improvement was carried out in a step by step process based on feedback and results from case studies, and its effects were clarified by seeing whether, in a new environment, the children’s activity in browsing/reading together were steadily enhanced when using the BrowsReader.     

Organizational and human resource management and innovation: Which management practices are linked to product and/or process innovation?

We examine the determinants of firms’ innovation success, using the firm-level data from the Japanese National Innovation Survey. We focus on the relationship between organizational and human resource management practices for research and development (R&D) and product/process innovation. We find that interdivisional cooperation/teams and the creation/relocation/integration of R&D centers are positively associated with both product and process innovation. Having board members with an R&D background is positively associated with product innovation, implying that top-down R&D decision-making may be important for firms to introduce new products. Among the factors examined, personnel assessment reflecting R&D outcomes appears to have an especially strong relationship with product innovation. Moreover, the positive relationship between the creation/relocation/integration of R&D centers and innovation success suggests that drastic organizational changes can work as a clear signal of firms’ determination to pursue an innovation-oriented strategy and help to accelerate innovation success.