Tampering with a Stable Process

This article presents a variation of the funnel experiment made famous by W. Edwards Deming. Ideally suited for classroom use, this exercise illustrates the disastrous consequences resulting from tampering with a stable process.     

Parent Surveys for Teacher Evaluation

Parent or guardian perceptions play a specialized role in the evaluation of school teachers. Parents are important stakeholders in teacher success, they are in some instances partners in the teachers' work, parents have unique personal information about student learning, and they can report on the teacher duties to inform parents about the classroom and child progress. This study analyzed the responses of parents to 12 survey items concerning teacher performance in 201 classrooms. The surveys were used as part of an innovative teacher evaluation program in which teachers elected to include parent feedback as one objective data source for annual review. In this study three factors emerged as important concerns for parents: humane treatment of students, support for pupil learning, and effective communication and collaboration with parents. Recommendations for use of specific survey items can be based on the empirical results of this sampling. The data gathered by parent surveys define one dimension of quality which may vary in importance from one teacher to another.     

Distributing and Showing Farmer Learning Videos in Bangladesh

Purpose: To describe the results of showing farmer learning videos through different types of volunteers.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Semi-structured interviews with volunteers from different occupational groups in Bangladesh, and a phone survey with 227 respondents.

Findings: Each occupational group acted differently. Shop keepers, tillage service providers, agricultural input and machine dealers reached fairly small audiences. Tea stall owners had large, male audiences. Non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations, reached more women. The cable TV (dish-line) operators showed the videos on local TV, but some were reluctant to do so again. The Union Information Service Centres showed the videos and reached women viewers. Half of the official government extension agents surveyed also showed the videos publically.

Practical Implication: This video featured maize, wheat and rice seeding machinery. Because the machinery is complex and requires hands-on training, this first video aimed to expose tillage and sowing service providers and farmers to the machinery, without trying to teach them how to use it. But some farmers were so interested that they watched the video many times to learn more about the equipment. Before farmers and service providers decide to buy machinery for direct seeding, they still want to see and learn from demonstration plantings, to examine first-hand how the crop behaves when planted with the new equipment.

Originality/Value: Video can be an effective way of sharing high-quality information with a large audience, if properly distributed.     

Intuitive statistical inference: How pigeons categorize binomial samples

Pigeons categorized binomial samples produced by two complementary random processes. Samples were 1, 2, 4, or 8 successively presented outcomes (vertical or horizontal lines) of, in effect, tossing one of two equally likely coins. One coin (A) was biased in favor of vertical, and the other coin (B) was similarly biased in favor of horizontal. Choosing red or green stimuli presented after each sample was reinforced with food if coin A or coin B had been tossed, respectively. In that sense, choosing red or green was logically analogous to inferring that the statistical evidence reflected tossing of coin A or coin B, respectively. The statistical diagnosticity of a sample, the relative likelihood of its having been produced by a particular coin, equaled, except for sampling fluctuation, the relative frequency of reinforcement of a particular color given that sample, and was experimentally varied by the bias on the coins and by sample size. All the variables that affect optimal, formal inference about binomial samples also affected intuitive inference. But inferences were very suboptimal: “undermatching” was obtained in part due to control of categorization by the sequential structure of binomial samples. These results reveal limitations of optimality theories for animal decision making in the face of uncertainty when observations in samples are presented successively. On the other hand, they are generally compatible with molecular analyses of instrumental learning which assign an important role to the local temporal organization of events preceding reinforcement. Most generally, they show that maladaptive control over intuitive statistical inference by a variable upon which optimal performance does not depend is neither a uniquely human phenomenon nor dependent upon linguistic strategies.     

知识管理在中美教育机构中的应用研究

目前知识管理在教育机构中的应用较为滞后 ,但其思想和方法同样适用于像大学、教育管理部门这样的组织机构。教育机构也可以通过实施知识管理达到提高响应能力和工作效率的目的。在高等教育中 ,知识管理工作体现在面向学生的教学和管理活动中。通过对中美两国教育机构调研的数据分析可以看出 ,在与知识管理相关的因素分析上 ,如知识管理的实施与激励形式、作用力和学校规模等方面 ,中国学校与美国学校在认识上具有不同的相关程度。这些差异反映了两国知识管理发展水平的不同 ,同时 ,对中国的高校实施知识管理具有启发意义 ,即知识管理本身本非目的 ,而是一种手段 ,应将它同具体的工作有机结合 ,才能取得更好的效果。     

Librarianship and information work: Job characteristics and staffing needs : . The British Library Research & Development Reports No. 5321HC, The British Library, London, 1977, 62 pp. £2.50

This paper deals with the broad concept of management of organizational information. More specifically, it examines the notion of information richness—that phenomenon by which certain individuals are better able to acquire, process and utilize information than are other individuals in the organization. Based on an analysis of relevant research findings some tentative hypotheses relating management and organizational information richness are suggested. In conclusion, a number of managerial implications of the notion of organizational information richness are discussed.     

Providing Bottom-Up Support to Middle School Science Teachers’ Reform Efforts in Using Inquiry-Based Kits

Middle grades science teachers need professional support in practice as they implement new inquiry-based science. Professional development schools can provide this bottom-up support through connecting preservice and inservice teacher education programs in classroom practice. In this study, coteaching arrangements with secondary science education majors provided additional teachers in the classroom to support a materials-rich curriculum and the needed associated pedagogies. Science education majors provided needed assistance in troubleshooting difficulties with the new curriculum. They also provided needed content knowledge to support inquiry, along with creating moments and space for teachers to reflect on inquiry practice. Ongoing assistance by preservice teachers allowed inservice teachers to progress from logistical concerns in implementing kit curriculum to concerns regarding student learning and the supporting professional development.

Flavor-evaluative conditioning is unaffected by contingency knowledge during training with color-flavor compounds

In two experiments, participants inspected and drank a series of drinks, half of which contained sugar and half unpalatable Tween20 (tween). Each sugar and tween drink had a particular flavor and color. Following this training, the flavors of the sugar drinks were assigned higher hedonic evaluations than were those of the tween drinks, even though the participants did not reliably report which flavors had been present in the sugar and tween drinks during training. Moreover, the evaluative conditioning of the flavors was unaffected by whether or not the colors alone had been pretrained to predict the presence of sugar or tween in the drinks. In accord with Baeyens, Eelen, van den Bergh, and Crombez (1990), we conclude that flavor-evaluative conditioning is not mediated by contingency learning.