Young Children's Use of Surface and Object Information in Drawings of Everyday Scenes

Pictorial symbols such as photographs, drawings, and maps are ubiquitous in modern cultures. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children relate these symbols to the scenes that they represent. The present work investigates 4‐year‐old children's (N = 144) sensitivity to extended surface layouts and objects when using drawings of a room to find locations in that room. Children used either extended surfaces or objects when interpreting drawings, but they did not combine these two types of information to disambiguate target locations. Moreover, children's evaluations of drawings depicting surfaces or objects did not align with their use of such information in those drawings. These findings suggest that pictures of all kinds serve as media in which children deploy symbolic spatial skills flexibly and automatically.     

The Role of Agricultural Education and Extension in Influencing Best Practice for Managing Mastitis in Dairy Cattle

Purpose: To examine the role of agricultural education and extension in influencing the adoption of best practice with regard to herd-level mastitis management.Design/Methodology/Approach: Somatic cell count (SCC) is an indicator of herd health with regard to mastitis and is negatively related to productivity and profitability. Panel data regression methods are utilised here to quantify the role of agricultural education and extension in reducing cell count and in influencing farmer best practice with regard to herd health. The impact of education and extension on farmer uptake of milk recording is of particular interest. Data utilised is farm-level Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data for Ireland over a five-year period (2008–2012).Findings: Farmer uptake of formal agricultural training and liaison with agricultural extension services are shown to significantly improve mastitis herd health. Collectively, education, extension and milk recording results in an overall SCC reduction of 25% for the average herd. Farmers who undertook agricultural training were ten times more likely to monitor milk quality through milk recording compared to those who had not. Additionally, those farmers in contact with an extension service and also participated in a dairy discussion group were seven times more likely to practice milk recording.Practical Implications: The importance of farmer behaviour in the optimum management of herd health has been validated, as has the role of agricultural education and extension in influencing the uptake of best practice by farmers.Originality/Value: To date little research has been conducted using nationally representative herd-level data on the role of agricultural education and extension in improving animal health best practice.     

Pre-service teachers’ experiences of ICT in daily life and in educational contexts and their proto-technological pedagogical knowledge

Many pre-service teachers are members of the net generation and are expected to be familiar with different ICTs, yet several studies have indicated that they are not necessarily able to use them for teaching and learning. The notion of teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) is central to this concern. In this study we use the responses of 146 pre-service teachers to open-ended questions about the experiences and knowledge of ICT and pedagogy they brought with them when they entered university teacher training. The data were analysed qualitatively with content analysis based on an integrative framework generated from a number of theoretical perspectives. Derived categories and subcategories were used to construct a framework for ‘proto-TPK’ as a basis for establishing a starting point for the coordinated development of TPK with students in their university training and early careers.     

Cognitive complexity and duration of classroom speech

Analysis of speech patterns in 27 high school discussion classes revealed that both teachers and students, and both males and females, took an increasingly longer time to express successively higher-cognitive types of utterances. Student utterances, though systematically briefer, followed precisely the same pattern as teacher utterances. The results suggest that duration of speech is related to level of cognition.     

A prevalence formula for automatic relevance feedback in Boolean systems

The implementation of relevance feedback explored here demonstrates the feasibility of query reformulation for boolean retrievals. Improvements to a term prevalence formula used in earlier research are presented along with experimental results that confirm the crucial role of term weights in relevance feedback. In particular, the weighting formula presented here differs significantly from those used by researchers in associative retrieval environments by giving equal weight to a patron's judgements of nonrelevance. The use of negative feedback—by NOTing terms in the negative prevalence range—failed to improve precision, a result that is also considered significant.     

Pre-service teachers’ experiences of scaffolded learning in science through a computer supported collaborative inquiry

Scaffolding helps the novice to accomplish a task goal or solve a problem that otherwise would be beyond unassisted efforts. Scaffolding firstly aims to support the learner in accomplishing the task and secondly in learning from the task and improving future performance. This study has examined pre-service teachers’ experiences of technologyenhanced/computer-supported collaborative inquiry learning when studying the anatomy of fish. The study investigated pre-service teachers’ experiences of scaffolded use of a Wiki in structuring a dissection inquiry activity combined with scaffolded use of digital imaging to support problematizing during the sense making process. Quantitative data on the benefits experienced by the pre-service teachers in using the Wiki and in digital imaging were collected through responses to questions posted through an online questionnaire. Structure equation modeling was used to investigate the relationship between scaffolding with the Wiki and the experienced benefits of using technology. The use of structural scaffolding with the Wiki was not seen to be directly related to the experienced benefits. In encouraging knowledge acquisition and supporting deeper thinking on the topic, digital imaging had the strongest positive relationship to the experienced benefits of the technology, but there was no direct relationship with the use of the Wiki. However, scaffolding by structuring the activity with the Wiki had meditational, indirect, effects through visualizations and peer support to intentional and active participation and thus the scaffolds were working during the inquiry synergistically. For teacher education this means that pre-service teachers may recognize the benefits of using technology only through a significant experience and thus under value the role of the technology itself.     

Influence of footwear designed to boost energy return on running economy in comparison to a conventional running shoe

Running economy is a reflection of the amount of inspired oxygen required to maintain a given velocity and is considered a determining factor for running performance. Athletic footwear has been advocated as a mechanism by which running economy can be enhanced. New commercially available footwear has been developed in order to increase energy return, although their efficacy has not been investigated. This study aimed to examine the effects of energy return footwear on running economy in relation to conventional running shoes. Twelve male runners completed 6-min steady-state runs in conventional and energy return footwear. Overall, oxygen consumption (VO₂), heart rate, respiratory exchange ratio, shoe comfort and rating of perceived exertion were assessed. Moreover, participants subjectively indicated which shoe condition they preferred for running. Differences in shoe comfort and physiological parameters were examined using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, whilst shoe preferences were tested using a chi-square analysis. The results showed that VO₂ and respiratory exchange ratio were significantly lower, and shoe comfort was significantly greater, in the energy return footwear. Given the relationship between running economy and running performance, these observations indicate that the energy return footwear may be associated with enhanced running performance in comparison to conventional shoes.     

Pupils' understanding of combustion

A questionnaire survey of 300, 14 and 15 year-old pupils in England and Spain was carried out to investigate pupils' general ideas about the process of buring and their ideas about specific types of combustion, using open-ended and structured response questions. Pupils' responses were analysed and categories were defined from a classification scheme previously reported by Andersson (1990). A possible model for progression of pupils' ideas about combustion is discussed. Specialization: science teacher education. Specializations: Problem-solving, pupils' alternative concepts, initial teacher education. Specializations: Environmental education, science teacher development (international).     

Hand Wringing in Paradise: Scholarly Communication and the Intimate Twinges of Conscience

ABSTRACT

Scholarly communication today is in the midst of a healthy and long running crisis that has been good for libraries, good for scholars and good for publishers. It is a reflection of a hypercompetitive academic environment and a ruthless academic winnowing and reward system. Large commercial publishers have successfully manipulated this system with the complicity of library consortia, which has led in turn to the birth of the expensive and at times counter-productive open access movement that later reached its nadir with the problematic SCOAP (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) episode. In our obsession with navel gazing we have forgotten the decisive role that China will play in future developments in scholarly communication.

This article originally published in Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 51, Issues 5–6, pages 415–431, 2011. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2011.589335.