Student performance in teacher education in Norway: the impact of student,institutional and structural factors

Many education systems face a challenge in recruiting graduates as teachers. This is also the situation in Norway and the newest estimates tell us that we will lack 9000 teachers in 2020. The situation is made even worse by the high number of dropouts and low performance rates in teacher education. There are many factors which have an impact on study performance and progress. Some factors are at student level, some at institutional or programme level and others at structural level. In the present article, we will discuss how students attending two different teacher education programmes at a university college in Norway negotiate between their studies and the need to earn money and the consequences this has for their study performance. We focus on student-level factors and how the university college organises its campus programmes. The findings are based on a quantitative study among 401 student teachers.     

Die Multimediaf?higkeit von mehrf?dig superskalaren Prozessoren am Beispiel der MPEG-2-Decodierung

Zusammenfassung. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein mehrf?dig superskalarer Prozessor im Hinblick auf Multimediaverarbeitung entworfen und mit einem Multimediaprogramm als Last getestet. Neu ist hierbei die Kombination von Multimediabefehlen mit der mehrf?digen Prozessortechnik und deren Evaluierung mit einer realistischen Last aus dem Multimediabereich. Diese Last besteht aus einem handoptimierten MPEG-2-Video-Decodierungsalgorithmus, der nicht nur intensiv Multimediabefehle, sondern durch kooperative Mehrf?digkeit auch grobk?rnige Parallelit?t nutzt. Verschiedene Konfigurationen des vorgeschlagenen Prozessors werden untersucht, um potentielle Flaschenh?lse zu identifizieren und soweit m?glich zu eliminieren. Es zeigt sich, dass ein mehrf?dig superskalarer Prozessor mit Multimediaerweiterungen in der Lage ist, einen um einen Faktor drei h?heren IPC-Wert (Instructions per Cycle) zu erreichen als ein gleichwertiger Superskalarprozessor, der nur einen Kontrollfaden gleichzeitig ausführt. Eingegangen am 4. April 2000 / Angenommen am 26. Juli 2000     

International Communication

Gerd D. Wallenstein, International Telecommunication Agreements (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1977—$175.00 for a two volume set)

Oswald H. Ganley and Gladys D. canley, International Implications of United States Communications and Information Resources (price is $990 with a discount for noncommercial institutions, paper)     

Understanding the link between older volunteers’ resources and motivation to volunteer

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of older volunteers’ available human, social, and cultural capital on their motivational forces to volunteer, measured through the Volunteer Function Inventory. A large European database of 955 older volunteers (i.e., aged 50+) was employed, and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions showed that older volunteers have different motivations according to different sets of individual resources. Furthermore, lower amounts of human and social capital (e.g., low educational level, poor health, being widowed, divorced or single) are associated with a higher propensity to volunteer to enhance one’s own self-esteem, to avoid thinking of personal problems, and for social reasons. These results have important implications for policy makers and voluntary organizations if they want to enhance volunteering among older people with less resources, i.e., that are more at risk of social exclusion. For example, according to the results of this study, policy makers could consider developing more tailored opportunities for involving older volunteers with low educational level, poor health, widowed, divorced, or single. They could do this by underlying that volunteering offers possibilities to satisfy motivational needs important to the, elderly, e.g., to increase self-esteem, to deal with personal problems in a better way, and to have satisfying social contacts.     

Two german theses reviewed

R. Breitenstein‐Röder, ‘Die Stellung des Sports in Indien: Eine Entwick‐lungskizze, eine Bestandsaufnahme und Erklärungsversuche’ (The Role and Function of Sports in India), Diploma thesis, German University of Sports Sciences, Cologne 1986, pp. 197.

B. Neumüller, ‘Die Geschichte der Much Wenlock Games’ (The History of the Much Wenlock Games), diploma thesis, German University of Sports Sciences, Cologne, 1985, pp.451.