Type of education and civic and political attitudes

In addition to increasing cognitive skills and preparing students for the labour market, one of the core tasks of education is to prepare citizens for participation in democracy. Considering the ideal of democratic equality, it is important to know the degree to which civic outcomes of education are distributed equally. One feature of the education system that can lead to differential civic outcomes is tracking, that is, the sorting of students into different types of education. In this study, we examine the relationship between type of education (general/academic or vocational) and five attitudinal dimensions of civic and political engagement between the ages of 14 and 49 years in the Netherlands. By using panel data from the Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (n = 5,312) and applying linear fixed effects models, we can observe the effect of a transition in the type of education on the within-person change in our outcome variables. The findings demonstrate that transitions in the type of education have little effect on intention to vote, trust in institutions or ethnic tolerance. However, students making transitions in general/academic education develop higher levels of interest in politics and generalised trust than do students in vocational education or people outside the education system. This point suggests that general/academic education fosters civic and political participation.     

Where and how early career researchers find scholarly information

This article presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project started in 2015. The project is a 3‐year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to information searching, use, sharing, and publication. The study recruited 116 researchers from seven countries (UK, USA, China, France, Malaysia, Poland, and Spain) and performed in‐depth interviews by telephone, Skype, or face‐to‐face to discover behaviours and opinions. This paper reports on findings regarding discovery and access to scholarly information. Findings confirm the universal popularity of Google/Google Scholar. Library platforms and web‐scale discovery services are largely unmentioned and unnoticed by this user community, although many ECRs pass through them unknowingly on the way to authenticated use of their other preferred sources, such as Web of Science. ECRs are conscious of the benefits of open access in delivering free access to papers. Social media are widely used as a source of discovering scholarly information. ResearchGate is popular and on the rise in all countries surveyed. Smartphones have become a regularly used platform on which to perform quick and occasional searches for scholarly information but are only rarely used for reading full text.     

Diagnosis,Evaluation, and Treatment of Lead Poisoning in General Population

Among the heavy metals, lead still remains the major toxic pollutant of the environment. Human exposure to lead can occur through numerous pathways including air, food, dust, soil, and water. In the present study 14 lead poisoned patients with non-occupational lead exposure were evaluated. They were followed up and compared against the controls with no history of lead exposure. The patients had high blood lead levels and symptoms of weakness, dizziness, abdominal pain, generalized body ache, loss of appetite, and anxiety. Repeated course of chelation therapy helped to bring down their body burden of lead. Alternative sources for lead exposure can cause severe lead poisoning in general population. Screening and medical management of such individuals is very important to identify and eliminate sources of lead. The treatment and management requires a thorough medical evaluation and environmental intervention.     

Children Left Behind in AYP and Non-AYP Schools: Using Student Progress and the Distribution of Student Gains to Validate AYP

The No Child Left Behind Act ( NCLB, 2002 ) establishes ambitious goals for increasing student learning and attaining equity in the distribution of student performance. Schools must assure that all students, including all significant subgroups, show adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward the goal of 100% proficiency by the year 2014. In this paper, we illustrate an alternative way of evaluating AYP that both emphasizes individual student growth over time and focuses on the distribution of student growth between performance subgroups. We do so through analyses of a longitudinal data set from an urban school district in the state of Washington. We also examine what these patterns tell us about schools that have been designated as meeting their AYP targets and those that have not. This alternative way of measuring AYP helps bring to light potentially important aspects of school performance that might be masked if we limit our focus to classifying schools based only on current AYP criteria. In particular, we are able to identify some schools meeting Washington state's AYP criteria in which above-average students are making substantial progress but below-average students making little to no progress. In contrast, other schools making AYP have below-average students making adequate progress but above-average students showing little gains. These contrasts raise questions about the meaning of "adequate" progress and to whom the notion of progress refers. We believe that closely examining the distribution of student progress may provide an important supplementary or alternative measure of AYP.     

An electronic workbook to study statistics: Design and evaluation

The present contribution focuses on an evaluation study in which a so‐called Electronic Workbook was designed, developed and experimentally implemented in the first‐year statistics course of the Faculty of Policy Sciences at the University of Nijmegen. The Electronic Workbook was developed as a potential solution to a four‐fold problem statement (study postponement by students, limited relevance of the course within the curriculum, lack of exploration possibilities, lack of insight into study progress by teachers). The Electronic Workbook was experimentally implemented as a regular part of the statistics course and evaluated during two consecutive academic years. The evaluation results show that students appreciated the possibility of active exploration provided by several types of support devices. They were fairly positive on being responsible for their own study activities. The aims — to gain insight into study progression and to meet the problem of study postponement ‐were achieved only to a limited degree in the first evaluation study. Due to some major changes in the educational set‐up of the second evaluation study, students were more actively and regularly engaged in the statistics course.     

生态社会的呼吁

我们需要创造一个走向生态纪元的社会!这种创造产生手布莱恩·斯维姆和托马斯·柏励所撰写的宇宙故事：“地球共同体的未来,在某种意义上,依赖于人类所做出的决定。人类已经把自己纳入地球过程的遗传密码之中,而且其程度是如此之深。推崇技术纪元的人,把地球看作资源,未来应该增加对地球的利用,所有一切都应该以人类的利益为中心：推崇生态纪元的人,提倡一种新型的人类与地球的关系,地球共同体的整体安宁是其根本的关注。生态纪元的未来可以解决这两者之间所产生的紧张状态。”     

Exploring the potential common psychotherapeutic factors: use of cognitive behavioural therapy,mindful yoga and positive psychology in enhancing the well-being of students with SENs in Hong Kong

This study examined the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), mindful yoga and positive psychology interventions and identified common psychotherapeutic elements that exert critical treatment effects on Hong Kong Chinese students with special educational needs (SENs). Forty-seven participants received CBT intervention while 42 and 41 participants received mindful yoga and positive psychology interventions, respectively (N = 130). Mixed ANOVAs revealed no significant interaction effect between time and intervention condition on any outcome variables. However, within-subjects ANOVA revealed significant improvements in some dimensions within each intervention, including areas of behavioural problems, positive feelings and positive relationships. Changes in negative automatic thoughts were also found to lessen negative emotions in all three interventions. This study ascertained the differential effects of the selected approaches in ameliorating negative emotion, reducing behavioural problems and enhancing positive relationships among students with SENs in various treatment approaches. In addition, this study highlighted several common psychotherapeutic elements, which could potentially serve as important factors and constitute the formulation of an integrative psychotherapeutic framework for enhancing the well-being of students with SENs in Hong Kong. Finally, implications for practice and the possible development of an integrative intervention model were discussed.     

Race,Media, and the Cultivation of Concern

These reflections on critical communication and cultural studies of race draw on Bruno Latour's idea of ‘matters of concern’ to propose that scholars expand the focus of inquiry from empirical questions of veracity and accuracy in representations of race to concerns with how (and where) media gather and mobilize sentiments and affective investments that increasingly underwrite quotidian practices of racial inequality and racism in the post racial period.     

The Internet Defends Itself: The Network Neutrality Debate on the Web

This study examines the network neutrality debate, as represented online. The research begins by conducting network analysis to identify key websites, followed by retrieving the relevant documents and using content analysis. Results demonstrate that the online version of the debate skews heavily toward the pro-network neutrality side. The web debate also includes much higher proportions of voices from nonprofit sectors, especially nongovernmental organizations. Telecommunications companies and trade groups, which anchor the anti-network neutrality coalition, are relatively quiet online. These findings show groups that are less powerful making heavy use of online communication and, in light of the political history of the issue, they also suggest online mobilizing may help reshape the dynamics of issue advocacy.