From the Majors to the Minors: Playing the Game as the Rules Are Changed

In Australia no library school at either professional or paraprofessional level offers a course to meet the needs of serials librarians. In the absence of such provision, this paper summarizes the findings of research on serials courses in the U.S.A. and Britain. It highlights the dissatisfaction of practitioners with training in this area and the failure of serials training to meet the needs of the profession; it indicates that a survey in Australia would probably produce similar findings. It discusses the content of librarianship courses-both the core curriculum and a specialized serials librarlanship curriculum-with the objective of outlining a professionally relevant serials librarianship course for Australia, drawing on experiences such as those at Loughborough and Columbia Universities. Finally, the paper specifies the aims and objectives of the proposed Australian course in serials librarianship, and outlines the content of thirteen suggested components.     

Popular Music

Frank Tirro Jazz: A History (New York: Norton, 1977—$16.95 in trade edition; $12.95 in text edition, both hardback)

Leonard Feather Inside Jazz (New York: Da Capo, 1977—$4.95, paper)

Jim Haskins The Cotton Club (New York: Random House, 1977—$15.00, with paperback edition available)

Jeff Todd Titon Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977—$16.50)     

International trends in health science librarianship. Part 5 Latin America and the Caribbean

This is the 5th in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in Latin America and the Caribbean in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors are from Argentina, Bermuda and Mexico. Future issues will track trends in Central Europe and the Middle East. JM     

Assessing the impact of football-based health improvement programmes: stay onside,avoid own goals and score with the evaluation!

Health improvement is an important strand of the Premier League’s ‘Creating Chances’ strategy. Through community programmes, professional football clubs offer health-enhancing interventions for a number of different priority groups at risk from a range of lifestyle-related health conditions. However, while national guidance recommends evaluating health improvement interventions, concerns remain about how to do this most effectively. This study aims to investigate the popularity of football-based health improvement schemes and assess the challenges associated with their evaluation. Adapted from existing methodologies, a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to an ‘expert’ sample (n?=?3) of football-led health evaluators. The sample was selected because of their experience and knowledge of performing evaluations of football-led health improvement programmes. Our ‘experts’ offered reasons for the popularity of football settings as channels for health improvement (including the reach of the club badge and the popularity of football), the justification for evaluating such schemes (including confirming effectiveness and efficiency) and the challenges of implementing evaluations (capacity, commitment and capability). Finally, a selection of key considerations for the evaluation of the impact of football-led health improvement programmes (obtaining expert guidance, building capacity and planning for evaluations) are discussed.     

“Spanish as a foreign language” teachers’ profiles: inclusive beliefs, teachers’ perceptions of student outcomes in the TCLA program, burnout, and experience

The present study focuses on the Temporary Classroom of Linguistic Adaptation program (TCLA program) in which specialist teachers (Spanish as a foreign language teachers—SFL teachers) teach Spanish to immigrants who are not proficient in the language. We suggest that support for immigrant students in Spanish schools should adopt a new inclusive educational approach. The present investigation is a preliminary attempt at characterizing the profiles of SFL teachers by assessing, simultaneously, five relevant variables (through cluster analysis): inclusive beliefs, teachers’ perceptions of student outcomes in TCLA program, general burnout, diversity-related teacher burnout, and years of teaching experience. Eighty-one SFL teachers from 132 schools in Spain (EU) were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire. Cluster analysis found two clearly differentiated groups: the larger one, Innovative SFL Teachers and the smaller, Traditional SFL Teachers. The Traditional SFL Teachers are characterized by more years of experience, lower inclusive beliefs scores, lower teachers’ perception of student outcomes in the TCLA program scores, and higher burnout scores as compared with the Innovative SFL Teachers. Moreover, Traditional SFL Teachers conceptualize their teaching role as a "teacher of Spanish" whereas Innovative SFL Teachers see themselves much more as playing a supportive role.     

Training and learning by using the Microwave Office program for designing high frequency and microwave circuits

This paper presents a detailed planning for a high frequency or microwaves laboratory based on microstrip techniques and also on the use of a CAE commercial software. In the second part of the article we justify the use of the so-called Microwave Office software because of its easy handling and learning, which make it, in the authors' opinion, a good tool for correct learning of the circuits with microstrip techniques and, therefore, of the proposed educational programme.     

The Assessment of Pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties

Jim McNicholas, educational consultant, provides an overview of a detailed research enquiry into the practices of teacher assessment of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) set against a background of curriculum theory and curriculum change. The overview approach (with its 'instant practical application') to a major study has not previously been reported in BJSE and the Editor would be grateful for your comments on its relevance to other studies.