Multilingual language use and television exposure and preferences: The case of Belize 1

This paper discusses the relationship between the language use patterns of multilinguals and their media preferences and exposure. Specifically, it examines the language behavior of multilinguals in Belize where television is available in both English and Spanish. A survey of Belizean high school students conducted in both languages, asked about their sociolinguistic patterns and media preferences and exposure. The results indicate that the frequency of a particular language's use correlates with preferences for and exposure to television in that language. This relationship is more pronounced when specific cultural programming is considered.     

Adquisición de morfemas del español

Resumen

Se han aplicado dos pruebas de palabras reales y palabras artificiales (semejante a la de Berko, 1958) a 109 niños hispano-parlantes de tres a seis años de edad, a fin de establecer la evolución en el uso de morfemas de plural, aumentativos y diminutivos, gerundio, pretérito imperfecto de indicativo y pretérito indefinido. Los resultados indican un progreso importante entre los tres y los cuatro años, siendo la curva posterior del desarrollo más suave. Se establece un orden de dificultad de estos morfemas, y se realiza un análisis de los errores cometidos, encontrándose también sobrerregularizaciones con verbos reales irregulares. Se extraen implicaciones acerca del proceso de adquisición de morfemas.     

An Educator's Guide to the Development of Advanced Practice Competencies in Clinical Social Work

The 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards identified 10 core competencies that all social work graduates should master. MSW programs found themselves with a need to identify knowledge, values, and skill statements that reflected what concentration-year students were expected to know and be able to do. In 2009 a group of educators convened at the Council on Social Work Education in Alexandria, VA to develop a model of advanced practice in clinical social work. This article describes the work group's process; identifies and describes the resulting advanced clinical knowledge, values, and skills statements; discusses the key debates and issues that arose during the development of the statements; and concludes with the implications for social work education and practice.     

The others-concept and friendly and cooperative behavior in children

This study explored the predictability of friendly, cooperative behavior of school children over a 5-week period. The basis for the predictions was the children's others-concept, as measured by the Paired Hands Test. Structured observations of groups of children working together on assigned tasks were made during five consecutive weekly sessions, each lasting approximately 15 minutes. The observations were obtained by recording each session and categorizing verbal statements as to their task-relatedness and friendliness. This procedure allowed comparisons between children with high and low others-concepts with respect to these behaviors. In three tasks out of five the high others-concept children showed a higher frequency and greater proportion of task-related and friendly behaviors. The tasks which best differentiated between children with high and low others-concepts were those which seemed to be the most challenging and exciting, and which called for the highest degree of group cooperation. The study demonstrated how friendly and cooperative interactions among small groups of children are influenced by a combination of their others-concept and situational factors.     

Towards the creative university: Five forms of creativity and beyond

The Creative University is susceptible to multiple interpretations which are moving in a fluid conceptual space. This conceptual openness can be adequately understood only as a set of discursive formations that reflect underlying societal changes. It is becoming a commonplace to suggest that creativity should no longer be seen as a matter of heroic individuals at work, for creativity is always a networked matter, but that reflection has to be widened to encompass a sense of underlying shifting societal forces, with the economy central stage and hence the emergence of the hybrid idea of the creative economy. Qua institution, the creative university sits uneasily between discourses of economicism and societal flourishing. The creative university, accordingly, has to be seen in this milieu, which is steering the university but which also is affording it new possibilities for creativity. Five levels of creativity are identified that serve as domains in which these forces and affordances coexist. One such level, university reflexive creativity, is singled out as the most significant of the five. The creative university, it follows, unfolds as sets of interactions between individuals, institutional structures and corporate agency. Even as the constraints multiply, so too ever‐wider possibilities for the creative university may be opening.     

Student outcomes of the physical education and physical literacy (PEPL) approach: a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of a multicomponent intervention to improve physical literacy in primary schools

ABSTRACT

Background: Health organisations such as the United Nations continue to place an expectation on school physical education (PE) programmes and wider school strategies to ensure students develop physical literacy and receive the well-established benefits of meeting physical activity guidelines. Barriers to meet this expectation such as lack of trained PE teachers, lack of time and greater emphasis on academic achievement are ongoing challenges to schools. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the multi-component Physical Education Physical Literacy (PEPL) intervention, designed to improve students’ fundamental movement skill, perceived physical abilities and level of physical activity.

Method: A qualified PE teacher implemented the PEPL intervention across seven schools, and another seven schools formed a control group as part of a randomised cluster-based trial. Grade 5 students (N?=?318, age 10.4 years?±?SD 0.4) completed assessments of physical activity, fundamental movement skill, attitudes towards PE, and self-perceptions of physical abilities before and after a 33-week intervention. Intervention effects were examined using general linear mixed models. Post-intervention focus groups with students were used to develop insights into experiences and outcomes.

Results: With no significant gender interactions, the PEPL approach led to enhanced object control skills (β?=?1.62; SE?=?0.61; p?=?0.008), with little evidence of any other fundamental movement skill improvements in excess of those in the control group. There was also modest evidence for an effect on accelerometer measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during school time (β?=?4.50; SE?=?2.39; p?=?0.058), but this was not accompanied by any significant intervention effect over the entire week. Questionnaires indicated students in the PEPL programme became less satisfied with their own sporting ability (β?=??0.20; SE?=?0.08; p?=?0.013) but qualitative data analyses suggested that they enjoyed the PEPL approach experience, becoming more motivated and confident in their physical abilities.

Conclusions: Evidence of enhanced object control skill, increased confidence and motivation to be physically active, and moderate evidence of more MVPA during school time, indicate that the introduction of the PEPL approach contributed to the development of student physical literacy. A decrease in perceived sporting competence warrants greater attention on student’s self-perceptions in future iterations of the intervention.

Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry identifier: ACTRN12615000066583.     

ENTRY AND EXIT PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: SOME POLICY AND RESEARCH ISSUES

The recent re‐emergence of an interest in the relationships between A levels and degree performance can be viewed in the context of the work of the planning bodies for higher education, and the associated drive to secure reliable performance indicators for planning purposes. However, a number of tacit but questionable assumptions can be seen to underlie the traditional model of students’ performance at the points of entry and exit. Once those assumptions are recognised, implications follow for policy and for decision‐makers, whether in institutions (such as admissions tutors) or outside institutions, in central planning and resource allocation bodies. What might appear to be a purely technical debate amongst statisticians turns out to be intimately connected with contrasting conceptions of higher education.     

IAIMS development at Harvard Medical School

The long-range goal of this IAIMS development project is to achieve an Integrated Academic Information Management System for the Harvard Medical School, the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, and Harvard's affiliated institutions and their respective libraries. An "opportunistic, incremental" approach to planning has been devised. The projects selected for the initial phase are to implement an increasingly powerful electronic communications network, to encourage the use of a variety of bibliographic and information access techniques, and to begin an ambitious program of faculty and student education in computer science and its applications to medical education, medical care, and research. In addition, we will explore means to promote better collaboration among the separate computer science units in the various schools and hospitals. We believe that our planning approach will have relevance to other educational institutions where lack of strong central organizational control prevents a "top-down" approach to planning.     

Fact-Checkers as Entrepreneurs

This study considers fact-checkers as innovators and entrepreneurs. It explores funding models as well as perceptions about three core aspects of a successful journalistic enterprise: audiences, value propositions, and resources. Findings indicate particular attention to media literacy and civic engagement, independence, and transparency. In addition, many fact-checkers see their role as not merely extending traditional journalism but also correcting some of its shortcomings.