The year’s work in international librarianship: 1969

The paper sets out to determine the social origins and professional status of librarians in Ghana with a view to understanding them as a professional group of working individuals. It examines the personal characteristics such as age, sex and marital status of the librarians. Parental influences on the choice of profession, as well as the status of individual librarians in their organizations and institutions are investigated. The results of this study indicate that most librarians in Ghana come from working class homes and that librarians in Ghana are satisfied with their status in their organizations and institutions.     

Teachers and Consultation: Applying research and development in organisations (RADIO)

In this article we describe how the RADIO process enabled EPiTs to negotiate research with an EPS around its desire to evaluate and develop its consultation work with schools. Findings of the evaluation and their implications for the Service are described and the potential of RADIO as a tool for providing external research support from HEIs for EPS or LA development, is discussed. Further discussion identifies the benefits of the application of RADIO in the research training of EPiTs in HEIs.     

Media utilization by faculty at the university of Qatar

Conclusions The findings of this study revealed that the science and education faculties of are more apt to use audiovisual media than the other faculty members. Transparencies, 16 mm films, and video programs are the most frequently used media. In general, the faculty believed that audiovisual media made significant contributions in the teaching/learning process. They also indicated some obstacles to the utilization of audiovisual media such as: lack of time to select and preview materials; the language of materials; and insufficient variety of materials to correlate with the curriculum. The majority of faculty members indicated that educational technology services are very adequate, while one third of the faculty did have problems particularly in the production of audiovisual materials. Almost half of the faculty members cannot operate one or more categories of audiovisual equipment.     

Mathematical models for process commonality under quality and resources breakdown in multistage production

It is essential to manage customers’ diverse desires and to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible for survival in competition and eventually in production. Sharing resources in manufacturing for different products is a vital method of accomplishing this goal. The advantages of using a common process in production are stated in the literature. However, the mathematical models as well as simulation or conceptual models are not sufficient. The main objective of this paper is to develop mathematical models for multiproduct and multistage production under quality and breakdown uncertainties. The idea of the process commonality is incorporated in the proposed models. The models are validated by primary data collected from a Malaysian company and comparison of the timely requirement schedules of earlier MRP II and the proposed models under stable and perfect production environments. An appreciable convergence of the outcomes is observed. However, the proposed models are carrying additional information about the available locations of the parts in a time frame. After validation, the effects of process commonality on cost, capacity and the requirement schedule under uncertainties are examined. It is observed that the use of common processes in manufacturing is always better than the non-commonality scenario in terms of production cost. However, the increase in capacity requirement for commonality designs is higher for an ideal system, while it is less when the system suffers from breakdowns and a quality problem.     

Learner modelling: systematic review of the literature from the last 5 years

The field of adaptive e-learning is continuously developing. More research is being conducted in this area as adaptive e-learning aims to provide learners with adaptive learning paths and content, according to their individual characteristics and needs, which makes e-learning more efficient and effective. The learner model, which is a representation of different learner’s characteristics, plays a key role in this adaptation. This paper presents a systematic literature review about learner modelling during the last 5 years, describing the different modelled characteristics and the adopted modelling techniques and modeling types: automatic modeling and collaborative modeling. 107 publications were selected and analyzed, and six categories of the modelled characteristics were identified. This literature review contributes to the identification of the learners’ individual traits and presents the most used modelling techniques for each of them. It also identifies the latest research trends of Learner Modeling and generates future research directions in this field.

     

The role of narrative in culturally responsive literacy education – a collaborative project in U.S. and Palestinian preschools

This one-year collaborative study examined the role of narrative in promoting new forms of culturally responsive literacy learning in two contrasting international preschool contexts. The qualitative project was carried out by a U.S.-based teacher educator and a Palestinian-based teacher educator who examined the benefits of culturally responsive children's literature, child-centred and open-ended questions, narrative-based dictation and art activities, and co-constructed stories between parents and children. The findings indicate that small-scale changes in the use of narrative in literacy pedagogy can strengthen the classroom as a literacy community, foster culturally valued modes of thinking that deepen children's connections to stories, and strengthen children's engagement with a culturally responsive sense of aesthetic representation. The study's implications emphasise the power of narrative to deepen young children's engagement with literacy in contrasting international settings, and the productive role of cross-cultural collaborative research to diversify current definitions of high-quality early literacy education at the global level.