Use of library space and the library as place

Citizens' use of the public library in their local community is explored, focusing on social activities and how the libraries function as meeting places. The findings are important because of the need for meeting places across cultural, ethnic, generational, and social lines in a complex multicultural and digitized society. How library visitors use the library space and services, so that the overall societal goals of the library and the local community are obtained, is still rarely examined. An in-depth observational study was conducted in three library branches of Oslo, combined with interviews with patrons to establish the context and purpose of their library activities and to which life spheres they are linked. The research used concepts from social theory. The overall finding is that the public library use is very diverse. Patrons move easily between high and low intensive activities and float between life spheres and roles—student, family member, friend, neighbor, and citizen. The library is a complex arena. It is a public realm, in the sense that most of the visitors are strangers to each other; most of the individual uses belong to a private realm, and the library's community activities constitute it as a parochial realm. In the library, users are exposed to the plurality of the community and learn about otherness. People are not categorized by profession or as being unemployed, a patient or a client, but are all library users. This quality of the library contributes to social inclusion.     

全球化中为了可持续增长的职业教育

在全球经济紧密联系的背景下,实现可持续的经济增长成为世界发展的核心目标。在这一过程中,职业教育与培训通过促进智慧专业化及地区经济和生产一线的创新发挥着关键性的杠杆作用。在未来发展中,职业教育与培训应充分重视与更广泛的外部主体建立合作伙伴和联系网络,形成促进技能供需动态平衡的技能生态体系,并注重教学组织的有效性和创新。     

作为中心与边缘的大学

本文讨论了工业化国家大学与第三世界大学之间的相互关系。作者认为 ,第三世界大学在各自国内发挥着重要作用 ,但是相对于工业化国家大学而言 ,第三世界大学处于边缘地位 ,在语言、学术基础设施、科研实力、知识交流途径等方面存在着种种不利。当然 ,大学的中心与边缘地位具有相对性 ,在不同国家之间乃至在一国内部 ,也存在中心大学与边缘大学的区分。作者还对改进第三世界高等教育提出了若干建设性意见。     

从二语习得理论看母语在教学中的应用

19世纪后半叶,直接教学法(Direct Method)作为语法-翻译法的对立物在西欧出现。直接法强调通过外语本身进行会话、交谈扣阅读实施外语教学,明确提出外语教学不应使用学生的母语,不用翻译,也不用形式语法,虽然之后又出现了许多教学法,但它的影响却相当广泛。在大学英语课堂教学中,全英语教学似乎成了默守的常规,然而在外语教学中是否应该使用母语?如何使母语在英语课堂中发挥画龙点睛的作用?这些问题历来受到外语教师们的关注。本文就在英语教学中使用母语的问题谈一谈自己的拙见。     

Information literacy self-efficacy: The effect of juggling work and study

Information literacy self-efficacy and academic motivation are both argued to play important roles in student academic development. The former is considered to be a predictor of student academic achievement while the latter is considered a key factor in developing information literacy self-efficacy. Today, many students undertake paid employment in conjunction with their academic studies and little is known about the effect this may have on their information literacy self-efficacy and academic motivation. As such, the relationship between information literacy self-efficacy, academic motivation, and employment has been unexplored. Data were collected via a questionnaire, comprised of existing scales, which was administered to undergraduate business students in an Australian higher education (HE) institution. A response rate of 58% resulted in 585 completed questionnaires. Findings suggest that whether or not students were engaged in paid employment did not appear to influence information literacy self-efficacy, although students in paid employment did exhibit significantly lower intrinsic motivation than students not in paid employment. Additionally, for students not in paid employment a significant relationship was found between amount of time spent on study and information literacy self-efficacy. Of some concern, the small amount of time students reported spending in academic pursuits outside of scheduled classes raises issues regarding the placement of information literacy instruction. For information literacy practitioners this study contributes to awareness regarding the conceptualization of information literacy instruction and its placement in the HE environment.     

E-mentoring: The adoption process and innovation challenge

The innovative nature of e-mentoring along with its ongoing adoption process provided the reasons for conducting an innovation–adoption study on e-mentoring. A sample of 234 mentors that have been employed by Ergani Center, a well respected Greek mentoring organization, were asked to identify with the use of an online questionnaire the factors that influence the adoption of e-mentoring. Gender, age, personal innovativeness, relative advantage computer self-efficacy, problems and pressures from mentees emerged as predictors of the innovation process.     

Reflection on the teaching-learning process in the initial training of teachers. Characterization of the issues on which pre-service mathematics teachers reflect

Our aim was to highlight the issues of the reflections of pre-service mathematics teachers in their learning portfolio about the teaching-learning process taking place in a university teacher-training classroom. Category systems were designed which, together with the analysis system used, could provide a method helpful to teacher educators, teachers and to future research. The pre-service teachers showed difficulty in considering themselves as ‘authentic’ mathematics teachers. The study revealed that the preparation of a portfolio can help pre-service teachers learn more about themselves and provide educators insight into how to help pre-service mathematics teachers engage in the teaching-learning process.     

我的一片心

1一天,一个青年站立在小镇中心宣称他拥有一颗全山谷最美的心。人群围聚在一起,都羡慕他有一颗如此完美的心。那颗心上没有任何痕迹和瑕疵。是的,他们都认同这是他们看过最美的心。那青年非常自豪,更加大声地夸耀他那美丽的心。     

Factors influencing intention to use e-government services among citizens in Malaysia

This study is an exploratory study on the e-government in Malaysia. With the liberalization and globalization, Internet has been used as a medium of transaction in almost all aspects of human living. This study investigates the factors that influencing the intention to use e-government service among Malaysians. This study integrates constructs from the models of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) which been moderated by culture factor and Trust model with five dimensions. The study was conducted by surveying a broad diversity of citizens in Malaysia community. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 195 respondents but only 150 of the respondents with complete answers participating in the study. The result of the analysis showed that trust, perceived usefulness, perceived relative advantage and perceived image, respectively, has a direct positive significant relationship towards intention to use e-government service and perceived complexity has a significant negative relationship towards intention to use e-government service. While perceived strength of online privacy and perceived strength of non-repudiation have a positive impact on a citizen's trust to use e-government service. However, the uncertainty avoidance (moderating factor) used in the study has no significant effect on the relationship between the innovation factors (complexity, relative advantage and image) and intention to use e-government service. Finally in comparing the explanatory power of the entire intention based model (TAM, DOI and Trust) with the studied model, it has been found that the DOI model has a better explanatory power.     

How responsive is E-Government? Evidence from Australia and New Zealand

Governments around the world are increasingly moving toward online service delivery in what is commonly called e-government. There are high hopes for e-government, particularly that the associated technologies provide the scope to make government services more responsive. This article reports on a 2006 study of one aspect of e-government responsiveness, namely, the basic capacity to answer a simple question posted by email. To this end, federal and state agencies in Australia, and central and local government agencies in New Zealand were emailed (n = 273). Data related to locating contact email addresses and subsequent responses was collected. The key finding was that the Australian agencies consistently did not perform as well as their New Zealand counterparts, bringing into question one component of their higher ranking in international e-government studies and also their potential to deliver on the Australian government policy that e-government means more responsive government.