Change in Family Income-to-Needs Matters More for Children with Less

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to model the dynamics of family income-to-needs for participants of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N = 1,364) from the time that children were 1 through 36 months of age. Associations between change in income-to-needs and 36-month child outcomes (i.e., school readiness, receptive language, expressive language, positive social behavior, and behavior problems) were examined. Although change in income-to-needs proved to be of little importance for children from nonpoor families, it proved to be of great importance for children from poor families. For children in poverty, decreases in income-to-needs were associated with worse outcomes and increases were associated with better outcomes. In fact, when children from poor families experienced increases in income-to-needs that were at least 1 SD above the mean change for poor families, they displayed outcomes similar to their nonpoor peers. The practical importance and policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Building Women’s Innovation Capacities Through Undergraduate Experiences

Research in Higher Education - This study examines how collegiate climates and practices can promote innovation capacities among an international longitudinal sample of undergraduate women. Using a...     

Curriculum as Experienced by Students: How Teacher Identity Shapes Science Notebook Use

This mixed-methods case study examined the notebook entries of one class of 22 second graders as a way of examining how teacher identity shaped the way students experienced their science curriculum. These notebook entries were created during lessons with three different teachers over the course of one school year, using similar kit-based materials to teach science. The entries were coded for inquiry phase, percent missing or incomplete entries, and driving force (teacher-driven, student-driven, or balanced); chi-squared analyses revealed significant differences among the notebook entries created by the same students during lessons taught by each of the three teachers. Qualitative observations of each teachers' instruction around notebook use supported these quantitative differences, and suggested that the differences in curriculum as experienced by students could be attributed to differences in teacher identity, both who the teacher is and what they do in the classroom. These findings indicate that students' notebooks are useful tools for examining how teachers' identities might shape how elementary students experience science curriculum, and that they can be used to help structure more effective professional development plans for each teacher.     

Changes in the Multi‐Level Effects of Socio‐Economic Status on Reading Achievement in Sweden in 1991 and 2001

This study examines the changes in educational inequality at the school‐ and individual‐levels in 1991 and 2001. Comparisons are made between the IEA Reading Literacy Study 1991 and the so called 10‐Year Trend Study in PIRLS 2001. The between‐school differences in reading achievement variance and the size of the relationship between SES and reading achievement at school‐level are the two main focuses. Applying a two‐level structural equation modeling technique, it was found that the between‐school differences in reading achievement were greater in RLS 2001 than in RLS 1991, and the school SES effect has been strengthened over time. These changes indicate that educational inequality in Sweden has increased over time. Some possible explanations to these changes are discussed with reference to school reforms and demographic changes.     

An International Orientation on Institutional Strategies and Governmental Policies for the Use of ICT in Higher Education

This article provides an international comparative overview of institutional strategies, collaboration patterns and governmental policies related to the use of ICT in higher education. It has been produced as part of an international comparative study on the use of ICT in higher education. A study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and published as: “The Use of Information and Communication Technology in Higher Education: An International Orientation on Trends and Issues”, B. Collis and M. van der Wende (Eds). University of Twente, CHEPS, 1999. It covers the following range of countries: Belgium, Finland, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America. Additionally some main initiatives at the European level have been taken into account. On the basis of this international comparison, the following main conclusions were drawn. Due in part to the fact that in many cases institutional strategies for ICT are still lacking, interesting experimentation does not generally lead to successful dissemination and adoption on a wider scale. In many cases, the push for a substantial use of ICT in distance learning programs has come from new educati onal markets, life-long learning and international education in particular. The response of higher education to these markets is leading in many countries to a convergence of distance and traditional (on-campus) education. Inter-institutional and inter-sectoral collaboration between universities and companies are characteristics of many successful ICT initiatives, although they do not generally continue into sustainable implementation in the individual institutions. Governments facilitate the use of ICT through the establishment of infrastructure, networks and inter-institutional and public–private partnerships, and try to create the right regulatory environment. Further deregulation will enable institutions to respond to new market demands and will inspire the necessary organizational change in higher education institutions.     

PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ THOUGHTS AND FEARS ABOUT DISCIPLINING CHILDREN

The purposes of this study were threefold: (1) to determine if fears and concerns about guiding children's behavior and misbehavior is a generalized feeling, or more related to specific circumstances and scenarios; (2) to determine which situations may give students the greatest and least amounts of anxiety; and (3) to explore the relationship between students’ beliefs about the causes of children's misbehavior and their anxiety about specific discipline situations.

After completing a questionnaire, preservice teachers in this study rated children's challenges to their authority as the most difficult. Discipline situations involving conflicts between children (e.g., refusing to share, not joining in activities) were rated as the least difficult to handle. Most of the preservice teachers believed children misbehaved because of a lack of social skills and developmental sophistication rather than because of bad parenting, inherent personality characteristics, or too many adult restrictions. Preservice teachers rated the difficulty of the discipline issues similarly regardless of their beliefs concerning the causes of misbehavior. Implications of this study are discussed.     

MAGIS: mobile augmented-reality games for instructional support

ABSTRACT

We present Mobile Augmented-Reality Games for Instructional Support (MAGIS), a framework for the development of mobile augmented-reality (AR) games for education. The framework supports off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art technologies that enable AR tracking and rendering on consumer-level mobile devices, and integrates these technologies with content-generation tools that simplify the development of educational AR games, especially those that extensively use narrative-based game design and player-location tracking such as location-based historical or museum adventure games. We use Igpaw: Intramuros, a proof-of-concept game developed using MAGIS, to help describe the current state of the framework and to show its efficacy for implementing outdoor location-based educational games, and we briefly outline future development plans to improve MAGIS’ AR support (especially those involving indoor scenarios) as well as to improve the instructional design and authoring phases of AR applications written using this framework.     

基于三阶段DEA的中国区域二氧化碳排放绩效评价研究

要在促进社会经济发展的同时减少二氧化碳排放量,关键在于提高二氧化碳排放绩效.客观正确地评估中国各省份经济发展过程中的二氧化碳排放绩效具有重要现实意义.文章从效率的角度,界定二氧化碳排放绩效的概念,将二氧化碳排放作为非期望产出纳入全要素研究框架,探索性地利用三阶段DEA方法和线性数据转换函数法来评价中国省际区域的二氧化碳排放绩效,剔除了环境变量和随机误差对结果的影响,为真实测度二氧化碳排放绩效提供了可行的方法.结果表明,传统DEA测度的二氧化碳排放平均技术效率和纯技术效率被低估,而平均规模效率被高估;中国区域间二氧化碳排放绩效发展显著不平衡,呈现出“东＞西＞中”的格局,与传统的经济格局存在一定出入.     

User community vs. producer innovation development efficiency: A first empirical study

In this paper we report upon a first empirical exploration of the relative efficiency of innovation development by product users vs. product producers. In a study of over 50 years of product innovation in the whitewater kayaking field, we find users in aggregate were approximately 3× more efficient at developing important kayaking product innovations than were producers in aggregate. We speculate that this result is driven by what we term “efficiencies of scope” in problem-solving. These can favor an aggregation of many user innovators, each spending a little, over fewer producer innovators benefitting from higher economies of scale in product development. We also note that the present study explores only one initial point on what is likely to be a complex efficiency landscape.