Does formative feedback on search behaviour help students in answering comprehension questions from an available text? / ¿Ayuda la retroalimentación formativa sobre el comportamiento de búsqueda a contestar preguntas de comprensión en lecturas con texto disponible?

This study analyses the efficacy of formative feedback to boost students’ search behaviour when answering comprehension questions in a with-text reading situation, which is a common reading situation in instructional and assessment settings. In these reading situations search strategies play an important role to predict students’ performance. Sixty-five high school students read two texts and answered eight multiple-choice comprehension questions per text using the software Read&Answer, which recorded all the students’ actions. After answering each question, students received either global-search-feedback or specific-search-feedback, which differed in the specificity of their information, or no-feedback. Participants who received any feedback had a second chance to correct their wrong answers. Specific-search-feedback increased students’ search decisions and improved their use of relevant information to repair wrong answers over global-search-feedback. Consequently, specific-search-feedback improved students’ performance when they corrected wrong answers over global-search-feedback. These results have implications for the design and implementation of formative feedback in computer-based systems aimed at improving students’ performance and teaching reading literacy skills.     

Intellectual development beyond formal operations

Post‐formal operations as a stage of cognitive development beyond Piaget's formal operations state are discussed. It is argued that thinking abilities are of major importance for an adequate understanding of quantum‐mechanical and relativistic issues as they occur in modern science, especially physics. Some pedagogical consequences of the ‘fifth stage’ of cognitive development are discussed and proposals made about how post‐operational thinking abilities might be developed in students.     

Agricultural extension as adult education: institutional evolution and forces for change

Agricultural extension is generally considered by adult educators to be one of the many different providers of adult education. Agricultural extension's pragmatic, specialized content and its task‐oriented field‐directed methodologies for providing information and technology transfer, and often other services as well, places this education provider in a unique category, so unique in fact that it is often overlooked in discussions of formal as well as nonformal education. This paper briefly reviews the value and current reforms taking place to reform agricultural extension, through structural, financial and managerial decentralization strategies and through the shift of government power and responsibility to market‐oriented approaches. The paper highlights the major forces for change that underscore the challenges facing this specialized provider of non‐formal adult education, including sociopolitical, economic, institutional and programmatic forces, which are affecting and will continue to affect extension worldwide.

     

La enseñanza de la Literatura en el ciclo 12–16

De la alfabetización a la competencia literaria media un tramo parecido al que va de la autoescuela a la participación en un rallye. Es obvio que la lectoescritura y la enseñanza de la literatura están relacionadas; pero reflexionar sobre esta relación y sobre la manera en que se ha enseñado, se enseña y se debe enseñar la literatura en la Reforma que viene, nos hace pasar de esa obviedad a un problema complejo en el que parece deseable una profunda renovación.     

Sources of productivity growth in the Spanish pharmaceutical industry (1994-2000)

The Spanish pharmaceutical industry underwent an important transformation during the 1990s. To survive under the new market conditions, labs had to refocus their competitive strategies towards increasing productive efficiency or reinforcing research and development (R&D) activities. This paper analyzes the evolution of the productive patterns in a sample of 80 pharmaceutical laboratories that operated in Spain from 1994 to 2000. We estimate Malmquist productivity indexes and decompose them into four sources of productivity change. The results suggest that pure technical efficiency change and the scale change of the technology explain most of the productivity growth observed during the period. The contribution of technical change to productivity growth is negligible, indicating a poor result from R&D activities at least in the groups of Small and Medium-sized labs.     

Inter-repetition rest training and traditional set configuration produce similar strength gains without cortical adaptations

This study compared the functional and neural effects of two strength training programmes differing in set configuration. Thirteen participants performed 10 sessions, over a period of 5 weeks, of unilateral leg extensions with different set configurations but with identical work-to-rest ratios for each limb: a traditional configuration (4 sets of 8 repetitions, 10RM load, 3-min pause between sets) and an inter-repetition rest configuration (32 repetitions, 10RM load, 17.4 s of rest between each repetition). Mean propulsive velocity of the traditional sessions was lower than for inter-repetition rest sessions (0.48 ± 0.06 vs. 0.54 ± 0.06 m · s^?1; P < 0.001), while perceived exertion was higher (8.3 ± 0.9 and 6.56 ± 1.6 for traditional training and IRT; P = 0.002). One repetition maximum (RM), work with 10RM load, maximum mean propulsive power, maximum voluntary contraction and time to failure with 50% of maximum isometric force improved similarly in both legs (time effect, P < 0.001; effect size range, 0.451–1.190). Time and set configuration did not show significant main effects or interactions for cortical adaptations (motor-evoked potentials, short-interval intracortical inhibition, intracortical facilitation). There were no significant correlations between changes in cortical and peripheral neural adaptations and strength improvement. In conclusion, inter-repetition rest configuration was as effective as traditional training in improving muscle performance.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity and attention,and their relationship with students’ approaches to learning

Past research has shown that working memory capacity, attention and students’ approaches to learning are all important predictors for educational achievement. In this study the interrelations between these three variables are investigated. Participants were 128 university students. Results show a negative relationship between attention and deep approaches to learning: students with a lower level of attention seem to use more deep approaches to learning than students with higher levels of attention. It was also found that students with a high working memory capacity score lower on both the surface and deep approaches to learning than students with a low working memory capacity. A possible explanation is that these high capacity students might not need a consistent profound strategy to be successful because they are very good at acquiring, processing and integrating all types of new information before moving it to storage.     

Production and Beyond: A Defining Moment for Public Sector Extension

Abstract

Two imperatives form the basis of the present paper. The first is the market-driven imperative, vital to production and value-chain development. The second is the knowledge imperative, central to the advancement of human capacity and institutional development. In view of these two imperatives, this paper argues for overhaul in extension toward a market orientation and for greater public investment in human resource development for modernizing the agricultural extension workforce. Part one of the paper reviews the rationale for market-driven extension and compares two key market-driven strategies. Part two proposes changes and new investment in post-secondary agricultural education and training, and calls for the establishment of a network of post-secondary agricultural education and training institutions. A post-secondary educational network is seen as essential to better prepare the agricultural extension workforce to face challenges in production and marketing and beyond with respect to alternative programs such as agriculturally related urban, environmental, energy, and rural development priorities.     

A conceptual approach to secure electronic elections based on patterns

Electoral processes are complex and need to be secure, reliable, and auditable. It is then important to define ways to evaluate their functional completeness and correction as well as their security and reliability. Many solutions to specific aspects of voting have been proposed but we do not know of any holistic view of this process. We present a unified approach to elections based on a conceptual model built using software patterns. A set of analysis patterns describe the structure and management of an election. The patterns describe voter registration, ballot structure, election day management, voting process, and the complete election. A conceptual model is built from the analysis patterns and defines precisely the functional properties of such a system together with its security requirements. The conceptual model is defined using UML diagrams that can be extended or complemented with formal methods to make the system verifiable. We show how to continue to the design phase for this system. While the model will not apply exactly to all elections it can be used as a reference architecture for voting applications and to show explicitly the security considerations for these kind of events. It can also be used for existing elections to verify that they have the required security provisions. The model can also be used as a reference for researchers to integrate their solutions in the complete process.