WIST — A science and technology access programme for rural women: The determinants of success

The University of Central Queensland access programme, Women Into Science and Technology (WIST), has successfully attracted and retained a large number of rural women as students. Careful analysis of the needs of rural women has resulted in a distance education mode programme which is community based, has a consultative approach to programme development and monitoring and strong student support systems. These systems include elements of both peer and institutional support. Strong feelings of ownership and belonging, which WIST women have, have contributed to the low drop‐out rate and continuing programme growth.     

Big books: How to make them and use them

Big — bold — beautiful — they're called big books, and preschool teachers are regularly discovering their exciting educational potential. Traditionally, using books with children is a practice that adults have used since they were first developed in the sixteenth century. Indeed, most preschool classrooms include centers which are called by a variety of names — book nook, book corner, book center, storytime center, reading center, or some other title. It's rare to find a child who does not respond to book reading or storytelling, and teachers of young children routinely plan time each day to read a book to their youngsters. Educationally, their use is acceptable practice for children of all ages. Laverne Warner is a professor of early childhood education at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX. This article draws on material published by the author in Texas Child Care Quarterly,(Summer, 1990), 13:4, 3–8.     

Adaptively selecting biology questions generated from a semantic network

The paper describes a biology tutoring system with adaptive question selection. Questions were selected for presentation to the student based on their utilities, which were estimated from the chance that the student’s competence would increase if the questions were asked. Competence was represented by the probability of mastery of a set of biology knowledge components. Tasks were represented and selected based on which knowledge components they addressed. Unlike earlier work, where the knowledge components and their relationships to the questions were defined by domain experts, this project demonstrated that the knowledge components, questions and their relationships could all be generated from a semantic network. An experiment found that students using our adaptive question selection had reliably larger learning gains than students who received questions in a mal-adaptive order.     

Choices with clients with profound hearing impairments

Kurt L. Johnson, Ph.D., and E. Jane Burkhead, Ph.D., are Assistant Professors with the Program in Counseling Psychology and Human Systems, Department of Human Services and Studies, at the Florida State University. D. Anthony Clark, M.S. is a Doctoral Candidate at the Florida State University.     

Winston Churchill's proposal for a united Europe

The 1848 Woman's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, was the rhetorical event that precipitated the beginning of the woman's rights movement. This essay discusses the First Woman's Rights Convention in light of the rhetorical tensions it produced.     

The 'freedom to frame questions … worth asking', or three stories and three (other) fragments of research

In our state of centralised control of the curriculum and high-stakes testing an examination subject's assessment objectives have become high profile. Some of the anomalous effects of this profile are shown in the teaching, question-setting, and marking of English literature. Glimpses of earlier times are revealed, all three secondary school key stages are considered, examination performances are discussed, and the views of beginning teachers about teaching to the test are sought.     

Polynomial solution of high-order linear Fredholm integro-differential equations with constant coefficients

In this study, a practical matrix method is presented to find an approximate solution of high-order linear Fredholm integro-differential equations with constant coefficients under the initial-boundary conditions in terms of Taylor polynomials. The method converts the integro-differential equation to a matrix equation, which corresponds to a system of linear algebraic equations. Error analysis and illustrative examples are included to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the technique.