Effectiveness of conceptual change instruction on understanding of heat and temperature concepts

This study investigated the differential effects of two modes of instructional program (conceptual change oriented and traditionally designed) and gender difference on students' understanding of heat and temperature concepts, and their attitudes toward science as a school subject. The subjects of this study consisted of 72 seventh grade students from two General Science Classes taking the course from the same teacher. Each teaching method was randomly assigned to one class. The experimental group received reinforcement via the conceptual change texts while the control group utilized traditionally designed science texts over a period of four weeks. Analysis of covariance was used. Logical thinking ability was taken as a covariate. The results showed that the conceptual change oriented instruction produced significantly greater achievement in understanding of heat and temperature concepts. The result for science attitudes as a school subject showed no significant difference between the experimental and control groups. Also, no significant difference was found between the performance of females and that of males in terms of learning heat and temperature concepts and attitudes toward science, but the interaction of treatment regarding to gender was significant for learning the concepts. In addition, it was found that students' logical thinking ability accounted for a significant portion of variation in heat and temperature concepts achievement.     

Perceptions of college of education students in Turkey towards organizational justice, trust in administrators, and instructors

In this research, the perceptions of college of education students in Turkey regarding organizational justice, trust in administrators, and trust in instructors were determined. In the present study, the answers to three research questions were sought. The research was done using the survey method. After choosing six universities of various sizes and from different geographical regions, 1,872 students were selected randomly as participants. As data collection instruments, “The Organizational Justice Scale”, developed by Hoy and Tarter (Int J Educ Manag 18(4):250–259, 2004), and the “Student Trust in Principals” and “Student Trust in Faculty” scales, developed by Forsyth et al. (Collective trust, Columbia University, New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), were used after being translated into Turkish. The results show that while statistically significant mean differences are found between at least two groups (p < 0.05), there is a high positive relationship between organizational justice and trust in both administrators and instructors.     

Educating and Training the Workforce to Work with People with Dementia: Two Projects from the United Kingdom

Educating and training the dementia workforce is a global challenge, given the expected increasing number of people living with dementia across the world as the population ages. Two projects from the UK (one regionally and one locality based) investigated courses available to the workforce and mapped the content of identified courses against a locally developed dementia care pathway. The locality project included a survey of what percentage of staff time was spent with people living with dementia, and what percentage of staff caseloads were devoted to people living with dementia. There was a great variation in the extent of education and training available, with some stages of the dementia care pathway poorly addressed. An educational strategy for the dementia workforce in the UK might include four categories of education and training: basic dementia awareness, intermediate level, advanced level, and dementia awareness for managers. Staff requiring education and training might be divided into three groups: those employed to work specifically with people living with dementia and their families; those working with people who have other conditions but some of whom will have a coincidental dementia; those working with other conditions but in settings where a high proportion of their patients have a comorbid dementia. To improve workforce skills in dementia care will require actions across the whole of education and training for professionals and untrained workers who provide services to this group.     

Crime & Elder Abuse: An Integrated Perspective by Brian K. Payne

The problem of reducing withdrawal and enhancing the lives of nursing home patients and other elderly members of society becomes more serious as the number of aged increases. Declines in the ability of elderly may be attributable, in certain cases, to disuse of intellectual capacities. Social reinforcement through reading activities has been proposed as a means of enhancing the performance of the aged and relieving the pain of social deprivation. In order to investigate this hypothesis, two reading groups were formed in a 100‐bed convalescent home; each group met for 6 weeks for 45 minutes. Short stories of high interest were read and discussed. Patients appeared to appreciate and enjoy the sessions. Problems of conducting similar programs were discussed and further research suggested.     

Shaking the “Magic 8 Ball”: Reflections of a First-Time Teacher

Social work doctoral candidates and others without much or any formal teaching experience or training are frequently invited to teach a variety of graduate-level social work courses. This beginning teaching experience can be quite challenging both personally and professionally. Yet, it is seldom discussed in the literature, especially from a personal perspective. This paper seeks to address that gap by providing a narrative account of the author's first-time experience teaching an Advanced Clinical Practice course to fifteen second year social work masters students. Included is an examination of influences on the experience of teaching, with particular attention to the importance of attending to student needs, teaching techniques, and to who the “self” is that one brings to teaching. Implications of the author's experience, including an appended “list” of what might have been done differently is presented as a general guide for other new social work educators as well as for those who mentor them.     

Factors Influencing M.S.W. Students' Interest in Clinical Practice

This study utilizes linear and log‐linear stochastic models to examine the impact that a variety of variables (including graduate education) have on M.S.W. students' desires to work in clinical practice. Data was collected biannually (between 1992 and 1998) from a complete population sample of all students entering and exiting accredited graduate programs of social work in California (n = 5,793). The influences of past practice experiences, professional motivations, socio‐demographic characteristics, ideological affiliations, and education and training experiences while a graduate students were all examined. Findings suggest that there is tremendous commonality in the variability of interest toward doing clinical practice among all student groups both before and after the completion of graduate studies. Male and female students, students of varied ethnic, social class and political identifications/affiliations, along with students of varied ages did not differ in their desire or interest to engage in clinical practice. The desire to prepare for private practice had the strongest influence—that was maintained over the course of their education—on students' interests in clinical social work. Desires to work with the poor were not associated with students' desires to be clinicians who wish to apply their trade across a wide variety of problems and populations.     

The case of EAI in facilitating e-Government services in a Welsh authority

This case focuses on enterprise application integration (EAI) in facilitating integrated electronic Government (e-Government) service delivery in a Welsh local authority. Whilst the development of a heterogeneous information technology (IT) infrastructure in the case organisation caused several integration problems, following a non-EAI approach was regarded as satisfactory by the management. The empirical findings illustrate that although the argument for EAI adoption was initially not seen as cost effective, strategically the decision not to implement EAI caused difficulties in the long term for realising integrated e-Government services.     

Gross motor coordination in junior tennis players

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine the gross motor coordination performance levels of junior tennis players and (2) to analyse the effects of age and gender. Participants were junior male (n = 50) and female (n = 51) tennis players aged 6–14. Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder (KTK) was used to assess the gross motor coordination of the participants. Results revealed that none of the participants performed lower than normal level in motor coordination. Besides, 40.6% of the participants performed above normal level. No gender differences were found on all subtests of KTK and also on total motor quotient. Although older players performed better on each test than their younger counterparts for the raw scores, no significant age effect was observed on motor quotient scores among different age groups.     

Animated Introductory Calculus： Development and perception

Recent years it has an explosive development of IT technologies. However, the problem of natural integration of modern technologies in teaching and learning mathematics is far from its final solution. In teaching mathematics at universities, these capabilities either are ignored or have extremely limited applications. In our study, we consider animation as one of the tools that could increase students＇ motivation, curiosity and understanding. In order to evaluate the perception about using animation in the study of calculus, a brief survey was conducted in University Utara Malaysia （UUM）. The survey consisted of 17 lecturers and 25 students from UUM. The survey also conducted in UPM （University Putra Malaysia） and UniKL （University Kuala Lumpur）, which comprised of 82 students and 49 students respectively. At the same time, we are interested in whether or not the perception of students differs by factors like gender, age group, entry qualification, program of study and previous grades. This survey was conducted in UPM comprised of 160 students. In this paper, we describe our data and report our findings, make a comparison between students＇ perception in UPM, UUM and UniKL. Further a comparison is also made regarding perception of UniKL students from two different programmes of study. To evaluate the performance of students, a simple comparative experiment between Computer Aided Learning Method （CALM） and the Traditional Learning Method （TLM） conducted in UUM and UPM and we report our preliminary findings in this paper.