On benzene and aromaticity

Several interesting historical details about the structure of benzene and the concept of aromaticity are provided.     

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON STUDENT RETENTION: A Role for Institutional Research

This paper proposes a role for institutional research in changing institutional attitudes about the priority placed on student retention efforts. Problems associated with changing perspectives are described using Kuber-Ross's work On Death and Dying. Potential barriers associated with changing the status of student retention efforts within the institution are identified relative to her stages of grief-denial, hostility, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Tactics useful in addressing and moving through each stage are described. Results from several studies on student retention provide information that has been used to promote and change attitudes toward student retention efforts at all levels at Virginia Tech.     

The Young Child's Pictorial Representation of the Human Figure

This study investigated reasons for the omission of the torso typical in most young children's drawings of the human figure. Do they have an incomplete mental image of the human figure; if so will the torso be omitted from a manikin task too? As the head is normally drawn first, is the torso simply forgotten; if so will children include it if they are asked to draw the torso first? Eighty tadpole‐drawers (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years) were randomly allocated to a drawing or a manikin condition; they were further subdivided into a head‐first or torso‐first condition. Significantly more children produced a conventional figure when they constructed a manikin compared with those who were asked to draw; the order of body parts (head‐first vs torso‐first) had no significant effect. These results suggest that young children omit the torso from their human figures because they have yet to devise a way of drawing it, perhaps because it is a relatively unimportant item; there is little evidence that they have simply forgotten it or that their mental model for the human figure is incomplete.     

印度喀拉拉邦的教育分权计划:理想与现实

许多发展机构的文献都提倡通过教育分权管理策略来促进地方参与教育的行动。尽管这种倡导有着长远的历史,但事实上,在许多教育体系中的教育分权计划并没有取得成功。印度喀拉拉邦的“人民分权计划运动”试图采用一个多方位的“大爆炸”方式实施分权计划,它虽有力量,但也存在局限性,其主要障碍是地方当局的技术能力有限,以及未转变参与者态度,未向参与者充分证明分权是符合他们需要的。     

Economics of Education. The Need to go Beyond Human Capital Theory and Production-Function Analysis

Human capital theory takes for granted that an individual's demand of education will automatically be transformed into real human capital: there is no supply constraint or, said differently, educational systems can be assimilated to 'neutral' black boxes mechanically transforming input into output. This optimistic view of human capital production was rapidly abandoned. In the late 1960s some economists began to revise the assumption that the black box's functioning was neutral with regard to human capital production. Supply-side economics of education appeared first under the form of production-function analysis. It was initially believed that the information delivered by such input/output approach would help policy makers and administrators choose the most productive 'mix' of inputs. But the major conclusion of this line of research is that there is apparently no clear and undeniable relation between both expenditure per student and the specific resources they can buy (teachers' degrees and experience, smaller student-teacher ratios) on the one hand, and student achievement on the other hand. This probably means that further conceptual development is necessary to overcome the current analytical - and also political - deadlock. This paper argues that one promising way consists of introducing organisational assets as well as non-monetary inputs into the production function paradigm.     

Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children

Young children's reading comprehension skill is associated with their ability to draw inferences (Oakhill 1982, 1984). An experiment was conducted to investigate the direction of this relation and to explore possible sources of inferential failure. Three groups of children participated: Same-age skilled and less skilled comprehenders, and a comprehension-age match group. The pattern of performance indicated that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading comprehension ability. Failure to make inferences could not be attributed to lack of relevant general knowledge. Instead, the pattern of errors indicated that differences in reading strategy were the most likely source of these group differences.     

The Adolescent in the Online Game

This article addresses the need for changes in current views on adolescent development. It presents observations of adolescent behavior in the online game Dragon Nest that were conducted by specialists from the Crossroads Center for Social and Psychological Adaptation and Adolescent Development, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, in 2013. These observations helped form theories about age-specific tasks arising in adolescence. The restorative approach was selected as the theoretical basis for this work. This approach represents the practical application of the cultural-historical theory and the activity theory to the provision of social and psychological assistance to adolescents. An analysis of adolescent activity in a game, the structure of communication, and observations of adolescent relationships in online gaming space make it possible to form theories on the role of communication among peers in today’s society in terms of adolescent individuation and development.