Social relations as predictors of achievement in math in Kenyan primary schools

In sub-Saharan Africa, where there is limited financial and human capital, it is important to examine how social relationships may serve to promote or undermine human capital formation. However, little is known about the contributions of social relations to human capital development, especially in terms of academic achievement in Africa. This study examined how variations in key aspects of social relations among teachers; between teachers and students; between principals, teachers, parents and students affect achievement in mathematics among sixth graders in 70 schools in six districts in Kenya. We modeled mathematics achievement as a function of measures of social perception and support while adjusting for school-, classroom- and student level background characteristics. We found that net of teacher subject knowledge and background characteristics, teachers who display commitment to teaching by always correcting homework and keeping students engaged during math lessons had their students performing better. Teacher absenteeism and lack of interest in teaching were negatively associated with performance in math. Lack of parental involvement in the classroom also had negative effects on grades. At the school level, the level of engagement of the principal, measured by supervision of teachers and good interpersonal interactions with parents had positive effects on math achievement. Schools where parents provided material and financial support had better grades, while student delinquency and absenteeism negatively affected grades.     

Writer identification approach based on bag of words with OBI features

Handwriter identification aims to simplify the task of forensic experts by providing them with semi-automated tools in order to enable them to narrow down the search to determine the final identification of an unknown handwritten sample. An identification algorithm aims to produce a list of predicted writers of the unknown handwritten sample ranked in terms of confidence measure metrics for use by the forensic expert will make the final decision.Most existing handwriter identification systems use either statistical or model-based approaches. To further improve the performances this paper proposes to deploy a combination of both approaches using Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook. To reduce the resulting high dimensionality of the feature vector a Kernel Principal Component Analysis has been used. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed method a performance analysis, using IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting, has been carried out. The results obtained achieved an accuracy of 96% thus demonstrating its superiority when compared against similar techniques.     

An NCME Instructional Module on Data Mining Methods for Classification and Regression

Data mining methods for classification and regression are becoming increasingly popular in various scientific fields. However, these methods have not been explored much in educational measurement. This module first provides a review, which should be accessible to a wide audience in education measurement, of some of these methods. The module then demonstrates using three real‐data examples that these methods may lead to an improvement over traditionally used methods such as linear and logistic regression in educational measurement.     

论阅读教学中“教”“学”主体的转变

在应试教育的大背景下，阅读教学已经异化为应试教学，沦落为应试教育的手段。阅读教学要做到优质高效，并对整个小学语文教学起到重要的拉动作用，必须实现由“教”到“学”的主体转变，即课堂教学要由从以教师“教”为中心转变到以学生“学”为中心。只有经历这样的转变，阅读教学才能实现质的跨越。     

关于数字图书馆的馆藏与技术问题刍议

数字图书馆使信息得以更广泛的传播，数字图书馆及其功能、作用与当前信息发展传播、计算机网络化所带来的有关馆藏、馆员诸多方面的新变化，今后数字图书馆可能的发展动向．     

应收账款管理创新研究

在传统应收账款管理方法的基础上，企业应运用维．帕累托(Vilfredo．Pareto)最优分析法对应收账款进行分类管理。即把已有客户分为核心客户、主要客户和一般客户，对他们实行不同的信用管理。对新客户运用稳健分析模型进行信用分析，然后做出销售决策。对销售人员确立应收账款管理目标，以应收账款质量提高作为目标管理的主要内容，企业销售人员的考核与应收账款质量的提高挂钩，建立应收账款管理的激励和约束机制。     

高校图书馆建设地方特色文献数据库的思考

论述了高校图书馆创建地方特色献数据库的意义、必要性、可行性及及创建方法。     

关于我国林业经济管理学科建设的思考

本文首先探讨了我国林业经济管理专业学科建设的意义,然后在分析我国同类学科的不足的基础上,提出了我国林业经济管理学科建设的目标,并从4个方面对我国林业经济管理学科建设提出了具体的内容。     

小说《简爱》中梦境的审美分析

梦是文学创作的一种特殊的表达方式。在小说《简爱》中,夏洛蒂.勃朗特通过梦的意象把女主人公简爱充满疑虑和矛盾的内心展现在读者面前。该文对小说中的梦境描写进行了归类并对其作了进一步分析,展示通过梦意象的运用产生了震撼人心的艺术效果,增强了思想感情表达的艺术张力。     

我国艺术立法原则和研究要点思考

艺术法不是一部单行法规，而是相关法规的总称。由于艺术的外延很大，其所涉及的社会关系也是多种多样，而不仅仅是有关版权的问题，因此，有必要从宏观上把握艺术发生过程中所涉及的一些重要关系。