Graduate LIS Students' Attitude Toward University Libraries and Personnel

This is an attitudinal survey that profiles Kuwait University Library and Information Science (KULIS) students' attitudes concerning Kuwait University's (KU's) libraries. It uses the phenomenological approach to analyze respondents' data regarding confidence in their skills and the effect on attitude toward KU's resources. It furthermore explores the attitudes of KU staff and the level of assistance offered to KULIS students. The results show that most of the respondents visited the library to access electronic resources. Some respondents disagreed that the staff had treated the KULIS suspiciously, yet a majority disagreed that the KU library staff was professionally trained to help KULIS students. Several respondents strongly agreed that they were confident in their searching skills. The results of the survey are used to recommend curriculum changes and ways to improve library and other academic support services at academic institutions generally.     

上海市部分中等职业学校体育教学现状的调查与分析

随着社会各界对体育教学越来越重视,我国政府也对体育教学的现代化提出了相应的政策和举措,今天体育健康教学提出了"健康第一"的口号。本文通过对上海市六所中职体育教学现状分析,并根据我国学校体育改革和发展的状况,对体育教育提供理论参考的依据。     

Instrument adaptation in cross-cultural studies of students’ mathematics-related beliefs: learning from healthcare research

Much comparative research into education-related beliefs has exploited questionnaires developed in one culture for use in another. This has been particularly the case in mathematics education, the focus of this paper. In so doing, researchers have tended to assume that translation alone is sufficient to warrant a reliable and valid instrument for cross-cultural research, prompting concerns that a number of necessary equivalences are unlikely to have been addressed. In this paper, we consider the nature of these equivalences before examining the literature of a different field, healthcare research, to synthesise an approach to instrument adaptation that is pragmatic but rigorous. Finally, we demonstrate how this pragmatic approach, incorporating extensive cognitive interviews, enabled us to adapt and refine a mathematics-related beliefs questionnaire, developed in Flanders, for use with students aged 14–15 in England and Spain. Analyses indicate that the instrument so developed is multidimensional, reliable and cross-culturally valid. Some implications are discussed.     

The Heyneman–Loxley effect revisited in the Middle East and North Africa: Analysis using TIMSS 2007 database

Since the controversial finding of the Coleman Report (1966), which was that school resources had little effect on educational outcomes comparing to family background, huge literature has emerged in order to verify the above finding in countries other than the United States. The Heyneman–Loxley work (1983) presented for the first time clear evidence that variation in school resource quality could matter more than variation in family inputs in low and middle income countries. Following this literature, and using TIMSS 2007 data, we attempt in this study to revisit the Heyneman–Loxley hypothesis and the related debate regarding the overall importance of schools in explaining variations in student achievement across Middle East and North African countries. Survey Jackknife regression technique and quantile regressions have been used for the purpose of this study. Our results are in line with those of Baker et al. (2002) showing that the Heyneman–Loxley effect had declined over time.     

From pre-service to practicing teacher: considering the stability of personal and classroom mastery and performance goals

Research shows that personal and classroom goals are important for pre-service and practicing teachers’ personal and professional outcomes; however, no research has examined changes to these types of motivation across the transition from student to teacher. This study followed pre-service teachers (n?=?47) into practise and assessed changes in self-reported personal and classroom goals using surveys and focus groups. Correlations, repeated measures analysis of covariance and reliable change indices were used to assess stability/change in the quantitative data. Qualitative data were analysed for themes and largely supported the quantitative results. The results showed that teachers were at least as personally oriented towards mastery-approach in their practice as they were during their pre-service education but less personally performance focused. In terms of classroom goals, performance practices increased whereas mastery practices decreased, particularly for secondary school teachers. Although practicing teachers are personally mastery-oriented in their teaching, their intentions to establish classroom mastery goals appear difficult to enact in practice.     

Fostering Social and Emotional Skills for Well-Being and Social Progress

Children need a balanced set of cognitive, social and emotional capabilities to adapt to today's demanding, changing and unpredictable world. OECD countries and partner economies recognise the importance on the holistic development of individuals. However, there are big gaps between stakeholders' knowledge, expectations and practices on how to foster such skills. This paper presents evidence on the importance of social and emotional skills; on how policy makers and schools are currently enhancing and monitoring such skills; and, on the existing gaps between knowledge, expectations and practices to mobilise these skills. The paper concludes by pointing ways in which education stakeholders can do more to better develop and mobilise the skills that drive individual's well-being and social progress. The paper draws on findings and frameworks that are being published in a full OECD report entitled ‘Skills for Social Progress: the Power of Social and Emotional Skills’ in the first half of 2015.     

Educating child practitioners: a (re)turn to the university disciplines

This paper analyses a specific disjunctive policy space in Scotland involving the current key children's social and educational policy agenda, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), and a recent national report on teacher education, the ‘Donaldson Report’. In four main parts, the paper first introduces and applies in policy review and analysis a capitals frame to identify the policy–practice discontinuities currently inherent in the ‘GIRFEC-child practitioner education’ policy space, exemplified by the Donaldson Report. Then, the same capitals frame is applied to examine the capitals resources demanded in the particular ‘child–child practitioner education’ policy space previously delineated. Next, examples of policy disconnects amongst current child practice and practitioner education policy production and implementation, which warrant a concerted integrative cross-sector project to ensure coherent social and intellectual capital relations at all levels, are discussed. Finally, the paper calls for the governing professional registration bodies and universities involved in the education of child-sector practitioners to engage in the redesign of university programmes underpinned by principles of transdisciplinarity and transprofessionalism. The methodology is policy sociology and policy text analysis.     

How MOOC instructors view the pedagogy and purposes of massive open online courses

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have proliferated in recent years despite disagreement about the role of MOOCs in higher education and whether student outcomes are satisfactory. Taking a mixed-methods approach, the current study surveys professors who have taught MOOCs (n = 162) in order to better understand how MOOCs are perceived by instructors. Professors’ backgrounds and beliefs about the role of MOOCs in higher education and their perceptions of the experiences of students are discussed. In addition, professors’ satisfaction in teaching MOOCs is reported. The study finds that most MOOC professors are experienced faculty members with relatively little prior experience teaching online, and that they are divided about the purpose of MOOCs in the institutional landscape of higher education.     

Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature

This paper identifies salient practices of faculty mentors of undergraduate research (UR) as indicated in the extensive literature of the past two decades on UR. The well-established benefits for students involved in UR are dependent, first and foremost, on high-quality mentoring. Mentorship is a defining feature of UR. As more and different types of colleges and universities strive to meet student demand for authentic scholarly experiences, it is imperative to identify what effective UR mentors do in order to ensure student engagement, quality enhancement, retention, and degree-completion. We offer an original analysis of the literature on UR mentoring in which we identify 10 significant “lessons learned,” or evidence-based practices of effective UR mentors that apply broadly across disciplines, students, institutions, and mentoring approaches.