The deployment,training and teacher relationships of teaching assistants supporting pupils with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) in mainstream secondary schools

Growing numbers of pupils with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are attending mainstream schools, and increasing numbers of additional staff are being deployed to support them. Recent research has cast doubt on the effectiveness of this support, by highlighting issues relating to deployment and training, and to relationships with class teachers. This study, conducted by Wendy Symes, who is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester, and Neil Humphrey, who is Professor of Education in the same university, interviewed 15 teaching assistants supporting pupils with ASD in four mainstream secondary schools in the north‐west of England to explore these issues. Analysis yielded several key findings. The majority of teaching assistants worked with just one pupil at a time and worked in a variety of lessons. Their role primarily involved helping pupils to stay focused and follow instructions. Many teaching assistants had no experience of ASD prior to starting their job. The amount of training received varied, but all felt that generic training about ASD was not helpful. A lack of time for joint planning with teachers was raised as a key concern. These findings are discussed in relation to the growing literature on inclusive education for pupils with ASD.     

Debt: the reality of student life

During the 1980s, a political consensus developed concerning the need to increase participation in higher education (Walker and Wright, 1990). How to finance this increase, however, was a matter of contention. While successive Conservative governments demonstrated a commitment to increasing the number of students, this aim was subordinate to their central concern of controlling public expenditure, which meant they were not prepared to meet the cost of expansion totally from the public purse. As a consequence, alternative ways of financing students were introduced which, as this paper will demonstrate, have led to a higher education system subsidized by student debt.     

File maintenance of MeSH headings in MEDLINE.

This article addresses file maintenance of subject headings in the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE, a bibliographic retrieval file which is indexed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), NLM's subject authority. The emphasis is class maintenance in which sets of records in MEDLINE are changed by maintenance actions which reflect yearly changes in MeSH. Specific types of maintenance action are described with examples to highlight problem areas. Class maintenance failures, checking class maintenance, and informing end-users of MeSH changes resulting in class maintenance are discussed. Technical constraints and feasibility are not analyzed in detail; rather, the approach is geared toward requirements and impact of maintenance from the standpoint of vocabulary specialists and end-users. The article concludes with a brief statement on defining file maintenance policy.     

美国对数字出版中侵权现象的应对措施

美国现有的版权法律条文不能有效地应对数字出版商们的忧虑.尽管数字作品可以享受和印刷作品同等的版权保护,我们似乎仍然需要新的法律条文和理论来应对数字作品和技术的特殊性质.在面对与数字侵权有关的问题上,美国通过立法、改进美国版权署的职能以及签订国际条约或协定,缓慢开始颁布一些关于数字侵权的条文.数字侵权虽然在庭审中得以应对,但法庭运用的是传统版权概念中的"合理使用"来分析数字侵权.目前,人们只能通过诉讼的方式迫使美国法庭建立一套能充分解决电子侵权的法律体系.