New Education in Old Europe

The article gives a survey about the development of archival education in some central European countries within the past 15 years. Although there are similar problems and challenges in all these countries, the different Universities and Archives Schools have developed different strategies for dealing with them. The range of reactions reaches from small reforms of the curriculum to completely new orientations of the entire education.     

HPS: High precision stemmer

Research into unsupervised ways of stemming has resulted, in the past few years, in the development of methods that are reliable and perform well. Our approach further shifts the boundaries of the state of the art by providing more accurate stemming results. The idea of the approach consists in building a stemmer in two stages. In the first stage, a stemming algorithm based upon clustering, which exploits the lexical and semantic information of words, is used to prepare large-scale training data for the second-stage algorithm. The second-stage algorithm uses a maximum entropy classifier. The stemming-specific features help the classifier decide when and how to stem a particular word.     

Development of students’ conceptual thinking by means of video analysis and interactive simulations at technical universities

Video analysis, using the program Tracker (Open Source Physics), in the educational process introduces a new creative method of teaching physics and makes natural sciences more interesting for students. This way of exploring the laws of nature can amaze students because this illustrative and interactive educational software inspires them to think creatively, improves their performance and helps them in studying physics. This paper deals with increasing the key competencies in engineering by analysing real-life situation videos – physical problems – by means of video analysis and the modelling tools using the program Tracker and simulations of physical phenomena from The Physics Education Technology (PhET?) Project (VAS method of problem tasks). The statistical testing using the t-test confirmed the significance of the differences in the knowledge of the experimental and control groups, which were the result of interactive method application.     

Students’ use of the interactive whiteboard during physics group work

This paper presents a case study of how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) may facilitate collective meaning-making processes in group work in engineering education. In the case, first-year students attended group-work sessions as an organised part of a basic physics course at a Norwegian university college. Each student group was equipped with an IWB, which the groups used to write down and hand in their solutions to the physics problems. Based on a Vygotskian, dialectical stance, this study investigates how the students used the IWB in the group-work situation. From qualitative analysis of video data, we identified four group-work processes where the IWB played a key role: exploratory, explanatory, clarifying and insertion. The results show that the IWB may facilitate a ‘joint workspace’, a social realm in which the students’ dialogues are situated.     

How do principals make sense of school leadership in Norwegian reorganised leadership teams?

A growing body of research has emphasised the importance of school leadership practice for quality improvement in schools. Yet, little attention has been paid to the investigation of how principals reshape their leadership role and leadership practices when schools reorganise the leadership team with the purpose of increasing the number of formally assigned leaders. As such, this study provides additional insight into how moments of transitions may reshape institutional logics regarding principal leadership practice. Drawing on interviews and contextual observations of five principals in lower secondary schools, framed within a distributed perspective and theory of sense-making, we address this issue by demonstrating that regulative changes influence the normative and cognitive aspects of institutions. We argue that principals re-conceptualise leadership when they move from being solo leaders to sharing leadership, and this allows for subjective interpretations. We have identified two approaches for principal leadership practice which the reorganised leadership team can provide – the exchanging information – and collaborative discussion approaches.     

Do more hours in center-based care cause more externalizing problems? A cross-national replication study

Whether high quantities of center-based care cause behavior problems is a controversial question. Studies using covariate adjustment for selection factors have detected relations between center care and behavior problems, but studies with stronger internal validity less often find such evidence. We examined whether within-child changes in hours in center-based care predicted changes in externalizing problems in toddlers and preschoolers (N = 10,105; 49% female; data collection 1993–2012) in seven studies, including from Germany, Netherlands, Norway, two from Canada and two from the U.S. Race/ethnicity data were only collected in the United States (57% and 80% White; 42% and 13% African-American; 1.2% and 5% Latinx). Meta-analyses showed no association (r = .00, p = .88) between hours in center-based care and externalizing problems.     

Return to play management after concussion in football: recommendations for team physicians

Abstract

A concussion is a rare but potentially serious injury of football players. Thus, an immediate and valid diagnosis, estimate of severity and therapeutic management is required. To summarise the published information on management of concussion with respect to a safe return to play (RTP), a literature search was conducted. Current guidelines on concussion in sports and significant studies on concussion in football were analysed. After concussion, management and RTP decision should remain in the area of clinical judgement on an individualised basis according to the current international guidelines. If a concussion is suspected, the player should not be allowed to RTP the same day. The RTP programme should follow a gradual step-wise procedure. A concussed player should not RTP unless he/she is asymptomatic and the neurological and neuropsychological examinations are normal. Untimely RTP bears an increased risk of sustaining another more severe brain injury and repetitive brain injury of long-term sequelae. In football, the management of concussion should primarily follow the recommendations proposed by the Concussion in Sports Group. Information and education of players and their medical and coaching team help to protect the players’ health. Future studies on concussion should include validated and detailed information on RTP protocols.