Evaluating the Implementation of an Olympic Education Program in Greece

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument for evaluating how an education program has been implemented. Such evaluation can provide insight into the effectiveness of a program. Examined here was the Olympic Education Program used in Greek schools since 2000. In it, students learn the history of the Olympic games and the importance of exercise for health along with the principles and values of sports and volunteerism. The evaluation instrument underlying this study addressed the following six factors: ‘facilities’, ‘administration’, ‘educational material’, ‘student–teacher relationships’, ‘educational procedures’, and ‘training’. Results indicate that the instrument, while adequate for assessing effectiveness, should be combined with advanced statistical methods.     

Teaching about the importance of trees: a study with young children

This paper reports on a study undertaken with the primary aim of investigating the effect of the storytelling teaching approach on kindergarten children's retention of ideas about the importance of trees. The study also assessed the effect of storytelling on children's intention to participate in a tree planting activity that they had to select from a list of activities. The story that was created included such elements as binary opposites, mental images, mystery, and wonder, according to Kieran Egan's theory. The study utilized a two‐group design, was conducted in three phases (pre‐test, intervention, and post‐test), lasted 11 weeks, and its results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the storytelling approach when compared with the traditional method of expository teaching complemented with visual images (pictures) of trees and their importance to human beings. The pedagogical appropriateness of the story, which was based upon the binary pair of opposites ‘security–insecurity’, is also discussed in the paper.     

Effects of a kindergarten-based,family-involved intervention on motor performance ability in 3- to 6-year-old children: the ToyBox-study

This study targeted to examine the effect of the ToyBox-intervention, a kindergarten-based, family-involved intervention, aiming to improve preschooler’s energy-related behaviours (e.g., physical activity) on motor performance ability. Physical activity sessions, classroom activities, environmental changes and tools for parents were the components of the 1-year intervention. The intervention and control were cluster-randomised, and children’s anthropometry and two motor test items (jumping from side to side, JSS and standing long jump, SLJ) were assessed. A total of 1293 (4.6 ± 0.69 years; 52% boys) from 45 kindergartens in Germany were included (intervention, n = 863; control, n = 430). The effect was assessed using generalised estimating equation. The intervention group showed a better improvement in JSS (Estimate 2.19 jumps, P = 0.01) and tended to improve better in SLJ (Estimate 2.73 cm, P = 0.08). The intervention was more effective in boys with respect to SLJ (P of interaction effect = 0.01). Children aged <4.5 years did not show a significant benefit while older children improved (JSS, Estimate 3.38 jumps, P = 0.004; SLJ, Estimate 4.18 cm, P = 0.04). Children with low socio-economic status improved in JSS (Estimate 5.98 jumps, P = 0.0001). The ToyBox-intervention offers an effective strategy to improve specific components of motor performance ability in early childhood. Future programmes should consider additional strategies specifically targeting girls and younger aged children.

Abbreviations: BMI: body mass index; SES: socio-economic status; JSS: jumping from side to side; SLJ: standing long jump; SD: standard deviation; GEE: generalised estimating equation     

Thinking through new literacies for primary and early years

Abstract

Most language instructors use resources found on the Internet to supplement their courses (Adolph and LeBlanc, 1997). This article shows how a teacher can make use of templates to create their own Internet pages.     

Work-related factors influencing doctors search behaviors and trust toward medical information resources

Regulation of clinical practice is a characteristic aspect of the medical profession. Regardless of whether this regulation derives from government-sourced guidelines or materials from government-sponsored institutions, it results in a high production of information resources (institutional information resources), which are disseminated to the clinical stuff in order to ensure compliance. In that case, the issue of credibility of these information resources might arise, since medical practice is characterized by a high frequency of change. The latter involves a continuous effort on the part of the clinical staff, which is motivated by work-related factors (e.g., need for compliance) or personal motivation (e.g., need for self-improvement). In this study we consider a simple trust model, according to which we assume that perceived trust is a direct antecedent of perceived credibility. We evaluate whether work-related or personal motivating factors influence the relation between perceived credibility and trust toward institutional information sources and how the effect of each factor affects this relation. Findings suggest that work-related factors have a higher impact on the relation between credibility and trust than personal motivation factors, while they are stressing the important role of hospital libraries as a dissemination point for government-sponsored information resources.     

Nearest-biclusters collaborative filtering based on constant and coherent values

Collaborative Filtering (CF) Systems have been studied extensively for more than a decade to confront the “information overload” problem. Nearest-neighbor CF is based either on similarities between users or between items, to form a neighborhood of users or items, respectively. Recent research has tried to combine the two aforementioned approaches to improve effectiveness. Traditional clustering approaches (k-means or hierarchical clustering) has been also used to speed up the recommendation process. In this paper, we use biclustering to disclose this duality between users and items, by grouping them in both dimensions simultaneously. We propose a novel nearest-biclusters algorithm, which uses a new similarity measure that achieves partial matching of users’ preferences. We apply nearest-biclusters in combination with two different types of biclustering algorithms—Bimax and xMotif—for constant and coherent biclustering, respectively. Extensive performance evaluation results in three real-life data sets are provided, which show that the proposed method improves substantially the performance of the CF process.

Informational properties of infinite numbers of objects in concurrent discriminations by monkeys

Eight rhesus monkeys were trained on a counterbalanced series of concurrent, two-choice, discrimination tasks that provided different numbers of correct or incorrect objects as lists of discriminanda. Small, large, or infinite lengths of correct or incorrect object lists were combined in different tasks, and acquisition performances were compared. When tasks had an infinite number of objects in their correct list and a small number (4) in their incorrect list, acquisition entailed significantly less error than was seen when a small number of correct objects was paired with an infinite incorrect list. This pattern of outcomes seemed attributable to novelty preference. However, comparison of error distributions from tasks with infinite. list lengths to distributions from analogous tasks with fixed list lengths provided some basis for interpreting the way monkeys integrated information that emerged from the temporally discriminative properties of the tasks. One prospective concern was whether or not these performances represented behaviors like those seen in human cognitive discriminations of frequency of occurrence.     

Tutoring conjunctions and construction of geometry concepts in the early childhood education: The case of the angle

Recent research concerning the understanding of geometrical concepts, such as the concept of angles, shows that children of pre-school age, as far as it concerns problems of angle comparison, systematically focus on visual comparative procedures. We suggest, however, that social interaction of a child having the role of tutor in diverse guided environments, could allow the building of this concept in the nursery school on strategies that have formed in natural settings. Sixty-four (64) subjects were accessed according to their performance in a test of angle comparison. They were introduced for an equal period to two experimental guidance conditions. In the first condition, the code of guidance is exclusively verbal and, in the second, the symbolic code of the Logo environment suceeds the verbal communication. Results show, on one hand, much more systematic improvement in a subjects performance where different contexts of guidance were used. On the other hand, in the verbal guidance experimental condition, children’s correct answers showed a dinstinct progress to the stage of finally advancing their performance.     

Aspects of negative numbers in the early 17th century

This paper argues that the questions, posed by researchers in the field of didactics of mathematics, require new historical research which mainly concerns the problems related to the emergence and evolution of concepts. Motivated by recent historico-didactical studies on negative numbers, the author explores two different types of problems through which these numbers started being used systematically in mathematics. The first problem deals with the correspondence between the terms of an arithmetical and a geometrical progression, which constitutes the theoretical basis of logarithms; the second deals with the application of algebraic syntactical ruies in the theory of equations. In the specific context of these problems, concepts, such as negative logarithm or negative root, were established in the early 17th century, long before the appearance of a general concept of negative quantity in mathematical textbooks. The analysis of these problems reveals the conventional character of negative numbers and poses certain questions about the meaning of the various concrete models, traditionally employed in their teaching (via temperature, debits and credits, etc.). Recent, large-scale empirical research has shown a major percentage of failure in understanding negative numbers and their operations; this fact is related to the meanings attributed to negative numbers during their introduction at school. The matter of revising traditional teaching models is considered in connection with a constructive learning hypothesis; there is a need for new problem-situations, which entirely justify the meaning of the concept that must be used and constructed by the pupil and allow a fruitful interaction with it. The case of negative numbers provides an illuminating example of the role historical problems can play in the creation of situations like these.