The Meaning and Rationale of Greece-Cyprus Unified Education: A Teachers’ and Parents’ Beliefs Study

The purpose of the present study was to investigate Cypriot teachers’ and parents’ attitudes towards, and understanding of, the educational policy of Greece-Cyprus Unified Education. The data of the study were collected through a 3-part questionnaire and an open question asking for attitudes towards, meaning and justification of the Unified Education. The results indicated that teachers and parents approve educational policy of Greece-Cyprus Unified Education and that they believe that it must be implemented more explicitly. In spite of the official declarations of this educational policy, teachers and parents believe that Greece-Cyprus Unified Education does not currently exist. The results are discussed in the light of the effects of cultural factors on teachers’ perceptions.     

I,Teacher: re‐territorialization of teachers’ multi‐faceted agency in globalized education

Analysis of teachers’ agency as multifarious change, embedded in educational reform in the global era, stands largely unexamined in educational policy. Although the concept of teachers as agents has political implications, beyond this, examining teachers’ agency offers ways of describing and reviewing changes to teachers’ work and relations within evolving education systems. Local systems draw from globally orientated education policies, which continue to influence to the way that local systems redesign education. In the global context, education systems are complex interactions between structure and agency, evidenced as ‘multiplicity undergoing change’. In other words, there is dynamic and dialectic interplay between structure and agency. Teachers’ agency, germane to dynamic interplay, means that teachers are not only engaging in the reproduction of structural change aligning globalization‐driven reforms to their work and practice, but also, in adapting and reacting to new structural conditions, they are transformed through their actions. In this paper, the focus becomes teachers’ agency as a framework for understanding how teachers are redesigned and reassembled to do things differently within restructured education systems. Finally, the discussion considers the possible consequences of teachers work and practice, given teachers’ agency relative to the macro policy of superfigures and the transitional national/global structures.     

The greater fragility of females' versus males' closest same-sex friendships

Sixty females and 60 males between 10 and 15 years of age were interviewed about difficulties in current and past close same-sex friendships. Based on prior studies, it was hypothesized that females' closest same-sex friendships would be more fragile than those of males. Analyses comparing only the closest same-sex friendship of the two sexes demonstrated that females' current friendships were of a shorter duration, that females were more distressed than males when imagining the potential termination of their friendships, that more females' than males' friends already had done something to hurt the friendship, and that females had more former friendships that had ended than males had. Possible reasons are discussed for the greater vulnerability of this type of relationship for females.     

Kindergarten cognitive intervention for reading difficulties: The PREP remediation in Greek

This study reports two different experiments, as a part of a longitudinal study, that evaluated a cognitive intervention (PREP: PASS Reading Enhancement Program) to enhance early phonological processing skills, such as odd-word-out, segmenting, and blending, to kindergarten children at-rish for reading difficulties, in order to support the development of subsequent word reading skills. As part of the first experiment, thirty children aged 5.1, matched on the basis of age, gender, parental education levels, Non-verbal and Verbal IQ, were assigned to an experimental and a control group (15 in each group) and compared before and after the four-week intervention on a set of phonological and cognitive (successive and simultaneous processing) measures. The two groups of participants were screened to be significantly different at pre-test on the outcome measures. The results of the first experiment indicated that the experimental group performed equally well with the control group on all the measures of phonological and cognitive processing skills. Subsequent analysis focusing on aptitude-treatment interaction indicated that the PREP program appeared to be optimally successful in improving phonological skills in cases where the cognitive profile of the 5-year-olds matched the emphasis on successive information integration. The follow-up experiment examined the long-term effects of PREP remediation. Results showed that both the experimental and control groups performed equally well on word reading tasks and, more importantly, on the bridging PREP tasks, requiring knowledge of the alphabet and of letter-sound correspondences, despite that neither of the groups had been previously trained on the latter. Discussion concludes that intervention including inductive training on the distal cognitive processes, namely successive and simultaneous processing, appears to be effective for enhancing early word-reading skills to kindergarten children at-risk for reading difficulties, even in the absence of direct training of these skills in kindergarten.     

End-User Understanding of Indexing Language Information

This study examines end-user interactions with indexing language information during subject searching in a library catalog and their understanding of this information and its function in term selection. Participants were asked to interact with the indexing language (Library of Congress Subject Headings) and were asked to express their general understanding of the information provided and each specific type of information included in the indexing language. In addition, participants were asked to express their understanding of the function of indexing language information in term selection, its usefulness and desirability as an integrated tool into the information retrieval system during subject searching. Study findings and their implications are discussed and future research is considered.     

Bilingual Authority Files at the Central Library of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,Greece

Abstract

The creation and the maintenance of three (name, title and subject headings) authority files in the Central Library of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is discussed. The reasons for establishing bilingual (Greek and English) authority files are explained, and the necessary modifications of the AACR2 Rules, which were imperative for the establishment of bilingual headings in the authority files, are represented. The benefits of an OPAC that uses bilingual authority files, which allow one to search in two languages, are described.     

Ethical frontiers of ICT and older users: cultural, pragmatic and ethical issues

The reality of an ageing Europe has called attention to the importance of e-inclusion for a growing population of senior citizens. For some, this may mean closing the digital divide by providing access and support to technologies that increase citizen participation; for others, e-inclusion means access to assistive technologies to facilitate and extend their living independently. These initiatives address a social need and provide economic opportunities for European industry. While undoubtedly desirable, and supported by European Union initiatives, several cultural assumptions or issues related to the initiatives could benefit from fuller examination, as could their practical and ethical implications. This paper begins to consider these theoretical and practical concerns. The first part of the paper examines cultural issues and assumptions relevant to adopting e-technologies, and the ethical principles applied to them. These include (1) the persistence of ageism, even in e-inclusion; (2) different approaches to, and implications of independent living; and (3) the values associated with different ethical principles, given their implications for accountability to older users. The paper then discusses practical issues and ethical concerns that have been raised by the use of smart home and monitoring technologies with older persons. Understanding these assumptions and their implications will allow for more informed choices in promoting ethical application of e-solutions for older persons.     

Commitment to Teach in Under-Resourced Schools: Prospective Science and Mathematics Teachers’ Dispositions

In this exploratory study, we sought to gain an understanding of what motivates prospective teachers who are Noyce Scholars at a research-intensive southeastern US university to commit to teaching secondary level science or mathematics in school districts that have a high proportion of students who come from low-socioeconomic households. An interpretive methodology revealed three themes associated with Noyce Scholars’ motivations to teach (1) awareness of educational challenges, (2) sense of belonging to or comfort with diverse communities, and (3) belief that one can serve as a role model and resource. The paper describes and compares the significance of each theme among six prospective teachers who identify with the schooling experiences of students who came from low-income or poor households and nine prospective teachers who identify with the schooling experiences in a middle-income school or district. The implication of this study supports the importance of recruiting prospective science and mathematics teachers who have knowledge of and a disposition to work with learners from low-income or poor households, even if those prospective teachers are not themselves the members of under-served populations.     

Complexity of Work Families and Entity-Based Visualization Displays

Abstract

Conceptual modeling of bibliographic data, including the FR models and the consolidated IFLA LRM, has provided an opportunity to shift focus to entities and relationships and to support hierarchical work-based exploration of bibliographic information. This paper reports on a study examining the complexity of a work's bibliographic family data and user interactions with data visualizations, compared to traditional displays. Findings suggest that the FRBR-based visual bibliographic information system supports work families of different complexities more equally than a traditional system. Differences between the two systems also show that the FRBR-based system was more effective especially for related-works and author-related tasks.