scholarly journals Reading across texts: perceptions and performance of early adolescent readers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robin Esther Cohen

<p>Learning Media have introduced an anthology series that draws on writing previously published in the School Journals with the addition, lately, of commissioned work. The series is designed to meet the new curriculum objectives for English, social studies and science with less practised readers. A title in the series will typically contain narratives as well as personal accounts by experts, loosely related to a theme in the social studies or science curriculum. A survey of how the titles were being used indicated that teachers were treating the contents of the anthologies as single texts and that the advantages of reading across texts related to a theme were not being realised. A study was therefore conducted with an intermediate school class in order to establish an activity cycle that would exploit the potential of anthologies as a resource for reading-to-write from multiple sources. The experience gained from the study suggests that the cycle should contain instruction on transforming sources and this skill needs to be practised within the framework of a discourse synthesis task. In the study, the task appeared to be the driving force that determined what was read, what information was selected, the student's stance towards the information, and what guided the monitoring process. Reading proficiency did not appear to make a substantial difference to the way the task was interpreted nor in the way the task was accomplished tactically, suggesting that discourse synthesis is an issue of experience with the component skills.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robin Esther Cohen

<p>Learning Media have introduced an anthology series that draws on writing previously published in the School Journals with the addition, lately, of commissioned work. The series is designed to meet the new curriculum objectives for English, social studies and science with less practised readers. A title in the series will typically contain narratives as well as personal accounts by experts, loosely related to a theme in the social studies or science curriculum. A survey of how the titles were being used indicated that teachers were treating the contents of the anthologies as single texts and that the advantages of reading across texts related to a theme were not being realised. A study was therefore conducted with an intermediate school class in order to establish an activity cycle that would exploit the potential of anthologies as a resource for reading-to-write from multiple sources. The experience gained from the study suggests that the cycle should contain instruction on transforming sources and this skill needs to be practised within the framework of a discourse synthesis task. In the study, the task appeared to be the driving force that determined what was read, what information was selected, the student's stance towards the information, and what guided the monitoring process. Reading proficiency did not appear to make a substantial difference to the way the task was interpreted nor in the way the task was accomplished tactically, suggesting that discourse synthesis is an issue of experience with the component skills.</p>


Author(s):  
Omar Shaikh ◽  
Stefano Bonino

The Colourful Heritage Project (CHP) is the first community heritage focused charitable initiative in Scotland aiming to preserve and to celebrate the contributions of early South Asian and Muslim migrants to Scotland. It has successfully collated a considerable number of oral stories to create an online video archive, providing first-hand accounts of the personal journeys and emotions of the arrival of the earliest generation of these migrants in Scotland and highlighting the inspiring lessons that can be learnt from them. The CHP’s aims are first to capture these stories, second to celebrate the community’s achievements, and third to inspire present and future South Asian, Muslim and Scottish generations. It is a community-led charitable project that has been actively documenting a collection of inspirational stories and personal accounts, uniquely told by the protagonists themselves, describing at first hand their stories and adventures. These range all the way from the time of partition itself to resettling in Pakistan, and then to their final accounts of arriving in Scotland. The video footage enables the public to see their facial expressions, feel their emotions and hear their voices, creating poignant memories of these great men and women, and helping to gain a better understanding of the South Asian and Muslim community’s earliest days in Scotland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 730-744
Author(s):  
V.I. Loktionov

Subject. The article reviews the way strategic threats to energy security influence the quality of people's life. Objectives. The study unfolds the theory of analyzing strategic threats to energy security by covering the matter of quality of people's life. Methods. To analyze the way strategic threats to energy security spread across cross-sectoral commodity and production chains and influences quality of people's living, I applied the factor analysis and general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Results. I suggest interpreting strategic threats to energy security as risks of people's quality of life due to a reduction in the volume of energy supply. I identified mechanisms reflecting how the fuel and energy complex and its development influence the quality of people's life. The article sets out the method to assess such quality-of-life risks arising from strategic threats to energy security. Conclusions and Relevance. In the current geopolitical situation, strategic threats to energy security cause long-standing adverse consequences for the quality of people's life. If strategic threats to energy security are further construed as risk of quality of people's life, this will facilitate the preparation and performance of a more effective governmental policy on energy, which will subsequently raise the economic well-being of people.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Siddique ◽  
Shandana Shoaib ◽  
Zahoor Jan

A key aspect of work processes in service sector firms is the interconnection between tasks and performance. Relational coordination can play an important role in addressing the issues of coordinating organizational activities due to high level of interdependence complexity in service sector firms. Research has primarily supported the aspect that well devised high performance work systems (HPWS) can intensify organizational performance. There is a growing debate, however, with regard to understanding the “mechanism” linking HPWS and performance outcomes. Using relational coordination theory, this study examines a model that examine the effects of subsets of HPWS, such as motivation, skills and opportunity enhancing HR practices on relational coordination among employees working in reciprocal interdependent job settings. Data were gathered from multiple sources including managers and employees at individual, functional and unit levels to know their understanding in relation to HPWS and relational coordination (RC) in 218 bank branches in Pakistan. Data analysis via structural equation modelling, results suggest that HPWS predicted RC among officers at the unit level. The findings of the study have contributions to both, theory and practice.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Jezabel D. Bianchotti ◽  
Melina Denardi ◽  
Mario Castro-Gama ◽  
Gabriel D. Puccini

Sectorization is an effective technique for reducing the complexities of analyzing and managing of water systems. The resulting sectors, called district metering areas (DMAs), are expected to meet some requirements and performance criteria such as minimum number of intervention, pressure uniformity, similarity of demands, water quality and number of districts. An efficient methodology to achieve all these requirements together and the proper choice of a criteria governing the sectorization is one of the open questions about optimal DMAs design. This question is addressed in this research by highlighting the advantages of three different criteria when applied to real-word water distribution networks (WDNs). To this, here it is presented a two-stage approach for optimal design of DMAs. The first stage, the clustering of the system, is based on a Louvain-type greedy algorithm for the generalized modularity maximization. The second stage, the physical dividing of the system, is stated as a two-objective optimization problem that utilises the SMOSA version of simulated annealing for multiobjective problems. One objective is the number of isolation valves whereas for the second objective three different performance indices (PIs) are analyzed and compared: (a) standard deviation, (b) Gini coefficient and (c) loss of resilience. The methodology is applied to two real case studies where the first two PIs are optimized to address similar demands among DMAs. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for sectorization into independent DMAs with similar demands. Surprisingly, it found that for the real studied systems, loss of resilience achieves better performance for each district in terms of pressure uniformity and demand similarity than the other two specific performance criteria.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Maadi Mahdi Alajmi ◽  
Hanan Abdullah Al-Hadiah

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of using the iPad in learning to acquire the mental and performanceskills in teaching the social studies. Using experimental design method, the study compared two groups: (a)experimental, taught using the iPad, and (b) control group, taught using the traditional learning without iPad. A totalof 48 (24experimental group and 24 control group) eighth grade students in state of Kuwait participated in this study.The study started on the second semester on 2015-2016 on the average of 6 weeks. After the test on the study sampleand the statistical processing, the results revolved that: (1) there are no significant differences between theexperimental and the control group in mental performance in pre-test score. (2) There are no significant differencesbetween the experimental and the control group in skills performance in pre-test score. (3) There are significantdifferences between the experimental and the control group in mental performance in post-test score in favor ofexperimental group. (4) There are significant differences between the experimental and the control group in skillsperformance in post-test score in favor of experimental group. Based on the results, the study concluded withrelevant recommendations regarding the implementation of using iPad technology in education, and suggested somefurther studies in this topic.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Robert Charles Knoeppel ◽  
Curtis A. Brewer

Using Kentucky as a case study, the research described in this paper examines efforts to provide equality of educational opportunity.  Standards based educational reform has produced myriad data on student achievement that are used by educators, policy analysts, legislators, and researchers to discern progress.  This research makes use of multiple sources of data(CATS index, reading proficiency, math proficiency) in an attempt to more thoroughly consider progress in attempts to ameliorate gaps in student achievement that have been found to exist as related to local wealth.  Findings from the study show mixed results.  Although local wealth has decreased as a predictor of student achievement in reading, it is still a significant predictor of achievement in math.  Gaps are closing more rapidly at the elementary school level which suggests the need to study the process of education at the secondary level.  Lastly, student demographics, especially students qualifying for free and reduced lunch continue to be a significant predictor of student achievement.  We conclude that changes to state accountability systems that move the unit of analysis from the school to the student level offer the best opportunity to utilize emerging research methodologies that will enable practitioners and analysts to better analyze educational process.


Maska ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (203-204) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Ana Dubljević

This text is offering an overview of principles of feminist dramaturgical thinking, that have been identified and used in research on feminist dramaturgy through theoretical and practical work on the performance Still to Come, a Feminist Pornscape. Some of the principles are: the principle of bell hooks, the principle of relationality, the principle of significant otherness, the principle of negative capability, the principle of critters, and they can be related to a variety of aspects of politics and ethics in artistic practice. The text is an ending chapter of The Feminist Pornscapes, on Feminist Dramaturgical Thinking in Dance and Performance Practice book and is intentionally only sketching the current reach of the proposed principles with the wish to welcome the reader into a conversation, to pave the way for more thorough elaborations that are still to come.


Author(s):  
Lorna Ann Moore

This chapter discusses the one-to-one interactions between participants in the video performance In[bodi]mental. It presents personal accounts of users' body swapping experiences through real-time Head Mounted Display systems. These inter-corporeal encounters are articulated through the lens of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his work on the “Mirror Stage” (1977), phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) and his writings on the Chiasm, and anthropologist Rane Willerslev's (2007) research on mimesis. The study of these positions provides new insights into the blurred relationship between the corporeal Self and the digital Other. The way the material body is stretched across these divisions highlights the way digital media is the catalyst in this in[bodied] experience of be[ing] in the world. The purpose of this chapter is to challenge the relationship between the body and video performance to appreciate the impact digital media has on one's perception of a single bounded self and how two selves become an inter-corporeal experience shared through the technology.


Author(s):  
Peer Hasselmeyer ◽  
Gregory Katsaros ◽  
Bastian Koller ◽  
Philipp Wieder

The management of the entire service landscape comprising a Cloud environment is a complex and challenging venture. There, one task of utmost importance, is the generation and processing of information about the state, health, and performance of the various services and IT components, something which is generally referred to as monitoring. Such information is the foundation for proper assessment and management of the whole Cloud. This chapter pursues two objectives: first, to provide an overview of monitoring in Cloud environments and, second, to propose a solution for interoperable and vendor-independent Cloud monitoring. Along the way, the authors motivate the necessity of monitoring at the different levels of Cloud infrastructures, introduce selected state-of-the-art, and extract requirements for Cloud monitoring. Based on these requirements, the following sections depict a Cloud monitoring solution and describe current developments towards interoperable, open, and extensible Cloud monitoring frameworks.


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