bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Instructional effects of a performance support system designed to guide preservice teachers in developing technology integration strategies
Authors: Kalota Faisal , Hung Wei‐Chen 
Published: May 2012

AbstractThe purpose of this formative evaluation was to investigate the experiences of preservice teachers utilizing performance support system (PSS) technology to develop knowledge related to classroom technology integration. A PSS provides end users just‐in‐time support to perform various tasks. Because teachers have time constraints, a PSS can be used to support them with classroom technology integration. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used to answer the research questions. Qualitative data included focus group interviews and a perception questionnaire; these data were used to identify factors related to the participant' experiences. In addition, a pre‐ and post‐knowledge test was administered to the preservice teachers (n = 28) to study potential learning impact of a PSS for technology integration. Results showed that, although their learning improvement was not statistically significant, the participants reacted to PSS use positively, with caution. Based on the results, it is recommended that the PSS environment should be updated based on the feedback from the participants, and additional long‐term studies should be conducted to validate the current findings.Practitioner NotesWhat is known about this topic
Preservice teachers often lack technology integration skills.
Preservice teachers often do not have the necessary support that can help them develop technology integration skills.
Performance support systems (PSS) are known to provide just‐in‐time training and learning opportunities.
What this paper adds
Provides a framework for developing a PSS based on the principles of advance organizers.
Provides support to further investigate the use of PSS for preservice and in‐service teachers' professional development.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Institutions should investigate the effectiveness of using a PSS to support preservice teachers with technology integration issues.
K‐12 schools should investigate the effectiveness of using a PSS to support teachers with technology integration issues.
Designers of PSS should incorporate appropriate learning theories in the design framework of a PSS.
A group decision approach to developing concept–effect models for diagnosing student learning problems in mathematics
Authors: Hwang Gwo‐Jen , Panjaburee Patcharin , Triampo Wannapong , Shih Bo‐Ying 
Published: May 2012

AbstractDiagnosing student learning barriers has been recognized as the most fundamental and important issue for improving the learning achievements of students. In the past decade, several learning diagnosis approaches have been proposed based on the concept–effect relationship (CER) model. However, past studies have shown that the effectiveness of this model heavily depends on the concept relationship knowledge provided by the domain experts (eg, experienced teachers or educators for a specified subject); ie, the performance of the developed learning diagnosis systems could be significantly affected by subjective opinions, ignorance or insufficient knowledge if those concept relationships are derived from a single domain expert. To cope with this problem, this study proposes a group decision approach for developing the CER model with the cooperation of multiple domain experts. Based on the proposed approach, a testing and diagnostic system has been implemented; moreover, an experiment has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this new approach. The experimental results show that this approach is able to develop quality CER models, and hence the low‐achievement students who received the generated learning suggestions had significantly better learning achievements than those who learned with the previous approach.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic
Diagnosing student learning barriers is a fundamental and important issue for improving the learning achievements of students.
Several learning diagnosis approaches have been proposed based on the concept–effect relationship (CER) model.
The effectiveness of the learning diagnosis model heavily depends on the concept relationship knowledge provided by the domain experts.
What this paper adds
A group decision approach for developing the CER model with the cooperation of multiple domain experts is proposed.
A testing and diagnostic system was implemented based on the proposed approach.
An experiment was conducted to investigating whether the students guided by the proposed approach had better learning achievements than those guided by the original CER model approach.
Implications for practice and/or policy
The experimental results show that the low‐achievement students who received the learning suggestions generated by the new approach had significantly better learning achievements than those who learned with the previous approach.
Further studies of developing more effective tools or leading in other group decision strategies to help domain experts cooperatively determine the prerequisite relationships are needed.
Games for engaged learning of middle school children with special learning needs
Authors: Ke Fengfeng , Abras Tatiana 
Published: May 2012

AbstractIn this paper, we describe an in situ study that examined the diverse design features and effects of three pre‐algebra games for middle school children who have either challenges with learning or different language backgrounds. Data were collected through in‐field observation, artifact analysis, school performance report and knowledge test during 15 one‐hour gaming sessions over a period of 3 weeks. A list of key design features related to creating engagement and learning for students with special learning needs emerged from the data. The findings and discussions will inform educational designers and practitioners on successful educational game design and implementation for learners with diverse characteristics and needs.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic
Computer games can act as rich primers for engaged learning of academic content.
What this paper adds
The potential for computer games to promote engaged learning for school children with learning difficulty or different language/cultural backgrounds.
The common and unique game design features that promote engaged learning for school children with special learning needs.
Game‐based learner support for school children with special learning needs.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Educational game designers should make purposeful design efforts (eg, a simple fantasy, open‐ended game challenges and scaffolding with visual cue/feedback) to create learner‐adaptive engagement.
Content processing should be a core and active part of the game‐play to promote game‐based learning.
Adaptive and nonintrusive support should be provided to student players to reinforce game‐based learning.
In Pursuit of Quality. The Institutional Change of Wine Production Market in Piedmont
Authors: Barbera Filippo , Audifredi Stefano 
Published: May 2012

AbstractThis article analyses the consequences of the ‘methanol wine scandal’ on the wine production market of Piedmont. Contrary to what is usually claimed, these consequences where not the direct result of the scandal, but emerged only when a change in the institutional configuration of the market came about. The article illustrates how the institutional change following the scandal triggered the quality turn of the wine production market in Piedmont. The key processes at the root of this change are depicted in terms of quality conventions as coordination mechanisms embedded in the institutional context. The first part of the article outlines the conceptual coordinates concerning the ‘social construction’ of quality. Afterwards both the general and regional trends toward the quality production in the national and local wine sector are summarised. Then ‘the methanol wine scandal’ and its institutional consequences are illustrated. Finally, to appreciate the current organization of the local production market and of the quality conventions among wine producers, findings from interviews with local entrepreneurs are reported.
THE MYSTERIES OF OUR EXISTENCE: ESTRANGEMENT AND THEATRICALITY
Authors: CARNES NATALIE 
Published: May 2012

Abstract“Theater” has become a fashionable metaphor that theologians and ethicists deploy to correct what they see as a Gnostic or antinomian impulse to prioritize “inner state” over “outer action.” But their turn to theater as an easy way to valorize “outer action” conflates person and role, generating a confused anthropology that 1) obscures what theater could make obvious about occupational roles; 2) misses the distinctively non‐theatrical character of performing Christ and church; and 3) renders actions more easily legible than they in fact are. These losses are traced in the work of several theater theologians, and their resultant distortions in self, power, and freedom are elaborated with the help of Stephen Mulhall's critique of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. Gregory of Nyssa's use of theater, by contrast, avoids such distortions by invoking theater together with the “mysteries of our existence”—death and creatio ex nihilo. Theater, for Gregory, becomes a way to describe the estrangement Christians must live into in a world beholden to wealth and power. The anthropology embedded in his metaphor of theater elaborates how Christians might approach their occupational roles, the world, and skepticism.
BARTH AFTER KANT?
Authors: STANLEY TIMOTHY 
Published: May 2012

AbstractBarth consistently comments on Kant's importance for his early thought in his autobiographical sketches, letters, and even more explicitly in his 1930 lectures on Kant in his Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Interestingly, however, little attention has been paid to these latter lectures on Protestant history in the secondary literature. In part, this oversight has been due to the manner in which Barth's theology has been thought to overcome Kant's influence much earlier on in his intellectual development. Hence, although commentators such as Merold Westphal, Simon Fisher and Bruce McCormack have developed keen interest in Kant's influence upon Barth's early work, even engaging Barth's Neo‐Kantian context in great detail, my contention is that Barth's later interpretation of Kant is crucial to his intellectual development, and gives further insight into Barth's legacy for contemporary theology today. My aim in what follows is to refigure the relationship between Barth's early appropriation and critique of Kant, and the more onto‐theological issues at stake in his later Protestant history lectures. In so doing, we can begin to discern in Barth, not an abandonment or disregard for the metaphysical questions of being, but rather, the call to face them all the more rigorously.
AGENCY, AUTONOMY, AND SOCIAL INTELLIGIBILITY
Authors: HASSELBERGER WILLIAM 
Published: May 2012

AbstractPopular Frankfurt‐style theories of autonomy hold that (i) autonomy is motivation in action by psychological attitudes that have ‘authority’ to constitute the agent's perspective, and (ii) attitudes have this authority in virtue of their formal role in the individual's psychological system, rather than their substantive content. I pose a challenge to such ‘psychologistic’ views, taking Frankfurt's and Bratman's theories as my targets. I argue that motivation by attitudes that play the roles picked out by psychologistic theories is compatible with radically unintelligible behavior. Because of this, psychologistic views are committed to classifying certain agents as ‘autonomous’ whom we intuitively find to be dysfunctional. I then argue that a necessary condition for autonomy is that an agent's behavior is intelligible in a particular way: autonomy necessarily involves acting from a subjective practical perspective that is, in principle, minimally comprehensible to others – not simply in a causal sense, but in a substantive, socio‐cultural sense.
DEVIANCE AND CAUSALISM
Authors: O'BRIEN LILIAN 
Published: May 2012

AbstractDrawing on the problem of deviance, I present a novel line of argumentation against causal theories of action. The causalist faces a dilemma: either she adopts a simple account of the causal route between intention and outcome, at the cost of failing to rule out deviance cases, or she adopts a more sophisticated account, at the cost of ruling out cases of intentional action in which the causal route is merely unusual. Underlying this dilemma, I argue, is that the agent's perspective plays an ineliminable role in determining which causal pathways are deviant and which are not.
EQUAL POLITICAL LIBERTIES
Authors: FREIMAN CHRISTOPHER 
Published: May 2012

AbstractFormal guarantees of political equality are compatible with inequalities in the value of political liberties, as individuals may convert their socioeconomic advantages into political advantages. Perhaps the predominant strategy for limiting substantive political inequalities recommends limiting inequalities in the means of acquiring political power for private gain – most notably, economic means. I express a worry that measures instituted to restrict economic inequalities may do more to frustrate the cause of political equality than to further it. I argue that attempts to decrease individuals' means to capture political power will systematically increase their motives to capture political power.
PRE‐PUNISHMENT, COMMUNICATIVE THEORIES OF PUNISHMENT, AND COMPATIBILISM
Authors: WRINGE BILL 
Published: May 2012

AbstractSaul Smilansky holds that there is a widespread intuition to the effect that pre‐punishment – the practice of punishing individuals for crimes which they have not committed, but which we are in a position to know that they are going to commit – is morally objectionable. Smilanksy has argued that this intuition can be explained by our recognition of the importance of respecting the autonomy of potential criminals. (Smilansky, 1994) More recently he has suggested that this account of the intuition only vindicates it if determinism is false, and argues that this presents a problem for compatibilists, who, he says, are committed to thinking that the truth of determinism makes no moral difference (Smilansky, 2007).In this paper I argue that the intuitions Smilansky refers to can be explained and vindicated as consequences of the truth of a communicative conception of punishment. Since the viability of the communicative conception does not depend on the falsity of determinism, our intuitions about pre‐punishment do not clash with (what Smilanksy calls) compatibilism. And if the communicative theory of punishment is – as Duff (2001) suggests – a form of retributivism, the account also meets New's (1992) challenge to retributivists to explain what is wrong with pre‐punishment.
THE RATCHETING‐UP EFFECT
Authors: CARBONELL VANESSA 
Published: May 2012

AbstractI argue for the existence of a ‘ratcheting‐up effect’: the behavior of moral saints serves to increase the level of moral obligation the rest of us face. What we are morally obligated to do is constrained by what it would be reasonable for us to believe we are morally obligated to do. Moral saints provide us with a special kind of evidence that bears on what we can reasonably believe about our obligations. They do this by modeling the level of sacrifice a person can realistically bear. Exposure to moral saints thus ‘ratchets‐up’ our obligations by combating a type of ignorance that would otherwise defeat those obligations.
Household Migration, Remittances and Their Impact on Health in Indonesia1
Authors: Lu Yao 
Published: May 2012

AbstractThe growing flow of migrants’ remittances has generated much interest in understanding the socio‐economic consequences of household migration for individuals and families in migrant‐sending areas. In this paper, I examine the effect of household migration on health status, as measured by nutritional status, of adults who have remained behind in rural Indonesia, a setting with a high rate of out‐migration and poor nutritional profiles. Assuming that remittances may improve household economic resources and thus change dietary intake and health‐related investment, household migration may be associated with the risks of both undernutrition and overnutrition. The analyses use longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey and fixed‐effect regressions. The results show that adults in emigrant households were significantly less susceptible to being underweight than those in non‐migrant households, but that they did not have an increased risk of being overweight. The improved nutritional status was restricted to people in households with labour migrants, highlighting the role of remittances in improving nutritional intake. The health gain was also concentrated among women, increased with the number of out‐migrants and was revealed over time as remittances arrived. Overall, this study demonstrates the beneficial role of household migration, and especially the resulting remittances, in the health status of household members in resource‐constrained settings. Improving transfers of remittances would be helpful in reducing the problem of undernutrition in poor migrant‐sending areas.
How Responsive are Remittances to Recipients’ Welfare? Evidence from Fiji
Authors: Jimenez Eliana V. , Brown Richard P.C. 
Published: May 2012

AbstractUsing data from a customized household survey in Fiji, we assess the extent to which remittances are motivated by the migrants’ commitment to provide social protection to their families back home. We test this hypothesis by estimating econometrically the responsiveness of migrants’ remittances to the perceived financial need of recipients. We extend a mixed‐motives model of private transfers, incorporating household‐specific, subjectively assessed welfare in place of the more generally used poverty‐line measure of welfare. We find stronger evidence that remittances provide important social protection for the poorest when using our extended model. We also find a positive, but relatively much weaker, relationship for those above the poverty threshold, implying support for switching of motives once the household’s welfare has reached a level that is deemed adequate. We consider the possibility that welfare improvements in migrant‐sending countries could increase or decrease remittance flows depending on pre‐transfer welfare levels and other intervening factors. In relation to policy, we caution against policy interventions that could undermine the functioning of the informal social protection role of migration and remittances. We also caution against unwarranted concern over the use of remittances for consumption spending and the associated, misplaced policy measures to address this.
Digital image analysis vs. clinical assessment to evaluate repigmentation after punch grafting in vitiligo
Authors: Linthorst Homan M.W. , Wolkerstorfer A. , Sprangers M.A.G. , van der Veen J.P.W. 
Published: May 2012

AbstractBackground  Repigmentation as a treatment outcome in vitiligo is not assessed in a standard way, making results of clinical trials hard to compare. Different types of repigmentation assessments after punch grafting have not been compared so far.Objective  To compare assessments of repigmentation by a digital image analysis system (DIAS) with those of clinical observers and patients after punch grafting for vitiligo.Methods  One vitiligo patch was selected in each patient (n = 21). This patch was treated with the punch grafting technique. The grade of repigmentation (%) after 3 months was assessed by: (i) DIAS; (ii) 3 clinical observers ; and (iii) the patient, scoring the grade of repigmentation on photographs. Physicians and patients also evaluated the global result on a 7‐point scale.Results  There was an almost perfect agreement between the three clinical observers and the DIAS (ICC 0.83). As expected, variation was found between the clinical observers. Patients’ scores showed a moderate agreement with the DIAS (ICC 0.49) and a poor agreement with the physicians (ICC 0.28). Overall, the patients were more satisfied with the results than the physicians.Conclusions  Whereas the results of the digital and clinical assessments were comparable, patients’ ratings diverged. The DIAS can overcome the inevitable differences between observers, which are intrinsic to a visual grading method, and is advisable for clinical trials on vitiligo to objectively assess repigmentation in limited lesions.
Relationship between itch and psychological status of patients with atopic dermatitis
Authors: Chrostowska‐Plak D. , Reich A. , Szepietowski J.C. 
Published: May 2012

AbstractBackground  Itching is a cardinal symptom of atopic dermatitis (AD).Objective  The study aim was to evaluate the relationships between pruritus and stress, health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) and depression in adult patients with AD.Methods  Eight‐nine patients (30 men and 59 women) with AD were included. Demographic and clinical data were collected. The intensity of pruritus was assessed according to the 10‐point Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the 4‐Item Itch Questionnaire, HRQoL according to Dermatology Life Quality Index, and depression symptoms with Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI). Stress experienced by patients was evaluated with Social Readjustment Rating Scale and Stress Self‐assessment Scale.Results  The mean intensity of pruritus according to VAS was 7.9 ± 2.2 points, and according to 4‐Item Itch Questionnaire 14.0 ± 4.4 points. The intensity of pruritus was related to the stress experienced by the patients prior to disease exacerbation (ρ = 0.37, P < 0.001). A significant correlation between pruritus and HRQoL was also found (VAS: ρ = 0.5, P < 0.001, 4‐Item Itch Questionnaire: ρ = 0.5, P < 0.001) as well as between pruritus and BDI (VAS: ρ = 0.44, P < 0.001, 4‐Item Itch Questionnaire: ρ = 0.51, P < 0.001). Patients with symptoms suggesting depression had more intense pruritus compared with the rest of patients (VAS: 9.1 ± 1.6 vs. 7.6 ± 2.2 points, P = 0.004; 4‐Item Itch Questionnaire: 17.3 ± 2.5 vs. 13.1 ± 4.4 points, P < 0.001).Conclusions  Itching intensity in AD plays an important role in determining patients’ psychosocial well‐being. Patients with atopic dermatitis require an effective, long‐term antipruritic therapy to improve their QoL and reduce the potential risk of depression.
MicroRNAs in the pathogenesis of malignant melanoma
Authors: Glud M. , Gniadecki R. 
Published: May 2012

AbstractCutaneous malignant melanoma is the most aggressive and lethal form of skin cancer. Over the past decades, its incidence has been increasing by 3–8% per year in western countries while mortality has stabilized. Melanoma is a heterogenous disease and can be subclassified based on distinct clinical characteristics, histopathological features and mutation patterns within NRAS and BRAF genes. Recent data indicate that microRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in the pathogenesis of malignant melanoma. MiRNAs are small, non‐coding, regulatory RNA molecules expressed in a tissue and cell specific manner and are known to play a crucial role in cell homeostasis and carcinogenesis. MiRNAs might prove to be powerful cancer biomarkers and future therapeutic targets. In this review, we focused on the miRNA involvement in four molecular pathways known to be deregulated in malignant melanoma, including the RAS‐RAF‐MEK‐ERK pathway, the p16INK4A‐CDK4‐RB pathway, the PIK3‐AKT pathway and the MITF pathway.