title: The economics concepts of sixth and seventh form secondary school students and their teachers

authors: Orere-Clifford, Samuel D.

abstract: The nature of teaching and learning continues to elude educators and researchers despite over half a century of research in teaching and learning. The central problem seems to be how teachers should practise their profession to facilitate student learning. In this regard, there has been several suggestions such as developing certain teacher personality attributes (Ryans, 1960), special teaching behavioural techniques (Rosenshine, 1976a) and the child-centered education of Piaget (1966) and Ausubel (1968).
More recently, studies such as the Learning in Science Project of the University of Waikato (e.g., Osborne, 1981a) have drawn attention to the suggestion that children tend to develop misconceptions about scientific phenomena in the classroom. It is felt this could be due to teachers not tapping and relating new material to children’s previous knowledge and cognitive structures. 
This study sought to examine the suggestions of the Learning in Science Project as described above with regards to Economics. The investigation was therefore aimed at uncovering the Economics ideas Sixth and Seventh Formers generated about certain Economics concepts after lessons. It also investigated the nature of conceptions held by their teachers for the same concepts. 
The method of investigation included both qualitative and quantitative features. A qualitative approach was used to uncover the ideas held by a small sample of students. This was then reduced into a survey format and administered to a large sample of students and teachers.
The findings of the study suggest that Sixth and Seventh Form Economics Students possess conceptions of Economics not generally acceptable to Economists. This substantiates the suggestion of the Learning in Science Project that learners tend to develop misconceptions about phenomena introduced in the classroom. However, the findings of the study also indicate that the teachers of the students also possess misconceptions about Economics concepts. The suggestion is therefore made that students’ misconceptions about Economics concepts may not necessarily be due to teachers not taking students’ past knowledge into account, but to the possibility that teachers may be introducing misconceptions about Economics concepts in the classroom.
The study, therefore, suggests that teaching and learning may be enhanced if teachers take stock of the state of their knowledge of subject matter constantly and also introduce concepts to students in such a way as to retain the meanings of experts.

text: The economics concepts of sixth and seventh form secondary school students and their teachers The nature of teaching and learning continues to elude educators and researchers despite over half a century of research in teaching and learning. The central problem seems to be how teachers should practise their profession to facilitate student learning. In this regard, there has been several suggestions such as developing certain teacher personality attributes (Ryans, 1960), special teaching behavioural techniques (Rosenshine, 1976a) and the child-centered education of Piaget (1966) and Ausubel (1968).
More recently, studies such as the Learning in Science Project of the University of Waikato (e.g., Osborne, 1981a) have drawn attention to the suggestion that children tend to develop misconceptions about scientific phenomena in the classroom. It is felt this could be due to teachers not tapping and relating new material to children’s previous knowledge and cognitive structures. 
This study sought to examine the suggestions of the Learning in Science Project as described above with regards to Economics. The investigation was therefore aimed at uncovering the Economics ideas Sixth and Seventh Formers generated about certain Economics concepts after lessons. It also investigated the nature of conceptions held by their teachers for the same concepts. 
The method of investigation included both qualitative and quantitative features. A qualitative approach was used to uncover the ideas held by a small sample of students. This was then reduced into a survey format and administered to a large sample of students and teachers.
The findings of the study suggest that Sixth and Seventh Form Economics Students possess conceptions of Economics not generally acceptable to Economists. This substantiates the suggestion of the Learning in Science Project that learners tend to develop misconceptions about phenomena introduced in the classroom. However, the findings of the study also indicate that the teachers of the students also possess misconceptions about Economics concepts. The suggestion is therefore made that students’ misconceptions about Economics concepts may not necessarily be due to teachers not taking students’ past knowledge into account, but to the possibility that teachers may be introducing misconceptions about Economics concepts in the classroom.
The study, therefore, suggests that teaching and learning may be enhanced if teachers take stock of the state of their knowledge of subject matter constantly and also introduce concepts to students in such a way as to retain the meanings of experts.

year: 1985

title: Analyzing and repairing concept drift adaptation in data stream classification

authors: Halstead, Ben

subjects: computer science

abstract: Data collected over time often exhibit changes in distribution, or concept drift, caused by changes in factors relevant to the classification task, e.g. weather conditions. Incorporating all relevant factors into the model may be able to capture these changes, however, this is usually not practical. Data stream based methods, which instead explicitly detect concept drift, have been shown to retain performance under unknown changing conditions. These methods adapt to concept drift by training a model to classify each distinct data distribution. However, we hypothesize that existing methods do not robustly handle real-world tasks, leading to adaptation errors where context is misidentified. Adaptation errors may cause a system to use a model which does not fit the current data, reducing performance. We propose a novel repair algorithm to identify and correct errors in concept drift adaptation. Evaluation on synthetic data shows that our proposed AiRStream system has higher performance than baseline methods, while is also better at capturing the dynamics of the stream. Evaluation on an air quality inference task shows AiRStream provides increased real-world performance compared to eight baseline methods. A case study shows that AiRStream is able to build a robust model of environmental conditions over this task, allowing the adaptions made to concept drift to be analysed and related to changes in weather. We discovered a strong predictive link between the adaptions made by AiRStream and changes in meteorological conditions.

text: Analyzing and repairing concept drift adaptation in data stream classification Data collected over time often exhibit changes in distribution, or concept drift, caused by changes in factors relevant to the classification task, e.g. weather conditions. Incorporating all relevant factors into the model may be able to capture these changes, however, this is usually not practical. Data stream based methods, which instead explicitly detect concept drift, have been shown to retain performance under unknown changing conditions. These methods adapt to concept drift by training a model to classify each distinct data distribution. However, we hypothesize that existing methods do not robustly handle real-world tasks, leading to adaptation errors where context is misidentified. Adaptation errors may cause a system to use a model which does not fit the current data, reducing performance. We propose a novel repair algorithm to identify and correct errors in concept drift adaptation. Evaluation on synthetic data shows that our proposed AiRStream system has higher performance than baseline methods, while is also better at capturing the dynamics of the stream. Evaluation on an air quality inference task shows AiRStream provides increased real-world performance compared to eight baseline methods. A case study shows that AiRStream is able to build a robust model of environmental conditions over this task, allowing the adaptions made to concept drift to be analysed and related to changes in weather. We discovered a strong predictive link between the adaptions made by AiRStream and changes in meteorological conditions.

year: 2021

title: Rising demand for health care: The sustainability of community general practice in the Waikato

authors: Amey, Janet Heather

subjects: General practice

abstract: Community general practice is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s health system, providing first contact health care, care coordination and acting as gatekeeper to expensive hospital services. An ageing population now brings increasing demand for the care provided in general practice, with chronic conditions a major contributing factor. This rising demand, alongside limited workforce capacity will seriously test general practice sustainability. 

These evolving and multifaceted challenges are within the context of long-standing health access and outcome inequalities, particularly for Māori (and more recently the Pacific population) compared with Pākehā. The pursuit of equity is inherent in all health sector strategies, but any meaningful improvement will necessitate wide-ranging reform of current planning, funding and service delivery pathways across traditional sector boundaries.

The sustainability of general practice is about the sustainability and efficiency of the entire health system. To better measure the contribution of general practice care to the system, and improve demand projections, an expanded service use measure was developed, combining services of a general practice nature from Emergency Department and Accident & Medical settings with services delivered in community general practice.

Drawing on approaches from demography, epidemiology and health services research, linked demographic and health administrative data were used to undertake a retrospective, observational study of service use for 235,666 people enrolled with the Pinnacle Midlands Health Network in 2013/14. Using the new expanded measure, service use levels at a locality level were established by age, gender, ethnic group, chronic condition status, practice funding model, high needs status, income and geography of residence.

Significant variation was found in annual average consults (1.0 to 13.4 consults in 2013/14). Statistical analysis identified age, chronic conditions and gender as the key demand drivers responsible for such variation, with regional level results masking significant spatial variation. Where the cost of care was lower, people used a higher level of services in the enrolled practice setting and a lower level outside of it, suggesting the importance of affordable care. Māori and Pacific used significantly fewer services than Pākehā although there was substantial sub-regional variation. Using the expanded measure, the vast majority of care was delivered in the enrolled setting, including for those with chronic conditions.

Demand projections, based on the expanded measure of general practice, out to 2038 show the uneven geography of future demand due to disordered cohort flows and sub-regional population contexts. Overall, demand for services is projected to rise by 34 per cent to almost two million consults across the Waikato District Health Board catchment, with this driven predominantly by services for those aged 65+ years (or 45+ years in Hamilton City, Waikato and Waipa Districts).

Models of care are being transformed as general practices and Primary Health Organisations look to the future. Reorganisation of work roles, improved use of health information and use of emerging health technologies will be required to re-configure general practice in preparation for an ageing future, and to eliminate recalcitrant health inequalities. Real and inclusive collaboration across traditional system boundaries is perhaps the greatest challenge to general practice sustainability.

text: Rising demand for health care: The sustainability of community general practice in the Waikato Community general practice is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s health system, providing first contact health care, care coordination and acting as gatekeeper to expensive hospital services. An ageing population now brings increasing demand for the care provided in general practice, with chronic conditions a major contributing factor. This rising demand, alongside limited workforce capacity will seriously test general practice sustainability. 

These evolving and multifaceted challenges are within the context of long-standing health access and outcome inequalities, particularly for Māori (and more recently the Pacific population) compared with Pākehā. The pursuit of equity is inherent in all health sector strategies, but any meaningful improvement will necessitate wide-ranging reform of current planning, funding and service delivery pathways across traditional sector boundaries.

The sustainability of general practice is about the sustainability and efficiency of the entire health system. To better measure the contribution of general practice care to the system, and improve demand projections, an expanded service use measure was developed, combining services of a general practice nature from Emergency Department and Accident & Medical settings with services delivered in community general practice.

Drawing on approaches from demography, epidemiology and health services research, linked demographic and health administrative data were used to undertake a retrospective, observational study of service use for 235,666 people enrolled with the Pinnacle Midlands Health Network in 2013/14. Using the new expanded measure, service use levels at a locality level were established by age, gender, ethnic group, chronic condition status, practice funding model, high needs status, income and geography of residence.

Significant variation was found in annual average consults (1.0 to 13.4 consults in 2013/14). Statistical analysis identified age, chronic conditions and gender as the key demand drivers responsible for such variation, with regional level results masking significant spatial variation. Where the cost of care was lower, people used a higher level of services in the enrolled practice setting and a lower level outside of it, suggesting the importance of affordable care. Māori and Pacific used significantly fewer services than Pākehā although there was substantial sub-regional variation. Using the expanded measure, the vast majority of care was delivered in the enrolled setting, including for those with chronic conditions.

Demand projections, based on the expanded measure of general practice, out to 2038 show the uneven geography of future demand due to disordered cohort flows and sub-regional population contexts. Overall, demand for services is projected to rise by 34 per cent to almost two million consults across the Waikato District Health Board catchment, with this driven predominantly by services for those aged 65+ years (or 45+ years in Hamilton City, Waikato and Waipa Districts).

Models of care are being transformed as general practices and Primary Health Organisations look to the future. Reorganisation of work roles, improved use of health information and use of emerging health technologies will be required to re-configure general practice in preparation for an ageing future, and to eliminate recalcitrant health inequalities. Real and inclusive collaboration across traditional system boundaries is perhaps the greatest challenge to general practice sustainability.

year: 2018