ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Investigating Academic Self-Efficacy of University Students in Terms of Socio-Demographic Variables
Author: Satici, Seydi Ahmet
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Self Efficacy,High School Students,College Students,Majors (Students),Parent Background,Educational Attainment,Statistical Analysis,Gender Differences,Family Financial Resources,Family Size,Questionnaires,Student Attitudes,Measures (Individuals),Foreign Countries

In this study whether academic self-efficacy of university students differ in terms of various socio-demographic features has been investigated. The study was conducted on 1679 students who were attending Anadolu University. In the study, the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale and Personal Information Form were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the data, independent sample t test and one-way analysis of variance were used. The findings of the study suggested that there are significant differences between academic self-efficacy, and gender, grade level, economic situation of the family, and perceived academic achievement. It was also suggested by the findings of the study that there are no significant differences between academic self-efficacy of university students, and field of study, education levels of the parents, number of family members and sibling numbers, perceived academic achievement in the high school, and the dwelling unit where the student lived the longest. Findings were discussed in line with relevant literature and conclusions were made.
Accurate On-Line Intervention Practices for Efficient Improvement of Reading Skills in Africa
Author: Marshall, Minda B.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Lifelong Learning,Reading Skills,Reading Improvement,Reading Instruction,Web Based Instruction,Intervention,Accuracy,Efficiency,Case Studies,Visual Perception,Silent Reading,Reading Fluency,Reading Comprehension,Public Schools,Private Schools,Elementary Secondary Education,Reading Strategies,Eye Movements,Reading Rate,Correlation,Regression (Statistics),Student Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Feedback (Response)

Lifelong learning is the only way to sustain proficient learning in a rapidly changing world. Knowledge and information are exploding across the globe. We need accurate ways to facilitate the process of drawing external factual information into an internal perceptive advantage from which to interpret and argue new information. Accurate and Effective Reading enables us to act creatively and critically in a world which is ever-changing. It provides rapid, ready access to new information and knowledge that will promote lifelong learning. LAB-on-line, a South African initiative, has proven that reading skills development is possible through visual skills and silent reading fluency improvement combined with upgrading of comprehension strategies. LAB has assisted more than 38,000 users, from Grade 1 to tertiary students to read faster, read better and remember more. This project looked at the 2014/15 LAB-on-line results in a case study of students from various public and private schools (Grade 1 to Grade 12) across South Africa. LectorSA developed LAB-on-line based on 30 years of research as an on-line student interface to assist students from Grade 1 through tertiary student levels in developing the crucial skills needed to access information intelligently.
How E-Gov in Greece Affects Life-Long Learning for Public Servants, Working on Technical Field
Author: Goulas, Dimitrios
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Lifelong Learning,Government (Administrative Body),Information Technology,Urban Areas,Statistical Analysis,Engineering,Government Employees,Case Studies,Attitude Measures,Role,Professional Education,Questionnaires,Internet

Engineers that work as civil servants cover a wide range of competences, administrative and scientific, which implies that they deal with many difficulties in the exercise of their duties as executives. Electronic government (e-gov), through the use of new Technologies of Information and Communications (ICT) at public technical services, has changed the procedures and the daily operation of public services. These changes create new needs but also new prospects in education/training of public services' executives. In this research, authors made a case study, examining the case of the municipality of Patras, one of the bigger municipalities of Greece. They used the method of review and the quantitative methodological approach. Their objectives concentrated on recording the aspects of Engineers working as Public Employees, regarding new needs, possibilities and choices of training in the frames of e-gov and comparing their opinions with their appositeness and their role in the organization they serve.
Media Education in Kazakhstan: Work Experience
Author: Laila, Akhmetova
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Media Literacy,Social Networks,Educational Improvement,Journalism Education,Educational History,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Technology,Technological Literacy

In the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2012 started work on formation of literacy in the field of media education for journalists, educators, and youth. Studied publishing foreign scientists, work experience in different countries, manuals, seminars and workshops, publishes scientific works in the Kazakh and Russian languages, and considers issues of media education in social networks on scientific, methodical and practical conferences. Development of complex measures on improvement of media education in Kazakhstan. Project goal: development of methodical materials on the formation of literacy in the field of media education in Kazakhstan for training target groups and informing the public.
Creating Learning Environments for Indigenous Students through Cultured-Based Math Modules
Author: Yao, Ru-Fen
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Indigenous Populations,Educational Environment,Culturally Relevant Education,Mathematics Instruction,Learning Modules,Tribes,Elementary School Students,Curriculum Design,Observation,Interviews,Content Analysis,Program Implementation,Learning Motivation,College School Cooperation,Teacher Attitudes,Teaching Methods,Instructional Materials,Case Studies,Qualitative Research

The main purposes of this one-year case study are to create learning environments for indigenous students through culture-based mathematics instructional modules, and what teachers' responds are in two tribes. The researcher leads sixteen in-service teachers and seven pre-service teachers to enter two indigenous tribes- &quot;Cado&quot; and &quot;Jayama,&quot; and design culture-based math modules for indigenous students of tribal elementary schools. Through five stages of guidance, including &quot;preparation and planning,&quot; &quot;exploration and understanding,&quot; &quot;reading and design,&quot; &quot;comment and revision,&quot; and &quot;practice and reflection,&quot; the participants work together to develop seven sets of culture-based math modules in total. Based on observation, interview, and analysis of related documents, it is shown that the implementation through culture-based mathematics instructional modules could motivate students' interest in learning math, and enhance their initiatives in the classroom. Hopefully, such cooperation between universities and local elementary schools will lead to improvement in the mathematics learning environments for the tribes.
Discourse Connector Usage in Argumentative Essays by American and Thai University Students
Author: Jangarun, Kamolphan
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Connected Discourse,Form Classes (Languages),Statistical Analysis,Essays,Computational Linguistics,Persuasive Discourse,Interlanguage,Transfer of Training,Second Language Learning,Communication Strategies,Pragmatics,North Americans,Asians,Undergraduate Students,Questionnaires,Foreign Countries,Scores,Native Speakers,North American English,English (Second Language),Discourse Analysis

This study investigated the similarities and differences in the use of discourse connectors (DCs) in argumentative essays of American undergraduate students (AMs), Thai with high-English exposure (THHs) and Thai with low-English exposure (THLs). The data of these three groups were collected from 60 essays; 20 essays were from the corpus of University of Michigan with a total of 43 essays, the 40 Thai data were selected from 300 Thai university students based on their English exposure scores. Adopting the theoretical framework of Halliday and Hasan (1976), Biber et al. (1999), and Cowan (2008), there were five categories of DCs in this study: Additive, Adversative, Causal, Temporal, and Continuatives. The data were statistically analyzed in terms of mean, standard deviation, t-test, and One-Way ANOVA. It was found that there was a significant difference in two categories: Causal and Temporal. The t-test for Causal was 0.007, and the t-test for Temporal was 0.005 (p &lt; 0.05). The differences in the use of DCs in AMs and THHs and THLs could be the effect of interlanguage processes, i.e., Language Transfer, Transfer of training, and Strategies of second language communication. Additive category was most frequently used by all three groups, especially the use of the DC lexis &quot;and.&quot; It is interesting to discover that pragmatically speaking &quot;and&quot; represents many discourse functions beside Addition. It is used in all main categories, i.e., Adversative, Causal, Temporal and Continuatives.
Extraversion and Female EFL Learners as Listeners: A Qualitative Investigation
Author: Akdemir, Ahmet Selçuk
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Personality Traits,Extraversion Introversion,Females,Qualitative Research,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,State Universities,Foreign Countries,Semi Structured Interviews,College Freshmen,Content Analysis,Student Attitudes,Gender Differences,Listening Skills

This study aims to investigate extraversion as a personality trait of female EFL learners as listeners. The study is based on qualitative research design. Five students, who were studying as freshman students at English Language Teaching Department of a public university in Turkey, are the participants of the study. All participants have been selected among freshman students of the department. Data which was collected with semi-structured interviews was transcribed verbatim by the researcher himself and then it was analysed with content analysis method. According to results of the study, extraversion is found to be a significant personality trait of female EFL learners as listeners. Besides, six sub-dimensions of extraversion were identified under two main categories. The study is expected to contribute the literature in terms of a detailed investigation of extraversion for female EFL learners as listeners.
Automated Scoring of L2 Spoken English with Random Forests
Author: Kobayashi, Yuichiro
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Second Language Learning,Computer Assisted Testing,Scoring,Automation,English (Second Language),Oral Language,Language Proficiency,Foreign Countries,Predictor Variables,Statistical Analysis,Research Methodology,Classification,Models,Accuracy,Nouns,Word Frequency,Lexicology

The purpose of the present study is to assess second language (L2) spoken English using automated scoring techniques. Automated scoring aims to classify a large set of learners' oral performance data into a small number of discrete oral proficiency levels. In automated scoring, objectively measurable features such as the frequencies of lexical and grammatical items are generally used as &quot;exploratory variables&quot; to predict oral proficiency levels, any of which can be used as a &quot;criterion variable&quot; in this study. We have chosen the NICT JLE Corpus, a corpus of 1,281 Japanese EFL learners' speech productions coded into nine oral proficiency levels (Izumi, Uchimoto, &amp; Isahara, 2004). The nine oral proficiency levels were used as the criterion variables and linguistic features analyzed in Biber (1988) as explanatory variables. We employed random forests (Breiman, 2001), a powerful method for text classification and feature extraction, to predict oral proficiency. As a result of random forests with the out-of-bag error estimate, 60.11% of the productions were correctly classified. Compared to the baseline accuracy of the simplest possible algorithm of always choosing the most frequent level (37.63%), our random forests model improved prediction by 22.48 points. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient with human scoring was 0.85. Predictors that showed a clear discrimination of oral proficiency levels were tokens, types, and the frequency of nouns in the order of strength.
The Use of Prosody in Semantic and Syntactic Disambiguation: Comparison between Japanese and Chinese Speakers' Sentence Production in English
Author: Tian, Shuang
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Semantics,Suprasegmentals,Japanese,Chinese,Phrase Structure,Protocol Analysis,Syntax,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Native Language,Cues,Pronunciation,Graduate Students,Contrastive Linguistics,Foreign Countries,Statistical Analysis,Task Analysis,Language Tests

The present study examined the use of prosody in semantic and syntactic disambiguation by means of comparison between Japanese and Chinese speakers' production of English sentences. In Chinese and Japanese, lexical prosody is more prominent than sentence prosody, and the sentential meaning contrast is usually realized through particles or a change in word order instead of prosodic cues. In order to find out whether Chinese and Japanese speakers of English can produce prosodic differences when they are aware of the syntactic and semantic ambiguity of the sentence, a read-aloud experiment was conducted. The results indicated that both Japanese and Chinese speakers were able to represent the difference of meaning by means of pause and the rising or falling of pitch at the final position of a sentence, which was reflected by their performance on boundary and tag questions. However, it was difficult for them to represent the difference of focus and phrase structure type merely by means of prosody. These findings suggest that some aspects of English prosody, such as a compound accent that is opposite to that of Japanese and Chinese, a phrasal accent that is peculiar to some degree, and an emphatic focus, require more consideration than other aspects. Furthermore, regardless of whether they are Japanese or Chinese learners of English, learners should expend more time and concentration on practicing the specific patterns of prosody that relate to semantic or syntactic disambiguation in English.
Paedagogus Hungaricus Denomination of Teachers in Hungary and Eastern Europe in the XXth Century
Author: Gloviczki, Zoltán
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teaching Methods,Hungarian,Language Usage,Diachronic Linguistics,Professional Education,Secondary School Teachers,Social Systems,Foreign Countries,Christianity,European History

The Hungarian word &quot;pedagógus&quot; means people who work as professional teachers in the educational system. Meanwhile the word &quot;paedagogus&quot; is a common European heritage, which is quite a unique lingual phenomenon. The &quot;paidagogos-paedagogus&quot;--across the Hellenistic culture, the Biblical use of the word, the language of the patristic age and the later theological and spiritual literature--becomes an abstraction without reference to the word of schools. The modern Indo-European languages consistently use other classical expressions (&quot;précepteur&quot;, &quot;professeur&quot;, &quot;maître&quot; etc.), or some own original words (&quot;teacher&quot;, &quot;Lehrer&quot; etc.). Though the Hungarian language has its original word covering the idea of &quot;teacher&quot; (&quot;tanító&quot;); this word is getting to mean in the course of classification of professional education (by ages of pupils and types of schools) teacher, namely the one, who teaches in a secondary grammar school. Its original role has been taken over by the classical &quot;paedagogus&quot; (&quot;pedagógus&quot;), instead of other original Hungarian possibilities thanks to a political-historical coincidence. It is surprisingly not a direct classical heritage, but an expression used by the communist party of the new-born Soviet Union, and it was spread by the local communist parties during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after the World War II.
A Survey on EFL Teachers' Assessment Methods in Entry-Level Writing Courses in Technological Universities in Taiwan
Author: Chen, Cheryl Wei-yu
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Surveys,Teacher Attitudes,Student Evaluation,Language Teachers,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Evaluation Methods,Writing Instruction,College Faculty,Writing Teachers,Essays,Peer Evaluation,Portfolios (Background Materials),Foreign Countries

How writing teachers conduct their assessment is an important but under-researched topic in the field of language assessment. By partly adopting Cheng et al.'s (2004) survey, this mail survey study aims to fill this gap by examining how tertiary-level EFL writing teachers assess their students in basic English writing classes in Taiwan. The results indicate that the most frequently used method was &quot;paragraph writing&quot; (84%), followed by &quot;editing a piece of writing such as a sentence or a paragraph&quot; (64%), &quot;essay writing&quot; (40%), and &quot;peer assessment&quot; (36%). Teachers were also found to use an eclectic mix of methods when assessing their students, and large-scale projects such as student portfolios were used by about a quarter of the participants. The results of this study offer a glimpse into teachers' classroom assessment methods for entry-level EFL writing courses. It is hoped that more research efforts would be carried out to further our understanding of teachers' assessment methods.
Sustainability and Science Learning: Perceptions from 8th Grade Students Involved with a Role Playing Activity
Author: Freire, Sofia
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Grade 8,Sustainability,Science Education,Role Playing,Science Activities,Facilities,Nuclear Energy,Relevance (Education),Scientific Concepts,Physics,Chemistry,Middle School Students,Data Analysis,Student Attitudes,Focus Groups,Qualitative Research,Decision Making,Science Process Skills,Social Action,Interviews

Raising awareness about sustainability is an urgent need and as such education for sustainability has gained relevancy for the last decades. It is acknowledged that science education can work as an important context for educating for sustainability. The goal of the present paper is to describe a role-playing activity about the construction of a nuclear power plant and to know how it affected students' perceptions concerning sustainability, their degree of involvement and the type of competencies manifested while involved in the activity. This is qualitative study, adopting an interpretative orientation. Participants were 39 students from 8th grade of elementary education (average age 13 years old). We collected and analyzed students' written documents and focus group interview after the activity was over. Data analysis was inductive. This study shows the importance of bridging science and sustainable education. The role-playing activity made the theme relevant for the students, and they were engaged with searching relevant information, thinking about it, and ways to present and to support their position. By proceeding this way, students became implicated with the theme under discussion and learnt about the curricular topic energy.
The Context Is the Message?! Learning about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through Computerized Simulations in Different National Contexts
Author: Kampf, Ronit
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Conflict,Computer Simulation,Simulated Environment,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Knowledge Level,Attitude Change,Role Playing,Undergraduate Students,Questionnaires,Perspective Taking,Context Effect,Foreign Countries,Computer Games,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Student Surveys,Statistical Analysis,Cultural Differences,Cross Cultural Studies

Two cross-national experimental studies examined the effects of PeaceMaker and Global Conflicts on knowledge acquisition and attitude change regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. PeaceMaker and Global Conflicts are role-playing computerized simulations of this conflict. 248 undergraduate students from Turkey, Israel, Palestine and the US participated in the two studies. They filled in questionnaires measuring knowledge and attitudes before and after playing the games. Results suggested stronger effects in knowledge acquisition and attitude change for secondary/third parties (i.e., Turks and Americans) compared to directly involved parties (i.e., Israeli-Jews and Palestinians). Yet effects in attitude change and perspective taking were limited for the Global Conflicts Game. The variation in the results obtained from different national contexts indicates the importance of context in learning from simulations, particularly important for the pedagogy and learning scholarship in the context of peacebuilding. The effect of context on learning from simulations should encourage scholars of experiential teaching and learning in conflictual contexts to direct their attention to exploring the contingencies of effectiveness for simulations, rather than adopting dichotomous research questions that ask whether simulations are useful or not. Yet the game characteristics may be crucial in determining whether the players gain the perspective of both sides or not.
The Indicators of the Quality and Changes of Teachers' Work
Author: Fuzi, Beatrix
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Competencies,Teacher Characteristics,Teacher Effectiveness,Student Attitudes,Questionnaires,Interviews,Observation,Statistical Analysis,Factor Analysis,Affective Behavior,Personality Traits,Secondary School Teachers,Foreign Countries

We present the indicators chosen for the determination of the quality of teacher's work: their popularity, effectiveness and disposition. As part of an empirical research project, their suitability as indicators was examined. It was discussed if a significant change can occur in the teachers' quality spontaneously or as a result of mentoring. To determine the popularity and effectiveness of the 71 teachers involved, we relied on the opinions of 4,150 students, gathered by questionnaires. The teachers' disposition was examined by the help of questionnaires. Interviews were conducted and lessons were observed. The quantitative and the individual, qualitative analyses of the teachers were combined. Based on factor analysis, it can be stated that popularity, effectiveness and positive disposition jointly characterize teachers performing high quality work. On the basis of the factor scores, the teachers examined were broken into three groups of different quality levels of work: good, medium and weak. The reliability and validity of the indicators could also be examined due to the longitudinal research. Reliability was characterised by the proportion of data that remained unchanged after 4 and 8 years. The changes of the quality of teachers' work were shown by the way of the sensitivity of the indicators. Spontaneous changes, as well as those induced by mentoring, were perceivable in the indicators.