ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Hobby-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour of Highly Dedicated Online Museum Visitors
Author: Skov, Mette
Date: 2013-12-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Museums,Information Seeking,Internet,Web Sites,Users (Information),Military Service,Recreational Activities,Information Science,Online Surveys,Interviews,Foreign Countries,Statistical Analysis,Questionnaires,Qualitative Research

Introduction: This paper explores the characteristics of online museum visitors in an everyday life, information-seeking context. Method: A triangulation of research methods was applied. A Web questionnaire survey gave initial, quantitative information about online museum visitors to a military museum. Follow-up interviews (n = 24) obtained rich, qualitative data to validate and elaborate the characteristics of online museum visitors' information-seeking behaviour. Analysis: Based on the serious leisure perspective, data analysis led to the identification of two different user groups named collectors and liberal arts enthusiasts. Analysis showed that the two hobby classes have distinct profiles including differences in the nature of their knowledge acquisition. Results: Across the two hobby classes, participants can be characterised as special interest museum visitors pursuing a long-standing interest or hobby. The identified information needs were surprisingly well-defined known item needs and only few exploratory information needs were identified. Participants stressed the importance of personal channels and the social context of the hobby. Conclusions: The present study contributes to the research area of everyday life information seeking within serious leisure. It also contributes to the emerging field of museum informatics by adding to the characteristics of the online museum visitor.
Social Tagging in a Scholarly Digital Library Environment: Users' Perspectives
Author: Noorhidawati, A.
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Social Networks,Electronic Libraries,Indexing,Information Retrieval,Computer Software,Educational Environment,Usability,Users (Information),Use Studies,Evaluation Methods,Questionnaires,Surveys,Interviews

Introduction: This paper reports an exploratory study examining how users participate in social tagging activities in a scholarly digital library environment to learn about their motivations, behaviour, and practices. Method: This study was conducted in two phases: a survey to investigate usage and attitudes of social tagging tool, and a task-based user study on tagging practices in Theses@UMalaya followed by a post-task questionnaire and interview. A total of thirty -seven responses were gathered out of 160 respondents giving a 23% response rate. Analysis: Responses to the study were analysed using SPSS while qualitative data were coded to bring together the emerging themes. Results: The survey demonstrated that the majority of the participants have not used social tagging before mainly because they were unaware of the existence. The participants used keyword that most closely related to describe the documents as a tag. Usability of the social tagging application was evaluated using SUMI and PLE constructs. The participants indicated the social tagging tool was relatively more usable rather than providing them with the ability to carry out the tagging process with less effort. Conclusions: A better understanding of social tagging usage and usability will help to improve future development of social tagging tools in digital libraries. [This paper was published as part of: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, 19-22 August, 2013.]
Dropout Factories and the Vaccination Approach: The Impact of the Dropout Rate on the Economy and the Need for Effective Literacy Instruction
Author: Carlson, Carolyn L.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Dropouts,Dropout Rate,High School Students,Literacy,Economic Impact,State Standards,Academic Standards,National Competency Tests,Nonfiction,Difficulty Level,Vocabulary Development

Almost seven thousand students drop out of high school every day. Without strong literacy skills, students are less likely to experience academic success and more likely to drop out. This has a negative impact not only on those students, but on the economy. If the dropouts from the Class of 2011 had graduated, the nation's economy would have gained nearly $154 billion in additional income over their lifetimes. Therefore, a high school diploma is considered the &quot;best economic stimulus package.&quot; The requirements of the Common Core State Standards will help address the literacy needs of students to be successful in school and become college and career ready.
Making Sense of Texts
Author: Harper, Rebecca G.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Language Arts,Reader Text Relationship,Concept Formation,Prior Learning,Learning Strategies,Preservice Teacher Education,Poetry,Oral Interpretation

This article addresses the triadic nature regarding meaning construction of texts. Grounded in Rosenblatt's (1995; 1998; 2004) Transactional Theory, research conducted in an undergraduate Language Arts curriculum course revealed that when presented with unfamiliar texts, students used prior experiences, social interactions, and literary strategies to aid in meaning construction. A discussion of these primary themes explains possible implications and suggestions for teacher education programs and classroom practice.
From Fearing STEM to Playing with It: The Natural Integration of STEM into the Preschool Classroom
Author: Torres-Crespo, Marisel N.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: STEM Education,Play,Summer Programs,Problem Solving,Preschool Children,Preschool Education,Engineering,Engineering Education,Scientific Concepts,Preschool Teachers,Pretests Posttests,Observation

The article describes the process of developing and implementing a STEM Summer Camp that allowed Preschoolers to experiment and investigate with materials while learning basic concepts of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through play as part of the educational process. The participants were presented with problems that they needed to solve together. Although the camp emphasized engineering skills and explored gender differences in preschoolers' performance in those activities, the main focus was to incorporate play in all the activities. This camp was a perfect example of how children learn more complex skills easily through play.
POWER Innovation: Transforming a Culture
Author: Quattrochi, David P.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Finance,Financial Support,School Districts,School Business Relationship,STEM Education,Partnerships in Education,School Buses,Fuels,Elementary Schools,Secondary Schools,Industry

The Carrollton Exempted Village School District is experiencing a major transformation due to the Utica Shale industry boom that has positively impacted the district. New money has not been passed by the voters since 1977. As a result, the administration and board had to find alternative ways to fund the district, which includes partnering with various oil and gas companies and most importantly, ensuring that students are learning the necessary skills in the classroom to compete in the local workforce. Three strategies emerged from this transformation.
Comments on Tobin's Contribution to Comparative Research in Anthropology and in Education
Author: Varenne, Hervé
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Anthropology,Comparative Analysis,Ideology,Educational Research,Cultural Differences,Cross Cultural Studies,Reader Response,Preschool Education,Foreign Countries

Tobin's work has been groundbreaking. Famously, he and his team put together a sophisticated comparative study of three ways of doing pre-school--in Japan, China, and the United States (1989). As such, this study has precedents in anthropology. What is unique in Tobin's work is that he got people from one place to comment on what they saw people from &quot;other&quot; places do, including what these Others said about Them. This is not only a study about cultural difference but, more significantly, a study about what might be called &quot;meta-culture&quot; or &quot;meta-ideology,&quot; culture &quot;about&quot; culture, ideology &quot;about&quot; ideology. In this article, the author analyzes Tobin's study and shares his personal views on the results of Tobin's study.
Vertical Case Studies and the Challenges of Culture, Context and Comparison
Author: Bartlett, Lesley
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Case Studies,Educational Research,Comparative Education,Culture

The Teachers College Symposium invited scholars to rethink culture, context, and comparison in educational research. In his response to these questions (this volume), Joe Tobin promoted comparative ethnographies to understand how social, cultural, and political processes play out across multiple locations and time periods. He urged careful empirical studies of how and why globally circulating ideas are made manifest in local practices. Specifically, Tobin recommended diachronic, video-cued multivocal ethnographic methods. In such an approach, video excerpts function as interviewing cues, prompting educators to reflect on what is shared and what is variable in educational practices that differ by time or location, as well as how cultural beliefs and practices were shaped by economic and political forces. Thus, Tobin and his colleagues invite participants themselves to explain the impact of culture on their own practices, and they fruitfully mine the basic human impulse for comparison in order to elicit contrasts in practices. Antoni Verger&apos;s response (this volume) focused more on policy making. He considered the epistemological and methodological implications of the deterritorialization of education policy processes, particularly how multiple scales interact during the policy adoption stage. He suggested that scholars should examine more carefully the role that ideas play in policy decisions and policy outcomes, and he asked &quot;what types of ideas might be most influential in these types of processes, how and in what contextual circumstances.&quot; In this brief intervention, Lesley Bartlett offers a distinct but compatible reaction to the challenges of considering culture, context and comparison in educational research. She draws upon work she has done over more than a decade with Frances Vavrus, developing what they have called the &quot;vertical case study&quot; approach. In this article, she first describes the &quot;axes&quot; of the vertical case study. She then explains how the approach addresses the dilemmas of culture, context, scale, and comparison in ways that complement the approaches recommended by Tobin and Verger.
Comparison and Context: The Interdisciplinary Approach to the Comparative Study of Education
Author: Steiner-Khamsi, Gita
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Comparative Education,Interdisciplinary Approach,Educational Research,Global Approach,Anthropology,Educational Practices,Generalization

Because educational research has grown more global in nature over the course of the last few decades, researchers find themselves questioning how best to conceptualize content and establish distinct levels in educational research. Globalization has exacerbated the need to rethink culture and context, to understand how and why similar content are, for cultural reasons, interpreted and received differently. The symposium on &quot;Rethinking Culture, Context, and Comparison in Education and Development&quot; brought together several groups of noted scholars to discuss the issues of this phenomenon. Of those groups of scholars, author Gita Steiner-Khamsi sets her focus on two: those that utilize a disciplinary lens versus those that apply an interdisciplinary, or rather multidisciplinary approach to the comparative inquiry of education. Steiner-Khamsi begins this essay by dismissing the dichotomy between anthropology and comparative education as a false juxtaposition and proposes instead a reflection on the disciplinary versus the multidisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education. In this ongoing discussion, she argues that the method of comparison strongly relies on an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand and generalize findings on similarities and differences between educational practices, beliefs, and systems.
Mathematical Modeling in Mathematics Education: Basic Concepts and Approaches
Author: Erbas, Ayhan Kürsat
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Mathematical Models,Mathematics Education,Mathematics Instruction,Educational Objectives,Problem Solving

Mathematical modeling and its role in mathematics education have been receiving increasing attention in Turkey, as in many other countries. The growing body of literature on this topic reveals a variety of approaches to mathematical modeling and related concepts, along with differing perspectives on the use of mathematical modeling in teaching and learning mathematics in terms of definitions of models and modeling, the theoretical backgrounds of modeling, and the nature of questions used in teaching modeling. This study focuses on two issues. The first section attempts to develop a unified perspective about mathematical modeling. The second section analyzes and discusses two approaches to the use of modeling in mathematics education, namely modeling as a means of teaching mathematics and modeling as an aim of teaching mathematics.
Connecting Theory and Practice in Teacher Education: A Case Study
Author: Ünver, Gülsen
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Theory Practice Relationship,Preservice Teacher Education,Case Studies,Elementary Education,Methods Courses,Teacher Educators,Cooperating Teachers,Preservice Teachers,Content Analysis,Interviews,Observation,Surveys,Teaching Methods,Class Activities

Teachers have many problems transferring theoretical knowledge into practice. That's why teacher educators seek ways for connecting theory and practice in their pre-service teacher education programs. This study describes the activities and the effects of these activities for connecting theory and practice, as well as the recommendations of major stakeholders concerning the activities in the Teaching and Learning Literacy II and Teaching and Learning Numeracy courses in the Elementary Teacher Education Program at the University of Washington, Seattle. 11 instructors, 6 cooperating teachers, and 60 teacher candidates provided the data for this study. The research techniques of the study included document analysis, unstructured interviews with the participants, observations in the partner schools, and surveys. The data was analyzed by administering content analysis. The results of the study revealed that direct instruction by the instructors, observing an instructor's teaching with real students, preparing lesson plans, rehearsing for specific teaching methods with small groups, self-assessment or group discussions during rehearsals, as well as doing assignments are all effective for connecting theory and practice. These activities provide teacher candidates with an understanding of the knowledge of teaching methods, how to conduct teaching methods in real classes, how to make some reflections on their practice, and how to improve their teaching performance.
Effect of Inquiry-Based Learning Approach on Student Resistance in a Science and Technology Course
Author: Sever, Demet
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Elementary School Students,Grade 7,Resistance (Psychology),Inquiry,Active Learning,Student Behavior,Elementary School Science,Quasiexperimental Design,Qualitative Research,Statistical Analysis,Pretests Posttests,Elementary School Teachers,Interviews,Observation,Science Instruction,Instructional Effectiveness

The aim of this study was to identify the resistance behaviors of 7th grade students exhibited during their Science and Technology course teaching-learning processes, and to remove the identified resistance behaviors through teaching-learning processes that were constructed based on the inquiry-based learning approach. In the quasi-experimentally designed study, data were collected from 95 students and 14 teachers using both qualitative (students' follow-up forms, observation, and interview forms) and quantitative (achievement test and personal information survey) methods. In the experimental process, courses given to the control group were taught using the traditional method, whereas those given to the experimental groups used an inquiry-based learning approach. When the data, which were collected in the spring term of the 2010-2011 academic year, were analyzed, 25 students were identified as having resistant behaviors such as not participating in the course, not being interested in the course, not taking care of their friends, seeking attention, not respecting the teacher, and providing suggestions to the teacher. The statistical data analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of both the control and experiment groups; however, the mean scores of the experimental groups showed a greater increase than those of the control group. While the findings derived from the follow-up forms and the analysis of teacher interviews showed that the experimental process changed the resistance behaviors of students in a positive way, this change was not permanent at the end of the experimental process. As a result, it was found that students can have a variety of resistant behaviors and these behaviors can be affected positively by different teaching methods that are accepted as effective in that discipline.
Preschool Teachers' Knowledge Levels about Inclusion
Author: Sucuoglu, Bülbin
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preschool Teachers,Knowledge Level,Inclusion,Psychometrics,Test Validity,Vignettes,Disabilities,Preschool Curriculum,Student Evaluation,Family School Relationship,Test Reliability,Scores,Teaching Experience,Preservice Teacher Education,Foreign Countries

The purpose of this study is to develop the Inclusion Knowledge Test (IKT) for assessing preschool teachers' knowledge of inclusive practices and to examine its psychometric characteristics. To achieve this purpose, the researchers wrote short stories (vignettes) focusing on the various aspects of inclusive practices, such as assessing the development of children with disabilities, adapting a preschool curriculum, and interacting with families of children with disabilities. Having been evaluated by a panel group consisting of experts who worked in special education fields, all vignettes were reviewed, and necessary adjustment and changes were made. Then the data were collected from the IKT responses of 169 preschool teachers, and validity and reliability studies were carried out. According to the results of the analysis, the IKT consists of 24 items (vignettes) loaded on one factor, and the factor loads of all items were more than 0.40. Cronbach's Alpha is 0.917. The findings showed that the preschool teachers have very limited knowledge of inclusive practices, and their IKT scores did not change according to their experience or whether or not they had children with disabilities in their classroom. However, there was a significant difference between the IKT scores of the teachers who had and did not have a special education course during their pre-service training.
Improving Primary School Prospective Teachers&apos; Understanding of the Mathematics Modeling Process
Author: Bal, Aytgen Pinar
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preservice Teachers,Elementary Education,Mathematical Models,Problem Solving,Action Research,College Freshmen,Mathematics Tests,Student Improvement,Preservice Teacher Education

The development of mathematical thinking plays an important role on the solution of problems faced in daily life. Determining the relevant variables and necessary procedural steps in order to solve problems constitutes the essence of mathematical thinking. Mathematical modeling provides an opportunity for explaining thoughts in real life by making connections with knowledge and skills. Research concerning mathematics education indicates that there are several problems faced when trying to apply modeling to problem solving. This research has been done using the action research model in order to help primary school prospective teachers understand the process of mathematics modeling. Participants in the study consisted of 36 freshmen in total who were continuing their education in the department of primary school teaching of a state university during the 2011-2012 academic year. For selecting participants, the criteria sampling method, a purposeful sampling method, was used. The tools for data collection were comprehension and operational tests which related to mathematical modeling as well as weekly evaluation tests created within the framework of the action plans prepared by the researchers (variables test I-II, model formation test and model analysis). At the beginning of the research, it was observed that teacher candidates were not able to create modeling activities related to mathematics problems. As a result of the action plans, it was observed that as the success of a teacher candidate&apos;s ability to perceive a problem increased, their operational success also increased and they were able to create modeling activities for the given problems.
Final Year Faculty of Education Students' Views Concerning Parent Involvement
Author: Lindberg, E. Nihal
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preservice Teachers,Student Attitudes,Parent Participation,Elementary Education,Student Surveys,Mixed Methods Research,Teacher Education Programs,Readiness,Foreign Countries,Multivariate Analysis

This study has aimed to determine the knowledge, skills, and views held by pre-service teachers attending different teacher training programs about parent involvement. A total of 520 4th year students receiving education in primary school teaching and in branch teaching programs participated in the study. Data were collected by the &quot;Parent Involvement Survey&quot; developed by Epstein and Dauber. This survey contains both open-ended questions and Likert-type items regarding the dimensions of parent involvement. A mixed research model was employed in this study. MANOVA, ANOVA and t-test were used. Qualitative data were thematically analyzed. The results show that although participants generally have positive opinions about parent involvement, participants from the primary school teaching program have higher averages in all dimensions. There is a significant difference between groups in regard to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th dimensions, but not in terms of the 5th, 6th, and 8th, dimensions. According to the results, branch teachers working with middle school students have more limited knowledge and less positive views on this subject. While they believe that the subject of parent involvement should be included in teacher training processes, they also think that parent involvement is not sufficiently supported at schools due to reasons stemming from both teachers and families.