The ‘PAThs’ Project: An Effort to Represent the Physical Dimension of Coptic Literary Production (Third–Eleventh centuries)

PAThs – Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in their Geographical Context. Production, Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage is an ambitious digital project based in Rome, working towards a new historical and archaeological geography of the Coptic literary tradition. This aim implies a number of auxiliary tasks and challenges, including classification of authors, works, titles, colophons, and codicological units, as well as the study and wherever possible exact mapping of the relevant geographical sites related to the production, circulation, and storage of manuscript

The italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC). Factor structure and reliability

The aims of the study were to investigate factor structure and reliability of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC), originally validated by Rieffe et al. (2006), on an Italian population. A total sample of 1265 participants, ranging in age from 8 to 14 years, filled in the Italian version of the AQC and 160 children also completed the Youth Self Report (YSR), during school time. A sub-sample (N = 60) was retested after eight weeks for an assessment of the measure’s stability. The three-factor model reported good fit indices on the total sample, even though not all items loading on the Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT) factor appeared statistically relevant. Moreover, the model was only partially invariant across gender and age groups: analysis indicated developmental gender-specific differences on Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF) and EOT factors. Significant correlations were found between AQC scores and the YSR internalizing and externalizing symptomatology scales. In conclusion, the three-factor model was confirmed and some evidence emerged concerning its generalization to gender and age-group

A Study in Authenticity : Admissible Concealed Indicators of Authority and Other Features of Forgeries : A Case Study on Clement of Alexandria, Letter to Theodore, and the Longer Gospel of Mark

A standard approach in historically minded disciplines to documents and other artefacts that have become suspect is to concentrate on their dissimilarities with known genuine artefacts. While such an approach works reasonably well with relatively poor forgeries, more skilfully done counterfeits have tended to divide expert opinions, demanding protracted scholarly attention. As there has not been a widespread scholarly consensus on a constrained set of criteria for detecting forgeries, a pragmatic maximum for such dissimilarities—as there are potentially an infinite numbers of differences that can be enumerated between any two artefacts—has been impossible to set. Thus, rather than relying on a philosophically robust critical framework, scholars have been accustomed to approaching the matter on a largely case-by-case basis, with a handful of loosely formulated rules for guidance. In response to these shortcomings, this dissertation argues that a key characteristic of inquiry in historically minded disciplines should be the ability to distinguish between knowledge-claims that are epistemically warranted—i.e., that can be asserted post hoc from the material reality they have become embedded in with reference to some sort of rigorous methodological framework—and knowledge-claims that are not. An ancient letter by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) to Theodore, in which two passages from the Longer Gospel of Mark (also known as the Secret Gospel of Mark) are quoted, has long been suspected of having been forged by Morton Smith (1915–1991), its putative discoverer. The bulk of this dissertation consists of four different articles that each use different methodological approaches. The first, a discourse analysis on scholarly debate over the letter’s authenticity, illuminates the reasons behind its odd character and troubled history. Second, archival research unearths how data points have become corrupted through unintended additions in digital-image processing (a phenomenon labelled line screen distortion here). Third, a quantitative study of the handwriting in Clement’s Letter to Theodore shows the inadequacy of unwittingly applying palaeographic standards in cases of suspected deceptions compared to the standards adhered to in forensic studies. Additionally, Smith’s conduct as an academic manuscript hunter is found to have been consistent with the standard practices of that profession. Finally, a study of the conceptual distinctions and framing of historical explanations in contemporary forgery discourse reveals the power of the methodologic approach of WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?), which has recently been used in three varieties (unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive) to construe suspected documents as potential forgeries—despite its disregard of justificatory grounding in favour of coming up with free-form, first-person narratives in which the conceivable functions as its own justification. Together, the four articles illustrate the pitfalls of scholarly discourse on forgeries, especially that surrounding Clement’s Letter to Theodore. The solution to the poor argumentation that has characterized the scholarly study of forgeries is suggested to be an exercise in demarcation: to decide (in the abstract) which features should be acceptable as evidence either for or against the ascription of the status of forgery to an historical artefact. Implied within this suggestion is the notion of constraint, i.e., such that a constrained criterion would be one that cannot be employed to back up both an argument and its counter-argument. A topical case study—a first step on the road to creating a rigorous standard for constrained criteria in determining counterfeits—is the alternative narrative of an imagined creation of Clement’s Letter to Theodore by Smith around the time of its reported discovery (1958). Concealed indicators of authority, or the deliberate concealment of authorial details within the forged artefact by the forger, is established as a staple of the literary strategy of mystification, and their post hoc construction as acceptable evidence of authorship is argued to follow according to criteria: 1) that the beginning of the act of decipherment of a concealed indicator of authority has to have been preceded by a literary primer that is unambiguous to a high degree, 2) that, following the prompting of the literary primer, the act of deciphering a concealed indicator of authority has to have adhered to a technique or method that is unambiguous to a high degree, and 3) that, following the prompting of the literary primer and the act of decipherment, both of which must have been practiced in an unambiguous manner to a high degree, the plain-text solution to the concealed indicator of authority must likewise be unambiguous to a high degree.Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan Klemens Aleksandrialaisen (n. 150-215 jaa.) kirjettä Theodorokselle, joka sisältää Salaisen Markuksen evankeliumin nimellä tunnettuja tekstikatkelmia. Näissä katkelmissa, jotka eivät sisälly kanonisoituun Uuteen testamenttiin, Jeesus mm. herättää nuorukaisen kuolleista ja opettaa tälle Jumalan valtakunnan salaisuuden. Klemensin kirje todistaa laajemmin kristinuskon varhaisvaiheen moninaisuudesta, mutta sitä on myös epäilty väärennökseksi. Historiallisten väärennösten tunnistamiseen ei ole löytynyt yleisesti hyväksyttyä metodia. Historiantutkijat ovat joutuneet arvioimaan epäiltyjä väärennöksiä tapauskohtaisesti, ja taidokkaasti toteutetut väärennökset johtavatkin usein pitkään ja kiivaaseen keskusteluun. Väitöskirjan ytimen muodostavat neljä artikkelia, joissa tarkastellaan Klemensin kirjettä eri näkökulmista ja kuvataan myös yleisemmin historiallisten väärennösten paljastamiseen liittyviä sudenkuoppia. Ensimmäinen artikkeli kuvaa diskurssianalyysin keinoin väärennösväitteistä käytyä sananvaihtoa, jota leimaa puhuminen toisten tutkijoiden ohi ja yli. Toinen ja kolmas artikkeli analysoivat Klemensin kirjeen käsialaa. Ne paljastavat, että digitaalinen kuvankäsittely on tahattomasti muokannut käsialan yksityiskohtia. Vertailuaineisto osoittaa, ettei Klemensin kirjeen käsiala sisällä "väärentäjän vapinaa" tai muita yleisiä väärennöksen tuntomerkkejä. Neljäs artikkeli tarkastelee ja problematisoi tutkijoiden tapaa perustella väärennösväitteitä luomalla kuvitteellisia tarinoita, joilla selitetään väärennöksien yksityiskohtien syntymistä. Väitöskirjassa ehdotetaan, että historiallisten väärennösten paljastamiseen täytyy kehittää vankka tieteellinen viitekehys. Väitöskirjan yhteenvetoluvussa otetaan tähän ensimmäinen askel tarkastelemalla, kuinka autenttisuuden kysymystä on lähestytty mm. kirjallisuustieteen alalla. Yhteenvetoluvussa analysoidaan mystifikaatiolle (kirjallinen genre) tyypillistä tapaa piilottaa "kätkettyjä tekijyyden indikaattoreita" väärennöksiin. Analyysin perusteella todetaan, että aiemmin tutkijat ovat saattaneet langeta kehittelemään villejä väärennösteorioita erilaisten kuviteltujen vihjeiden ja salakirjoitusten pohjalta. Jotta vältytään tämänkaltaiselta "kryptoanalyyttiseltä hyperaktiivisuudelta," tarvitaan "kätkettyjen tekijyyden indikaattoreiden" käytölle kriteerejä. Ehdotettujen kriteerien mukaan ainoastaan sellaiset "kätketyt tekijyyden indikaattorit" voidaan hyväksyä todellisiksi, joiden 1) olemassaoloon viitataan yksiselitteisesti, joiden 2) purkaminen tapahtuu yksiselitteisellä metodilla ja jotka 3) nimeävät tekijän yksiselitteisellä tavalla

The health locus of control concept: Factorial structure, psychometric properties and form equivalence of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control scales

Contradictory evidence exists on the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control scale’s factor structure and the psychometric equivalence between Form A and Form B. University students (N = 359) completed the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control and General Self-Efficacy scales. The three-factor model had better fit and parsimony in both Forms. ‘Internal’ scale negatively correlated with ‘chance’ but positively with ‘others’. The two external scales positively correlated. The scales’ reliability was satisfactory, but the two Forms were not psychometrically equivalent. Convergent validity was confirmed. The evidence suggests a three-factor structure and psychometric non-equivalence of the two Forms. Researchers should make an informed choice on which Form to use

An examination of the influence of court interpreters upon attributions of defendant and plaintiff culpability

An expressed reluctance of the courts to employ interpreters has been challenged on the basis that a failure to provide such assistance to the Non-English Speaking (NES) witness contravenes the principles of natural justice. Further, NES defendants risk being misunderstood and incapacitated in their ability to effectively communicate the intended meaning of the evidence they are giving. In order to determine whether the presence of an interpreter exerts influence upon attributions of culpability given to a NES defendant, it was .important to identify whether evaluations were based on the interpreter\u27s presence or on the defendant\u27s ethnicity. Therefore, three trial conditions were filmed and randomly administered to a total of 90 participants recruited mainly from the student population at Edith Cowan University. Each trial condition was viewed by thirty participants. The hypothetical trial concerned a civil litigation case in which the same Australian plaintiff in all trial conditions attempted to establish negligence for a car accident. Evidence given by both parties made it difficult to determine fault. In the control \u27condition, an Australian defendant argued her case against having to make restitution for damages not caused by her. In the condition controlling for ethnicity, a defendant of Italian background argued the same case in accented English. In the Interpreted condition, the same Italian defendant gave the same evidence in Italian with the assistance of an interpreter. Using a ratio-percentage scale, participants rated the proportion or culpability attributed to the defendant. They were also asked to indicate how much their decision was influenced by key participants involved in the trial process. Comments were invited with regard to the nature of this influence. The results of a one-way ANOVA returned means of 67 .33, 63.33 and 59.00, F(2, 87) = .81, p \u3e .05, for the Australian., Italian-Australian and the Italian-interpreted conditions, respectively. The findings demonstrated that respondents did not discriminate between defendants. Qualitative data relating to the defendant and the interpreter was analysed for references to impression-formation and evidential information. The results demonstrated that evidential information was used to inform respondents\u27 decisions. A finding of no influence attributed to the interpreter suggests that the reluctance of courts to employ such assistance is unjustified

Investigating features and techniques for Arabic authoriship attribution

Authorship attribution is the problem of identifying the true author of a disputed text. Throughout history, there have been many examples of this problem concerned with revealing genuine authors of works of literature that were published anonymously, and in some cases where more than one author claimed authorship of the disputed text. There has been considerable research effort into trying to solve this problem. Initially these efforts were based on statistical patterns, and more recently they have centred on a range of techniques from artificial intelligence. An important early breakthrough was achieved by Mosteller and Wallace in 1964 [15], who pioneered the use of ‘function words’ – typically pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions – as the features on which to base the discovery of patterns of usage relevant to specific authors. The authorship attribution problem has been tackled in many languages, but predominantly in the English language. In this thesis the problem is addressed for the first time in the Arabic Language. We therefore investigate whether the concept of functions words in English can also be used in the same way for authorship attribution in Arabic. We also describe and evaluate a hybrid of evolutionary algorithms and linear discriminant analysis as an approach to learn a model that classifies the author of a text, based on features derived from Arabic function words. The main target of the hybrid algorithm is to find a subset of features that can robustly and accurately classify disputed texts in unseen data. The hybrid algorithm also aims to do this with relatively small subsets of features. A specialised dataset was produced for this work, based on a collection of 14 Arabic books of different natures, representing a collection of six authors. This dataset was processed into training and test partitions in a way that provides a diverse collection of challenges for any authorship attribution approach. The combination of the successful list of Arabic function words and the hybrid algorithm for classification led to satisfying levels of accuracy in determining the author of portions of the texts in test data. The work described here is the first (to our knowledge) that investigates authorship attribution in the Arabic knowledge using computational methods. Among its contributions are: the first set of Arabic function words, the first specialised dataset aimed at testing Arabic authorship attribution methods, a new hybrid algorithm for classifying authors based on patterns derived from these function words, and, finally, a number of ideas and variants regarding how to use function words in association with character level features, leading in some cases to more accurate results

MOOC and OER: identity management

Open educational resources (OER) and massive open online courses (MOOC) are new and emerging issues in the international higher education context. Under the exponential growth of the supply of courses and related publications, the purpose of this chapter is to foster scientific discussion on the socio-cultural and economic impacts, as well as its technological and pedagogical implications. Supported by the methodological typology of bibliographical studies, systematized interpretative-critical analysis based on review of the concepts, and principles guiding OER and MOOC, the authors' reflections show that the enlargement terminologies without epistemological delimitation have provoked theoretical and practical mistakes. In the final considerations, the authors systematize broader problematizations around the open educational practices in universities aimed to five dimensions: spatio-time-content, theoretical models, principles of pedagogical innovation, economic aspects, and fundamentals of collaborative culture.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Spelling in the secondary school: A review of the current situation

The purpose of this study was to discover the strategies being employed by secondary school teachers to assist students with spelling difficulties. Teachers in the English and social studies departments of three Perth high schools were interviewed and asked to indicate the criteria they used to identify students with spelling problems and the teaching methods they employed to help those students overcome their problems. They were also asked to identify the causes of spelling difficulty. Staff at the local district offices and the Ministry of Education were interviewed to establish what support services were available for teachers who wished to improve their skills in this area. The study found that the teachers used performance indicators to assess spelling skills. They listed nineteen different causes of poor spelling and used a variety of different methods to assist students. English teachers had a wider repertoire of methods available to them than did the social studies teachers and were more familiar with support material produced by the Ministry of Education. At ministry and school level the policy was that spelling was an important skill to be developed. It was more difficult to discern a policy at district office level. Finally, there are few support programmes available for high school students with spelling problems and it was not possible to say how great a problem poor spelling may be

A computational academic integrity framework

L'abast creixent i la naturalesa canviant dels programes acadèmics constitueixen un repte per a la integritat dels protocols tradicionals de proves i exàmens. L'objectiu d¿aquesta tesi és introduir una alternativa als enfocaments tradicionals d'integritat acadèmica, per a cobrir la bretxa del buit de l'anonimat i donar la possibilitat als instructors i administradors acadèmics de fer servir nous mitjans que permetin mantenir la integritat acadèmica i promoguin la responsabilitat, accessibilitat i eficiència, a més de preservar la privadesa i minimitzin la interrupció en el procés d'aprenentatge. Aquest treball té com a objectiu començar un canvi de paradigma en les pràctiques d'integritat acadèmica. La recerca en l'àrea de la identitat de l'estudiant i la garantia de l'autoria són importants perquè la concessió de crèdits d'estudi a entitats no verificades és perjudicial per a la credibilitat institucional i la seguretat pública. Aquesta tesi es basa en la noció que la identitat de l'alumne es compon de dues capes diferents, física i de comportament, en les quals tant els criteris d'identitat com els d'autoria han de ser confirmats per a mantenir un nivell raonable d'integritat acadèmica. Per a això, aquesta tesi s'organitza en tres seccions, cadascuna de les quals aborda el problema des d'una de les perspectives següents: (a) teòrica, (b) empírica i (c) pragmàtica.El creciente alcance y la naturaleza cambiante de los programas académicos constituyen un reto para la integridad de los protocolos tradicionales de pruebas y exámenes. El objetivo de esta tesis es introducir una alternativa a los enfoques tradicionales de integridad académica, para cubrir la brecha del vacío anonimato y dar la posibilidad a los instructores y administradores académicos de usar nuevos medios que permitan mantener la integridad académica y promuevan la responsabilidad, accesibilidad y eficiencia, además de preservar la privacidad y minimizar la interrupción en el proceso de aprendizaje. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo iniciar un cambio de paradigma en las prácticas de integridad académica. La investigación en el área de la identidad del estudiante y la garantía de la autoría son importantes porque la concesión de créditos de estudio a entidades no verificadas es perjudicial para la credibilidad institucional y la seguridad pública. Esta tesis se basa en la noción de que la identidad del alumno se compone de dos capas distintas, física y de comportamiento, en las que tanto los criterios de identidad como los de autoría deben ser confirmados para mantener un nivel razonable de integridad académica. Para ello, esta tesis se organiza en tres secciones, cada una de las cuales aborda el problema desde una de las siguientes perspectivas: (a) teórica, (b) empírica y (c) pragmática.The growing scope and changing nature of academic programmes provide a challenge to the integrity of traditional testing and examination protocols. The aim of this thesis is to introduce an alternative to the traditional approaches to academic integrity, bridging the anonymity gap and empowering instructors and academic administrators with new ways of maintaining academic integrity that preserve privacy, minimize disruption to the learning process, and promote accountability, accessibility and efficiency. This work aims to initiate a paradigm shift in academic integrity practices. Research in the area of learner identity and authorship assurance is important because the award of course credits to unverified entities is detrimental to institutional credibility and public safety. This thesis builds upon the notion of learner identity consisting of two distinct layers (a physical layer and a behavioural layer), where the criteria of identity and authorship must both be confirmed to maintain a reasonable level of academic integrity. To pursue this goal in organized fashion, this thesis has the following three sections: (a) theoretical, (b) empirical, and (c) pragmatic