MISUNDERSTANDING OF ROLE AND POSITION OF ACCOUNTING STANDARD SETTING AUTHORITIES TO REDUCE INFORMATION ASYMMETRY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF IRAN

Purpose - Critical role of accounting and financial reporting is providing useful information for different and entitled users to help them in making economical decisions. While repeatedly it is stressed that the quality of financial information is a function of both the quality of accounting standards and the regulatory enforcement, it is vital that standard setting authorities bodies to have independence and suitable enforcement power to guarantee their issued standards implementation with accountants in preparing and releasing accounting information, where their enacting mechanisms differ significantly across countries, even being non-existent in some countries. This study seeks with aid of Abdolmohammadi’s enforcement powers classification of standards (2002) including: Reward, Legitimate, Referent, Expert and Coercive Powers, determine from perspective of respondents and current condition of accounting profession, which powers are dominant, besides it also tends to evaluate past performance of Iranian accounting regulatory. Design/methodology/approach - in order to test two main hypotheses of the study, a suitable questionnaire was used with some questions about current condition of enforcement ways of accounting standards in Iran. 281 questionnaires distributed among accounting related financial society members including: accountants, auditors, bank specialists, and accounting students as agents of financial society. After assuring of its validity and reliability, collected data tested by Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman, and T-test statistical methods. Findings - The results showed that among various enforcement accounting standards powers respondents believe coercive power is more apparent and main motivation for providing accounting formal reports in accordance to GAAP come from managers’ concern of blocking their companies stock dealing by Tehran Stock Exchange organization, besides they accept standard setting professional abilities. Also respondents believe that Iran’s Audit organization in standard setting process has had behaved unfairly and didn’t pay attention to regulate accounting of governmental and Not-For-Profits parts as equal as large private corporation accounting. Research limitation/implication - A key technical result is that the five original powers of enforcement accounting standards don’t have equal weight and influence on current accounting environment of Iran and to enhance disclosure quality and reduce information asymmetry, some work must been done to more highlight powers with positive and professional perspective. Practical implications - The paper will be of interest to standards setting authority bodies’ when regulating accounting information releasing process to achieve high level of market efficiency and also to academics’ investigating the reliability and value of current standard setting condition. Originality value - The paper reports an original application of accounting standard enforcement origins as a determinant level of dominance financial wisdom in financial society of Iran.Accounting standard, enforcement powers, Information asymmetry, financial wisdom, and fairness in standard setting.

The role of the user within the medical device design and development process: medical device manufacturers' perspectives

Copyright @ 2011 Money et al.Background: Academic literature and international standards bodies suggest that user involvement, via the incorporation of human factors engineering methods within the medical device design and development (MDDD) process, offer many benefits that enable the development of safer and more usable medical devices that are better suited to users' needs. However, little research has been carried out to explore medical device manufacturers' beliefs and attitudes towards user involvement within this process, or indeed what value they believe can be added by doing so.Methods: In-depth interviews with representatives from 11 medical device manufacturers are carried out. We ask them to specify who they believe the intended users of the device to be, who they consult to inform the MDDD process, what role they believe the user plays within this process, and what value (if any) they believe users add. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the fully transcribed interview data, to gain insight into medical device manufacturers' beliefs and attitudes towards user involvement within the MDDD process.Results: A number of high-level themes emerged, relating who the user is perceived to be, the methods used, the perceived value and barriers to user involvement, and the nature of user contributions. The findings reveal that despite standards agencies and academic literature offering strong support for the employment formal methods, manufacturers are still hesitant due to a range of factors including: perceived barriers to obtaining ethical approval; the speed at which such activity may be carried out; the belief that there is no need given the 'all-knowing' nature of senior health care staff and clinical champions; a belief that effective results are achievable by consulting a minimal number of champions. Furthermore, less senior health care practitioners and patients were rarely seen as being able to provide valuable input into the process.Conclusions: Medical device manufacturers often do not see the benefit of employing formal human factors engineering methods within the MDDD process. Research is required to better understand the day-to-day requirements of manufacturers within this sector. The development of new or adapted methods may be required if user involvement is to be fully realised.This study was in part funded by grant number Ref: GR/S29874/01 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. This article is made available through the Brunel University Open Access Publishing Fund

Critical thinking

YouTube, in parallel with Moodle forums, emerge as new learning environments, fostering a multifaceted and integrated process consistent with young digital natives’ profile and the challenges demanded by a knowledge-based society. A case study was conducted in English as a second language (ESL), involving eleventh-grade secondary education students in formal and non-formal learning environments, offline and online. The research focussed on the educational value of digital video and Moodle forum discussions and their effective contribution to a meaningful and in-depth learning, aiming to develop critical thinking skills. First phase results showed that not only were a vast majority of learners not aware of many of the skills involved in critical thinking, but clear intellectual standards inherent to disciplined and critical thinking did not govern them as well. Final results showed major differences regarding learners’ achievements, indicating that YouTube and Moodle have promoted the development of critical thinking in English (ESL). In this paper we present: (a) theories that support the integration of digital videos for developing essential skills to the learning process; (b) new insights into the way foreign language may be processed; (c) methodologies with YouTube and Moodle in the educational context

ICT and critical thinking : a multifaceted and integrated process in the English Language Learning (ESL)

The increased complexity of our world today calls for learners’ active knowledge construction and collaboration in the learning process, as opposed to traditional approaches based on the assumption that knowledge is transmitted from teacher to student. Accordingly, YouTube, in parallel with Moodle forums, emerge as new learning environments, fostering a multifaceted and integrated process consistent with young digital natives’ profile and the challenges demanded by a knowledge-based society. A case study was conducted in English as a second language (ESL), involving eleventh-grade secondary education students in formal and non-formal learning environments, offline and online. The research focussed on the educational value of digital video and Moodle forum discussions and their effective contribution to a meaningful and in-depth learning, aiming to develop critical thinking skills. First phase results showed that not only were a vast majority of learners not aware of many of the skills involved in critical thinking, but clear intellectual standards inherent to disciplined and critical thinking did not govern them as well. Final results showed major differences regarding learners’ achievements, indicating that YouTube and Moodle have promoted the development of critical thinking in English (ESL). In this paper we present; a) theories that support the integration of digital videos for developing essential skills to the learning process; b) new insights into the way foreign language may be processed; c) methodologies with YouTube and Moodle in the educational context

A Semantical Framework To Engineering WSBPEL Processes

International audienceWeb services promise the interoperability of various applications running on heterogeneous platforms over the Internet, and are gaining more and more attention. Web service composition refers to the process of combining Web services to provide value-added services, which has received much interest in supporting enterprize application integration. Industry standards for Web Service composition, such as WSBPEL, provide the notation and additional control mechanisms for the execution of business processes in Web service collaborations. However, these standards do not provide support for checking interesting properties related to Web Service and process behavior. In an attempt to fill this gap, we describe a formalization of WSBPEL business processes, that adds communications semantics to the specifications of interacting Web services, and uses a formal logic to model their dynamic behavior, which enables their formal analysis and the inference of relevant properties of the systems being built

PENERAPAN STRATEGI WATCHING BEFORE LEARNING PADA PEMBELAJARAN MATEMATIKA PROGRAM PENDIDIKAN KESETARAAN PAKET C PKBM KASIH BUNDO BUKITTINGGI

Package C's Curricular Education Program is a non-formal education channel aimed at children and citizens who are unable to access formal education services and who can not complete their education or drop out at high school / vocational level. Mathematics subjects in the Equivalency Program C Package have the same Content Standards as formal. . The low learning outcomes of learners is also one of the problems encountered during the learning process. One of the solutions is the innovation of Watching Before Learning (WBL) learning. WBL learning innovation is one of the learning strategies that utilize HP technology or computer. Based on the final test of the students who get the value above the KKM more than the initial test. Learning motivation is also increasing as it utilizes the technology used everyday

Coding the Common Core : What\u27s Missing from the English Language Arts Standards for Writing

Since its release in June 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by more than 40 states. Created by a team led by curriculum specialist Susan Pimentel and College Board president David Coleman, the standards establish benchmarks for what students should learn at specific grade levels. In this project, I examine closely the Core’s writing standards, analyzing the writing values it emphasizes at Grades K, 5, 8, and 11/12. Generally, the CCSS has been lauded for its “Anchor Standards for Writing,” which focus on the production of narrative, informational, and argumentative texts as a broad requirement. Yet ultimately the grade-specific standards prioritize the last requirement, as they expect students to produce well-defended, logical, and formal writing at the high school level. In concert with Common Core critics such as Leslie Burns1 and Anthony Esolen,2 among others, this project explores the tensions that exist within the writing standards, analyzing them along with examples of student writing provided in the CCSS’s comprehensive “Appendix C: Samples of Student Writing.” Unlike Bums and Esolen, whose critiques of the CCSS focus only on what they believe to be the standards’ flaws, I strive for a more balanced approach, noting how the CCSS could better prepare students for college or professional writing by expanding on the qualities and components of writing it currently values. In this project, I conduct a qualitative data analysis of the CCSS, which reveals that the current standards value personal and collaborative writing in Grades K-5, but then ultimately reduce the writing process to an impersonal, formulaic assemblage of practical information by Grades 11/12. Building on this analysis, I rely on Peter Elbow, Anne Lamott, and Judd Apatow - three writers from the discourses of academic research, fiction, and comedy, respectively - as models of working writers who offer three different perspectives on the relevance of personal writing to their professional work. These writers, along with the previously mentioned qualitative data analysis, provide a rationale for this project’s revisions to the writing standards. The revisions, which address the lack of audience awareness, personal memory, personal reaction, reflection, and collaboration in the standards for Grades 6-12, call on the CCSS to emphasize all three rhetorical appeals, to prepare students for the kinds of college and professional-level writing that aren’t valued by standardized tests like the SATs or ACTs, and to realize the potential of multimodal technologies for collaborative writing. Ultimately, I argue that if the Common Core were to adopt the revisions proposed in this project, then students would be encouraged to discover the value of writing beyond the academic experience, and would thus more readily see themselves as writers, not just student writers