Critical Thinking Skills and Teacher Effectiveness of Pre-kindergarten Special Education Teachers

The critical thinking skills of pre-kindergarten special education teachers needed for effective education of their students are currently not known. This study used a mixed methods multi-case study design to answer the question: What is the relationship between critical thinking and effective teaching for pre-kindergarten special education teachers? Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism guided the study design and data analysis of standardized measurements of critical thinking and effective teaching, observations, and interviews of ten pre-kindergarten special education teachers. Findings of the study included that a) the HCTA may not be a good measure of teacher critical thinking; b) teacher discussion of critical thinking related most closely to the CLASS dimension of concept development in the subcategory of instructional support; and c) teachers and pre-service teachers need opportunities to develop their knowledge base of behavioral and instructional strategies

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Business Information Systems; Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing; Management of Computing and Information System

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Business Information Systems; Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing; Management of Computing and Information System

GSD - An interactive window oriented debugger

Each computer program, no matter how carefully designed, may contain code entry mistakes, errors in logic, and/or anomalies that can result in unexpected outcome (also known as bugs). In order to find and correct these problems, a software tool known as a debugger can be utilized by a programmer as an aid in isolating and correcting computer programs. The purpose of this thesis is to design and create such a tool for the AT&T UNIX-PC CU that will allow the user to function interactively within a window-oriented environment. This new debugger will be referred to as GSD (Graphic Symbolic Debugger). A study of prior art has been made in order to learn various debugger implementation techniques, their advantages and shortcomings, and to gain an understanding of methods that may be utilized within the UNIX environment for such a tool to be effective

Focality in Prospective Memory: A Thorough Examination of Cue Specificity and Task-Appropriateness

Prospective memory (PM) refers to memory for future intentions (e.g. remembering to press a button when you see an animal word). Researchers classify PM intentions in the laboratory as focal or nonfocal primarily in two ways. One way, task-appropriateness, refers to how the processing for the intention relates to the processing required for an ongoing task; the PM intention and the ongoing task either match in processing (TAP; focal) or mismatch in processing (TIP; nonfocal). The second way researchers classify focality is based on cue specificity, with the PM task either being specific (focal) or general (nonfocal). Resolving this ambiguity in defining “focality” is the focus of the current research. These two experiments compared the roles of cue specificity and task-appropriateness in PM focality. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, a focal PM condition (TAP/Specific), or one of three nonfocal conditions (TAP/General; TIP/Specific; TIP/General). Their ongoing task required them to make a semantic judgment (Experiment 1) or an orthographic judgment (Experiment 2). Cue specificity impacted PM accuracy consistently, favoring specific cues. Task-appropriateness impacted PM accuracy in Experiment 1 as predicted, but not in Experiment 2 which showed protective effects for specific, whole-word PM cues. Ongoing task performance mostly followed predicted patterns (no differences for ongoing task accuracy) and suggested ex-gaussian analyses offered a nuanced measure of RT data. These studies highlight the existing ambiguity in the operational definition of focality and provide the groundwork for a clear definition of focality centered around cue specificity and task-appropriateness

Development and analysis of the Software Implemented Fault-Tolerance (SIFT) computer

SIFT (Software Implemented Fault Tolerance) is an experimental, fault-tolerant computer system designed to meet the extreme reliability requirements for safety-critical functions in advanced aircraft. Errors are masked by performing a majority voting operation over the results of identical computations, and faulty processors are removed from service by reassigning computations to the nonfaulty processors. This scheme has been implemented in a special architecture using a set of standard Bendix BDX930 processors, augmented by a special asynchronous-broadcast communication interface that provides direct, processor to processor communication among all processors. Fault isolation is accomplished in hardware; all other fault-tolerance functions, together with scheduling and synchronization are implemented exclusively by executive system software. The system reliability is predicted by a Markov model. Mathematical consistency of the system software with respect to the reliability model has been partially verified, using recently developed tools for machine-aided proof of program correctness

Analysis of data processing systems

Mathematical simulation models and software monitoring of multiprogramming computer syste

Peer Review of a Formal Verification/Design Proof Methodology

The role of formal verification techniques in system validation was examined. The value and the state of the art of performance proving for fault-tolerant compuers were assessed. The investigation, development, and evaluation of performance proving tools were reviewed. The technical issues related to proof methodologies are examined. The technical issues discussed are summarized

Towards the definition of a quality model for mail servers

The paper presents an approach for building a Mail Server Quality Model, based on the ISO/IEC software quality standard. We start by defining the mail system domain to be used as general framework and the relevant technologies involved. Then a general overview of the ISO/IEC standard is given. The basic steps, the relevant considerations and criteria used to select the appropriated subcharacteristics and quality attributes are also presented. The selected attributes are categorized under the six ISO/IEC quality characteristics conforming the model. Finally some case studies requirements and two commercial mail server tools are used to evaluate the model.Postprint (published version

Don’t Remind Me: Part-set Cuing Inhibits Consumers Prospective Memory When Reviewing Home Loan Terms

Three experiments examined whether part-set cuing effects might impair consumers’ abilities to remember to check loan attributes on a home-loan disclosure form. In part-set cuing effects, memory is typically impaired when a subset of previously learned items are offered as cues to aid subsequent recall. Participants studied a list of loan attributes to check when they subsequently reviewed a home-loan disclosure form. Results indicated that participants cued immediately prior to reviewing the form remembered to check (visually fixated) a lower percentage of non-cued attributes relative to those presented with no cues (Experiments 1 – 3). The magnitude of impairment increased as the cue-set size increased (Experiment 2) but did not vary according to the correspondence between the cue-presentation order and encoding order (Experiment 3). This pattern of results is consistent with retrieval-strength accounts (response competition or retrieval inhibition) and inconsistent with strategy-disruption accounts of part-set cuing effects. These findings demonstrate that even informed borrowers are vulnerable to deceptive tactics when reviewing government mandated home-loan disclosure forms. Implications for understanding consumers’ vulnerabilities to fraud and poor decision-making are discusse