An item analysis of Nason phonics test in grades one and two

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Exploring Sara Paretsky\u27s detective fiction from the perspective of ecofeminism

This thesis analyzes Paretsky\u27s works and how the dominant members of society use their power to exploit the weaker members, and how that exploitation impacts society. It shows how the author connects the abuse that stems from the power of patriarchy to the abuse of nature

Stories for preschool children based on a study of causes of maladjustment in kindergarten and first grade children.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Finding predominant word senses in untagged text

In word sense disambiguation (WSD), the heuristic of choosing the most common sense is extremely powerful because the distribution of the senses of a word is often skewed. The problem with using the predominant, or first sense heuristic, aside from the fact that it does not take surrounding context into account, is that it assumes some quantity of handtagged data. Whilst there are a few hand-tagged corpora available for some languages, one would expect the frequency distribution of the senses of words, particularly topical words, to depend on the genre and domain of the text under consideration. We present work on the use of a thesaurus acquired from raw textual corpora and the WordNet similarity package to find predominant noun senses automatically. The acquired predominant senses give a precision of 64% on the nouns of the SENSEVAL- 2 English all-words task. This is a very promising result given that our method does not require any hand-tagged text, such as SemCor. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our method discovers appropriate predominant senses for words from two domainspecific corpora

Parent Involvement in Urban Schools: The View from the Front of the Classroom

American educational reform movements focus on efforts to restructure our schools to include all interested parties, especially parents, in the decision-making process. Nowhere is involvement more crucial than in America\u27s inner-city urban neighborhoods. As parents are given a greater voice in their child\u27s school, educators must join them as collaborators. This article identifies elements that impeded parental involvement and recognizes positive and encouraging techniques leading toward successful family-school-community partnerships. An alliance between groups too long seen as opponents rather than proponents must be established

Psychosocial Predictors of Taiwanese Secondary Students' Self-Esteem

This study investigated the relationships between psychosocial factors and self-esteem 1,672 Taiwanese senior high school students (779 boys, 893 girls). Students from Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, completed a Chinese version of the Secondary Student Questionnaire (SSQ), which measures self-esteem, depression, anxiety, stereotyped thinking, personality, and satisfaction with nonacademic performance at school. Students were categorized into four groups: (a) high academic achievement/low self-esteem (HALS); (b) high academic achievement/high self-esteem (HAHS); (c) low academic achievement/ low-self esteem (LALS); and (d) low academic achievement/high self-esteem (LAHS). Results showed that two variables, personality/satisfaction and anxiety, were predictive self-esteem for all four groups. Depression was predictive for all groups except low achievement and high self-esteem (LAHS). Research recommendations and educational implications are discussed.Cette étude porte sur les liens entre des facteurs psychosociaux et l'estime de soi de 1 élèves taïwanais du secondaire (779 garçons, 893filles). Des élèves de Kaohsiung City, Taiwan ont complété une version chinoise du Secondary Student Questionnaire (SSQ) mesure l'estime de soi, la dépression, l'anxiété, les attitudes stéréotypées, le caractère et la satisfaction quant à la performance nonacadémique à l'école. Quatre catégories d'élèves ont été créées : (a) performance académique élevée/estime de soi pauvre (HALS) ; (b) performance académique élevée/estime de soi élevée (HAHS); (c) performance académique pauvre/estime de soi pauvre (LALS) ; et performance académique pauvre/estime de soi élevée (LAHS). Les résultats indiquent que deux variables, caractère/satisfaction et anxiété, étaient prédictives de l'estime de soi pour les quatre groupes. La dépression était une variable prédictive chez tous les élèves sauf pour le groupe caractérisé par une performance académique pauvre/estime de soi élevée. Nous discutons de recommandations de recherche et d'implications pédagogiques

Spatial considerations for instructional development in a virtual environment

In this paper we discuss spatial considerations for instructional development in a virtual environment. For both the instructional developer and the student, the important spatial criteria are perspective, orientation, scale, level of visual detail, and granularity of simulation. Developing a representation that allows an instructional developer to specify spatial criteria and enables intelligent agents to reason about a given instructional problem is of paramount importance to the success of instruction delivered in a virtual environment, especially one that supports dynamic exploration or spans more than one scale of operation

The Effect of Small Group Tutors on Student Engagement in the Computer Laboratory Lecture

Background: Student engagement is widely recognised as being influential on learning and achievement in higher education. What is less clear is how the knowledge transfers, i.e., the process of engagement by the student with any new forms of teaching demonstrated by the teacher. Aim: To investigate the effect of small group tutors on student engagement in the computer laboratory lecture. Methods: Participants were undergraduate, second year BSc Public Health students taking the Health Information Systems II module. Teaching consisted of 12 x 2-hour face-to-to face classes. Tutors were assigned to groups of 6/7 students from weeks 5-12. Quantitative data from the Irish Survey of Student Engagement was collected in week 12 and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Qualitative data from a 1-minute pre-and post-module CAT, tutor post lesson appraisals and two focus groups (one student and one tutor group, respectively) were analysed thematically. Findings: This study provided evidence that student engagement and learning was indeed enhanced by the addition of small group tutors in the computer laboratory lecture. In addition, students’ attitude to engaging with their programme of study improved and their positivity towards learning increased as the term progressed. Furthermore, there was evidence of an improved student experience and improved personal development that was highly valued by the students

Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of parents regarding fever in children: a Danish interview study

Aim: Fever and febrile illness are some of the most common conditions managed by parents. The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of parents around fever in children under five years of age. Methods: Between July and August 2014, a convenience sample of parents was invited to participate in this study in Copenhagen, Denmark. Results were analysed thematically using a constant comparison method. Results: Twenty-one parents participated in the study. Five themes emerged from the data: parental concern, help-seeking behaviour, parental knowledge, parent fever management practices and initiatives. Parents used a range of information sources to obtain their knowledge on management of fever; however, due to issues of trust with these sources, reassurance was often sought from healthcare practitioners. There was a desire amongst most parents for initiatives to be introduced which provide general information on how to manage fever in children. Conclusion: Parents were very concerned when their child was febrile and instigated practices obtained from accessible information sources. This study has identified a need for specific and reliable information initiatives to be introduced as a means of reducing parental concern and ensuring evidence-based strategies for managing a child with fever

Validation of CAT as an independent assessment tool in pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

The benefits of PR in COPD are well recognised but the practical assessment of patients undergoing PR can be complex. The COPD assessment test (CAT) is a recently introduced simple, validated 8-item questionnaire designed to assess the impact of COPD symptoms on quality of life (QOL). We hypothesized that CAT could be used as a screening tool and outcome measure to assess QOL in COPD. 60 patients with COPD enrolled in 8 weeks outpatient PR between January 2011 and October 2011 were studied. Patients completed CAT score, chronic respiratory disease questionnaire (CRDQ), hospital anxiety and depression (HAD) at baseline and at 8 weeks. Functional status (6 min walk test (6MWT) and incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT)), dyspnoea (MRCD) and body mass index (BMI) were measured. 52 COPD patients completed the 8 weeks PR and data were available for 37 patients with mean (SD) age 68.7 (9.2) yrs and FEV1 48.64 (20.79) % predicted. There was a significant difference in 6MWT (47.03m), ISWT (47.84m), MRCD (0.3 points), CRDQ (-3.02 points), Anxiety (1.5points), depression (0.6points) and CAT (3.63 points) post PR. CAT correlated closely with CRDQ at baseline and following PR whereas there was good correlation only with ISWT, anxiety and depression post PR. CAT is an independent, simple and highly responsive outcome measure that can also be utilized for screening patients with COPD for PR