Predictors of Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practice in Pre-service Teachers

Teachers who show high teacher efficacy affect student achievement positively. Teaching is sometimes seen as an overwhelming profession because of classroom diversity and expectations placed on teachers. It is important to bring beginning teachers to the point at which they feel they are capable and will be more emotionally equipped to take on the stressors of the classroom. The current study focused on predicting pre-service teachers’ efficacy for inclusive practice from variables found to be important in the literature: gender, inclusion-related beliefs, and experiences with individuals with disabilities. Participants consisted of 1,026 students completing the in-faculty component of their pre-service program in 9 faculties of education across Canada. They completed the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practice survey and the Beliefs about Learning and Teaching Questionnaire. All teacher candidates appeared to benefit from experience with people with disabilities. General findings indicated more positive inclusive beliefs for women than men and for pre-service teachers in elementary than in secondary programs. Important differences emerged, however, concerning which beliefs contributed to each area of teacher efficacy for secondary as compared to elementary programs. Results are discussed in terms of issues to consider in initial teacher education programs

Tukea, tyynnyttelyä ja vakauden tavoittelua : Suomen toiminta ja suhtautuminen Viron ja Venäjän välisiin Neuvostoliiton hajoamisen perintönä tulleisiin kiistakysymyksiin vuosina 1991–1994

Tutkimuksessa käsitellään Suomen ulkopolitiikkaa Viron ja Venäjän välisissä Neuvostoliiton hajoamisen perintönä tulleissa kiistoissa 1990-luvun alussa, Viron itsenäisyyden palauttamisen jälkeen. Käsittelyyn on valittu kolme olennaisinta kiistaa, jotka liittyivät entisen neuvostoarmeijan joukkojen vetäytymiseen Virosta, venäläisen vähemmistön asemaan Virossa sekä Viron ja Venäjän väliseen rajaan. Tutkimuksen lähdeaineiston rungon muodostavat ulkoministeriön arkiston, tasavallan presidentin kanslian arkiston sekä Mauno Koiviston arkiston asiakirjat, joiden tutkimiseen on sovellettu lähdekriittistä sisältöanalyysiä. Suomalaisten ja virolaisten poliitikkojen sekä virkamiesten muistelmateokset täydentävät lähdemateriaalia. Suomi kehotti Viroa sopimaan venäläisjoukkojen vetäytymisestä ensin kahdenvälisesti Venäjän kanssa. Kiista kuitenkin kansainvälistyi, jolloin Suomi asettui tukemaan Viroa. Suomi yritti edesauttaa Viron ja Venäjän jumiutuneita neuvotteluja vetäytymisestä hyvillä palveluksillaan. Vuonna 1994 viimeiset joukot poistuivat Virosta tavalla, johon Suomi oli tyytyväinen. Viron itsenäistyttyä Virossa olevien venäläisten asema oli epäselvä. Monet Viron säätämät lait, jotka liittyivät venäläisten asemaan, olivat kansainvälisen kiistelyn kohteena. Erityisesti Venäjä ja venäjänkieliset pitivät lakeja syrjivinä. Suomi piti osaa laeista kelvollisina, osaa puutteellisina. Viron ja Venäjän välinen rajakiista kytkeytyi kysymykseen Viron valtion jatkuvuudesta ja vuoden 1920 Tarton rauhansopimuksen voimassaolosta. Suomi ei tukenut Viron pyrkimyksiä palauttaa vanhoja rajoja, mutta tunnusti Viron valtiollisen jatkuvuuden. Viron ja Venäjän välisissä kiistoissa Suomen sympatiat olivat Viron puolella. Virolaisten tyyliä ja tapaa ajaa asiaansa ei kuitenkaan aina hyväksytty, ja myös Venäjän näkemyksille osoitettiin ymmärrystä. Suomen piti valita linjansa tilanteessa, jossa toimintaympäristö oli radikaalisti muuttunut kylmän sodan päättymisen myötä, ja suhde Venäjään oli murroksessa. Suomen edustajat kehottivat sekä Viroa että Venäjää malttiin ja lieventämään jyrkkiä lausuntojaan. Suomen tärkeimpinä tavoitteina olivat lähialueiden vakauden turvaaminen ja jännitteiden purkaminen

Reflection of OH molecules from magnetic mirrors

We have reflected a Stark-decelerated beam of OH molecules under normal incidence from mirrors consisting of permanent magnets. Two different types of magnetic mirrors have been demonstrated. A long-range flat mirror made from a large disc magnet has been used to spatially focus the reflected beam in the longitudinal direction ("bunching"). A short-range curved mirror composed of an array of small cube magnets allows for transverse focusing of the reflected beam.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Hydrogen cyanide in the headspace of oral fluid and in mouth-exhaled breath

Peer reviewe

The origin of mouth-exhaled ammonia

Peer reviewe

Modality-Independent Effects of Phonological Neighborhood Structure on Initial L2 Sign Language Learning

The goal of the present study was to characterize how neighborhood structure in sign language influences lexical sign acquisition in order to extend our understanding of how the lexicon influences lexical acquisition in both sign and spoken languages. A referent-matching lexical sign learning paradigm was administered to a group of 29 hearing sign language learners in order to create a sign lexicon. The lexicon was constructed based on exposures to signs that resided in either sparse or dense handshape and location neighborhoods. The results of the current study indicated that during the creation of the lexicon signs that resided in sparse neighborhoods were learned better than signs that resided in dense neighborhoods. This pattern of results is similar to what is seen in child first language acquisition of spoken language. Therefore, despite differences in child first language and adult second language acquisition, these results contribute to a growing body of literature that implicates the phonological features that structure of the lexicon is influential in initial stages of lexical acquisition for both spoken and sign languages. This is the first study that uses an innovated lexicon-construction methodology to explore interactions between phonology and the lexicon in L2 acquisition of sign language

Risk of Psychosis Among Individuals Who Have Presented to Hospital With Self-harm:A Prospective Nationwide Register Study in Sweden

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: Recent research showed that young people who presented to hospital with self-harm in Finland had a significantly elevated risk of later psychosis. We investigated the prospective relationship between hospital presentation for self-harm and risk of psychosis in an unprecedentedly large national Swedish cohort.STUDY DESIGN: We used inpatient and outpatient healthcare registers to identify all individuals born between 1981 and 1993 who were alive and living in Sweden on their 12th birthday and who presented to hospital one or more times with self-harm. We compared them with a matched cohort, followed up for up to 20 years, and compared the cumulative incidence of psychotic disorders. Furthermore, we examined whether the strength of the relationship between hospital presentation for self-harm and later psychosis changed over time by examining for cohort effects.STUDY RESULTS: In total, 28 908 (2.0%) individuals presented to hospital with self-harm without prior psychosis diagnosis during the follow-up. For individuals who presented to hospital with self-harm, the cumulative incidence of diagnosed psychosis was 20.7% at 20 years follow-up (hazard radio = 13.9, 95% CI 13.3-14.6, P-value &lt;5 × 10-308). There was no evidence of a dilution of the effect over time: while the incidence of hospital self-harm presentation increased, this did not result in an attenuation over time of the strength of the relationship between hospital self-harm presentation and subsequent psychosis.CONCLUSIONS: Individuals who present to hospital with self-harm in their teens and 20s represent an important risk group for psychosis prediction and prevention.</p

Why computational models are better than verbal theories: the case of nonword repetition

Tests of nonword repetition (NWR) have often been used to examine children’s phonological knowledge and word learning abilities. However, theories of NWR primarily explain performance either in terms of phonological working memory or long-term knowledge, with little consideration of how these processes interact. One theoretical account that focuses specifically on the interaction between short-term and long-term memory is the chunking hypothesis. Chunking occurs because of repeated exposure to meaningful stimulus items, resulting in the items becoming grouped (or chunked); once chunked, the items can be represented in short-term memory using one chunk rather than one chunk per item. We tested several predictions of the chunking hypothesis by presenting 5-6 year-old children with three tests of NWR that were either high, medium, or low in wordlikeness. The results did not show strong support for the chunking hypothesis, suggesting that chunking fails to fully explain children’s NWR behavior. However, simulations using a computational implementation of chunking (namely CLASSIC, or Chunking Lexical And Sublexical Sequences In Children) show that, when the linguistic input to 5-6 year old children is estimated in a reasonable way, the children’s data is matched across all three NWR tests. These results have three implications for the field: (a) a chunking account can explain key NWR phenomena in 5-6 year old children; (b) tests of chunking accounts require a detailed specification both of the chunking mechanism itself and of the input on which the chunking mechanism operates; and (c) verbal theories emphasizing the role of long-term knowledge (such as chunking) are not precise enough to make detailed predictions about experimental data, but computational implementations of the theories can bridge the gap

The influence of children's exposure to language from two to six years: the case of nonword repetition

Nonword repetition (NWR) is highly predictive of vocabulary size, has strong links to language and reading ability, and is a clinical marker of language impairment. However, it is unclear what processes provide major contributions to NWR performance. This paper presents a computational model of NWR based on Chunking Lexical and Sub-lexical Sequences in Children (CLASSIC) that focuses on the child’s exposure to language when learning lexical phonological knowledge. Based on language input aimed at 2–6 year old children, CLASSIC shows a substantial fit to children’s NWR performance for 6 different types of NWR test across 6 different NWR studies that use children of various ages from 2;1 to 6;1. Furthermore, CLASSIC’s repetitions of individual nonwords correlate significantly with children’s repetitions of the same nonwords, NWR performance shows strong correlations to vocabulary size, and interaction effects seen in the model are consistent with those found in children. Such a fit to the data is achieved without any need for developmental parameters, suggesting that between the ages of two and six years, NWR performance measures the child’s current level of linguistic knowledge that arises from their exposure to language over time and their ability to extract lexical phonological knowledge from that exposure