5,103 research outputs found
Improving State Evaluation of Principal Preparation Programs
Intended for state officials involved in the assessment and approval of university and other programs to train future school principals, this report describes five design principles for effective program evaluation. "While states will undoubtedly want and need to develop systems unique to their context, they could benefit from having guideposts to organize what can be complex work," says the report, which was written jointly by representatives from New Leaders, which helps train school leaders and designs leadership policies and practices for school systems, and the University Council for Educational Administration, a consortium of universities that seeks to promote high-quality education leadership preparation and research. The principles, which emerged from a New Leaders/University Council project to develop a model evaluation system and accompanying of tools, are:Structure the review process in a way that is conducive to continuous program improvement.Create appropriate systems to hold programs accountable for effective practices and outcomes.Provide key stakeholders with accurate and useful information.Take a sophisticated and nuanced approach to data collection and use.Adhere to characteristics of high-quality program evaluation.The report also describes how two states, Illinois and Delaware, have approached evaluation, and provides a tool from its model-development work, an assessment that states can use to determine their degree of "readiness" for building a stronger system to evaluate principal preparation programs
Cross-comparative analysis of evacuation behavior after earthquakes using mobile phone data
Despite the importance of predicting evacuation mobility dynamics after large
scale disasters for effective first response and disaster relief, our general
understanding of evacuation behavior remains limited because of the lack of
empirical evidence on the evacuation movement of individuals across multiple
disaster instances. Here we investigate the GPS trajectories of a total of more
than 1 million anonymized mobile phone users whose positions are tracked for a
period of 2 months before and after four of the major earthquakes that occurred
in Japan. Through a cross comparative analysis between the four disaster
instances, we find that in contrast with the assumed complexity of evacuation
decision making mechanisms in crisis situations, the individuals' evacuation
probability is strongly dependent on the seismic intensity that they
experience. In fact, we show that the evacuation probabilities in all
earthquakes collapse into a similar pattern, with a critical threshold at
around seismic intensity 5.5. This indicates that despite the diversity in the
earthquakes profiles and urban characteristics, evacuation behavior is
similarly dependent on seismic intensity. Moreover, we found that probability
density functions of the distances that individuals evacuate are not dependent
on seismic intensities that individuals experience. These insights from
empirical analysis on evacuation from multiple earthquake instances using large
scale mobility data contributes to a deeper understanding of how people react
to earthquakes, and can potentially assist decision makers to simulate and
predict the number of evacuees in urban areas with little computational time
and cost, by using population density information and seismic intensity which
can be observed instantaneously after the shock
Expansion of Cottage Industry in Northeast Thailand : The Case of Triangular Pillows in Yasothon Province (<Special Issue>Transformation of Agriculture in Northeast Thailand)
この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されました
Photodarkening of amorphous selenium under high pressure
The photodarkening phenomena of amorphous Se have been studied by the optical absorption coefficient, sound velocity and attenuation measurements. The light illumination at low temperatures induces the photodarkening, and the photodarkened state is completely recovered by annealing near 306 K corresponding to the glass transition temperature. The photodarkening is enhanced by application of pressure. The sound velocity decreases and the sound attenuation increases by the illumination at low temperature. These suggest that a structural disorder increases in the photodarkened state. Three stages are observed for the recovery process of the photodarkened specimen. The photodarkening and the recovery process are discussed on the basis of VAP (valence alternative pair) model.<br /
Improving the policy making process in municipal solid waster management: Learning from Minamata-City, Japan
Many countries, especially industrialized countries, are facing a crisis in municipal solid waste (MSW) problems due to its ever increasing amount and related problems such as limited dumping space, transboundary waste movement, financial pressures, and dioxin problems. In Japan, one of those industrialized countries, while national MSW policies have not appeared effective, some municipalities have established remarkable policies to reduce MSW Minamata-city, which has a unique experience of environmental pollution, known as Minamta-disease, has reduced waste with the two major MSW policies: a Recycling Program; and the Food-containers Abolition Project of the Women\u27s Committee on Waste Reduction, based on the tragic history. Through the assessment of the two policies in Minamata-city case study, I found the most important factors for a successful policy process in MSW management are: (1) participation of all stakeholders; (2) face-to-face discussion; and (3) power sharing by leading organizations in the decision process. Other factors such as: (4) level of crisis; (5) environmental consciousness; (6) problem orientation and goal clarification are also important. Therefore, to improve the policy process on MSW management issue in a community, professionals can suggest that decision makers and leading organizations have face-to-face discussions with all stakeholders and to share the power with them in the early stages of the decision process. As a basic concept, connectedness of the whole environment must be considered in the design of a MSW management program
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