1,720,996 research outputs found
The rise and demise of assessment centres in the selection of principals in Queensland State Schools
No full textThe identification of successful candidates for school leadership positions is one of the most significant challenges confronting any school system. The focus of this thesis was a large State education system in Queensland, Australia, and policy decisions that were made in relation to how principals in that system were to be selected. The central purpose of this thesis was to examine the critical factors that underpinned the Queensland Department of Education's decision to use Assessment Centres as a major tool in the selection process for principals in Queensland, Australia. As well, this thesis sought to identify those factors that contributed to a later policy decision to dispense with using Assessment Centres for selection purposes.\ud
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A mixed-method case study approach was adopted which incorporated semistructured interview, participant observation, questionnaire, and document review. Semi-structured interviews were held with a small group of 'elites' including a Director-General of Education, who at the time, held the most senior position within the Queensland Department of Education. These 'elites' provided strategic insights into policy decisions that related to the use of Assessment Centres for selecting principals. A more 'grass roots' view of Assessment Centres was obtained through using questionnaire and participantobservation methods which focused on the views that practitioners held about Assessment Centres. Document review complemented these data collection methods by uncovering the historical factors underpinning the views that the QTU and many senior Departmental officers held about Assessment Centres.\ud
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The findings of this study revealed that the Director-General of Education in Queensland, was convinced that Assessment Centres were strong, predictive tools that could lend consistency, validity and rigor to the selection process. By using the Queensland Assessment Centre as a selection tool, he hoped to identify leaders who would embrace the new culture of Education Queensland and as such achieve his vision of excellence in education. However, the topdown approach to policy change, and the commander style of leadership that he used to achieve this goal, did not engender stakeholder support for and commitment to the new selection policy. Instead, it generated resistance amongst stakeholders, particularly the Queensland Teachers' Union (QTU).\ud
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Significantly, the Queensland Assessment Centre did not have bipartisan political support. Instead, it was dependent on the political patronage of the State Coalition Government whose Education Minister was intent on excluding the QTU from critical Departmental policy making processes.\ud
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However, by marginalising the QTU, a pressure group aligned to the Labor Party, the Government ignored the QTU's capacity to exert considerable power and influence should the right political conditions prevail. Such a situation arose in 1998 when a State Labor Government took Office and the QTU gained 'insider' status in the Government's policy making process. The changed political climate proved to be less favourable for the Queensland Assessment Centre as it failed to gain the endorsement of the new Government, and within a very short time it ceased operating. Perhaps, had greater emphasis been placed on building bipartisan political support for the Queensland Asssessment Centre it might possibly have survived the change of Government.\ud
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The study concluded by providing recommendations for future research to be conducted in the of area of Assessment Centres, in particular, how Assessment Centres might be used to improve recruitment and selection processes within the Queensland education context as well as in other organisations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Mothers of Invention: Commercial Content on Mother Blogs and Perceptions of Credibility - A Pilot Study
No full textThe popularity of mother blogs is increasingly attracting sponsors looking to market their products to mother blog audiences. This combination of commercial and informational content calls on readers and writers to distinguish between informational content and commercial activity. This thesis examines how mother bloggers integrate sponsored content into their blogs and how both writers and readers interpret the credibility of these posts. The study takes place within a conceptual framework of source and message credibility. Using a qualitative and interpretive approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with readers and writers. Although the results are not generalizable, they suggest determining the credibility of
these posts is a social process, informed by participants’ existing knowledge and framed within the community of mother bloggers. The results add to our understanding of credibility perceptions when commercial and informational content comingle and have implications for other online communities that require ongoing information evaluation
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