1,720,958 research outputs found
The Development of the Student Assessment System in New Zealand
No full textNew Zealand is a relatively high
performing country according to international assessments.
It has transited the journey to develop a strong student
assessment system. This paper describes this journey,
highlighting drivers that helped shaped the assessment
system, and drawing lessons for other countries aiming to
undertake this journey. This case study shows that New
Zealand revamped its assessment system in the context of
broader education and curricular reforms. A new vision of
assessment for learning was realized in national
large scale assessment, secondary school examinations, and
classroom assessment activities. Key drivers that allowed
these reforms to take place were strong leadership at all
levels of the education system, clear vision and
agreed upon principles, stakeholders who were assessment
literate, and regulations that gave discretion to the
schools to self monitor their performance
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
New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project 1995-2009. The Pre-Conception, Conception, Realisation, and Contribution of an Educationally Principled Large-Scale Assessment Programme
No full textThis thesis is a researched account of the factors that gave rise to New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project, the design and practice of the project, and the contribution it made to knowledge of student achievement in all areas of the national curriculum. The purposes of this Ministry of Education funded project were to meet public accountability and information requirements by identifying and reporting patterns and trends in educational performance, and providing high quality information that policy makers, curriculum planners and educators could use to debate and review educational practices and resourcing. From 1995 to 2009, this large-scale research programme annually assessed nationally representative samples of approximately 2,800 year 4 and year 8 students so that their achievements could be reported and debated. Clearly defined principles drawn from perspectives of both theory and practice underpinned the design and operation of the project at every point.
Following detailed investigations into the design and implementation of system monitoring in other educational jurisdictions, it was found that some features were common to most, such as multiple matrix sampling, whereas others, such as the choice of assessment formats and subject coverage, were variously predicated on population size, resourcing, standards-based curricula, and political interests. Performance-based assessment, while extensively debated by measurement specialists, was gaining widespread acceptance for its potential to provide markedly greater strength of validity in the interpretation and use of assessment results. This was particularly evident in contexts where there was a strong desire to emphasise the formative functions of assessment (assessment to improve learning) more so than summative functions (assessment for which the endpoint is reporting). Regardless, traditional paper-and-pencil formats tended to prevail, with comparatively small proportions of performance tasks. Consequently, very few examples were available internationally of rich performance tasks suited to large-scale assessment programmes across the breadth of curriculum that might benefit a New Zealand programme. Other notable differences among monitoring systems were found in the approaches used to administer tasks, and in the statistical and descriptive methods used for analysing and reporting results.
Research in the design and practice of monitoring systems elsewhere was used extensively in deliberations that led to the development and implementation of a programme design that was suited to the New Zealand context and purposes. The result, however, was not a programme that mirrored another. The National Education Monitoring Project developed and used processes that were somewhat unique among large-scale programmes. Those processes included the approaches to administering assessment tasks and recording student responses, the extensive use of performance-based task formats, the engagement of practising teachers for administering and scoring the tasks, the full and regularised coverage of all areas of the national curriculum, task-by-task descriptive reporting, and examination of trends in student achievement by maintaining intact tasks from one assessment cycle to the next with re-sampled populations, rather than using statistical linking. In sum, NEMP's contribution to knowledge included a vast amount of information on what New Zealand primary school students know and can do across a wide range of learning outcomes. Added to this, the Project contributed to the field of knowledge on educational assessment perspectives generally, and to large-scale applications in particular
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
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