1,720,954 research outputs found
Assessing Topic Alignment in Pre-tertiary TVET Core Mathematics: A Ghanaian Case Study (2011-2023)
Get PDFMathematics plays a pivotal role in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). However, persistent underperformance in the subject limits the academic and career progression of many Ghanaian learners. While various studies have investigated factors influencing achievement, little attention has been paid to the alignment between exit examinations and the curriculum. This study examines the alignment of topics in Ghana’s pre-tertiary TVET Core Mathematics curriculum and exit examinations from 2011 to 2023. Using content analysis and Porter’s alignment model, the study analysed topic distributions in both Paper 1 and Paper 2, computing alignment indices for each year. The results revealed significant variation, with 2017 achieving the highest index (0.807) and 2019 the lowest (0.563). Number and Numeration emerged as the most frequently assessed topic, while areas such as Coordinate Geometry and Trigonometry were minimally represented. Correlation analysis indicated that alignment had a weak, statistically insignificant relationship with learner pass rates. This suggests that while topic alignment is necessary, it alone cannot drive academic success. Other factors. such as instructional quality, resource availability, and cognitive alignment. may also be critical. The study highlights imbalances in topic coverage and misalignment between curriculum intent and assessment practices, offering empirical evidence to inform curriculum and assessment reforms in Ghana’s TVET sector
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Assessing Cognitive Alignment in Pre-Tertiary TVET Core Mathematics: A Ghanaian Case Study of Curriculum and Exit Examination
Get PDFMathematics plays a crucial role in pre-tertiary education, especially within STEM disciplines, where mastery of it enhances success in finance, engineering, and technology. Poor performance in the subject continues to delimit many pre-tertiary TVET learners. In our quest to find a lasting solution to this menace, many studies have been conducted to improve performance, but the problem persists in Ghana. What is yet to be done at the pre-tertiary TVET level is checking the alignment of the exit examinations with its curriculum. This study, therefore, investigates the cognitive alignment between Ghana’s pre-tertiary TVET core mathematics curriculum and its exit examinations from 2011 to 2023. Using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) framework and Porter’s Alignment Model, this study employs a pragmatic paradigm within a mixed-methods, and a convergent parallel design was used to gather both qualitative and quantitative. Eleven out of 13 exit examinations were randomly selected for content analysis. Data collection involved researcher-designed specification tables to categorize the cognitive demand levels of both the curriculum standards and examination questions. Content validity was established using the Item-Level Content Validity Index (I-CVI), yielding values of 0.89 and 0.91. Construct validity was confirmed with convergent validity (r = 0.78) and discriminant validity (r = 0.24), while inter-rater reliability, measured using Cohen’s kappa (κ = 0.83, p < 0.000), indicated strong agreement in coding cognitive demand levels. The findings revealed that Paper 1 (multiple-choice) primarily assessed lower-order cognitive skills (DOK 1 and 2), whereas Paper 2 (constructed response) focused on higher-order thinking (DOK 2, 3, and occasionally 4). Cognitive alignment fluctuated across years, with the highest alignment index recorded in 2011 (0.819) and the lowest in 2019 (0.594). A weak positive correlation (r = 0.241, p = 0.474) between alignment and pass rate suggests that alignment alone does not strongly predict learner performance. The study recommends improving curriculum-examination alignment, ensuring a balanced representation of cognitive demand levels, and enhancing item development processes to better support learner achievement
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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