1,720,962 research outputs found
Ouderlijke betrokkenheid bij de ontwikkeling van geletterdheid bij lagere schoolkinderen in Tanzania
Full text linkDespite several initiatives to enhance primary education provision in Tanzania, and as a consequence high enrollment rates, there have been limited improvements in the early literacy development of Tanzanian children. The current education system of Tanzania focuses mostly on schools and teachers as the key educators in children's learning with little attention to the role of parents and the home environment. This PhD project aimed at exploring and supporting parental involvement in primary school children's reading development, and at creating a framework to encourage teacher-parent partnership in Tanzania. The research in the dissertation (a) explored motivational factors that influence parents' decisions to be involved in educational activities at home and schools, (b) assessed the relationship between parental reading support activities with children's reading skills, and (c) evaluated the effectiveness of a one year intervention programme that intended to enhance children's reading development. We used Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's model of parental involvement as our theoretical framework. The intervention was based on practices that were shown in the research literature to be effective for children's learning and included a teacher and parent training, teacher-parent communication, reading at home, and parent involvement in their child's homework.
Participants in the study were 600 second-grade primary school pupils and their parents (68.2% mothers) from 24 schools in Dar es Salaam. Questionnaires and tests (reading, intelligence) were used to measure the study variables. We used a school-based cluster randomized controlled trial with baseline, post-intervention and follow-up measurement to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention (n = 336 intervention group, n = 224 control group). Statistical analyses included regression analyses and multilevel modelling.
Findings showed that parents are willing to be involved in their children's education. Involvement at home was related to parents' expectations for children's school success, next to parents' perceived time and energy, child invitations and parents' self-efficacy. School involvement was predicted by perceived time and energy, and school and child invitations. There were weak associations between parental reading support activities (modelling, reinforcement, encouragement and instruction) with three aspects of children's reading (decoding, fluency, and comprehension). The evaluation of the intervention revealed that children in the intervention condition made more progress in reading (decoding and comprehension) compared to children in the control condition. Throughout the study, we found a relationship between parents' education level and children's reading skills. This indicates that parents with a low level of education need more attention and support. We can conclude that the intervention through feasible activities, is able to foster parental involvement. Schools need to support teachers and create a warm environment for all parents, regardless of their social economic status. The government should make parental involvement a policy issue by setting regulations and guidelines for effective parental involvement in the literacy development of children.status: Publishe
Parental Reading Support Activities and Children’s Reading Achievement in Tanzania
Full text linkParents’ activities to support their children in reading and their children’s reading skills was studied to 600 grade 2 children and their parents in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Parents completed a questionnaire on parental involvement activities, i.e. encouragement, reinforcement, modeling and instruction. Children’s reading abilities were tested with a reading test measuring word decoding, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices test was used to control for children’s IQ. Results showed that IQ was not related to children’s word decoding and reading fluency, but there was an association between IQ and some aspects of children’s reading comprehension. Although parents’ level of education correlated significantly with children’s reading, parents’ reading was not related to children’s reading. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a statistically significant, but weak association between parental reading support activities with all three aspects of children’s reading. The usefulness of an intervention to stimulate early literacy is discussed
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
Challenges Encountered by School Heads in Carrying out Instructional Supervisory Activities in Public Secondary Schools in Lindi Region-Tanzania.
Full text linkThe purpose of this study was to determine the challenges heads of schools encounter while carrying out their instructional supervisory activities in schools. The study conducted in Lindi region, Tanzania Mainland. The study used descriptive design in which qualitative and quantitative approaches were involved. The study sample comprised of teachers (N=114), heads of schools (N=57) from 57 randomly selected secondary schools. Data collected through questionnaires, focus group discussion and interview. Thematic used to analyse qualitative data, while IBM SPSS version 20 used as a statistical tool for analysing quantitative data. The study findings revealed several challenges encountered by heads of schools while carrying out their instructional supervisory activities in public secondary schools in Lindi region. Challenges identified by this study included; multiple responsibilities, lack of qualification, negative attitude of teachers toward supervision, inadequate training among heads of schools and large number of teachers as well as poor communication skills. Heads of schools have to be relieved with multiple responsibilities by school boards. The study recommends leadership training to heads of schools, establishment of good communication system through which teachers will not consider supervision negatively. Moreover, provision of awareness seminars to teachers on the importance of supervision. As for further research, the study recommends the comparative study involving a number of heads of schools to determine the role of an individual head of school in effective supervision at school
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
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