186,228 research outputs found
Gender and School Achievement in the Caribbean
Full text linkTeaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,
Relational approaches in early education: enhancing social inclusion, personal growth and learning
No full textTo improve quality and effectiveness of early education across the E.U. and made learning more attractive by introducing relational approachings for pupil groups. The project will help prevent disaffection, promote social inclusion and enhance participation and attainment. The Target groups are early years teachers and their pupils in six european countries. The main activities will be performed in five phases: survey the quality of peer-based experience offered in early education context, analyze the quality of relational experiences in the promotion of social inclusion, identifying beneficial social and learning peer based experiences, implement relational programs, prepare and disseminate materials for use in early education context
Preface and Summary
No full textThe study reported in this volume was undertaken collaboratively in six countries by a large number of researchers. The study identifies a major concern about life and interaction within preschool settings. Further, it was designed to coordinate with European council concerns regarding education for personal development and social cohesion. We explain how the study was coordinated with European initiatives here, and we wish to express our appreciation for the support provided by the European commission.
The research team that completed the ‘relational approaches’ study have come together over a number of years, with study co-directors having expressed parallel concerns about the development of social competence of young children attending preschool experience. The research teams that we have assembled have helped to expand our expertise – especially in relation to adapting our concerns to the preschool classroom setting.
This research study presented in this volume was written with three main aims.
First, to make school studies and learning attractive for early education and teacher education in the European Union through analysing current peer-based early education experience of young children and making recommendations as to how this experience can lead to enhanced social inclusion, personal and social growth and cognitive development.
Second, to provide for improved education and training for early education teachers through recognising the importance of peer-based early education practices and identifying programmes that may be integrated into classrooms to enhance social inclusion and cognitive development.
Third, to enhance young children’s ability to learn more effectively by providing and legitimising social inclusion and learning attractiveness that may be derived through their peer-based experiences in early education.
Overall, the study described here has met and advanced a number of key objectives in the Lisbon Strategy, with particular focus on education, training and social inclusion young children and their teachers
Relational Approaches in Early Education: Enhancing Social Inclusion and Personal Growth for Learning
No full textThe significance of relational approaches in early education has become increasingly recognised, but there is relatively little research on the topic. The study reported in this volume was a collective effort by researchers in six European countries (England, Finland, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden) originally designed in response to European Union concerns for making early education more ‘attractive’, promoting knowledge and personal development, and enhancing social cohesion and inclusion. The study identifies major concerns about life and interaction within preschool settings and aims to contribute new methodological tools for early education research, developing a number of theoretical explanations regarding social and cognitive development of preschool children and providing recommendations for development of practice within early education settings.
The first phase of the study represents a mapping out, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of the context of relationships that young children are likely to encounter during their early education experience in preschool settings. The second phase takes up the challenge to develop relational approaches and activities that practitioners could include within their early education settings to enhance the learning and social competence effects of peer relations. The relational approach adopted here is based on a social, developmental model of relationships – developing interpersonal trust and sensitivity, reciprocal communication and joint working skills.
The results point out that the social pedagogic context must be recognised as a fundamental aspect to learning and development. It becomes crucial to develop teachers’ awareness of the importance of peer-based early education practices and to identify programmes that may be integrated into classrooms to enhance social inclusion and cognitive development
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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
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
Academic achievement, pupil participation and integration of group work skills in secondary school classrooms in Trinidad and Barbados
No full textStudies have shown a positive relationship between a rise in schooling levels and economic production [World Bank, 2005. A Time to Choose: Caribbean Development in the 21st Century. World Bank, Washington, DC; Jules, V., Panneflek, A., 2000. EFA in the Caribbean: Assessment 2000, Sub-Regional Report, vol. 2, The State of Education in the Caribbean in the 1990s. UNESCO, Kingston, Jamaica; Haddad, W.D., 1990. Education and Development; Evidence for New Priorities. World Bank Discussion Paper 95. The World Bank, Washington, DC; McClelland, D., 1969. Does Education Accelerate Economic Growth. In: Eckstein, M.A., Noah, H.J. (Eds.), Scientific Investigations in Comparative Education. Macmillan, London], but this link may be limited in systems of education where traditional pedagogic methods have been dominant (such as the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Barbados where underachievement is also associated with lack of participation and low levels of social inclusion skills by teachers: World Bank, 1992. Access, Quality and Efficiency in Caribbean Education: a Regional Study. World Bank, Washington, DC; Kutnick, P., Jules, V., Layne, A., 1997. Gender and School Achievement in the Caribbean. Department for International Development, London). Into traditional classroom contexts in Trinidad and Barbados, a new social pedagogic method was introduced by teachers and changes in attainment and motivation of pupils and attitudes of teachers were assessed over two terms in secondary schools. Social Studies teachers participated in this action research study. They co-developed and applied a relationally based group work training programme and were provided supportive visits by a research officer between December and June of a school year. Data were collected from nearly 300 pupils in January and July, including: end-of-term, school-based attainment scores in social studies; a teacher-completed questionnaire for each child in class concerning pupil classroom performance (perceptions of knowledge, interactions with teacher and peers); and a pupil-completed questionnaire concerning attitudes to interpersonal contexts for classroom learning. In addition, reflective interviews were undertaken with pupils and teachers at the end of the programme. Over the period studied, virtually all pupils improved their social studies attainment; especially the lowest achieving pupils. Pupils improved their attitudes towards working with others and expectations of achievement in schools. Teachers' understanding of a 'good pupil' also changed-recognising of the importance of social inclusion at the classroom level and relational/groupworking skills among pupils. Overcoming educational underachievement and enhancing economic production is not simply a matter of access to schools; especially where traditional pedagogic methods appear as the norm in schooling. Greater attention needs to be given to helping teachers acquire (and use) additional socially inclusive/relational approaches. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex
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
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