1,720,956 research outputs found
Perceptions of the social and economic factors influencing engineering and applied science students' choice of degree program
A career in science or engineering is not among the top choices of Canadian students. Although there is no current imbalance in demand and supply of engineers and scientists in Canada, it is also true that the global need for these skills is currently at its peak with substantial future growth opportunities. With competition from emerging economies like India and China, it is essential for government, schools and universities, and other agencies in the Canadian education system to understand the factors influencing Canadian students’ participation in post-secondary degree in engineering. Review of the literature shows that there has been limited investigation of this phenomenon. Using a cross-sectional survey design, this study, set in the Newfoundland Labrador context, examines certain demographic, family, high school, societal, economic, and personal factors that play a role in students’ academic decisions to pursue an undergraduate engineering degree. The findings show that participation in undergraduate engineering programs at Memorial University is associated with student’s family background and gender. Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and women are underrepresented in undergraduate engineering education in Newfoundland and Labrador. The results also reveal that engineering student represent their decisions to pursue engineering as influenced primarily by personal factors and only marginally by school-level factors. The study points to a number of implications for policy and practice. Among the policy actions that could increase the number of engineering students from underrepresented groups is reexamining and, where necessary substantially improving support programs for underrepresented populations – both at the secondary and post-secondary levels. At the school level, this might involve greater attention to engaging students in STEM-based experiential activities and programs, explicitly exposing students to information on careers in engineering and the applied sciences, and professional development for teachers and counselors. At the post-secondary level, financial support to students from underrepresented groups and continued research in the area of engineering education may increase participation in engineering and help create equitable educational opportunities in the field of engineering for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-96)
Narratives of resilience: exploring the voices of individuals who grew up in the child welfare system in Newfoundland and Labrador
This novel Bildungsroman biographical narrative inquiry explored the narratives of resilience of six adults who grew up in Newfoundland and Labrador’s child welfare system. It considered: a) the unresolved disagreements about the understanding of resilience; b) the deficit discourse that contaminates resilience research within the context of the child welfare system and c) the methodological exclusion in resiliency research and theorizing of the voices and experiences of some individuals who grew up in care. This study used a critical strengths perspective to examine: 1) How do we ask individuals if they feel resilient? 2) How do we determine what adversity means to these individuals and the outcomes they value? 3) What processes did they go through to achieve those outcomes?
Data were generated using interviews and prolonged engagement via email, text messages, and phone call with six adults who had spent >=3 years in care and reported a subjective sense of accomplishment. The findings are represented in the form of, a) six biographical summaries co-constructed in Bildungsroman style; and b) a discussion of themes within the three core components of resilience theory: adversity, outcomes, and processes.
Themes within Adversity were, a) pre-care adversity; b) adversity associated with being in care; c) struggle with negative self-perception and stigma; d) state-designated and healthcare workers caring for the client, not the child, e) post-care adversity. Themes about Better-Than-Expected Outcomes were, a) agreement with the normative indicators of positive outcomes; b) unique meaning of normative accomplishments; c) striving to become the same as everyone else; d) extreme expectations and associated consequences;
e) dynamic nature of the sense of accomplishment. The identified processes were, a) processes of accessing supports and services from the child welfare system; b) processes of accessing supports outside care; c) extended processes of stability and consistency; and d) processes of acceptance: disconnecting care from protection.
This study considers the contemporary critiques of the concept of resiliency and introduces a novel methodology to research resiliency. The strength of this thesis lies in the findings grounded in intimate accounts of those who grew up in care. The study also uses Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction to consider the potential harm of the resilience discourse as a way to understand the experiences of youth in care. I conclude with recommendations for practice and policy.Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-283
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The 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
“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
We 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
We 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
We 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.
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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