1,720,967 research outputs found
Accommodating Agency-Supportive Learning Environments in Formal Education
Full text linkInternationally, schools engage in efforts to promote student agency, hoping it will increase attainment, better prepare students for their employment future, and enhance a sense of active membership of the school community and society. Student agency is promoted when students are encouraged and supported to exert influence, make choices, and take stances in ways that affect their learning. A growing body of research supports the belief that student agency has direct positive effects in the context of formal education, for example by turning students into more engaged and motivated investors in their education. Yet, other studies produce seemingly opposite results. To understand what makes student agency initiatives effective, there is a need for further educational theory and empirical research. This dissertation contributes with theory on how student agency can be promoted in formal education. The empirical studies in this dissertation also investigated the challenges that teachers, school leaders, and researchers are confronted with while attempting to promote student agency. These are, among others, how student agency can be measured, how to balance the tension between input from the learner and teacher guidance, and how to identify high-impact school improvements. Specifically, this dissertation focused on 1) the relationship between measures of student agency through self-reports and online trace data, 2) the contribution of the notion of Transactional Proximity in understanding agency-supportive learning environments in formal education, and 3) a method for researchers and practitioners to collaboratively identify high-impact improvements for agency-supportive learning environments using descriptive data. The general picture that emerges, taking the results of all five studies together, is that attending to the relationships within a school is key in promoting student agency through learner control. Students’ trust in their educators (principal and teacher trust) is shown to have a relatively high average association with all areas that together make up the student’s school experience. In accordance, teachers indicated that it is key to build a relationship with students to identify and create beneficial opportunities for learner control. Furthermore, the literature review shows that dialogue (e.g., group work, the use of non-controlling language, explaining the relevance of an uninteresting task) positively impacts manifestations of student agency. The importance of relationships and dialogue suggest that students do not always recognize learner control as an opportunity to benefit from it and that they need additional support and guidance. Descriptive evidence suggests that transactional proximity may be a helpful concept when promoting student agency in formal education. Transactional proximity enables both the teacher and the students to better estimate which opportunities for learner control will benefit both learning and the student’s sense of agency. The mechanism that connects the concepts of transactional proximity, control, and student agency is laid out in the ATP model. The Student Experiences of Proximity (SEP) inventory provides school organizations with opportunities to identify growth areas based on the views of multiple stakeholders and can be used to facilitate the improvement of learning environments by catalyzing a conversation regarding targeted instructional domains. Finally, this dissertation shows that while leaders have good insights as to which areas to focus on, research-based methods and instruments can allow school leaders to see where they are excelling and where they need to focus for further growth. Within a partnership that respects the expertise of school leaders and teachers, researchers can empower those in schools working alongside teachers and students so that they can make informed decisions based on learners' needs. Researchers may influence policies and implement new programs, but without empowering school leaders and creating a school culture where people feel valued and involved, it is unlikely that student learning will improve
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
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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