Post-adjunct reading comprehension questions and meaning construction : a case of gender study

This article explicates on how the post-adjunct reading comprehension questions existing in the Iranian high school and pre-university English textbooks affect the comprehension of the related students. It further purports to see if there is a significant gender difference in the comprehension of reading texts by these student groups. To this end, 240 third-grade high school and pre-university students (equal number of male and female) participated in this investigation. The results demonstrated a significant superiority in the subjects’ reading comprehension when they answered the texts with the post-adjunct reading comprehension questions, designed by the researchers for this purpose. The results also showed non-significant gender disparities in the comprehension of given texts.

The task of designing tasks for teacher education and development

Posing, adapting, and creating worthwhile tasks that support student learning are significant pedagogical practices of teachers. However in mathematics education, task design and curriculum development are not often the responsibility of practicing teachers. Textbooks can become the main source of mathematics problems and teachers often follow the text and its sequence of problems. Although mathematics teachers can benefit from access to research-based curriculum resources, limited opportunities to adapt and design tasks can make it challenging to meet the diverse needs and interests of their students. More opportunities for learning to create problems are needed for both practicing and beginning mathematics teachers. What then is involved in learning to pose, adapt and create worthwhile mathematics tasks? More specifically, how can teacher educators design tasks that support teacher candidates in learning to create mathematical tasks? As teacher educators we have, over the past few years, used our own courses as sites in Australia and Canada for investigating various contexts to support preservice teachers in their learning to adapt and create mathematical tasks. Our research includes both large scale and small qualitative studies to explore the perspectives of teacher candidates on learning to create and pose mathematical problems, the kinds of problems they pose, and the opportunities and challenges this offers us as teacher educators. Our work is inspired by Variation Theory that focuses on learning as the act of awareness and discernment of variation. We are exploring both how variation theory can be useful for preservice teachers in their designing, posing and adapting of mathematical tasks and for teacher educators in their design of such pedagogical tasks. The results of our work support the argument that tasks to design, adapt and pose mathematical problems enhance their pedagogical understanding and should be a feature of teacher education courses. This is a new area for research and practice; further exploration of the suitability of particular tasks in elementary mathematics teacher education is recommended.

The impact structured patient assessment frameworks have on patient care: an integrative review

Aims and objectives:
To evaluate structured patient assessment frameworks' impact on patient care.

Background:
Accurate patient assessment is imperative to determine the status and needs of the patient and the delivery of appropriate patient care. Nurses must be highly skilled in conducting timely and accurate patient assessments to overcome environmental obstacles and deliver quality and safe patient care. A structured approach to patient assessment is widely accepted in everyday clinical practice, yet little is known about the impact structured patient assessment frameworks have on patient care.

Design:
Integrative review.

Methods:
An electronic database search was conducted using Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System, PubMed and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. The reference sections of textbooks and journal articles on patient assessment were manually searched for further studies. A comprehensive peer review screening process was undertaken. Research studies were selected that evaluated the impact structured patient assessment frameworks have on patient care. Studies were included if frameworks were designed for use by paramedics, nurses or medical practitioners working in prehospital or acute in-hospital settings.

Results:
Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. There were no studies that evaluate the impact of a generic nursing assessment framework on patient care. The use of a structured patient assessment framework improved clinician performance of patient assessment. Limited evidence was found to support other aspects of patient care including documentation, communication, care implementation, patient and clinician satisfaction, and patient outcomes.

Conclusion:
Structured patient assessment frameworks enhance clinician performance of patient assessment and hold the potential to improve patient care and outcomes; however, further research is required to address these evidence gaps, particularly in nursing.

Relevance to clinical practice:
Acute care clinicians should consider using structured patient assessment frameworks in clinical practice to enhance their performance of patient assessment.

Introduction : democracy and history

The notion that democracy could have a ‘secret’ history might at first seem strange to many readers. Indeed, the history of democracy has become so standardized, is so familiar and appears to be so complete that it is hard to believe that it could hold any secrets whatsoever. The ancient Greek practice of demokratia and the functions of the Roman Republic are foundational to Western understanding of politics; school textbooks introduce the Magna Carta and the rise of the English Parliament; Hollywood blockbusters recount the events surrounding the American Declaration of Independence; many best-selling novels have been written about the French Revolution; and the gradual global spread of the Western model of democracy has been a recurrent news story since the end of the Cold War. So pervasive is this traditional story of democracy that it has achieved the status of received wisdom: endlessly recycled without criticism by policy-makers, academics, in the popular media and in classrooms across the world.

Contextually responsive transfer: perceptions of NNES on an ESL/EFL teacher training programme

Post-training reflections from nine overseas NNES students were recorded in relation to the extent to which they perceived potential applications of what they had learned in a Contextually Responsive Teacher Training (CRTT) programme in the learning-teaching contexts into which they were returning as English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) teachers. Pragmatic issues in home contexts concerning resources generally and textbooks particularly were seen to threaten the viability of what was learned. Significantly, all participants projected disillusion with home country context rather than with foreign country training as a personal resolution of the mismatch. Implications are drawn for preventative redesign in relation to the Australian programmes.

Assessing the economic costs of parental mental illness

The economics discipline is broadly concerned with the allocation of scarce societal resources in the context of unlimited societal wants. Intrinsic to economics is the concept of choice – that is, how can we best use scarce societal resources when our wants are greater than the resources available to us. If we were able to satisfy all our wants and needs with our available resources, there would be no need for the discipline of economics! In most economies, markets are used to make these decisions. Markets are basically a mechanism whereby consumers and producers interact in such a way that the “best” allocation of resources is thought to occur. This “best” allocation of resources in economics is said to be an efficient allocation. Efficiency basically assumes that the correct types of services are being produced (allocative efficiency) in the least resource-intensive way (technical efficiency). Inherent within all these concepts is not just cost but also the benefit derived from the consumption of different goods and services. A central tenant of economics is the concept of opportunity cost whereby the true cost of any given action (or service) is the benefit which would have been attained if the resources used in providing that action or service were used in an alternative way. Therefore, both costs and benefits are central to the economic way of thinking. Contrary to much public perception, economics is not necessarily about cutting costs; rather, it is about using resources in the “best” possible way. Inherent within this idea of “best” is “value,” “benefit,” or “utility” (utility is the term most often seen in economics textbooks to refer to the value of using resources). Unfortunately, there are many assumptions which need to be met for markets to operate in an ideal way. One important assumption is that consumers of goods and services need to be aware of the full impact and consequences of all consumption choices. When market failures occur, governments can sometimes intervene in the operation of markets either because the markets are not working properly (largely because the assumptions underpinning the market mechanism are not met) or for social-justice or equity considerations (Rice and Unruh, 2009).

Gender issues in elementary mathematics teaching materials: a comparative study between China and Australia

International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) cross-national studies (FIMS, SIMS and TIMSS) show that gender differences in mathematical achievements and attitudes have decreased considerably over thirty years (Hanna, 2000), however, mathematics is still historically stereotyped as a male domain with crucial evidence supporting this belief (Forgasz, Leder, & Kloosterman, 2009). Previous research showed that gender differences in mathematics participation,performance and achievement existed widely in the majority of English speaking countries, specifically favouring boys (Forgasz, 1992; Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990; Tiedemann, 2000). Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis and Williams (2008) pointed out that the stereotype that females lack mathematical ability persists and is widely held by parents and teachers.Mathematics teaching materials play an important role in mathematics teaching and learning. The contents within mathematical teaching materials are rational, and deliver both explicit and implicit information. The explicit information refers to mathematics knowledge that students can learn from textbooks, while the latter one, also named as hidden curriculum, contains social and cultural messages. Hidden curriculum is a side effect of education. It has deep and long-term influences on students’ construction of math-gender stereotype that impact their future mathematicallearning (Zhang & Zhou, 2008). Therefore, this study will investigate Chinese andAustralian elementary mathematics teaching materials to explore the messages of gender equity and inequity delivered through hidden curriculum including names, images and problem-solving contexts. Based on the findings, practical implications concerning the promotion of equitable gender environments within elementary mathematics teaching materials from a cross-cultural perspective will be discussed.