Top-down and bottom-up approaches to motor skill assessment of children : are child-report and parent-report perceptions predictive of children's performance-based assessment results?

Background/ Aim: Therapists use different types of tests, scales, and instruments to assess children's motor skills, including those classified as being top-down and bottom-up. The aim of the study was to investigate the ability of measures of children's motor skill performance from the perspectives of children and parents (a type of top-down assessment) to predict children's performance-based motor ability test results (a type of bottom-up assessment).
Methods: A convenience sample of 38 children and parents was recruited from Victoria, Australia. Motor skill performance was evaluated from a top-down perspective using the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ) and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children – Second Edition (MABC-2) Checklist to measure children's and parents' perspectives respectively. Motor skill performance was also evaluated from a bottom-up approach using the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency – Second Edition (BOT-2). Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis to determine whether the PSDQ or MABC-2 Checklist was predictive of the children's BOT-2 performance results.
Results: Two predictive relationships were identified based on parents' perspectives, where the total score of the MABC-2 Checklist was found to be a significant predictor of the BOT-2 Manual Coordination motor composite score, accounting for 8.35% of its variance, and the BOT-2 Strength and Agility motor composite score, accounting for 11.6% of its variance. No predictive relationships were identified between the children's self-report PSDQ perspectives and the BOT-2 performance scores.
Conclusions: Therapists are encouraged to utilize a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches and purposefully to seek parents' and children's perspectives when evaluating children's motor skill performance.

Invader impact clarifies the roles of top-down and bottom-up effects on tropical snake populations

Disentangling the effects of prey limitation (bottom-up) and predation (top-down) processes on natural populations is difficult, but the perturbations introduced by an invasive species can provide pseudo-experimental evidence on this issue.

The academic acclimatisation difficulties of international students of the built environment

Teaching models common to Australasia can be antithetical to those of its Asian neighbours. Australasian andragogy is a bottom-up student-centred mode of knowledge transmission promoting extroverted learning styles, whilst in Asia andragogy is commonly a top-down teacher centred model promoting introspective learning. Yet these teaching styles are in opposition to the cultural-systems attributed to Asia and the West. Such socio-cultural differences are recognised in this research as contributing to the difficulties international Built Environment undergraduates experience when asked to learn in multi-disciplinary collaborative teams. This paper presents the initial stages of a study currently running as a reflexive research program aimed at resolving these learning difficulties. The primary aim of this program is to inform a new culturally inclusive andragogy for design teaching. The outcome of the research questions are addressed through a triangulated analysis including: the formative appraisal of student satisfaction through questionnaires; the summative evaluation of student achievement through the analysis of grades and the assessment of knowledge and skills gained through the measure of student design projects; and illuminative evaluation through focus group discussions and the observation of tutorials.

The academic acclimatisation difficulties of international students of the built environment

Teaching models common to Australasia can be antithetical to those of its Asian neighbours. Australasian andragogy is a bottom-up student-centred mode of knowledge transmission promoting extroverted learning styles, whilst in Asia andragogy is commonly a top-down teachercentred model promoting introspective learning. Yet these teaching styles are in opposition to the cultural-systems attributed to Asia and the West. Such socio-cultural differences are recognised in this research as contributing to the difficulties international Built Environment undergraduates experience when asked to learn in multi-disciplinary collaborative teams. This paper presents the initial stages of a study currently running as a reflexive research program aimed at resolving these learning difficulties. The primary aim of this program is to inform a new culturally inclusive andragogy for design teaching. The outcome of the research questions are addressed through a triangulated analysis including: the formative appraisal of student satisfaction through questionnaires; the summative evaluation of student achievement through the analysis of grades and the assessment of knowledge and skills gained through the measure of student design projects; and illuminative evaluation through focus group discussions and the observation of tutorials.

Bayesian classification of catchments using spatial data: a first step to improved modelling of catchment effects on stream ecological condition

A major challenge facing freshwater ecologists and managers is the development of models that link stream ecological condition to catchment scale effects, such as land use. Previous attempts to make such models have followed two general approaches. The bottom-up approach employs mechanistic models, which can quickly become too complex to be useful. The top-down approach employs empirical models derived from large data sets, and has often suffered from large amounts of unexplained variation in stream condition.

We believe that the lack of success of both modelling approaches may be at least partly explained by scientists considering too wide a breadth of catchment type. Thus, we believe that by stratifying large sets of catchments into groups of similar types prior to modelling, both types of models may be improved. This paper describes preliminary work using a Bayesian classification software package, ‘Autoclass’ (Cheeseman and Stutz 1996) to create classes of catchments within the Murray Darling Basin based on physiographic data.

Autoclass uses a model-based classification method that employs finite mixture modelling and trades off model fit versus complexity, leading to a parsimonious solution. The software provides information on the posterior probability that the classification is ‘correct’ and also probabilities for alternative classifications. The importance of each attribute in defining the individual classes is calculated and presented, assisting description of the classes. Each case is ‘assigned’ to a class based on membership probability, but the probability of membership of other classes is also provided. This feature deals very well with cases that do not fit neatly into a larger class. Lastly, Autoclass requires the user to specify the measurement error of continuous variables.

Catchments were derived from the Australian digital elevation model. Physiographic data werederived from national spatial data sets. There was very little information on measurement errors for the spatial data, and so a conservative error of 5% of data range was adopted for all continuous attributes. The incorporation of uncertainty into spatial data sets remains a research challenge.

The results of the classification were very encouraging. The software found nine classes of catchments in the Murray Darling Basin. The classes grouped together geographically, and followed altitude and latitude gradients, despite the fact that these variables were not included in the classification. Descriptions of the classes reveal very different physiographic environments, ranging from dry and flat catchments (i.e. lowlands), through to wet and hilly catchments (i.e. mountainous areas). Rainfall and slope were two important discriminators between classes. These two attributes, in particular, will affect the ways in which the stream interacts with the catchment, and can thus be expected to modify the effects of land use change on ecological condition. Thus, realistic models of the effects of land use change on streams would differ between the different types of catchments, and sound management practices will differ.

A small number of catchments were assigned to their primary class with relatively low probability. These catchments lie on the boundaries of groups of catchments, with the second most likely class being an adjacent group. The locations of these ‘uncertain’ catchments show that the Bayesian classification dealt well with cases that do not fit neatly into larger classes.

Although the results are intuitive, we cannot yet assess whether the classifications described in this paper would assist the modelling of catchment scale effects on stream ecological condition. It is most likely that catchment classification and modelling will be an iterative process, where the needs of the model are used to guide classification, and the results of classifications used to suggest further refinements to models.

Accessibilitė

Le developpement des industries creatives est largement lie a I'accessibilite
de I'offre culturelle pour les publics et a leur integration socialepar la culture.

Reflexive and critical views of leadership performance in corporate accomplishment : framework and illustration

Purpose – This paper intends to shed some light on the relationship between leadership performance and corporate accomplishment through the aid of complexity sciences. The objective is to describe leadership performance in corporate accomplishment using different teleological approaches.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the underlying criteria of the relationship between leadership performance and corporate accomplishment. Case illustration and narrative analogy are also provided.

Findings – The authors believe that the discussion highlights a potential downside of leadership performance in corporate accomplishment and its precision rarely highlighted in practice and literature.

Research limitations/implications – There is a reigning assumption in management practice that is based on the belief that a top-down approach of leadership performance in management and business practices is superior to the bottom-up approach. It proffers the assumed importance of strategic management issues, but neglects the knowledge, experience, competence and awareness inherent among employees at tactical and operational levels of business practices. It also proffers a mechanical view of employee performance and ignores the worth of the generation of ideas from subordinates in management and business practices that contribute to corporate achievements. Furthermore, it neglects the fact that it is not possible to know the future nor it is predictable.

Practical implications – The paper contends that the importance of top management tends to be inflated in respect to corporate achievements in the management/leadership literature. It also contends that it should be questioned as to whether the top management of corporations are largely responsible for the corporate results on which they attempt to justify their salaries and other benefits. Furthermore, the paper contends that it also should be questioned as to what extent corporate accomplishment may be derived from the performance of the top management in organizations.

Originality/value – The paper strives to contribute to the ongoing discussion of leadership performance in corporate accomplishment in various ways. The principal contributions are: a set of teleological sub-processes of leadership performance and a case illustration and narrative analogies of teleological leadership performance patterns, in respect to corporate accomplishment in management and business practices. These contributions provide theoretical and managerial ideas and insights to anticipate and avoid deficient or erroneous grounds of leadership performance evaluation in corporate accomplishment.

MammoSapiens: eResearch of the lactation program.

Delivering bioinformatics power to life science researchers inevitably runs into problems of limited computing resources in the context of exponentially increasing data sources, access time, costs, lack of skills and, rapidly evolving technology and software tools with poorly defined standards. In this context the development of e-facilities to best enable collaborative research often needs to be customized to specific project applications in close cooperation with the experimentalist users and, to be concerned with the storage and management of results to allow more consistency and traceability of e-results on a broad access data mining platform.

Here we showcase an internet based eResearch platform using the PHP/MySQL paradigm for the collaborative, integrative and comparative analysis of lactation related gene sequences and gene expression experiments to support lactation research. We also illustrate how these resources are used, how they enable research by allowing meta-analysis of data and results and, how the bottom-up development of customized eResearch components can lead to the production of more generic functional software tools and eResearch environments for deployment to a larger number of biological research users working on other bio-systems.

Recent developments in mechanochemical nanoparticle synthesis

The results of recent investigations of the mechanochemical synthesis of CaC0₃, Cr₂0₃ and Nb₂0₅ nanopowders are reported. With all three materials studied, it is shown that the volume fraction of the matrix phase is crucial to the formation of separate, unagglomerated particles. With Cr₂0₃ and Nb₂0₅, amorphous particles were formed by mechanochemical reaction and low temperature heat treatment was required for crystallization. It is shown that, as a 'bottom up' process, mechanochemical processing enables the building up nanoparticles through solid-state chemical reaction in a microscopically uniform environment, leading to the formation of nanoparticles with narrow size distributions.

Addressing the contradiction between discourse and practice in health promotion

The main theme of this thesis is the contradiction between discourse and practice in health promotion. Many health promoters continue to exert power-over the community through top-down programming whilst at the same time using an emancipatory discourse. The thesis has addressed this contradiction in three parts. The first part determines how the emancipatroty discourse has evolved and eplores the role of social movements in the development of contemporary health discourses and their influence on the legitimisation of empowerment. Central to this discourse is the empowerment of communities. To understand the role of this concept the thesis provides an interpretation of the different meanings of power and community, and the different levels of analysis of empowerment in the context of health promotion programming. The second part identifies the nature of health programming and the dominance of top-down, and to a much lesser extent, bottom-up approaches. The thesis argues that these two approaches are not, and do not have to be, mutually exclusive. To address this issue the thesis presents a new methodology is situated within a framework developed for the accomodation of empowerment goals within health promotion programmes. The study also identifies the organisational areas of influence on the processs of community empowerment and it is these which are used for the assessment of this concept. Both the framework and the methodology address the contradiction in health promotion by making community empowerment operational within a programme context. The third part of the thesis supports the rationale for the design of the methodology with field work in rural Fijian communities. The findings are presented as a composite case study to highlight the experiences of implementing the methodolgy and the main themes that emerged during the field work. the final chapter of the thesis brings together the central themes of the study and draws from these and 'emergent agenda' as a way forward for health promotion research and practice.

Intelligent kanban : evaluation of a supply chain MAS application using benchmarking

The real world challenges of incomplete information access and bounded computational resources in supply chain management motivate us to propose a bottom up approach to supply chain intelligence, built over a widely used reactive card-based replenishments system (kanban). The rationale is to use agent technology to improve the performance of the traditional kanban system while maintaining its recognized usability. Instead of optimizing a system utility function, we encode the system goal in desired behaviours of individual agents that reason about their own behaviours in the local context. This paper discusses a rigorous framework for evaluation of the proposal based on the concept of benchmarking. Preliminary results from these simulations show remarkable improvements over the traditional system. Furthermore, use of the benchmarking framework gives confidence that these results translate into real performance gains in practical implementations.