Suchergebnisse

AbstractDoes the grade‐level configuration of a school affect academic achievement? This research examines the effect of attending a middle/junior high school on academic outcomes in British Columbia, Canada, relative to attending a school from kindergarten through grade 8. Using an OLS strategy, I find that attending a middle/junior high school reduces grades 4 to 7 achievement gains in math and reading by 0.125–0.187 and 0.055–0.108, respectively. Similar‐sized estimates are found for math using a 2SLS strategy. Finally, large negative effects on grade 10 and grade 12 English exams are also found.

The expansion of the spheres of political, trade, economic and cultural cooperation between Russia and other countries creates real preconditions for intercultural professional communication in all areas of language experts' activity: teaching, researching, translating, interpreting and speaking for the peers. In these conditions, learning to provide a monologue in different world languages is becoming increasingly important to future linguists. According to the requirements of the new Federal Standard for Higher Professional Education, a linguist must be able to perform intercultural communication in various professional fields, conduct business negotiations, be an active participant in conferences, workshops and roundtable discussions using several working languages and search for topical information to improve his/her professional skills in the field of intercultural communication. Thus, the standard reflects the strategy of modern foreign-language education aimed to form the cultural and linguistic personality of the language expert who has reached a high level of the foreign-language professional communicative competence, which manifests itself in speech culture, an open-minded attitude to unfamiliar traditions and ways of life, along with the abilities for monologue and international professional communication. High-quality monologic speech is a personally and professionally significant skill, due to which specialists do not have difficulties with business conversations, reports, public messages and presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint and freely participate in discussing the course and prospects of joint activities. Mastering such skills begins at the very beginning of learning a foreign language in a higher educational institution to be able to work with complicated scientific texts and prepare creative monologues as a postgraduate student.

Background: Clinical decision-making is influenced by many factors, including clinicians' perceptions of the certainty around what is the best course of action to pursue. Objective: To characterise the documentation of working diagnoses and the associated level of real-time certainty expressed by clinicians and to gauge patient opinion about the importance of research into clinician decision certainty. Method: This was a single-centre retrospective cohort study of non-consultant grade clinicians and their assessments of patients admitted from the emergency department between 01 March 2019 and 31 March 2019. De-identified electronic health record proformas were extracted that included the type of diagnosis documented and the certainty adjective used. Patient opinion was canvassed from a focus group. Results: During the study period, 850 clerking proformas were analysed; 420 presented a single diagnosis, while 430 presented multiple diagnoses. Of the 420 single diagnoses, 67 (16%) were documented as either a symptom or physical sign and 16 (4%) were laboratory-result-defined diagnoses. No uncertainty was expressed in 309 (74%) of the diagnoses. Of 430 multiple diagnoses, uncertainty was expressed in 346 (80%) compared to 84 (20%) in which no uncertainty was expressed. The patient focus group were unanimous in their support of this research. Conclusion: The documentation of working diagnoses is highly variable among non-consultant grade clinicians. In nearly three quarters of assessments with single diagnoses, no element of uncertainty was implied or quantified. More uncertainty was expressed in multiple diagnoses than single diagnoses. Implications: Increased standardisation of documentation will help future studies to better analyse and quantify diagnostic certainty in both single and multiple working diagnoses. This could lead to subsequent examination of their association with important process or clinical outcome measures.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to enhancing accountability with regard to a college's reporting and to developing guidelines for reporting and self-auditing. Public institutions of higher education must report enrollment data according to the requirements of the Coordinating Board, Article III of the General Appropriations Act, and the Texas Education Code.

The professional development of managers poses fundamental challenges that higher education is facing in these fast-changing times. These challenges include a lack of induction into managerial roles and responsibilities, conflicting roles and responsibilities and a lack of general skills pertaining to managerial positions. Experiencing these challenges necessitates the need for sustainable development programmes and practices within higher education institutions. To address this need, the purpose of this exploratory research was to develop a professional development needs analysis instrument as a reliable and valid instrument to determine the professional development needs of junior and mid-level academic managers. A gap analysis was conducted, involving 156 junior and mid-level academic managers at a university in South Africa. The construct validity of the instrument was determined through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. To determine the reliability of the instrument, Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated. The outcome of both the factor analysis and the Cronbach alpha coefficients indicated that the questionnaire was a valid and reliable measuring instrument that could be employed in future research to determine the professional development needs of academic managers. The implementation of the professional development needs analysis instrument may contribute to sustainable management activities at universities for junior and mid-level academic managers.

Collegiate sport in the United States not only provides educational opportunities to student athletes, but also offers excellent entertainment options to stakeholders of universities and their community. For the long-term sustainability of college athletic programs, financial support
from individual donors is very important. Our purpose in this study was to identify and compare motives of low- and high-contribution donors to athletic programs. A sample of college sport donors (N = 484) completed the Scale of Athletic Donor Motivation, and the data were categorized
into low- and high-contribution groups. The results of multigroup structural equation modeling indicated that tangible benefit was a salient predictor of giving intention among the low-contribution group, whereas socialization was significant for the high-contribution group. Theoretical and
practical implications are discussed.