This study used the Rasch model to assess the unidimensionality and item-person fit of an Academic Self-Concept Questionnaire (ASCQ) that is based on the Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) perspective. Knowledge of the relationship between academic achievement and academic self-concept is particularly useful because academic achievement is overemphasized in the CHC. ASCQ largely satisfies the Rasch model for unidimensionality. However, four items had poor Infit statistics, suggesting that they do not contribute significantly to the scale hierarchy. Rasch model also confirmed the unidimensionality of the two subscales ? Academic Confidence and Academic Effort. The academic self-concept scale, academic effort and academic confidence subscales were also been found to be valid with students with learning disabilities. Results from this study will extend the predominantly Western based literature regarding Academic Self-Concept by reaffirming the construct of a CHC measure of academic self-concept that incorporates the values of academic effort and academic confidence.

This article presents a new measure of teachers' confidence to conduct musical activities with young children; Teachers Music Confidence Scale (TMCS). The TMCS was developed using a sample of 284 in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The TMCS consisted of 10 musical activities. Teachers rated their confidence levels to conduct each activity on a scale from 1 (Not confident at all) to 5 (Very confident). An exploratory factor analysis retained a 10-item single factor that was replicated using confirmatory factor analysis procedures. All items of the TMCS fitted the Rasch model adequately. In-service teachers showed higher confidence levels to conduct several musical activities with young children than pre-service teachers. Implications of these findings for measuring teachers' confidence to conduct musical activities with young children were discussed.

This article is a critical reflection on a study of the views of Spanish teachers in South Australian schools about their professional development (PD) needs and experiences. Officials responsible for designing Spanish specific PD were interviewed. Sixteen teachers were randomly selected from private, public, country and metropolitan middle schools and were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire with an open-ended response format. Non-native and native Spanish speaking participants formed the cohort. The findings of the study revealed that within-system weaknesses and individual-identified locus of control, were barriers to Spanish teachers' PD and growth. Tensions existed between teachers and officials' expectations of PD which influenced participants' views of PD and achievable outcomes. The findings suggest participatory strategic negotiations are required if both parties are to improve the perceptions of the value of PD provisions and outcomes.

As schools continue to invest resources into the integration of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), many are also utilizing the Internet as a medium for promoting and marketing their facilities and educational programs to prospective families. Tailored and personalised school websites provide a wide range of information for members of the school community and for any interested members of the public. As a preliminary stage of a larger scale research project, guidelines and evaluation criteria have been formulated to determine if website content and design can be used as an indicator of either novice or expert ICT leadership within a school, and in addition if it reflects the level of ICT integration.

This article addresses the need for systematic and replicable research methods for the examination of student learning using so called interactive whiteboard technologies. As a basis for these methods a model is developed of the cognitive concomitants evident in students? use of these technologies. While interactive whiteboards are shared spaces, it is important for educators to recognise individual cognitive outcomes from the interactions. Through extending an existing model of cognitive concomitants that has been used in the successful analysis of interaction in shared online discussion spaces, this paper outlines a systematic approach to the analysis of whiteboard interactions that can provide insights into the cognitive processing occurring. Recent notions of imprinting and cognitive tracks, drawn from research into online interactive behaviours, in the context of such methods, may inform the development of effective pedagogies for interactive board use.

This paper examines the intersection between creativity, problem solving, cognitive psychology and neuroscience in a discussion surrounding the genesis of new ideas and innovative science. Three creative activities are considered. These are (a) the interaction between visual-spatial and analytical or verbal reasoning, (b) attending to feeling in listening to the 'self', and (c) the interaction between conscious and nonconscious reasoning. Evidence for the importance of each of these activities to the creative process is drawn from (a) historical and introspective accounts of novel problem solving by noted scientists and mathematicians; (b) cognitive psychology and neuroscience; and (c) a recent empirical study of novel mathematics problem solving. An explanation of these activities is given in terms of cognitive neuroscience. A conceptual framework connecting each of these activities is presented and the implications for learning and teaching considered.

The concern that educational research is often divorced from the problems and issues of everyday teaching practice, is strongly influenced by the chosen paradigm in which the research is framed. Modelled on design-based research methods, this paper presents the development of a theoretical research framework that accommodates complex interventions, such as the adoption of ICT into mainstream classroom practice, which can be informed and improved through empirical study. It is hoped that in developing the Design-Based Research in Innovative Education Framework (DBRIEF), the desirable outcome of providing a practical and adaptable instrument with the potential to find applicability, currency, and promote the sharing of knowledge in the wider educational research community, is achieved.

Education has become a central issue in West Papua. During the Suharto regime, the Indonesian government paid little attention to educational investment in the province which led to poor educational infrastructure and a shortage of teachers. As a result, the quality of human resources in the province is poor. Since 2001, the adoption of the Special Autonomy Law has seen education emerge as a priority program for local government. Improving the quality of human resources to match standards in other provinces has emerged as a new challenge for the province. The article highlights the critical issues relating to the education system, education investment and policy formulation to support the development of West Papua.

This article highlights the potential influence of reflective writing upon the emergence of a professional identity during pre-service teachers' practicum placements. Links between reflective writing and identity formation were made during a project which required pre-service teachers to reflect upon their responses to, and observations of, a number of broad elements of the teaching environment both within the classroom and in the wider school context. The author reports on this small study involving teacher education students at Flinders University in South Australia and makes recommendations which could enhance the value of reflective writing as a personal and professional development tool.

The multiple-goal perspective has recently been applied to teacher behaviours in primary school classrooms through experimental intervention (Linnenbrink, 2005) and objective observation (Sideridis, 2005). However, there is evidence suggesting that rather than centered only on teacher behaviour, classroom goal structures are a whole class feature (Urdan, 2004c). Despite intended or observed classroom goal structures, students' perceptions of the same classroom can vary (Wolters, 2004). Furthermore, students' pre-existing personal goal orientations may shape their perceptions of classroom goal structures (Lyke & Kelaher Young, 2006). An investigation with tertiary students in naturalistic learning contexts will extend achievement goal theory to a multiple-goal perspective of classroom goal structures.

This article presents the quantitative findings from a mixed methods study of students and faculty at a private medical university in Malaysia. In particular, the relationships among students' individual characteristics, general self-efficacy, family context, university and classroom learning environments, curriculum, approaches to learning, and measures of students' academic achievement, self-directed learning readiness and mental health at the student level. Data were collected from 392 students attending a private medical university in Malaysia. The findings from the partial least square path analysis (PLSPATH) suggest that: (a) parental involvement continues to impact and influence student learning process, and related student outcomes, at the university level, and (b) a surface approach to learning is related to poor quality processes and outcomes and a deep approach to learning is related to high quality processes and outcomes.

A large body of literature reports that there are gender differences in mathematical problem solving favouring males. Strategy use, as a reflection of different patterns in mathematical problem solving between genders, is found to be related to cognitive abilities, together with psychological characteristics and mediated by experience and education. Many complex variables including biological, psychological and environmental variables are revealed to contribute to gender differences in mathematical problem solving in some specific areas. This article suggests that the combined influence of all affective variables may account for the gender differences in mathematical problem solving patterns.

Physical environments are a major contributor to human health, cognitive development, and social wellbeing but, until recently, these roles have largely been ignored. Historically the nature-nurture dichotomy divided understandings of human growth, learning and behaviour but the recent epigenetic research and the emergence of gene-environment interplay as a concept offers a contemporary integrated perspective. This paper reviews research demonstrating that environments significantly influence the expression of genetic information in ways that are critical to healthy human development. It then draws connections between these findings and studies that demonstrate natural environments support a range of significant human health, cognitive and cultural benefits. By linking the two fields the author posits that engaging with natural environments affects the expression of genetic and cultural information in ways that support human physical, psychological and social wellbeing. This hypothesis is explored through examining the measured learning outcomes achieved in naturalised school grounds. The author concludes there is sufficient evidence that natural environments support wellbeing at many levels and recommends that students, communities and education professionals seek to naturalise school grounds through inclusive, action based learning programs.

This study is intended to examine the influence of the democratic climate of classrooms on student engagement and learning outcomes in order to find out a more adequate model of learning in Civic Education classrooms. A model is developed for testing with data obtained from a sample of 930 students from schools in North Sulawesi. Prior to the analysis, scales are analysed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and are calibrated using Rasch Measurement Model Analysis (RMMA). The analysis shows that the trimmed model (Model B) is slightly more coherent and simpler than the hypothesised model (Model A). However, both models indicate that the democratic climate of Civic Education classrooms has significant effects on student engagement, student civic knowledge and interpretation skill, and student concepts of citizenship.

This paper represents an autoethnographic exploration of white teachers in South Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, through the lens of critical whiteness studies and racial contract theory. The broad aim of the paper is to return the gaze on the white subject within the context of White Australia. Moreover, this article seeks to position the teacher as a site of representation; a site for the reproduction and potential disruption of the relations of dominance 'in situ'. I employ a narrative technique to locate my Self as a writer and as a racialised subject; to critique my structural and cultural location as a teacher in the Pitjantjatjara Lands; and to argue that autoethnography may be harnessed as one of the many tools for negotiating forms of critical pedagogy within the transcultual setting.

The Inspire Peer Mentor Program (Inspire) operates of Flinders University in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, and has received funding from the Department of Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA). The experience gained during the past three years has indicated that a mentoring program between the University and schools located in its local region, which includes key areas of low socio-economic status, can be a major form of community engagement for Higher Education. Inspire received a commendation in the recent Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) Report (2006) as a strategy for community engagement. This article is written in two sections. The first will use the experience gained from Inspire to discuss the Higher Education sector's involvement in school-based mentoring programs as a strategy for community engagement. Catherine Koerner's analysis of the literature on mentoring, finds that mentoring programs can be an effective intervention with communities to increase school retention rates and engagement with formal learning if they are adequately resourced. She argues that the implication of this finding for the tertiary sector is that mentoring programs can be a strategic form of community engagement. In the second section, John Harris provides a case study of the adoption of the school-based mentoring model by the Teaching Experience Office of the School of Education at Flinders University as one example of how mentoring is being embedded within faculty programs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that those preservice teachers who had participated, as Inspire mentors were better prepared for their teaching practicums. As a result, second year education students are placed on 20 days of school experience over two semesters to better prepare them for their teaching practicums in their third and fourth years of their Education Degree.

Buss and Perry (1992) developed the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) to assess aggressiveness as a personality trait in high school and college samples. The AQ has been used by researchers in United States, Italy, Germany, Netherland, Japan, Canada, and Greece. The present study is reported on an Arabic adapted version of the AQ among a sample of 510 Egyptian high school students. An exploratory factor analysis technique defined four factors: physical aggression (9 items), verbal aggression (5 items), anger (7 items), and hostility (8 items). The correlation among the four factors ranged from 0.38 to 0.49. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the AQ could be described by four first levels factors that were linked by a higher order factor of general aggression. Rasch analysis showed that the AQ was bias free. Relevance of these findings to the assessment of the trait aggressiveness is discussed.

This paper discusses the baics tenets of Islam and the Islamic view of nature that were influential in the development of science in the so-called 'Golden Age of Islam'. These findings have been the catalyst for present day Muslim scholars, who have emphasized the importance of Islamic science, as the means of understanding Western science. There is also a strong body of opinion within researchers of Islamic science that the abandonment of Islamic values and the rapid adoption of Western science and technologies have led to conflict in social, educational and scientific fields in Islamic countries. The article examines how these two views can be reconciled in order to build bridges between modern science and Islamic science.

This article considers the current debate in Australia into the learning of literacy and foreign languages. It examines not only the literacy levels attained by Australian students in their national language (English) in comparison to these in other countries, as well as between Australian states, but also theories involved in school learning and the learning of language, with particular reference to the learning of a foreign language. The article raises and discusses 12 issues that arise in language learning. It is noted that in many countries it is necessary for students to learn at least three languages, namely, the mother language, their national language and an appropriate foreign language, that make heavy demands on the time available in the curriculum of the schools if adequate levels of competence in language usage are to be attained.

The passing of Emeritus Professor Kevin Majoribanks on the 29th April occurred at a time of continuing high level scholarly productivity. The present paper celebrates some of the accomplishments from his long career. It takes a developmental orientation, beginning with the early stages of his career in education and his choice of inequalities in educational outcomes as the core long-term focus for his scholarly endeavours. His emphasis was on family and school environments as the origin of inequalities in educational outcomes. His empirical work drew on both the conduct of large-scale longitudinal studies and on the analysis of secondary data. His scholarly achievements are reflected in the formulation of a series of increasingly comprehensive causal models linking environments to educational achievement and occupational attainment. His approach to research and theory construction offers a model for future scholars in educational research. Foremost, his achievements provide a foundation on which those future scholars can build.

The discussion in this paper is based on the assumption that international education is equated to recruiting and educating international students, even though its true concept goes far beyond this narrow understanding. The purpose of this research is to look at the key factors that influence recruiting young Chinese students, and make sure all who work in this field understand how their business will achieve success. This is done through an analysis of the Chinese education system, the history of young Chinese students studying abroad, China's economic outlook, the Australian and Chinese governments' attitudes and international education policies, and the expectations of the students and their families. The article concludes with some constructive recommendations and suggestions.

A review of literature reveals that self-efficacy (SE) has been shown as a successful predictor of students' course-taking. Many factors have been reported to have influences on physics self-efficacy (PSE), but most of them are contextual variables. This article suggests that learning content is also an influencing factor. Physics learning content in high schools is far from being congruent with girls' development of cognitive psychology and social cognition. This incongruence contributes to the lower PSE of girls, and consequentially leads to their less course-taking in physics. The relationship is examined with respect to the author's personal schooling experiences in China. Appropriate interventions to promote female students' physics course- taking need to be emphasised.

This study was an investigation of the educational needs of tuk-tuk drivers when using English to communicate with tourists in Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya, an old capital of Thailand. The samples included 30 tuk-tuk drivers at five famous places where tourists require tuk-tuk drivers' services in Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya, for example at the train station, the bus station, a bus stop in front of the Ayutthaya district office, Hua-Ror and the Chao-Phrom market. Six participants were drawn from each place. Simple random sampling was used to select the participants. The instrument was an interview questionnaire constructed by the researchers. The data were analyzed by frequency, percentage and mean. The problem conditions were analyzed in terms of contrast and similarity. Our study has presented the problems and suggested ways to develop English competency to meet the needs of tuk-tuk drivers in order to improve the tourism industry and assist the tuk-tuk drivers themselves who struggle to earn their lives as poor and low educated citizens. This study has supported UNESCO and Thailand?s National Education Act 1999, in the pursuit of lifelong learning for all. Non-formal and Informal Education have been promoted as a way for education to meet the needs of tuk-tuk drivers. It has emphasized the necessary cooperation between government educational institutions and local communities if local people are to benefit from meaningful educational opportunities. Such endeavors will assist the development of the tuk-tuk drivers' English communication competency, so necessary in the tourism industry in Thailand.

Australian educators now operate in environments that frequently stress marketing activities. This article highlights the ways that colonial school prize ceremonies were deliberately developed to promote teaching activities. These ceremonies were part of carefully considered strategies that helped to boost the status of entrepreneurial teachers who had taken the risk of establishing their own private educational ventures. Private school promotional techniques were extremely influential because they were also used to extend the growth of government-supported and corporate schools as well as cultural activities in Australia's colonial civil society.

Research was undertaken to examine the level of support and general attitudes towards multi-level selective classes for gifted students amongst the staff and parents of an independent (non-government) boys' Preparatory school, located in Adelaide, South Australia. Questionnaires were sent to all parents and staff in the Preparatory school and approximately 50 per cent chose to participate, which equated to 90 parents and 14 staff. The responses received reflected the range of attitudes noted in the literature. This article examines some of these attitudes in the light of the research on grouping for gifted students, and evaluates the benefits and disadvantages that parents and staff expressed about the multi-level selective classes at the school in question. A general overview of current provisions within South Australia for gifted students, and findings from the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Committee report into the Education of gifted children in Australia (The Senate Committee, 2001) puts this provision into context.

This article discusses the reasons why Chinese learners of English avoid using phrasal verbs in an English community context or when using English as an interlanguage in China. The avoidance of phrasal verbs often leads to ineffective communication. By adopting appropriate pedagogical and methodological approaches or providing proper guidance to learning, Chinese learners of English may achieve the goal of using phrasal verbs appropriately in the context of English as an international language in China.

The South Australian Education Department introduced the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy in 2001 to help teachers assess young learners and plan relevant learning events, to help collect information about South Australian education from Pre-School to Year 3, and to facilitate collaboration within and between educational and social institutions. Implementation of the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy was supported in a limited number of schools by the School Entry Assessment Mentor Project (SEAMP), which reported generally positive results and concluded that mentoring was an effective way to support new policy implementation. However, the SEA Mentor Project was discontinued in 2005, and it remains unclear how teachers and schools that were not mentored are implementing the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy, how they are feeling about its implementation, what training and supports they have received, or how they are using the accompanying documentation. This exploratory qualitative study involved comparative analysis of interview responses from eight Reception teachers currently working in South Australian public (state) schools. It was found that positive attitudes towards the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy have not necessarily translated into a thorough policy implementation in some schools; that the practices and attitudes of some teachers may be based on limited understandings about the aims of the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy; and that some Reception teachers may not be involving parents and caregivers in their considerations about the policy. It also appears that some teachers believe the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy only concerns the first year of school (Reception in South Australia), Data collected for this study lends weight to concerns about the disenfranchisement of teachers and about teachers' workloads, especially concerning non-teaching or administrative expectations, and suggests that more inclusive policy-development processes may engender more commitment to shared goals. The argument is made that new policy must include an adequate budget for initial training and ongoing support to facilitate a successful and thorough policy implementation, and that the savings made in initial expenditure may be a false economy, leading to less efficient long-term use of limited public resources.

An examination of the professional socialisation process is critical in changing the way graduates are trained and how they are supported post graduation. This article summarises key mechanisms to facilitate socialisation from recent socialisation studies undertaken in the fields of medicine, physical therapy nursing, occupational therapy, and certified athletic coaches. The article outlines the design of a survey of undergraduate university property program directors in the Pacific Rim to determine their awareness of professional socialisation and how the development of graduates' professional socialisation is accommodated at orientation and in subsequent years of their program.

The purpose of this study was to determine prospective teachers' knowledge about the concept of division. One focus of interest was whether the prospective teachers were able to represent division of fractions. The participants were introduced to an alternative model for representation of fractions based on a rate or ratio model of division involving whole numbers. A second focus of interest was whether the prospective teachers would be able to apply this model to problems of division of fractions. The findings revealed that the prospective teachers' successfully represented division of whole numbers using models of fair sharing and, to a lesser extent, repeated subtraction. However, they had difficulty in successfully representing division of fractions. Some improvement was observed in participants' performance in attempts to represent division of fractions after introduction of the rate/ratio model. However the prospective teachers often used the rate or ratio model mistakenly where the situations were not appropriate for the model, which appeared to be associated with difficulty in multiplicative thinking.

This article reports on a study into the ideological beliefs of first year prospective teachers. Here ideologies are understood as expressions of specific ?world views' and certain collective interests. Data were drawn from tasks that attempted to get students to position themselves relative to and reflect upon questions and propositions related to social justice as it applied to education. It was found that most students work with a variant of liberal ideology, emphasising individual autonomy, a capacity for selfassertion and the fulfilment of native potentials. While expressing a concern about inequality and misrecognition, student responses also provided insights into the limits of liberal approaches to social justice, these arising from an underdeveloped sense of the dynamic tension between society and individual.

Within a wider study of pedagogic change, students from two innovating secondary schools described their experiences of the changes presumed to be occurring in their schools. The students exhibited scant knowledge of the innovations. While their learning was promoted as the motive for change, their role appeared to have been peripheral at best. There were indications, however, that enthused student engagement with new learning approaches, or, conversely, apathy or resistance, had the potential to intensify, or to sabotage, any change of pedagogy. An authentic, informed partnership between learners and teachers may be an essential element of any strategy for pedagogic innovation.

This study is exploratory, examining to what extent the Thai ICT (information and communication technology) schools have classroom learning environments that are associated with certain teacher characteristics using questionnaires, interview surveys, and computer-based classroom observations in order to collect data from 13 Thai ICT model schools. The data analysis was carried out using statistical analysis techniques as well as using descriptive analysis. It is proposed that students can be assisted to learn critical thinking skills that have particular supportive learning environments. The significant findings offer opportunities to develop and support students' critical thinking skills through co-operation between students and their peers to achieve their student assignments among cooperative classroom learning environments with ICT. In particular, the findings of this study have major implications for teachers and school management where ICT schools are being established and incorporated in Thailand.

High quality pedagogical knowledge is crucial for students, especially for teacher-education students, because it can assist them in their current learning and in helping their own future students' learning. This study of teacher-education students used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate three main research questions: (1) What pedagogical knowledge (SPK) do students have about teachers' use of questions? (2) How well-developed is this SPK? (3) Do students use this SPK in planning for teaching? The findings showed that students did have SPK about teachers' use of questions that involved a wide range of motivational, cognitive and metacognitive activities in teaching and learning. There was evidence that students did use their SPK in a simulated teaching situation. However, the extent of knowledge used depended on the situations students were involved in, on the types and the quality of the SPK, and on the availability of external probing.

This study aimed to extend previous studies into resilience, by identifying the roles that teachers played in fostering resilience (N=57: females n=43; and males n=14). A quantitative scale was administered to teachers in South Australia's Catholic education sector to determine the extent to which they were involved in fostering resilience. A qualitative questionnaire followed which determined teachers' understanding of this phenomenon. The latter results suggested that teachers may be able to describe readily those circumstances which place any child 'at risk' (e.g. poverty) but they failed to recognise that those children identified as resilient also experienced circumstances in which they are potentially 'at risk'. Instead, teachers appeared to be describing some children as 'resilient' on the basis of displaying competence in coping generally but not because of experiencing 'at risk' life circumstances. This paper argues that teachers may be confusing the profile of a competent student: one who does not have 'at-risk' circumstances, with that of a resilient one, who also manages competently despite the 'at risk' circumstances in their lives. Recognising these differences is considered essential for teachers to be able to identify those children requiring intervention and support both at the personal, interpersonal, social and emotional levels.

Teacher renewal and improvements in teaching quality through teacher professional development (PD) have been high on the agenda of many countries for some time. Several principles of effective PD for teachers, based on a synthesis of research evidence, have been espoused by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI, 1998). A survey based on these principles was developed and administered to 395 primary and secondary teachers at the conclusion of a variety of curriculum, topic or Information Communication Technology (ICT) based professional learning activities which ranged from seminars and workshops to longer courses. While teacher age, gender and school level were not significant, teachers' ratings indicated ICT activities and longer courses contributed significantly to their professional renewal. Teachers also perceived longer courses were more applicable to their work. These findings affirm the CERI principles of effective PD and endorse the need for long term activities that have specific focus.

This article reports an investigation into the students' use of metacognitive reading strategies that involve the use of analytic and pragmatic reading strategies when reading in the two languages: English and Bahasa Indonesia. One-hundred and one students from the English Study Program within the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education of Sriwijaya University in Palembang, South Sumatera, Indonesia, completed the Metacognitive Reading Strategies questionnaire (MRSQ) both in Bahasa Indonesia and in English. The good values of indicators of internal consistency are shown by both the English and the Bahasa versions of the MRSQ. A paired sample t-test shows that some significant differences are found between the students? use of particular metacognitive reading strategies for reading in English and in Bahasa. On average, the students reported using some of the analytic reading strategies more frequently when reading in Bahasa. However, they used the pragmatic reading strategies more frequently when reading in English.

A hypothetical model was formulated to explore factors that influenced academic and clinical achievement for undergraduate nursing students. Sixteen latent variables were considered including the students' background, gender, type of first language, age, their previous successes with their undergraduate nursing studies and status given for previous studies. The academic and clinical achievement of 179 undergraduate nursing students were estimated by measuring their performance using two separate assessment parameters, their completing grade point average scores and outcomes of their final clinical assessment. Models identifying pathways leading to academic and clinical achievement were tested using Partial Least Square Path Analysis (PLSPATH). The study's results suggest that undergraduate nursing student achievement can be predicted by four variables, which account for 72 per cent of the variance of scores that assess academic and clinical performance at the completion of the third year level of nursing studies. The most significant predictors and those that had direct influence on undergraduate nursing student achievement were: (a) grades achieved in topics undertaken at the beginning of their last year of study and (b) those achieved just prior to course completion (c) where the undergraduate nursing students had undertaken their final allocation for clinical experience, and (d) students' self rated need for clinical supervision at course completion. Measures of performance according the grade point average scores, student gender, age and type of first language used were not directly related to the performance outcomes.

In this study, the Felder learning styles inventory was administered to students who were non-English majors in a Chinese University. Descriptive statistics identified that participants do vary in their preference for particular learning styles with a great variety of learning style preferences distributed unevenly among the sample population. A large number of the participants showed mild preference to Global, Visual and Sensing learning styles. The present study extended Felder?s work to a group of Chinese English as a Foreign Language learners. Implications for English as a Foreign Language teachers in Chinese Universities are that it is important to be aware of varied needs of learners from different majors and to respond flexibly by employing a broad range of teaching techniques to better reach students of different learning preferences.

This study aims to point out the differences between the North and the South of Vietnam, more particularly, Saigon and Hanoi, in terms of family and work roles of women. It helps to explain the ways women in Ho Chi Minh City reconstruct their reproduction role, the attitudes of Southern husbands towards household tasks and the husband-wife relationship in the Southern family. The literature in Vietnamese studies shows that the regional differences remain considerable. Studies on Ho Chi Minh City therefore must take into account the geographical, historical, cultural, social and economic context. Even the notion of 'family in Ho Chi Minh city' cannot be understood as the same notion of ?family in the South' due to the differences between urban and rural life.

By using the Rasch model, much detailed diagnostic information is available to developers of survey and assessment instruments and to the researchers who use them. We outline an approach to the analysis of data obtained from the administration of survey instruments that can enable researchers to recognise and diagnose difficulties with those instruments and then to suggest remedial actions that can improve the measurement properties of the scales included in questionnaires. We illustrate the approach using examples drawn from recent research and demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate figures that make the results of Rasch analyses accessible to non-specialists.

Whilst PLT providers are indebted to the legal profession for providing Placements for our students, we need to be pro-active in educating the current profession about the needs of tomorrow's profession. Good lawyers are not necessarily good teachers. The notion that students "had better see what it is like in the real world" is short-sighted and unrealistic in its naivete. This paper analyses the real gaps between the expectations of students on Placement and the supervisors who host them.