The effect of teaching strategies on student achievement: An analysis using TALIS-PISA-link

The present study investigates the effects of different teaching strategies on student achievement using data from the so-called TALIS-PISA link created by the OECD. This is a recently developed instrument that allows for connecting data about teacher characteristics and practices collected in the TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) survey with students’ academic performance measured in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). Our empirical strategy is based on an instrumental variable (IV) approach. Our results suggest that traditional teaching methods have a positive influence on students’ proficiency in mathematics, while the implementation of more innovative active learning strategies seem to have a negative impact on student achievement.     

Rethinking social work ethics: what is the real question? Responding to Stephen Webb's ‘Against difference and diversity in social work’

Jose J. Rethinking social work ethics: what is the real question? Responding to Stephen Webb's ‘Against difference and diversity in social work’ Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 246–252 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. In his recent article, Stephen Webb argued that the real question for social work ethics concerns ‘recognising the Same and of restoring the principles of equality and social justice’. This argument also included raising questions about what should be considered an appropriate philosophical basis for progressive social work ethics. In his view, social work's emancipatory potential has been blunted by overstated and philosophically ill‐informed human rights claims about difference and diversity. He suggested that French philosopher Alain Badiou offers social workers a ‘set of conceptual devices for rethinking social work ethics’. I argue that pressing his points into Badiou's philosophical mould is unlikely to lead to a progressive social work practice, let alone solve the issues identified by Webb. Badiou's philosophical pronouncements about ethics are of questionable value and offer little or no assistance to social workers seeking to establish an ethical grounding for their professional practice.     

Stochastic Measures of Network Resilience: Applications to Waterway Commodity Flows

Given the ubiquitous nature of infrastructure networks in today's society, there is a global need to understand, quantify, and plan for the resilience of these networks to disruptions. This work defines network resilience along dimensions of reliability, vulnerability, survivability, and recoverability, and quantifies network resilience as a function of component and network performance. The treatment of vulnerability and recoverability as random variables leads to stochastic measures of resilience, including time to total system restoration, time to full system service resilience, and time to a specific α% resilience. Ultimately, a means to optimize network resilience strategies is discussed, primarily through an adaption of the Copeland Score for nonparametric stochastic ranking. The measures of resilience and optimization techniques are applied to inland waterway networks, an important mode in the larger multimodal transportation network upon which we rely for the flow of commodities. We provide a case study analyzing and planning for the resilience of commodity flows along the Mississippi River Navigation System to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed metrics.     

A generalization of an identity of hoeffding and some applications

Summary We generalize a well-known identity due to Hoeffding and use this generalization to prove a result of Cambanis, Simons and Stout under somewhat different hypotheses and to extend some results of Lehmann concerning bivariate distributions with quadrant dependence.     

Does Premarital Cohabitation Predict Subsequent Marital Stability and Marital Quality? A Meta‐Analysis

Cohabitation with a romantic partner has become common in recent decades. This meta‐analysis examined the link between premarital cohabitation and marital stability ( k = 16) and marital quality ( k = 12). Cohabitation had a significant negative association with both marital stability and marital quality. The negative predictive effect on marital stability, however, did not remain when only cohabitation with the eventual marital partner was analyzed, suggesting that these cohabitors may attach more long‐term meaning to living together. Moderator analyses demonstrated that effects of cohabitation have remained consistent over time, despite the fact that cohabitation has become more normative.     

A Characterization for the Spherical Scoring Rule

Strictly proper scoring rules have been studied widely in statistical decision theory and recently in experimental economics because of their ability to encourage assessors to honestly provide their true subjective probabilities. In this article, we study the spherical scoring rule by analytically examining some of its properties and providing some new geometric interpretations for this rule. Moreover, we state a theorem which provides an axiomatic characterization for the spherical scoring rule. The objective of this analysis is to provide a better understanding of one of the most commonly available scoring rules, which could aid decision makers in the selection of an appropriate tool for evaluating and assessing probabilistic forecasts.      

Identity,language, and ethnic relations in the Bilingual Autonomous Communities of Spain1

This study surveyed 2446 undergraduates from five Bilingual Autonomous Communities (BAC) of Spain. We propose that the creation of the BAC of Spain in 1978 allowed the development of differing prototypic identities ranging from Spanish only identity, Autonomous only identity, and various permutations of dual Spanish/Autonomous identities. Based on their linguistic and ethnic self‐identifications, the percentage of participants endorsing each prototypic identity was monitored along with their key sociopsychological correlates. Six prototypic identity profiles were obtained. Results indicate that individuals endorsing the Autonomous only (11%) and Spanish only (13%) identities were more likely to engage in problematic intergroup relations. Strong Dual identifiers (9%) are the most likely to act as cultural and linguistic brokers and to foster intergroup harmony. Pro‐Spanish (15%) and Moderate Dual (7%) identifiers are more likely to benefit from language learning in the Autonomous language and emerge as cultural brokers. Esta investigación sondeó 2446 estudiantes de pregrado de cinco Comunidades Autónomas Bilingües (CAB) de España. Proponemos que la creación de las CAB de España en 1978 permitió el desarrollo de diferentes identidades prototípicas que van desde identidades solamente españolas, identidades solamente autónomas hasta varias permutaciones de identidades dobles españolas/autónomas. Basado en sus auto‐identificaciones lingüística y étnica, se observó el porcentaje de participantes que corresponden a cada identidad prototípica y sus correlacionados socio‐psicológicos claves. Se obtuvieron seis perfiles de identidad prototípicos. Los resultados indican que los individuos que asumen una identidad solamente autónoma (11%) y solamente española (13%) tienen más probabilidades de entablar relaciones intergrupales problemáticas. Los que tienen más probabilidades de comportarse como conciliador cultural y lingüístico, y de fomentar armonía intergrupal son los que asumen una fuerte identidad doble (9%). Los que asumen una identidad pro‐española (15%) o una identidad doble moderada (7%) tienen más probabilidades de beneficiar del aprendizaje de la lengua autónoma y se revelaron como conciliador cultural.