Question Of Style Research Articles

Reported communication challenges for adult witnesses with intellectual disabilities giving evidence in court

Communication plays a key role in a witness's ability to give evidence and participate in the court process. Adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) can be negatively impacted by communication difficulties such as: limitations in recall abilities; suggestibility to leading questions; difficult question styles used by advocates; and unfamiliar language used within the court setting. Most research carried out on communication challenges for adults with ID, when giving evidence, has involved participants in psychology-based experimental methodology. In this study 19 court reports assessing actual witnesses (complainants and defendants) with ID, written by Registered Intermediaries in Northern Ireland, were analysed. A wide range of communication difficulties were identified for the adult witnesses. Difficulties resulting from communication used by their communication partner (typically the advocate in a court setting) were also described. A rich model of the challenges for both partners, in giving evidence and in cross-examination, is presented, extending previous research. This study highlights the need for research within UK courts to assess: how witnesses with ID are being questioned; the effectiveness of changes made to the court process to enhance communication; the impact of the court process and environment on communication and alternative question styles for advocates to use.

A matter of taste? On the significance of aesthetic judgement for morality

ABSTRACT It is clear that in everyday life, people and behavior patterns are frequently, or perhaps almost always, judged not in terms of good or bad, but with terms that belong more to the aesthetic, like appropriate and inappropriate. This means that in a situation where you would tend to expect moral judgement and moral behavior, it is in fact much more a question of style and, at best, self-respect that plays a role, not morality. As a result, the desired behavior is achieved more easily and more confidently. These observations might seem to undermine Kant’s account of the categorical imperative, but Kant, unlike Kierkegaard, for example, did not advocate a strict separation between ethics and aesthetics. Rather, as I demonstrate here, he showed an ethical interest in the formation of aesthetic taste. This disclosure is followed by a series of further reflections in moral philosophy that, among other things, take up Hegel’s distinction between the Customary and the Moral, and Foucault. By offering this new reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, my aim is to show that there are areas of ethics that are a matter of taste, and these are by far the most common.

Teachers’ Qualification and Questioning Styles as Correlates of Achievement in Reading in Secondary Schools in Ido Lga, Nigeria

The study examined teachers’ qualification and questioning style as determinants of senior secondary students’ achievement in reading comprehension in Ido LGA, Nigeria. Studies have shown that several teacher-related factors, especially subject mastery, experience, qualification, and questioning styles contribute to students’ learning outcomes in ESL classrooms. Hence, there is the need to conduct this study. The study adopted a correlational type of descriptive research design. Four research h questions were raised and 20 English language teachers were randomly selected to participate in this study. Two research instruments were used: Teachers’ Questionnaire on Pedagogical Factors in Teaching (TQPFIT) (r = 0.74) and Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (RCAT) (r = 0.71) were used for data collection. The results indicated that there was no significant relationship between the in dependent variables and students’ achievement in reading comprehension. Also, there were no relative and composite contribution of teachers’ qualification and questioning styles to students’ achievement in reading comprehension. However, questioning styles predicted students’ achievement higher than teachers’ qualification. Based on these findings, it was recommended that teachers should develop and adopt quality questioning styles during lesson delivery to stimulate learners’ interest, engage them in the learning task, and improve students’ achievement.

(Un-) settling Sites and Styles

(Un-)settling sites and styles: In search of new expressive means. Eight performers (voice, piano, violin, cello), one musicologist and one composer aspired to unsettle their habitual ways of working with musical interpretation of 20th century and contemporary Norwegian composers. By collaborating to develop new perspectives and methods, they investigated questions of style and how different sites influenced their rehearsals and performances. How do performers find new expressive means? How can intersubjective exchange within a research group contribute to articulating tacit knowledge? How can mutual unsettling approaches influence conventional or subjective attitudes of fidelity to a score or a performance tradition? How can novel sounds, musical material and musical meaning emerge beyond prejudiced conceptions or through improvisation? The three-year project was facilitated by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme and the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (Grieg Academy), University of Bergen, and resulted in texts, sound recordings, videos, and new commented score editions.

Clouds, style, and poetic generation in Descartes’s Météores (1637)

In this essay, I argue that the clouds in Descartes’s Météores (1637) tell us something valuable about the impact of contemporaneous deliberations around poetic writing on philosophical expression in early modern France. When Descartes replaces rainbows with clouds as the primary origin of meteorological wonder at the start of the Météores, he is engaged, I suggest, with a question of poetic style. To wonder at rainbows and clouds was, for a generation of humanists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, to become a poet. The meteora, those atmospheric phenomena which, according to Aristotelian tradition, lacked substantial form, were imperfectly mixed, and were therefore provisional and uncertain, could only be the object of a similarly speculative kind of poetic language. As he takes pains to distinguish the rainbow from the clouds, Descartes strips the language of meteorological investigation of its poetic ostentation and casts his broader repudiation of Aristotelian qualities as a rejection of the figure of enargeia in natural philosophy. I argue that the Météores are a reflection on writing in early modern France in which meteorological phenomena are shown to be, like poetic writing itself, the product of both material and ineffable forces.

The springs of didactogeny. The repulsive educational style

By the way it presents itself, the repulsive educational style brings indisputable prejudices to the teachinglearning process, strongly affecting the entire construction of this process, especially the segment that covers the relationship between the teacher and the students. Having the ability to impose itself differently – as something reminiscent of an authoritarian or nomothetic behavioral, distant or impulsive, ultra-reactive or strict, oscillating or detached – the educational style in question is characterized by the fact that it contradicts the rights and duties incumbent on the position of a teacher. In his presence, the school environment collapses, ceasing to present a „suitable environment in which essential connections can be created for the multilateral and harmonious development of the student” or a „space in which the professional competence of the teacher is complementary to the developmental particularities of the student”. Moreover, through the conflicting energies he releases, he distorts the meaning of the teaching profession, obviously contributing to the establishment of didactogeny. Or, as it has been mentioned more than once, in various specialty sources, if the educational style does not resonate with the rights and duties of the pedagogical profession, the didactogeny is predetermined, simply, to become a reality, a state in fact, which must be associated with the big mistakes in the area of the teaching–learning process or, in other words, with the big deviations from what the professional deontology of the teacher means.

Communication during the COVID-19 pandemic: evaluation study on self-perceived competences and views of health care professionals.

The aims of this study were to describe communication experiences while wearing a mask during COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, to identify possible mask-related barriers to COVID-19-adapted communications and to investigate whether the ABC mnemonic (A: attend mindfully; B: behave calmly; C: communicate clearly) might address these. This study was a cross-sectional, voluntary, web-based survey between January and February 2021. A 22-item survey was developed using the Surveymonkey platform and question styles were varied to include single choice and Likert scales. The respondents were also asked to view a short video presentation, which outlined the ABC mnemonic. CHERRIES (Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys) was used to ensure completeness of reporting. Diverging stacked bar charts were created to illustrate Likert scale responses. We received 226 responses. The respondents were mostly women (60.2%) and the majority worked in a teaching hospital (64.6%). The majority of the respondents indicated issues related to lack of time during clinical encounters, uncertainty about how to adapt communication, lack of personal protective equipment, lack of communication skills and lack of information about how to adapt their own communication skills. In addition, the participants indicated acknowledging emotions and providing information using clear, specific, unambiguous, and consistent lay language while wearing a mask were among the main communication challenges created during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the study showed significantly improved self-perceived competency regarding key communication after watching the short video presentation. Effective communication in medical encounters requires both verbal and nonverbal skills.

Interactive Instructional: Theoretical Perspective and Its Potential Support in Stimulating Students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Interactive Instructional: Theoretical Perspective and Its Potential Support in Stimulating Students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Examining Irish Leaving Certificate physics examination questions (1966-2016) according to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Over the past half-century free secondary level education has been introduced in the Irish education system and as a result a steady increase in the number of students completing a third level education has been observed. In tandem with this widening participation in second level education, curricula have been adapted to accommodate the varying needs and abilities of students while at the same time, addressing the changing role of science education in the national economy. Between 1966 and 2016, three different physics syllabi have been implemented at the upper secondary level in Irish schools. The focus of this study was to examine what were the cognitive demand of the Leaving Certificate Physics examination questions from 1966-2016. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives was used as a classification tool of the level of cognitive demand in the analysis of the examination question parts, as it has been used by the Irish Department of Education in the preparing the examination questions. A sample of nine Leaving Certificate Physics examination papers were selected as representative samples of the three syllabi spanning the fifty years. Despite clear changes in the three physics syllabi over the fifty year period with changes in examination question style, there was not a notable change in cognitive domains of examinations papers. All question parts were classified according to four levels of cognitive demand with the cognitive domain ‘remember’ coded most frequently (ranging from 73% in 1967 to 46% in the 2008 examination). Notably, none of the nine examination papers examined in this study contained questions (or question-parts) which coded for the cognitive domains of ‘evaluate’ or ‘create’.

Designing Critical Questions for Argumentation Schemes

This paper offers insights into the nature and design of critical questions as they are found in argumentation schemes. In the first part of the paper, I address some general concerns regarding their purpose and formulation. These include a discussion of their evaluative function, their relationship with the patterns of reasoning they accompany, as well as the differing formulations of critical questions currently on offer. I argue that the purpose of critical questions for humans ought to be to provide the means for a scalar evaluation of the reasoning at hand. To do so, critical questions should be closely paired with individual premises in the accompanying pattern of reasoning and be open-ended. Doing so allows the roles of raising considerations relevant for the reasoning and scrutinizing those considerations to be clearly distinguished. In the second part of the paper, I offer a positive methodological proposal for the construction of questions and premises that aims at overcoming a number of the individual and systematic shortcomings of extant question styles. The paper concludes by arguing that the newly proposed approach is both normatively strong and practically useful for argumentation in context.

Supporting Student Visualization of Molecular Processes Through Diagram Drawing

Historically, scientists and researchers have accompanied their observations with drawings, indicating that visual models are an effective way of communicating science. Studies have shown that students should draw images that are either interpretational or transformative, and artistic ability is irrelevant as they still help improve learning. However, many educators do not utilize this practice in their courses. In this study, we investigated if practising making simple and schematic drawings can help students understand complex molecular processes, and to use that tool to contextualize complex plant biology processes in an undergraduate plant biology course. When students were introduced to a complex plant process, the instructor accompanied their explanation with a simple schematic drawing. Students were told by the instructor that 1-2 drawing questions would appear on the midterm. For the final exam, no questions explicitly asked students to include a schematic drawing. Students who drew often scored higher on questions related to the topics where drawings were introduced in the course and the lab. Students who drew on the final exam did 12.3% better on the exam than those who didn’t draw. Students who had continuous exposure to drawing style questions during the midterms, did 6% better in the course compared to students who did not write the midterms. Students also gave an overwhelmingly positive response towards drawing, and 94% of the surveyors believed that making simple drawings helped with their learning of complex molecular processes. This could indicate that exposure to drawing style questions helped reinforce the learning of complex molecular processes.

تحليل أسئلة امتحانات شهادة الدراسة الثانوية العامة في مبحث الرياضيات لعامي 2019-2020 وتصور مقترح لتطويرها في فلسطين

هدف البحث الحالي التعرف على نواحي القوة والضعف في أسئلة امتحانات الرياضيات في الثانوية العامة، بفرعيها (العلمي- الأدبي) للعامين 2019م، 2020م، من حيث المجال التعليمي، والمستوى العقلي، ونوع الأسئلة (موضوعية- مقالية)، ونمط التفکير (تقاربي- تباعدي)، وکذلک عمليات علم الرياضيات، بالإضافة لتقديم تصور مقترح لنموذج امتحان رياضيات. ولتحقيق ذلک اعتمد الباحثان أسلوب تحليل الأسئلة، وبينت النتائج ما يأتي: - رکزت الأسئلة على المجال العقلي في الفرعين (العلمي- الأدبي) وبنسبة أقل على المجال النفس حرکي، فيما انعدم المجال الوجداني. - رکزت الأسئلة على المستويات الدنيا للمستوى العقلي وبشکل خاص على الفهم والتطبيق، بينما کان مستوى التذکر ضعيف، أما المستويات العليا، فکانت نسبة مستوى التحليل في حدود 13% ، بينما کانت الترکيب والتقويم معا أقل من 10%. - ظهرت الأسئلة المقالية بنسبة بلغت 70%، فيما کانت نسبة الأسئلة الموضوعية 30%، التي اقتصرت هذه الأسئلة على الاختيار من متعدد. - غلب على الأسئلة نمط التفکير التقاربي وکانت نسبته حوالي 72%، أما أسئلة نمط التفکير التباعدي فکانت نسبتها في حدود 28 %. - رکزت الأسئلة على حل التمارين وتطبيق القوانين على حساب عمليات علم الرياضيات الأخرى. - راعت أسئلة الامتحانات الأهمية النسبية لبعض الوحدات، ولم تراعها في وحدات أخرى، حيث أن بعض الوحدات لم تأخذ وزنها النسبي الحقيقي في الامتحان. - قدم البحث تصورا مقترحا لامتحان الرياضيات. This research aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the questions of mathematics examinations of the general secondary school (scientific - literary) branches for the years 2019 and 2020 in terms of the educational field, the mental level, the type of questions (objective - essay) and the thinking pattern (convergent - Divergent) , As well as mathematics science processes, in addition to presenting a proposal of a mathematics examination model. To achieve this, the researchers adopted the method of analyzing the questions. The results showed the following: - In the two branches (scientific and literary), the questions focused the most on the mental field, and to a lesser extent on the psychomotor field, while the emotional field was absent. - The questions focused on the lower levels of the mental level, particularly on the understanding and application, while the level of memorization was weak. For the higher levels, the percentage of the level of analysis was about 13%, while the composition and evaluation together were less than 10%. - Essay questions constituted 70%, while objective questions constituted 30% and were limited to multiple choice questions. - Most of the questions adopted the convergent thinking style, as it constituted about 72%, while the divergent thinking style questions constituted about 28%. - The questions focused on problem solving and rules applying, and neglecting the other mathematical processes. - The examination questions took into account the relative importance of some units, and did not take it into account for other units, as some units did not have their true relative weight in the exam. - The research presented a proposal for mathematics exam.

Contract cheating by STEM students through a file sharing website: a Covid-19 pandemic perspective

Students are using file sharing sites to breach academic integrity in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the use of one such site, Chegg, which offers “homework help” and other academic services to students. Chegg is often presented as a file sharing site in the academic literature, but that is just one of many ways in which it can be used. As this paper demonstrates, Chegg can and is used for contract cheating This is despite the apparent existence of an Honour Code on Chegg which asks students not to breach academic integrity. With pandemic led safety considerations leading to increased online teaching and assessment, the paper analyses data relating to how Chegg is used by students in five STEM subjects, namely Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry. The results show that students are using Chegg to request exam style questions. They demonstrate that contract cheating requests can be put live and answered within the short duration of an examination. The number of student requests posted for these five subjects increased by 196.25% comparing the time period April 2019 to August 2019 with the period April 2020 to August 2020. This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online. The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities. The paper concludes by recommending that academic institutions put interventions in place to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic.

Epic Cinema: Defining Our Terms

Studies in epic cinema have flourished in the past decade, but one senses that scholars take the term to be self-explanatory, without considering its literary origins and the variety of films that can be placed under the rubric of the epic. Furthermore, the question of epic style has received less scholarly attention. In this article, I propose that in order to define epic cinema we need to look at literary, philosophical, and film theoretical discussions of the epic. In doing so, we will be able to appreciate that epic cinema is an exceptionally expansive umbrella term that covers many and diverse film practices, including films (1) with epic subject matter but not epic style, (2) with epic subject matter and epic style, (3) with epic style but not epic subject matter, and (4) films which can be placed under the rubric of the modernist epic.

Enhancing pediatricians' engagement on social media: the role of board style questions.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Social Media is used among medical professionals for collaborative education. Little is known about how case discussions prompt engagement. Objective: To determine the association between item characteristics of board exam-style questions to social media engagement. Methods: This was a prospective cohort study through the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) PediaLink FaceBook page, conducted in 2018 over 9 months. Items from the 2017 PREP® questions were ranked in difficulty, then rated in relevance to general pediatrics through content-expert consensus. Thirty-six questions were randomly posted on FaceBook and Twitter weekly. Independent variables included item difficulty rank, difficulty level (easy vs hard), relevance to general pediatrics, and word count. Outcome variables included percent correct responses and total comments under the post. Results: More difficult questions were associated with fewer comments (rho=0.63, p<0.001) and lower correct response percentages (rho=0.39, p=0.02). Easy questions garnered more comments than hard questions (median 18 IQR 13-23 vs median 9.5 IQR 5-14, p=0.001). Correct response percentage was lower for hard questions (90% IQR 85-95% vs. 77% IQR 60-94%, p=0.04). Relevance to general pediatrics and word count did not affect engagement (p > 0.1). Conclusion: Easier practice test items attracted more responses from pediatricians on social media, increasing engagement.

Probing students' higher order thinking skills using pictorial style questions

The ability to use Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) plays a substantial role in determining students’ success in future studies. Therefore, it is important that students’ ability in this skill is continually refined by training and assessment. This paper explores the responses of first-year university students’ to a range of pictorial-style questions in chemical kinetics that require the use of HOTS. 80 food science and 57 chemistry students (137 in total) at The University of Reading (UoR) participated in the study. The results showed that many students demonstrated limited ability to answer HOTS questions. The implications for the teaching of chemical kinetics, particularly at the university level, are discussed.

Using Solution-Focused Principles With Older Children Who Stutter and Their Parents to Elicit Perspectives of Therapeutic Change

Purpose We previously presented findings from pretherapy solution-focused interviews regarding the therapeutic best hopes of older children who stutter (CWS) and their parents. The current follow-up study explored the same clients' solution-focused reflections 1 year later with respect to their perspectives of what changes had occurred over the course of therapy. Method Seven CWS (11–14 years old) and 12 of their parents, who were interviewed in the original Berquez et al. (2015) study, were interviewed again 1 year after they started therapy. These clients responded to open-ended, solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT)–style questions and rating scales. Their responses were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to identify what clients noticed had changed over the course of therapy. Result CWS and their parents reported changes spanning social communication abilities, cognitive-emotional skills, and speech management strategies. While these were consistent with their pretherapy best hopes, CWS and their parents identified additional, unexpected gains beyond the scope of what they originally hoped for at the beginning of therapy, including improvements in adaptive coping, academic experience, parent–child interactions, thoughts and feelings about stuttering, and personal growth. Conclusion SFBT can provide speech-language pathologists a framework for facilitating client reflections on positive signs of change that occur over the therapeutic process.

Health literacy levels of British adults: a cross-sectional survey using two domains of the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ)

BackgroundA person’s health literacy determines whether they are able to make appropriate health decisions and are able to follow treatment instructions. This is important because low health literacy is associated with mortality and extra costs to the healthcare system. Our aim was to describe the health literacy levels of British adults using a nationally representative population survey, and show how health literacy levels vary by population characteristics.MethodsA population based cross-sectional survey including questions from two domains from the Health Literacy Questionnaire™: 1) Understanding health information well enough to know what to do, and 2) Ability to actively engage with health care providers. Both domains are made up of 5 Likert style questions with 5 levels ranging from ‘cannot do or always difficult’ (1) to ‘always easy’ (5). The survey was conducted by NatCen in Britain (2018) as part of the annual British Social Attitudes survey. We used weighted descriptive analyses and regression to explore the relationship between population characteristics and health literacy. Weighted analyses were used to ensure the sample was representative of the British population.ResultsA total of 2309 responded to the questionnaire. The mean score for ‘understanding information’ was 3.98 (95% CI: 3.94, 4.02) and for ‘ability to engage’ was 3.83 (95% CI: 3.80, 3.87), where 5 is the highest score. 19.4% had some level of difficulty reading and understanding written health information, and 23.2% discussing health concerns with health care providers. The adjusted logistic regression for ‘understanding information’ showed that those with lower health literacy were more likely to be in the most socially deprived quintile (OR 2.500 95% CI: 1.180, 5.296), have a limiting health condition or disability (OR 4.326 95% CI: 2.494, 7.704), and have no educational qualifications (OR 7.588 95% CI: 3.305, 17.422). This was similar for the ‘ability to engage’ domain.ConclusionsThis study described the distribution of health literacy levels for the British population in 2018. Interventions to improve health literacy will best be targeted at those with lower levels of education, those living in the most deprived areas, and those with a limiting health condition or disability.

Artificial Intelligence Chatbot for Depression: Descriptive Study of Usage.

BackgroundChatbots could be a scalable solution that provides an interactive means of engaging users in behavioral health interventions driven by artificial intelligence. Although some chatbots have shown promising early efficacy results, there is limited information about how people use these chatbots. Understanding the usage patterns of chatbots for depression represents a crucial step toward improving chatbot design and providing information about the strengths and limitations of the chatbots.ObjectiveThis study aims to understand how users engage and are redirected through a chatbot for depression (Tess) to provide design recommendations.MethodsInteractions of 354 users with the Tess depression modules were analyzed to understand chatbot usage across and within modules. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze participant flow through each depression module, including characters per message, completion rate, and time spent per module. Slide plots were also used to analyze the flow across and within modules.ResultsUsers sent a total of 6220 messages, with a total of 86,298 characters, and, on average, they engaged with Tess depression modules for 46 days. There was large heterogeneity in user engagement across different modules, which appeared to be affected by the length, complexity, content, and style of questions within the modules and the routing between modules.ConclusionsOverall, participants engaged with Tess; however, there was a heterogeneous usage pattern because of varying module designs. Major implications for future chatbot design and evaluation are discussed in the paper.

Nostalgia in Print and Performance, 1510–1613: Merry Worlds. Harriet Phillips. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. vii+239.

<i>Nostalgia in Print and Performance, 1510–1613: Merry Worlds</i>. Harriet Phillips. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. vii+239.