The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

The power of feedback.

The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

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Education at a Glance

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) constitute a class of flexible nonlinear models designed to mimic biological neural systems. In this entry, we introduce ANN using familiar econometric terminology and provide an overview of ANN modeling approach and its implementation methods. † Correspondence: Chung-Ming Kuan, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan; ckuan@econ.sinica.edu.tw. †† I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editor, Professor Steven Durlauf, for his patience and constructive comments on early drafts of this entry. I also thank Shih-Hsun Hsu and Yu-Lieh Huang for very helpful suggestions. The remaining errors are all mine.

Artificial neural networks

Ability to use information and communication technologies (ICT) is an imperative for effective participation in todays digital age. Schools worldwide are responding to the need to provide young people with that ability. But how effective are they in this regard? The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) responded to this question by studying the extent to which young people have developed computer and information literacy (CIL), which is defined as the ability to use computers to investigate, create and communicate with others at home, school, the workplace and in society.The study was conducted under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and builds on a series of earlier IEA studies focusing on ICT in education.Data were gathered from almost 60,000 Grade 8 students in more than 3,300 schools from 21 education systems. This information was augmented by data from almost 35,000 teachers in those schools and by contextual data collected from school ICT-coordinators, school principals and the ICILS national research centers.The IEA ICILS team systematically investigated differences among the participating countries in students CIL outcomes, how participating countries were providing CIL-related education and how confident teachers were in using ICT in their pedagogical practice. The team also explored differences within and across countries with respect to relationships between CIL education outcomes and student characteristics and school contexts.In general, the study findings presented in this international report challenge the notion of young people as digital natives with a self-developed capacity to use digital technology. The large variations in CIL proficiency within and across the ICILS countries suggest it is naive to expect young people to develop CIL in the absence of coherent learning programs. Findings also indicate that system- and school-level planning needs to focus on increasing teacher expertise in using ICT for pedagogical purposes if such programs are to have the desired effect.The report furthermore presents an empirically derived scale and description of CIL learning that educational stakeholders can reference when deliberating about CIL education and use to monitor change in CIL over time.

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Preparing for Life in a Digital Age: The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study International Report

FOREWORD This report provides compelling reading for everyone interested in the health and wellbeing of Australian children and adolescents. Based on a survey conducted in the homes of over 6,300 families with children and/or adolescents aged 4 to 17 years, the report presents a comprehensive picture of the mental health of young Australians. It documents the prevalence and type of mental health problems, the impact of those problems on families and young people themselves and the role of health and education services in providing assistance. While the primary sources of information were parents and carers, the survey also engaged directly with young people 11 years and older who completed their own survey. This information provides unique insights about aspects of their emotional lives and behaviour that are generally not visible to parents and carers.

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The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: Report on the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing

Student engagement with science in early adolescence: The contribution of enjoyment to students’ continuing interest in learning about science

Publication Date 2010 Comments ISBN/EAN: 978-90-79549-07-8 This study was organised by a consortium of three partner institutions: the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in the United Kingdom, and the Laboratorio di Pedagogia sperimentale (LPS) at the Roma Tre University in Italy. These institutions worked in close cooperation with the IEA Secretariat, the IEA Data Processing and Research Center (DPC), and the study’s national research coordinators. Abstract The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) studied the ways in which countries prepare their young people to undertake their roles as citizens. ICCS was based on the premise that preparing students for citizenship roles involves helping them develop relevant knowledge and understanding and form positive attitudes toward being a citizen and participating in activities related to civic and citizenship education. These notions were elaborated in the ICCS framework, which was the first publication to emerge from ICCS (Schulz, Fraillon, Ainley, Losito, & Kerr, 2008). Recommended Citation Schulz, Wolfram; Ainley, John; Fraillon, Julian; Kerr, David; and Losito, Bruno, "ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary school students in thirty-eight countries." (2010). https://research.acer.edu.au/civics/6  Download

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ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary school students in thirty-eight countries.

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John Ainley

Papers

Preparing for Life in a Digital Age: The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study International Report

The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: Report on the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing

Student engagement with science in early adolescence: The contribution of enjoyment to students’ continuing interest in learning about science

ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary school students in thirty-eight countries.

IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 Assessment Framework