The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that students of unequal writing ability are frequently placed in the same beginning media writing classes in college journalism. It is difficult for a teacher to be effective when the ability of the students ranges from those who cannot write clear complete sentences to others whose work already appears in newspapers and magazines. The purpose of this study is to determine whether students who are ability grouped into slow—average and advanced groups do the same, better, or worse than heterogeneously grouped students. In the spring semester of 1987, students in Journalism 1345, Media Writing laboratory, at the University of Texas at Arlington, were given a pretest to determine how well they wrote a simple news story and a simple feature story. On the basis of that test, which was graded by three raters, the students were placed in two separate ability groups in three classes. The fourth class contained students with heterogeneous abilities who were not placed in groups. At the end of the semester a posttest was given in news and feature writing. A two-way analysis of variance was used to analyze the posttest scores of sixty-seven students. There was no significant difference in the posttest scores of students who were grouped homogeneously and those who were grouped heterogeneously. The difference in the scores of heterogeneously grouped advanced students and homogeneously grouped advanced students was not significantly different from the difference between the posttest scores of heterogeneously grouped slow-average students and homogeneously grouped slow-average students.

We evaluated the effects of one year of schoolwide cluster grouping on the academic achievement growth of gifted and non-identified elementary students using a piecewise multilevel growth model. Scores from 186 non-identified and 68 gifted students' Measures of Academic Progress Reading and Math scores were examined over three school years. In 2008-2009 within-class ability grouping was used. In 2009-2010 schoolwide cluster grouping was implemented. In 2010-2011 students once again were grouped only within classrooms by ability and students identified as gifted were spread across all classrooms at each grade level. Results suggest that schoolwide cluster grouping influenced student performance in the year following its implementation, but only for mathematics and not the area of reading.

We evaluated the effects of one year of schoolwide cluster grouping on the academic achievement growth of gifted and non-identified elementary students using a piecewise multilevel growth model. Scores from 186 non-identified and 68 gifted students' Measures of Academic Progress Reading and Math scores were examined over three school years. In 2008-2009 within-class ability grouping was used. In 2009-2010 schoolwide cluster grouping was implemented. In 2010-2011 students once again were grouped only within classrooms by ability and students identified as gifted were spread across all classrooms at each grade level. Results suggest that schoolwide cluster grouping influenced student performance in the year following its implementation, but only for mathematics and not the area of reading.

To meet the educational needs and acceleration of talented and gifted (TAG) students, it is important to determine the best learning environment to afford optimal academic success during their educational experience. A study at a Bartow County school district in Georgia has been conducted in order to establish this best learning environment. This study investigated if Lexile scores (ability) and academic averages (performance) differ for 6th grade TAG students in homogeneous classes compared to TAG students in heterogeneous settings. Vygotsky's theory of social constructivism, which proposes that students need to feel socially and cognitively supported by their environment, was the theoretical foundation of this study. Using a time series, quasi-experimental, between-group comparison, and a 2-group, nonequivalent control group design, this study analyzed archival data for reading, language arts, and social studies from sixth grade middle school TAG students (n = 43) who were enrolled in both homogenous and heterogeneous settings depending on the scheduling of the courses. The results revealed no significant differences in either the reading or language arts classes but did reveal a significant difference (p = .03) in the level of academic performance for social studies in homogeneous classes compared to students in heterogeneous classes. The findings may contribute to positive social change by informing educators about the utility of specific curricular content for TAG students in a particular setting.

School personnel are concerned that reading gaps of grade 3 and grade 4 students have persisted in 4 rural elementary schools in the southern United States despite the use of ability grouping to improve student reading proficiency scores. Between the 2014-2016 school years, less than 50% of students in grades 3 and grade 4 scored at the proficient level in reading at the 4 target rural schools. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the teachers' and administrators' perceptions regarding the influence of grouping on the reading performance of students in grades 3 and 4. Using Vygotsky's framework, the research investigated teachers' and administrators' perceptions of grouping and nongrouping in relation to students' reading progress, socioeconomic status, and achievement gaps between minority and non-minority students. Using purposeful sampling, interview data were collected from 4 administrators who met the criteria of working in a target site that used ability and nonability grouping. Teacher data came from focus groups, and surveys from 15 teacher participants who met the criteria of being certified in English Language Arts, and assigned to Grades 3 and/or 4 in ability or nonability grouping environments. Using emergent coding, themes supported the findings that assessment strategies are positively and negatively perceived, nonability grouping is preferred, reading achievement is perceived as higher in nonability grouping, and gaps in learning are influenced by socioeconomic status. Based on this research the use of nonability grouping may promote greater positive social change that will enhance student success in reading.

Feature selection is demanded in many modern scientific research problems that use high-dimensional data. A typical example is to find the genes that are most related to a certain disease (e.g., cancer) from high-dimensional gene expression profiles. There are tremendous difficulties in eliminating a large number of useless or redundant features. The expression levels of genes have structure; for example, a group of co-regulated genes that have similar biological functions tend to have similar mRNA expression levels. Many statistical methods have been proposed to take the grouping structure into consideration in feature selection and regression, including Group LASSO, Supervised Group LASSO, and regression on group representatives. In this thesis, we propose to use a sophisticated Markov chain Monte Carlo method (Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with restricted Gibbs sampling) to fit T-probit regression with heavy-tailed priors to make selection in the features with grouping structure. We will refer to this method as fully Bayesian T-probit. The main feature of fully Bayesian T-probit is that it can make feature selection within groups automatically without a pre-specification of the grouping structure and more efficiently discard noise features than LASSO (Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator). Therefore, the feature subsets selected by fully Bayesian T-probit are significantly more sparse than subsets selected by many other methods in the literature. Such succinct feature subsets are much easier to interpret or understand based on existing biological knowledge and further experimental investigations. In this thesis, we use simulated and real datasets to demonstrate that the predictive performances of the more sparse feature subsets selected by fully Bayesian T-probit are comparable with the much larger feature subsets selected by plain LASSO, Group LASSO, Supervised Group LASSO, random forest, penalized logistic regression and t-test. In addition, we demonstrate that the succinct feature subsets selected by fully Bayesian T-probit have significantly better predictive power than the feature subsets of the same size taken from the top features selected by the aforementioned methods.

<p>The aim of this essay is to examine if the attitudes and the experiences of Ability Grouping are the same on different levels of the school organisation.</p><p>I have chosen to answer the following two questions:</p><p>· Have the teachers, the students and the headmaster the same idea concerning the educational model at the school, that is, the pros and cons of Ability Grouping?</p><p>· Does the intentions of the curriculum agree with this educational model?</p><p>I knew what I thought about the educational model at the school that is the object of this essay, after spending ten weeks at it as a trainee, but I felt that I would be interesting to know what the people who are part of that system everyday think about it.</p><p>In order to be able to answer my questions, I used both the qualitative and the quantitative method. I interviewed the headmaster and five teachers to find out what they thought about Ability Grouping. I also distributed inquiries to 70 students from 6th to 9th grade to get their point of view. In the theoretical discussion I explain the meaning of different conceptions that I use throughout this essay. I also discuss different theories to give examples of pros and cons of Ability Grouping.</p><p>My conclusion is that the majority of the students think that Ability Grouping is either a good or a very good way of organizing the students in school. All the teachers except one prefer Ability Grouping to the traditional way of grouping the students, that is, in classes that are mixed concerning the level of knowledge but where everybody is at the same age. The main concern though, both among the students, the teachers and the headmaster, is that the students get more shy when they work in groups that are mixed, and that the students who are not that good in school loose someone to look up to. The Ability Grouping model that this school uses, which is more flexible than the traditional one, agree with the intentions of the curriculum in many ways. To agree with it to the full extend though, you need to add the traditional classes as well, which also is the mix that the school has chosen.</p>

This thesis explores the range of strategies used for educational provision for gifted children in mathematics in a group of schools in England. A review of literature relating to international theory and existing research in gifted education and empirical work into the teaching of gifted mathematicians were carried out. The literature review examined the dominant theories of intelligence and giftedness in general, including the historical background of definitions of giftedness and methods for its measurement, before specifically focusing on the concept of mathematical giftedness. The study was located in primary schools within Greater London, where schools are required to implement the ‘Gifted and Talented’ policy of the UK government. The research was conducted in two stages during the school years 2007-2008 and 2008-2009. The first stage involved a questionnaire survey sent to primary schools within five Local Educational Authorities. For the second stage of the research, which constituted the main study, a case study approach was used. The main methods of data collection employed within the case study were observations of mathematics lessons, semi-structured interviews with children nominated as able or gifted mathematicians and their teachers, as well as analysing documentary evidence (i.e., school policy, teacher’s planning, children’s assessment records and children’s written work). It was found that schools were responding to the policy in pragmatic terms, although no specific training was provided for practising teachers or school co-ordinators as part of the national training programme in making provision for mathematically gifted children. In practice, in classrooms, it was found that teachers’ level of confidence and expertise, the level of focused attention given to gifted children, the level of support and extension through higher-order questioning, as well as the size of the class and the nature of the work set were factors which affected the progress, perceptions and attitudes of children who were nominated to be able mathematicians. There is a paucity of research which has investigated aspects of provision for gifted and talented children, particularly in mathematics, in the UK. By specifically addressing this topic, this study makes a distinct contribution to current literature in both understanding aspects of mathematical giftedness and the range of provision used. This study makes a particular contribution to finding out how practising teachers in England are responding to a government initiative, which should be of interest to both policy-makers and practitioners. This thesis also presents examples for organising and teaching mathematics to gifted children at higher cognitive levels, within regular classrooms; this may be of interest to audiences internationally, including countries where there are no policies of provision for mathematically gifted children.

Flat ownership The theme of this thesis is flat ownership. The author has chosen this theme because it is very current and from the legal point of view also very interesting issue, which affects the major part of the population of the Czech Republic. The main objective of this work is to analyze the Institute's flat ownership in terms of the Flat Ownership Act. Furthermore, to highlight some problematic points in the regulation of housing ownership, to comment and suggest possible solutions with regard to case law and opinions of authors specializing in issues of housing ownership. This work consists of eight chapters. The first chapter deals with basic theoretical concepts of flat property, important for understanding the specific nature of the Institute's flat property. Such basics also may serve as a guide for policymakers in the design of legislation on housing. Then continues the second chapter, which talks about the concept of law based on flat ownership, its applicability and relationship to the Civil Code and other regulations. The third chapter focuses on the definition of specific terms related to the issue of flat property, such as: building, section, house, unit, flat, flat under construction, floor area of a flat, common space in building and land. The following fourth chapter is...

Nelson and Palmer (2007) concluded that figures/figural properties automatically attract attention, after they found that participants were faster to detect/discriminate targets appearing where a portion of a familiar object was suggested in an otherwise ambiguous display. We investigated whether these effects are truly automatic and whether they generalize to another figural property-convexity. We found that Nelson and Palmer's results do generalize to convexity, but only when participants are uncertain regarding when and where the target will appear. Dependence on uncertainty regarding target location/timing was also observed for familiarity. Thus, although we could replicate and extend Nelson and Palmer's results, our experiments showed that figures do not automatically draw attention. In addition, our research went beyond Nelson and Palmer's, in that we were able to separate figural properties from perceived figures. Because figural properties are regularities that predict where objects lie in the visual field, our results join other evidence that regularities in the environment can attract attention. More generally, our results are consistent with Bayesian theories in which priors are given more weight under conditions of uncertainty.