Factors affecting departmental peer collaboration for faculty development: Two cases in context

This paper extends current research on departmentalpeer collaboration as a means of faculty development. Given the potential advantages of such situateddevelopmental activities, the need for furtherresearch is pressing. The study reported hereexamines two different cases of department-based,practice-centered peer inquiry projects; one set in adepartment of history and one in a department ofmechanical engineering. Both departmental projectswere part of a larger initiative on the peer review ofteaching coordinated by the American Association forHigher Education.The aim of this study is to illuminate factors thatcan influence the nature, development and impact ofsuch collaborative activities. The leadership,structure and outcomes of each department's projectare compared and contrasted. The role of departmentalculture is considered, through an investigation ofpotential influences from the discipline andinstitution, as well as from departmental history. Factors such as the norms of scholarly collaboration,standard work patterns, the presence or absence ofexternal curricular standards, university status,faculty autonomy and morale are discussed.     

Incorporating out-of-school mathematics: from cultural context to embedded practice

Connecting students’ cultural and community mathematical practices to school mathematics is a critical issue in mathematics education. The goal of the study was to identify how teachers incorporate children’s cultural and out-of-school mathematics in instruction. Four related practices were identified, and three drew on children’s cultural or out-of-school experiences: (a) using these experiences as contexts for problems, (b) linking these experiences to school mathematics, and (c) identifying embedded mathematical practices prominent in these experiences. A fourth category, teacher initiated situated settings, focused on shared experiences using the classroom as a site of culture. Findings suggest that these practices represent varying levels of complexity and that use of this framework might support teachers in better relating students’ cultural and out-of-school experiences to mathematics.     

浅议文化大发展语境下的畲族文化传承

福建宁德的畲族人口,占全国畲族人口总数的四分之一多,是全国最大的畲族聚居地。在长期的发展过程中,畲族形成了独特的文化,在现代化进程中,因种种原因,传统畲族文化面临礼仪弱化,村落文化缺乏特色,畲族传统技艺处于失传边缘等问题,本文在分析畲族文化传承现状的基础上,提出加强保护,开展抢救性征集工作;以文化为媒,走文化产业化与旅游业共同发展的新路等思路,以期能够不断提高文化创新能力,为传承和保护闽东畲族原生态文化提供新的视角和思路。     

Sorcery and SSCEP: the cultural context of an educational innovation

The paper highlights the relative neglect by educational planners of a socio‐cullural analysis of the context surrounding the implementation of educational reforms designed to promote rural development in Third World countries. An examination of the sociological and anthropological literature pertaining to both village culture and rural development in Papua New Guinea suggests that there are powerful cultural constraints on schools leavers applying practical skills learned in school on their return to the village. These are exemplified by a discussion of the role of sorcery, the subordinate position of youth, and the divergence between planners’ and villagers’ priorities, and are illustrated with reference to the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project (SSCEP).     

全球化语境中文化多元化的可能性

今天的世界格局是西方仍处于强势和霸权的地位,他们试图主宰并重构处于弱势的第三世界文化,全球化实际上加剧了这一趋势,使得东西方之间的文化互动呈现出“中心”与“边缘”、“强势”与“弱势”极其不平等的状态。然而全球化的浪潮不可遏止也无法逃脱,第三世界国家的知识分子对西方文化充满了异常复杂的矛盾心态。因此,在全球化语境中,多元共生、文化互补的世界新格局更像一个美妙的乌托邦,但是,我们依然愿意说服自己相信这样一个乌托邦,因为这也许是我们唯一真正拥有的东西。     

Facilitating interpersonal evaluation of knowledge in a context of distributed team collaboration

This study investigates how distributed team members evaluate their own and others’ knowledge when they engage in goal‐directed activities and seek shared understanding. Twenty‐three manager‐level employees of a municipal organisation worked as two distributed teams for two months. Their work was supported with a visualisation tool, which was embedded in the teams’ shared www‐based workspaces. After the distributed working period, the subjects were interviewed and their work in the shared workspace was traced. Qualitative analysis of the interviews showed that, in distributed collaboration, individuals use both self‐evaluation and interpersonal evaluation strategies when trying to gain an awareness of others’ knowledge. The interpersonal evaluations included strategies such as assessing the expertise and knowledge of others. It is concluded that when individuals do not have situational information, eg, what others think about the content of the shared task, they tend to make personal attributions. In other words, their evaluations of the others’ knowledge focus on stable tendencies like the expertise of other individuals.     

Towards a framework for creative online collaboration: A research on challenges and context

The OnCreate project was initiated by ten universities with expertise in collaborative work in online-based learning environments and explores the specific challenges of implementing university courses in creative disciplines in such an environment. The first research phase comprises a literature search on creativity and its contextual factors in online collaboration in an educational setting. From this research a first set of possible key challenges and contextual key factors has been selected and applied to categorize the results of interviews and surveys on current good practice in creative online collaboration among experienced online teachers from the partner universities. From the key findings we formulate hypotheses to guide future research towards a framework for creative online collaboration. At the same time, the results can serve as inspiration for the educational practice. Notable observations of the good practice research among the partner universities are that they realise innovative collaboration concepts usually on mashed-up environments of state-of-the-art web services rather than on the omnipresent learning management systems (such as Moodle or Blackboard). Also, they show a paradigm shift from teaching to coaching and promotion of an open peer-review culture among the students.     

Philosophical education and cultural relevance: discipline-affirmation in the context of the knowledge economy

The following paper proposes a discipline-affirming response to the challenge facing higher education in the context of the knowledge economy. It resists the drive to reduce the value of a humanities based education to the mere production of skills and instead affirms the substantial body of knowledge of specific disciplines. It uses as its model the degree programme in Philosophical Studies at Newcastle University in order to show how a discipline-affirming approach to learning has the advantage of not only developing and making students aware of educational skills that can contribute to the knowledge economy, but doing so without downgrading the worth of the knowledge and concepts of the students' discipline. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate that a learner involved in a personalised, object-based project will not view the acquisition of knowledge as merely a means to an end and also be able to communicate the value of the knowledge gained to laypeople.     

翻译中如何填补语篇内的文化空缺

翻译是一种文化交流,文化空缺是指作者在与读者交流时对双方共有的相关文化背景知识的省略。这一现象对翻译中的连贯理解造成影响。应根据具体的情况,灵活采用不同的方法,填补文化空缺,以达到文化交流目的。     

整体视域中的石家庄市文化软实力研究

石家庄市拥有丰富的文化资源,但地方文化特色缺乏提炼和弘扬,文化品位不高,公共文化服务体系不够完善,现代文化生产、传播和消费与高新技术结合程度不强,文化软实力缺少强大的产业经济载体。提高石家庄市文化软实力需遵循整体性发展原则,打造石家庄市特色文化品牌,构建综合性的文化传播体系,加快建立和落实公共文化服务,建立健全文化领域的科技创新机制,增强石家庄市文化产业的市场竞争力。     

The discourse of collaborative creative writing: Peer collaboration as a context for mutual inspiration

Drawing on socio-cultural theory, this paper focuses on children's classroom-based collaborative creative writing. The central aim of the reported research was to contribute to our understanding of young children's creativity, and describe ways in which peer collaboration can resource, stimulate and enhance classroom-based creative writing activities. The study drew on longitudinal observations of ongoing activities in Year 3 and Year 4 classrooms (children aged 7-9) in England. Selected pairs’ collaborative creative writing activities were observed and recorded using video and audio equipment in the literacy classroom and in the ICT suite (13 pairs, about 2-4 occasions each).The research built on the contextualised, qualitative analysis of the social and cognitive processes connected to shared creative text composition. Using an analytic tool developed specifically for creative writing tasks, we linked collaborative and discursive features to cognitive processes associated with writing (‘engagement’ and ‘reflection’). The research has identified discourse patterns and collaborative strategies which facilitate ‘sharedness’ and thus support joint creative writing activities.The paper discusses two significant aspects of the observed paired creative writing discourse. It reports the significance of emotions throughout the shared creative writing episodes, including joint reviewing. Also, it shows children's reliance on collaborative floor (Coates, 1996), with discourse building on interruptions and overlaps. We argue that such use of collaborative floor was indicative of joint focus and intense sharing, thus facilitating mutual inspiration in the content generation phases of the children's writing activities. These findings have implications for both educational research and practice, contributing to our understanding of how peer interaction can be used to resource school-based creative activities.     

Emotional autonomy and perceived parenting styles: relational analysis in the Hong Kong cultural context

Three hundred and seven teacher education students of a Hong Kong university were administered two questionnaires, one measuring emotional autonomy (EAS) and the other measuring perceived parenting styles (PAQ) of their parents. It was found that the Hong Kong teacher education students tended to be autonomous and they characterized their parents as authoritative instead of authoritarian. In addition, the emotional autonomy scale was positively related to authoritarianism, but negatively related to authoritativeness and permissiveness of parenting. Emotional detachment instead of autonomy seemed to be a more appropriate meaning of EAS for the interpretation of results. Implications were drawn for future research including development of an improved instrument in measuring emotional autonomy to study its associations with perceived parenting styles of young people across cultures.     

Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration

Current trends in the field of distance education indicate a shift in pedagogical perspectives and theoretical frameworks, with student interaction at the heart of learner‐centered constructivist environments. The purpose of this article is to explore the benefits of using emerging technology tools such as wikis, blogs, and podcasts to foster student interaction in online learning. It also reviews social software applications such as Writeboard?, InstaColl?, and Imeem?. Although emerging technologies offer a vast range of opportunities for promoting collaboration in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments, distance education programs around the globe face challenges that may limit or deter implementation of these technologies. This article probes the influence of technology on theory and the possible implications this influence affords.     

文化强国语境下高等教育科研教学互动研究

建设文化强国需要大量适应时代需要的创新型人才。因此,从事高等教育的教师,在教学实践中展开对科研教学互动研究,主动开展有利于创新型人才培养的教育教学改革,倡导以学生为主体的人才培养新模式,如此必将会不断提升学生自主创新能力。     

The flexible role of the researcher within the changing context of practice: forms of collaboration

We discuss in the article the following issues: the strong relationship between collaboration and diversity; the need for understanding collaboration as a process of mutual acknowledgement and as a process of building in a democratic way; the strong influence for each participant of the concept of education over the process of building collaboration; the strong dependence of the process of collaboration on the institutional context, the school culture, and the requirements of the political and economical exponsors. This flexibility is a requirement for preserving the purpose of building a collaborative relationship in order to help improve the quality of practice through human development and institutional change. The basis for these reflections is the discussions we, as a group of researchers, had during the development of two action research-like projects in Malaga (Spain). An exploration of action research methodology in each of these two very different professional settings demonstrates how strongly action research methodology is determined by the culture of the participants and their institutions. As a consequence we conclude that every researcher has to take a flexible and changing role in order to meet the situational demands for building a collaborative relationship.