The future for (second) life and learning

This paper highlights the potential of three-dimensional multi-user environments such as Second Life (SL) from the perspective of future developments in the service of learning. It notes trends within the SL innovation to date, including the provision of realistic settings, the exploitation of pleasant simulated environments for groups and the links with other learning technologies. It also considers the creativity sparked by SL's potential to offer the illusion of 3-D 'spaces' and buildings, and points to infinite imaginative educational possibilities. It explores aspects of the construction of virtual representations of learners and teachers as avatars, and reveals a wide range of intriguing issues yet to be researched.     

Exploring influences on later life learning

Academic debate about education and ageing issues has hitherto been based largely on provider and practitioner concerns. Here, the first stage of a two‐year research project that aimed to move the focus to older learners themselves is discussed. The aim in this initial stage was to construct a conceptual model of life course influences on older people’s learning that could be tested in a subsequent stage of the research. The method used involved ten focus group discussions with very different groups of learners, all of whom were ‘post‐work’ and based in different parts of the UK. The intertwined themes that emerged from the discussions related to discontinuity and change, situational and institutional influences on education and learning and the possible influence of personality factors and values as well as issues of gender, class and race. The efficacy of using focus groups in this context is briefly discussed, together with implications for the next stage of the project and for further research.     

论终身学习与学校教育

终身学习是教育自身发展的必然选择.文章主要是在分析我国学校教育对终身学习的影响,并在此基础上,探讨在终身学习对我国学校教育的要求.     

Learning Organisationsreengineering schools for life long learning

It has taken some two decades for the concept of the learning organisation to achieve recognition as a powerful way of reengineering for life long learning. During this time, schools have been through a period of very rapid change but, paradoxically, many look less like learning organisations today than they may have before the introduction of the Education Reform Act. This paper examines some of the key ideas behind the learning organisation, explores why the concept is so powerful in contemporary contexts, identifies various types of learning organisations and suggests an analytical technique for relating styles of organisational learning to the environmental context. The paper concludes with an analysis of the implications of learning organisation concepts for schools and school leaders.     

论孔子为学思想对大学生人生教育的影响

文化是一个民族的血脉,党的十八大指出全面建成小康社会、实现中华民族伟大复兴必须推动社会主义文化大发展大繁荣。伟大的思想家、教育家孔子一生致力于兴办私学,以其丰富的为学思想影响了一代又一代志士仁人,因其对中国传统文化所做出的巨大贡献而在历史上始终占有重要地位。通过对孔子为学思想的内涵、核心要义、价值的分析阐述,有利于深入领会孔子之学习精神与教育精髓,对于指导当代大学生树立正确的学习动机、提高学习能力、营造良好的学习氛围具有重要的参考价值和借鉴意义。     

Confucian states and learning life: making scholar-officials and social learning a political contestation

This paper describes how the way the concept of learning is identified and managed in a societal context can provide a crucial clue to explaining how a form of culture as a complex mental organism is constructed and interwoven. Specifically, I argue the point by illustrating that the discourse of Confucianism has fabricated a specific form of learning life as a basic unit of social practice that has modulated the key social structures in Confucian states: it has fabricated the pieces of social webs of order, stratification, and rules and legislations of these states. In this process, the role of the scholar class, specifically scholar-officials, has played a key role in reproducing the mode of social learning, cultural rituals, and mode of politics. The Confucian state was a large-scale metaphorical school, on a different scale to the modern concept of the school as an institution, where the ruler–subordinator relationship was re-framed to that of the teacher–learner. Overall, I reveal in this paper that the notion of a complex social learning system can be a key theoretical framework that sheds new light, not only on the nature of the Confucian states, but also on the discourse of the East/West dichotomy.     

Global undernutrition during gestation influences learning during adult life

Intrauterine growth restriction can lead to significant long-term health consequences such as metabolic and cardiovascular disorders, but less is known about its effects on choice and behavioral adaptation in later life. Virgin Wistar rats were time mated and randomly assigned to receive either ad-libitum access to chow or 30% of that level of nutrition during pregnancy to generate growth-restricted offspring. At 60 days of age, 6 female offspring from each group were trained on concurrent variable-interval schedules. Sessions consisted of seven randomly arranged concurrent-schedule components, each with a different reinforcer ratio that varied from 27:1 to 1:27, and each component lasting for 10 reinforcer deliveries. Behavioral change across reinforcers in components, measured by sensitivity to reinforcement, was consistently lower for offspring of undernourished mothers, showing that their behavior was less adaptable to environmental change. These results provide direct experimental evidence for a link between prenatal environmental conditions and reduced behavioral adaptability--learning--in later life.     

Positivity and quality of college life of business students: The mediating role of learning approaches

Drawing upon the causal agency theory, this study examined the direct and indirect (via learning approaches) links between positivity and quality of college life (QCL) of business students in a transitioning market, Vietnam. Two studies were conducted to test these relationships using structural equation modeling. Findings from study 1, based on a sample of 428 business students, showed that positivity was positively related to QCL. Further, deep learning approaches mediated the relationship between positivity and QCL. Findings from study 2, based on a sample of 416 business students, reconfirmed the role of positivity in QCL. However, the indirect relationship between positivity and QCL was not significant, demonstrating that surface learning approaches did not mediate the relationship between positivity and QCL. The findings contribute to the literature on positivity in higher education by confirming the overarching role that positivity plays, directly and indirectly (via deep learning approaches), in QCL.     

Enhancing learning in the life sciences through spatial perception

Recent educational research finds if students are encouraged to form mental images of events, objects and written or spoken words, learning of the material is enhanced. The inability to image an item may, in fact, hinder one's learning efforts in some disciplines. To find if low spatial apptitude does have a deleterious effect on learning in the life sciences, two hundred and fifty undergraduates taking a nonmajor's biology course were given tests to measure their visual-spatial awareness. Students falling more than one standard deviation from the mean were classified as low in spatial cognition and were randomly sorted into an experimental and a control group. Exercises known to enhance spatial understanding were conducted weekly with the experimental group. When the final grades for the course were examined at the end of the semester, it was found that students in the experimental group scored significantly better than the control group in the biology course. These students, however, did not reach the same level of proficiency as the students who were measuring high in spatial ability initially.He became interested in visual-spatial aptitude and its effect on learning as a doctoral student at Rutgers University and furthered his studies on the topic as a post-doc at Birmingham University in England. While there he worked with Janic Weikowski and I. MacFarlene Smith, two premier British researchers on spatial perception. Dr. Lord has published several articles on spatial learning and given numerous presentations on the topic in recent years.     

探究性学习--聚焦《生命科学》的教学生命性

本文阐述了《生命科学》教学生命性的内涵;展示了探究性学习在提升《生命科学》教学生命性中的积极作用;探讨了教师引导学生进行探究性学习的策略.旨在引起广大生物教师对探究性学习和《生命科学》教学生命性的更多关注.