What is reciprocal understanding in virtual interaction?

The aim of this study is to investigate what is reciprocal understanding in virtual web-based interaction and what does it consist of. The context of this study was an international web-based pre-service teacher education (N=116) course. The study is based on an idea of shared cognition and reciprocal understanding, in particular. It is assumed that reciprocity is an essential component not only of social interaction, but also of successful virtual interaction. Since many kinds of virtual interaction, such as e-learning, web-based courses, and virtual universities are rapidly getting more common in education, there is a need to analyse the issue of reciprocal understanding in web-based learning in order to develop more profound pedagogical models. The results widely show that during this particular web-based course there was reciprocal discussion between the participants. Participants had mutual negotiations and they discussed about issues from a variety of different viewpoints. Seven different ideas were found for the mechanisms of reciprocal understanding. It is concluded that this information is useful for developing a new pedagogical model for web-based learning and enhancing the quality of virtual interaction.     

What is (good) practitioner research?

This special issue recognizes EAPRIL as being a platform for practitioner and practice-based research and by organizing the 10th annual conference for practitioner research on improving learning in education and professional practice. Papers in this conference and in this special issue are rooted in practice-based research or practitioner research. They reflect the popularity of practitioner research in vocational teacher education and in universities of applied sciences. Reason enough for the authors of the current paper to reflect on the question: “What is practitioner research?” And, more importantly what makes good practitioner research? Reviews show that people use broad interpretations of the concept, which requires that to clarify the epistemological basis of the relation between research and practice the reflections goes back to Aristotle philosophy. The latter, aiming at discovering what kind of knowledge is obtained, what purpose it serve, and how it differs. This yields a theoretical, and two practical kinds of knowledge. Although all three are relevant, the so called ‘practitioner knowledge’ (the prhonesis and the techne), need more attention in judging the ‘goodness’ of practitioner research. Five principles of validation are mentioned, e.g. the process of meaning making and negotiation, differing from the correspondence between knowledge and the outside world, e.g. validity. These principles provide a possible angle and sometimes researcher follow them implicitly and unconsciously. The articles in this special issue reflects the realisation of many of these principles within the individual studies. The current paper does not intent to give final answers, but rather to trigger a further conversation on the fundamental question of: What is good practitioner research?     

Factors shaping parent–adolescent communication about sexuality in urban China

Within a rapidly changing cultural and socio-economic context, young people in China are increasingly engaging in romantic experiences and sexual behaviours with consequences such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Across a range of contexts, parental communication about sexuality has been recognised as protective in terms of increasing the likelihood of sexual abstinence and safer sexual practice. This study focuses on the factors shaping parent–adolescent communication about sexuality. Thirty-eight young people and twenty-seven parents, recruited from two high schools in a Northern-Eastern city of China, were interviewed. Thematic analysis of their interview responses was conducted using a social constructionist framework. Four main themes were identified: timing; discomfort and uncertainty; assumptions; and the parent–adolescent relationship. Findings suggest that communication between parents and children is influenced by individual as well as interpersonal factors and factors relating to the broader Chinese sociocultural context. To facilitate communication, both parents and young people need support from health and other professionals, while parents need more help and support in overcoming historical, social and cultural barriers to open communication about sex.     

What is this in English?

在图中的空格内填入适当的字母, 使每一竖行都成为所学的词语, 并能填入相应的句子中。     

What is new in computers?

This article discusses the recent trends in mobile computing and communication. The wireless technologies behind the emergence of mobile computing and the use of the current technologies to create a mobile computing environment have also been discussed.     

What is this Substance? What Makes it Different? Mapping Progression in Students’ Assumptions about Chemical Identity

Given the diversity of materials in our surroundings, one should expect scientifically literate citizens to have a basic understanding of the core ideas and practices used to analyze chemical substances. In this article, we use the term ‘chemical identity' to encapsulate the assumptions, knowledge, and practices upon which chemical analysis relies. We conceive chemical identity as a core crosscutting disciplinary concept which can bring coherence and relevance to chemistry curricula at all educational levels, primary through tertiary. Although chemical identity is not a concept explicitly addressed by traditional chemistry curricula, its understanding can be expected to evolve as students are asked to recognize different types of substances and explore their properties. The goal of this contribution is to characterize students' assumptions about factors that determine chemical identity and to map how core assumptions change with training in the discipline. Our work is based on the review and critical analysis of existing research findings on students' alternative conceptions in chemistry education, and historical and philosophical analyses of chemistry. From this perspective, our analysis contributes to the growing body of research in the area of learning progressions. In particular, it reveals areas in which our understanding of students' ideas about chemical identity is quite robust, but also highlights the existence of major knowledge gaps that should be filled in to better foster student understanding. We provide suggestions in this area and discuss implications for the teaching of chemistry.     

What is critical about critical pedagogy? Conflicting conceptions of criticism in the curriculum*

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate.     

What is international about International Schools? An institutional legitimacy perspective

In recent years, the number of International Schools around the world has increased rapidly largely as a result of growth of new forms of International Schools, which differ markedly from the traditional forms. These new forms: are often operated on a for-profit commercial basis; are usually for children from the local (indigenous), wealthy population; and have been defined as International Schools because they are located in a non-English speaking country and English is the school’s medium of communication. The growth of International Schools of the non-traditional type raises issues about the legitimacy of such schools. These new forms of International School face particular challenges in establishing themselves legitimately as ‘international’. In this article, we develop a framework which is grounded in institutional theory to analyse the institutionalisation of and the consequent legitimacy of International Schools. We use the three pillars of institutionalisation which, by means of carriers, underpin the institutionalisation of organisations. We employ this framework to analyse and illustrate the legitimacy of a school’s claim to be an International School and also to bring to light the challenges that schools face in establishing a legitimate claim to be ‘international’.     

What about classroom Communicators?

Conclusion Note that the comparisons presented in this paper serve only as a springboard in pointing out some of the advantages and limitations of the Classroom Communicator. Like the bicycle and the automobile, each serving a useful purpose under certain conditions, different types of teaching aids and teaching machines will find their use. Not many individuals will want to argue whether the bicycle or the automobile is better. One would hope that an out-of-context decision on the Classroom Communicator versus this or that teaching machine is not made. It is thought, however, that some empirical or logical decision might be made with respect to the use of the Classroom Communicator in the near future. This article is adapted from a paper given by the author as part of a symposium on “Automated Instruction and Programed Learning,” Southeastern Psychological Association, Louisville, Kentucky. The opinions expressed are those of Herbert P. Froehlich, who from 1959 to 1962 was a research officer on the staff of the Chief of Naval Air Technical Training, Memphis, Tennessee, and are not necessarily shared by the Department of the Navy.     

What about social value?

We focus on three aspects of the articles of Reyna, of Perry, Stupnisky, Daniels and Haynes, and of Murdock, Beauchamp and Hinton. The first aspect is the logic of causal chain, a logic that we differentiate from a more deterministic approach. The second one is the mode of corrective action (attribution retraining) that is planned for students, whether cheaters or lower achievers. We differentiate this mode of action from the one that is based on the idea of normative awareness (or “clear-sightedness”): normative awareness does not imply that the speaker believes in what he says. Finally, we discuss the concept of social value (of a person) which seems to underlie the empirical results but which does not appear in the authors’ formulations. But this concept stems from a “sociologizing” meta-theory that these authors probably do not share and which makes the norm of enternality theory difficult to integrate within Weiner’s attribution theory.     

What is this?

"嘿……你认得我吗?""哎哟!谁,谁打我的头……"你!说的就是你,不要这么突然跑出来吓人啊!哼,就算你是我们今天请来的客人,也要乖乖守规矩才可以!咳咳,大家好,让我把台词说完……来,猜猜看今天来到我们这个栏目的朋友是谁吧!当然,按老规矩,要先给它画张像才可以!     

What is this?

"在每一个天空被洒满朦胧月色的夜晚,我从幽深的森林里启程,来到人们居住的地方,吸食人们的梦。我不会害怕在吃梦的时候吵醒熟睡着的人们。因为我生性胆怯,在夜色中,只会发出轻轻的、摇篮曲一样的叫声……"传说中我过着这样的生活。然而你真的知道我是什么吗?     

What is this?

也许你觉得我很可怕,但我其实是个傻娃娃!咦?你在笑什么,难道觉得我在说大话?哼,不要小看了我啊。如果你了解我,一定就不会这样嘲笑我了。我的名字?现在可不能告诉你,老规矩,来猜猜看吧!     

What is transit?

The event of Venus passing in front of the Sun is called the transit. This is equivalent to an eclipse with the Moon replaced by the planet Venus. In this article, the rarity and importance of the event and the historical explorations are discussed.     

What is it?

Yon can find it everywhere．Yon can touch it or feel it.But it can’t be eaten and can’t be drunk．There is air in it．There is water in it．Because it has much nutrition(营养物)which plants live on it,and we