A taxonomy and research framework for personalization in children’s literacy apps

This paper reviews the key types of personalization in children’s literacy apps to propose a taxonomy and research framework for future empirical studies Systematic content analysis was used to identify the amount and type of personalization in a hundred most popular children’s literacy apps/digital books. Titles with three and more personalization features were screened qualitatively to identify what can be personalized, how personalization occurs and who personalizes the experience. Similar themes were synthesized into a research framework that outlines how identity, self-evaluation and agency relate to personalization. The discussion sets the agenda for future research, design and evaluation of children’s digital books.     

新媒体环境下大学生数字身份对外语学习的影响

本文旨在研究新媒体环境下中国大学生数字身份对其外语学习的影响机制并提出相应的教育建议。采用 问卷方式对398名大学生进行了调查。结果显示：1）中国大学生的数字身份包括“友谊信息驱动”、“新媒体素养”、 “网络公共文化”、“兴趣驱动”四个因子;2）“友谊信息驱动”是影响大学生数字身份最重要的因子;3）“新媒体素养” 对“新媒体外语学习”产生直接显著的影响;4）大学生利用新媒体进行外语学习的深度和广度仍然有待拓展。     

A Computational Approach to Assessing Rhetorical Effectiveness: Agentic Framing of Climate Change in the Congressional Record, 1994–2016

The goal of this paper is to consider rhetorical effects as the propagation of rhetorical expressions across large sets of texts, measured by the extent to which rhetorical expressions, structures, or practices become replicated in texts and sites of rhetorical in(ter)vention. The paper draws on lines of scholarship in the digital humanities and computational rhetoric – primarily, sequential structuring of semantic contexts, semantic parsing of unstructured text, and diachronic tracking of textual expressions – to extend their conceptual and methodological insights into a computational framework for assessing rhetorical effectiveness. It offers a test case for this concept through an analysis of how Congress has framed human agency toward addressing climate change.     

Environmental Education for Behaviour Change: Which actions should be targeted?

One aim of environmental education is to enable people to make informed decisions about their environmental behaviour; this is particularly significant with environmental problems that are believed to be both major and imminent, such as climate change resulting from global warming. Previous research suggests no strong link between a person's general environmental attitudes and knowledge, and his or her willingness to undertake pro-environmental actions, so this study focuses on some specific issues. Using survey methods to produce quantitative data about students' beliefs concerning the usefulness of specific actions and their willingness to adopt them, novel indices have been constructed that indicate the potential of education to increase students' willingness to undertake those actions. The findings imply that altering a student's belief about certain issues will have little effect on their willingness to act. This can be because most students, even those with only a weak belief in the efficacy, are prepared to take action anyway. Conversely, it can be because a majority, including those convinced about the efficacy, are not prepared to take action. Education about such actions, where there is only a weak link between believed effectiveness and willingness to act, may be ineffective in terms of changing practice, because other factors such as social norms and situational influences dominate. For such actions other strategies may be required. For another set of actions, however, the benefits of education in changing practice seemed more positive; increasing recycling, reducing the use of artificial fertilisers and planting more trees are examples.     

Digital image manipulation and avatar configuration: implications for inclusive classrooms

This paper outlines concerns for inclusive classrooms involving personal digital image modifications and selections, as well as avatar configurations. Classroom interactions incorporate various dimensions of personal appearance; however, educators try to make them primarily about knowledge and wisdom. Students in environments where they can interact with each other face‐to‐face are constantly immersed in issues involving their exterior manifestations. However, the utilisations of digital media in the classroom and in the online delivery of instruction are providing new ways of manipulating the digitised images of individuals, as well as their characteristic patterns of speech and motion. The rising popularity of avatars in education (such as in Second Life) also provides a new spectrum of representational choices. Individuals who reconstitute their images so as to appear more ‘normal’ may achieve results that are more problematic than liberating, however. Fostering the development of manipulated images and avatars for the purposes of educational interaction can also be construed as an attempt to ‘erase’ stigma and in effect disempower individuals, especially those with disabilities. Likewise, image modification can be incorporated into bullying initiatives as part of efforts to ridicule and marginalise. In endeavours to mitigate these problems, faculty and staff can model the creative and empowering use of digital image and avatar technologies while celebrating (and not eradicating) their own idiosyncratic personal characteristics.     

Ongoing Doctoral Study Process to Live by: A Narrative Inquiry into the Doctoral Identity Construction Experiences—A Chinese Case

The study employs a narrative inquiry approach to probe a Chinese doctoral student’s identity construction experiences fraught with interruption and transformation. The longitudinal narratives gathered through participant entries in Evernote, a face-to-face life story interview, and researcher memos, have enabled a dynamic configuration of the intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions characterizing doctoral identity development. Using identity-trajectory as an analytical lens, the study highlights how individual agency is embodied and exercised in institutional, relational, and personal spaces where doctoral identity is formed and contested. Findings are episodically ordered as: beginning doctoral study with great expectations; conceptualizing the nature of becoming a doctoral student; forces that are disruptive to the development of the doctoral-researcher identity; the ongoing process of being mediated by socialization into an extended research community, socio- professional support, and agentic reflexivity over time. The study argues for using narrative inquiry to speak of and express the subtleties and continuities of doctoral students’ experiences. It also provides practical implications for action by supervisors and students in doctoral programs respectively.     

数字媒体专业学生艺术素养的培养策略研究

数字媒体相关专业分为数字媒体技术和数字媒体艺术两种。数字媒体艺术专业要求学生必须具备较好的艺术素养和艺术思维能力。如何为非艺术类招生的数字媒体艺术专业的学生量身制定一套切实可行的艺术素养培养策略是数字媒体艺术专业建设需要解决的关键问题之一。     

Beyond you and me: stories for collective action and learning? Perspectives from an action research project

This paper explores the combination of storytelling and reflective action research as a means to effect change and learning within and across communities and organizations. Taking the complex challenge of ‘pro-environmental behaviour change’ as an example, the paper reflects on the experiences of a pilot project run for the UK government that took place over two years with five community groups in rural England. The research question centred on how the stories of ‘older’ (aged 50+) community advocates might be amplified and inspire wider change via a systemic action research approach. This paper describes the project and shares insights into how behaviour change might occur in this action-based learning context challenging more Newtonian conceptualizations of change. Some of the methodological and practice challenges and conundrums that arose are discussed including authenticity, ownership and ethical issues of voice and ownership. Parallels and distinctions between story-based action research and action learning are identified and the role of narrative in inducing action is considered. The paper concludes by reflecting on future directions and the overall potential there is for ‘narrative action learning’ to address those wicked systemic problems that transcend organizational boundaries and that are faced by real people in our communities and society as a whole.     

The Ethico-politics of Teacher Identity

Identity is a contemporary buzzword in education, referencing the individual and the social, the personal and the political, self and other. Following Maggie MacLure, we can think of identity in terms of teachers 'arguing for themselves', or giving an account of themselves. Yet in the wake of poststructuralism's radical de-centering of the subject and its highlighting of a number of impediments to agency, we might well ask how teachers are to give an account of themselves? This paper offers reading of identity that recognizes its paradoxical aspects, yet also contains scope for ethical agency. The latter is explored via a 'diagram' that utilizes Foucault's four axes of ethics to elaborate a framework for thinking about teacher identity as ethical self-formation and for engaging in what I refer to here as 'identity work'. This approach to thinking about teacher identity recognizes our discursive determination, yet also offers scope for recognizing and building ethical agency.