‘My language tree’: young Finland‐Swedish adults tell us about their linguistic and cultural identities

The education of teachers in Swedish Finland is a stage for a powerful display of Finland‐Swedish culture. This paper discusses the voices on this cultural stage, exploring the patterns in the stories these young Finland‐Swedish adults tell about their linguistic and cultural identities.     

Teaching Personality Theory: A Games Approach

This study compares the subject matter acquisition of a lecture-discussion group and a game-playing group in a graduate course in personality theory. The performance of the group which played only two personality theory games during the five-week summer session was at least as good as that of a lecture-discussion group attending the same session. An additional, unanticipated gain for the game-playing group was consistently high motivational level and esprit de corps.     

Understanding the dynamics between preterm infants and their families

The high‐tech environment of the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) may seem a million miles away from the classroom, but the baby who has been born prematurely, wired up in an incubator in the former, will in five years' time be a learner in the other. The journeys through our education system of children who have survived premature birth to become learners are causing teachers, psychologists, therapists and carers to explore innovative learning pathways, new psychological and therapeutic interventions, and creative care approaches to meet their needs. While much is known about the serious physical and sensory problems of preterm babies, less is known about their psychological, educational and socio‐emotional difficulties. This article attempts to identify key targets for holistic intervention with families of premature infants. An approach used at the Champion Early Intervention Centre (Burwood Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand) is described, from which practitioners of school‐aged children can draw teaching and learning implications.     

A Religious Education Otherwise? An Examination and Proposed Interruption of Current British Practice

This paper examines the recent shift towards the dominance of the study of philosophy of religion, ethics and critical thinking within religious education in Britain. It explores the impact of the critical realist model, advocated by Andrew Wright and Philip Barnes, in response to prior models of phenomenological religious education, in order to expose the ways in which both approaches can lead to a distorted understanding of the nature of religion. Although the writing of Emmanuel Levinas has been used in support of the critical realist model by Wright, I will consider how his and Slavoj Žižek's writings on the nature of religion might challenge the dominance of the critical realist approach and provide a conceptual framework through which it might be possible to develop an alternative approach to religious education that attends to the complexity, ambiguity and demanding nature of engaging with religious traditions.     

A Cross-section of Women Engineers in Italy

In Italy as in other European countries, the percentage of women who graduated with a degree in engineering is still very low. However, in past years, matriculation of women in engineering has been increasing, although the trend is still lower than in other departments, where an overall average of 50% increase is projected.

Using statistical data from the oldest and one of the most important universities in the world, the University of Bologna, we have analysed the historical and social reasons why particular careers for women,i.e. teaching and medicines, were chosen over other careers. Other data were used to study why women had difficulties being accepted at the University; who were the famous female teachers at the University of Bologna (18th century); who were the first female graduates in engineering in Italy (Turin, 1908) and in particular, in Bologna (1915).

In addition, we studied the distribution of women in the various fields of engineering. A survey was sent to a sample of woment graduates in engineering from the University of Bologna in which they responded to questions concerning their present status in the field, job possibilities, prejudices, problems, etc.     

华信惠悦成功变身

日前，华信惠悦(Watson Wyatt Worldwide)在嘉里中心召开记者招待会，其亚太区董事李秋里博士宣布，大中华区在各地的分公司的营运合而为一，其香港、北京、上海及深圳的分公司将在全新的统一组织内运作。