Strategies for leading academics to rethink humanities and social sciences curricula in the context of discipline standards

The introduction of discipline standards in Australia has required a comprehensive rethinking of humanities and social science curricula from first year through to graduation. This paper proposes a model to facilitate academics’ engagement with discipline standards and their implication for first-year curricula. The model supports discipline-focussed professional development that integrates consideration of discipline threshold learning outcomes, first-year pedagogy principles, and discipline threshold concepts. The model is demonstrated using strategies that were applied, tested, and shown to be effective in workshops across five disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.     

Literacy,schooling and ideology in a multilingual state

In this article I argue that current government policy for teaching literacy in schools in England is part of a broader ideology of homogeneity which is visible in other dominant-culture institutions. Despite the multilingual nature of England and its schools, the dominant discourse is one which values English at the expense of other languages, leading to the ‘misrecognition’ (Bourdieu, 1998b: 131), by majority and minority language speakers alike, of English as the sole language of symbolic capital. While the first part of this article outlines the monolingual ideology of current literacy policy in schools in England, and locates this in the context of a similar ideology evident in discourses beyond education, I also suggest that this process of symbolic domination is not inevitable. Schools need not be sites of social and cultural reproduction. They can challenge existing relations of power in society, and put in place structures and practices which question and even reverse the coercive relations between majority-culture schools and minority-culture communities and their children. I propose some ways forward in the development of structures which can enable schools to become sites of social and cultural transformation, rather than reproduction.     

Innovation studies and sustainability transitions: The allure of the multi-level perspective and its challenges

Sustainable development is prompting a re-assessment of innovation and technological change. This review paper contributes three things towards this re-assessment activity. First, it considers how the history of innovation studies for sustainable development can be explained as a process of linking broader analytical frameworks to successively larger problem framings. Second it introduces an emerging framework whose allure rests in its ability to capture the bigger picture: the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP). Whilst burgeoning researcher networks and literature suggests this policy-relevant theory is attractive, it is not without its challenges. The third purpose of this paper is to elaborate these challenges as areas for further research and development. We do this by drawing upon contributions to this special section and the wider literature.     

Peak Moments in Sport: A Literature Review

Despite being inherently rewarding and a major stimulus for many athletes' continued involvement in sport, there is a dearth of research concerning peak moments in sport. Methodological and definitional problems are abundant, and confusion surrounds the categorization of such instances. This paper examines four models related to peak moments, with particular emphasis placed on the Privette and Bundrick model. Peak experience, peak performance, and flow, which form a central component in this model, are discussed in detail. Similar and distinctive characteristics of peak moments in sport are then discussed. Finally, personal factors influencing the ability to experience peak moments, as well as optimal conditions for facilitating such moments, are reviewed. Particular attention is devoted to how one can minimize interference with these experiences.     

Disruption of splicing-regulatory elements using CRISPR/Cas9 to rescue spinal muscular atrophy in human iPSCs and mice

We here report a genome-editing strategy to correct spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Rather than directly targeting the pathogenic exonic mutations, our strategy employed Cas9 and guide-sgRNA for the targeted disruption of intronic splicing-regulatory elements. We disrupted intronic splicing silencers (ISSs, including ISS-N1 and ISS + 100) of survival motor neuron (SMN) 2, a key modifier gene of SMA, to enhance exon 7 inclusion and full-length SMN expression in SMA iPSCs. Survival of splicing-corrected iPSC-derived motor neurons was rescued with SMN restoration. Furthermore, co-injection of Cas9 mRNA from Streptococcus pyogenes (SpCas9) or Cas9 from Staphylococcus aureus (SaCas9) alongside their corresponding sgRNAs targeting ISS-N1 into zygotes rescued 56% and 100% of severe SMA transgenic mice (Smn^−/−, SMN2^tg/−). The median survival of the resulting mice was extended to >400 days. Collectively, our study provides proof-of-principle for a new strategy to therapeutically intervene in SMA and other RNA-splicing-related diseases.     

A Curricular Merger at a Medical College

This article considers the planning undertaken jointly by the Medical Colleges of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital and the London Hospital to merge their two undergraduate medical curricula and develop a new innovative curriculum for 1990–91. Some of the institutional features which encouraged successful curriculum planning are described. The emphasis is placed on the mechanisms employed by the Colleges to reach their decisions rather than the details of what was decided.     

Social science,social relevance and the politics of educational developmentLes sciences sociales,leur rapport avec la societe et la politique de l'evolution pedagogique

This article raises some broad questions about the relevance of the current content and teaching methods in undergraduate social science generally. First, it examines critically the general teaching patterns which often stress the teaching of concepts, theory, history and techniques in isolation from current or historical problems. It next argues that our major methods of teaching—notably the lecture—contribute little to achieving the widely advertised pedagogic objectives of independent, critical thinking by students. Thirdly, it argues that we need to inject more relevance into the content of social science courses by shifting the emphasis towards a greater use of contemporary or historical problems or incidents as the starting point for the appreciation of theory and methods. It suggests that the teaching methods best suited to this are the various versions of the ‘case’ or ‘enquiry’ or ‘problem’ approach, which involve a more active participation by students in the process of learning, rather than their current passive role as consumers of teaching. Some illustrations of how this can be done are given. The article concludes by indicating some of the problems which are likely to be encountered in educational development of this kind. These problems are considered to be ‘political’ ones in that they involve a changed use and distribution of resources (of staff, students, times and buildings), which are likely to run counter to current systems of academic and institutional power, social organization, culture and ideology.     

Too Much Monkey Business

The apparent contradictions between different strands of conservative thinking on education have been particularly clear recently in relation to 16–19 English, where a reactionary insistence on the "gold standard" of traditional A Level English Literature, and traditional literary study in general, sits uncomfortably alongside an aggressive promotion of vocationalist modernisation. This article discusses the connections between the two, and offers an example of a practical alternative to both.     

Quantum Heterodoxy: Realism at the Plank Length

Science &; Education -