Students’ relationships to knowledges,place identity and agency concerning the St. Lawrence river

Our study is framed according to a transformational-sociocritical approach to an education for sustainable development (ESD) that, in particular, considers landscapes as learning contexts of potential use for fostering engagement in the areas of environmental protection and sustainable development. In keeping with this perspective, we surveyed students aged 16–17 years from the Lower St. Lawrence region (Quebec, Canada) concerning their knowledge and perceptions of issues pertaining to the St. Lawrence, the river facing them on an everyday basis, and about their role as citizens in that connection. In respect of theoretical considerations, we propose developing the concepts of relationships to knowledge, place identity and agency. An analysis of questionnaires (N=334) has served to: bring out the learnings and issues pertaining to the St. Lawrence River that students consider to be meaningful; characterise the various identity-centred relationships with this landscape; and define the eco-civic agency of the students surveyed. The results of this analysis then provide a basis for some proposals for an ESD curriculum relating to the St. Lawrence River that is rooted in students’ concerns. While the environmental issues dealt with occur locally, the potential transfer of results into other curricula and educational contexts is also discussed.     

From an immigrant to a citizen: language as a hindrance or a key to citizenship

The starting point for this paper is a question that has provoked a recent parliamentary election debate in Sweden: whether fluency in Swedish should be regarded as a requirement when applying for Swedish citizenship. Two main issues have been discussed: the different levels and meanings of citizenship, and language acquisition by adult immigrants as a hindrance or a key to citizenship based on recent research and scholarship.¹ The Swedish policy of integration, being trapped between demos and ethnos, between universality and diversity, has profound consequences for forming Swedish language policy for immigrants. Yet learning a new language is connected with learning a new culture and society. For immigrants the new language is not only a means of survival, but an important step in reconstructing identities. It seems quite natural that a good command of the language is a key to becoming a full and active citizen, i.e. to acquire a citizenship. Comprehension of the language and knowledge of culture of the (new) country helps one to be aware of one's rights and duties and exercise them, to be involved in society and to participate actively in it. The new language and culture can enrich one's identity and make it more complex.     

Researching the Transition to High School for Adolescents with a Disability: Qualitative Action-Project Method as an Exemplar Approach

ABSTRACT

The transition from elementary to middle or high school is an important experience common to most adolescents in North America. However, very little research has been conducted to understand the experiences of students with a disability status and the stakeholders involved in the transition. Clearly, there is a need to generate information that views the transition as a process between students and stakeholders that takes place over time. This investigation illustrates the utility of the action-project method for studying the transition to middle or high school. Three cases involving Canadian adolescents with different disabilities (learning, sensory/motor and emotional/behavioural) and their parents, as key stakeholders, are presented.     

The relationship between meeting of recommendations on physical activity for health and perceived work ability among white-collar workers

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between meeting recommendations on physical activity for health in leisure-time and the ability to work among Polish white-collar workers. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design with a convenience sample of 360 white-collar workers. Participants recorded 7-day physical activity logs, including form, duration and intensity of leisure-time physical activities. The results were compared to health recommendations. A standardized Work Ability Index (WAI) questionnaire was used in assessing the ability to work. Results: Participants who met health recommendations achieved higher scores of the WAI (mean score?=?41.93) in comparison to those who were not sufficiently physically active (mean score?=?39.35) (p?Conclusions: Meeting leisure-time physical activity recommendations (especially the criterion of vigorous physical activity) is significantly related to higher self-assessed ability to work among white-collar workers.     

Cognitive Style and Socialisation: An exploration of learned sources of style in Finland,Poland and the UK

Many educators are faced with the problem of how to handle the different ways in which students from different cultures approach learning content and processes. In management education, study has mostly considered the socio-economic, structural and organisational aspects of national differences and the external, explicit aspects of cultural differences such as managerial attitudes and values. There has, however, been less study of the differences between national groups in managerial cognition - the way managers think. If managers from one cultural group perceive, process, interpret and structure information differently from those from another, assumptions about the design and content of educational interventions based in one culture could be challenged in another. This paper reports on an exploratory study of 200 managers in Finland, Poland and the UK to investigate, firstly, whether there are national-cultural differences in cognitive style and, secondly, whether these differences are related to individual, occupational and cultural aspects of socialisation. In the latter case, the relationship between early schooling and the way people think is explored. Respondents' cognitive styles as measured by the Allinson and Hayes (1996) Cognitive Style Index (CSI) were compared with responses to two qualitative instruments assessing attitudes to early schooling and personal confidence and against predictions about national cultural differences derived from Hofstede (1984). The results, to be followed up by more extensive study, show significant differences between national groups in cognitive approaches and some aspects of socialisation. They also suggest that the constructs being measured by the CSI reveal individual characteristics that are not fixed and innate, but instead learned through processes of personal and cultural socialisation.     

Academia in the Grip of the Wolf and Its Utopia

Minerva - In 2015, Willem Halffman and Hans Radder published in Minerva a paper, in which they diagnosed that our universities are colonized by “The Wolf of management.” Using the...     

Coherence between text comments and the quantitative ratings in the UK’s National Student Survey

Institutions are understandably interested in the profile of their own reputations based upon publicly available data about student experiences. The UK’s National Student Survey (NSS) metrics are integrated into several ‘Good University’ calculations, whereas teaching teams most often use the survey’s text comments to change practices, rather than the metrics directly. There is little information about how messages from the national survey’s text comments relate to the accompanying numerical ratings, partly because text comments are confidential to the institution and unavailable for wide-scale research. We categorised institutional NSS text comments into themes that mirrored those of the original questionnaire. Comparisons were made between frequencies of thematic comments and the national ratings of satisfaction for several subject areas. For the first time, we demonstrate broad agreement between comments about measures of teaching staff and course organisation with the performance of the subject areas (compared to metrics of their national counterparts). These findings are consistent with previous quantitative models predicting the most important factors that most influence overall satisfaction ratings. We intend this study to be a catalyst for other institutions to explore their non-publicly available, textual returns in a similar way. The outcomes of this type of work are pertinent to all countries that use large-scale surveys. However, institutions will need to release findings to a public audience if we are to gain a national/international perspective on this key linkage between publicly available metrics and the associated text comments.     

The BBC Polish Service During the Second World War

During the Second World War the broadcasts of the BBC Polish Service became a major source of information in occupied Poland. Although listening to, or possessing, a radio was punishable by death under the German occupation, Poles were willing to risk their lives in order to hear the news from London. For many, the BBC remained the only contact with the outside world, whilst listening itself became a symbol of resistance. The Polish Service was required to follow the official line of British government's policy, presenting a positive picture of the USSR. Anything considered anti-Soviet was expunged. Given that the BBC European Service was designed as an instrument of British propaganda, the Polish Service was recognised as a powerful medium in territorial and political disputes between Poland and the USSR.