Personal Context and Continuity of Human Thought as Recurrent Themes in a Longitudinal Study

The present study of personal context and continuity in 23 students' thinking builds upon data from a longitudinal study of the students' conceptualisations of ecological processes. Each student was interviewed 11 times from age 9-15 about these processes. At the ages of 15 and 19, the students listened to what they said at the age of 11 and 15, respectively, and described how they thought their understanding had developed. The occurrence of charac teristic individual elements in the students' conceptions can be followed as themes in the interviews year by year. The students could, as 15- and 19-year-olds, often reveal concrete experiences from an early age that they referred to repeatedly in the interviews. Even if there was a substantial conceptual development, there was also a very strong element of personal continuity. Conceptions that had developed at an early age seemed to be important for future conceptual development.     

The Relationships Between Perceived Teaching Behaviors and Motivation in Physical Education: A One-Year Longitudinal Study

This study aimed to examine the direction of relationships between specific dimensions of perceived teaching behaviors and motivation in physical education over time among 330 secondary school students. Cross-lagged path-analytic models revealed that autonomous motivation was reciprocally related over time with perceived decision-making style, and positive feedback and that prior situation consideration, social support, and teaching behavior were related to a higher level of subsequent autonomous motivation and a lower level of controlled motivation; however, prior autonomous motivation was related to a higher level of subsequent positive nonverbal feedback. Results suggest that differences in the direction of relationships between various dimensions of perceived teaching behaviors and students' motivation in physical education are due to differences in the nature of the teacher-student interaction behind each teaching behavior.     

"Thinking the Practice": Academic adult educators' reflections on mediating a summer institute as a multicultural learning journey for graduate students

In this paper we research our roles as academic adult educators who worked with 40 graduate students during a 10 day summer institute, which we developed using the theme "Culture and Diversity in Education for Adults". We discuss how we framed the development and delivery of this summer institute in the context of a transgressive and transformative learning journey that heeds Paulo Freire's (1998) call to "think the practice" by reading and comprehending the word and the world critically. From this perspective, we examine our positionalities that situate us as present, sometimes strong, yet sometimes vulnerable educators who use insurgent theories and positional pedagogies to shape alternative learning experiences. We also examine how these positionalities impact our conceptions of pedagogy and multiculturalism, and we explore how they helped to shape the inclusive teaching-learning interactions that we designed to query being, acting, becoming, belonging, and surviving in education and the larger Canadian and global cultures. In this regard we investigate how our learning journey emerged as one deeply textured by engagements with issues of educator and learner positionalities as well as matters of context, disposition, relationship, and affiliation. We explore how our learning journey with institute participants took us into the uneasy intersections of the personal, professional, and political where pedagogical practices and associated challenges, risks, possibilities, and liabilities emerge.     

Primary and secondary school teachers in France: changes in identities and professionalization

Teacher professionalization is a recent field of study in France that has developed in connection with the creation of the Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres (IUFMs) and other changes that have brought primary and secondary teachers into closer relation. In order to help the reader understand the traditional divisions between these two groups and recent trends towards unification, we first present historical differences in their development as separate corps, their training and their modes of unionization. We then proceed to analyse the political turning point of 1989, date of the creation of the IUFMs which introduced a similar curriculum for teachers of each degree on the basis of officially specified fundamental skills, as well as leading to the reconstitution of teachers' unions. Finally, we examine the effects of recent moves toward professionalization on the rationalization of teachers' knowledge and skills, the relationship between training and professional activity and teachers' socialization.     

Size-dependent trajectories of DNA macromolecules due to insulative dielectrophoresis in submicrometer-deep fluidic channels

In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time that insulative dielectrophoresis can induce size-dependent trajectories of DNA macromolecules. We experimentally use λ (48.5 kbp) and T4GT7 (165.6 kbp) DNA molecules flowing continuously around a sharp corner inside fluidic channels with a depth of 0.4 μm. Numerical simulation of the electrokinetic force distribution inside the channels is in qualitative agreement with our experimentally observed trajectories. We discuss a possible physical mechanism for the DNA polarization and dielectrophoresis inside confining channels, based on the observed dielectrophoresis responses due to different DNA sizes and various electric fields applied between the inlet and the outlet. The proposed physical mechanism indicates that further extensive investigations, both theoretically and experimentally, would be very useful to better elucidate the forces involved at DNA dielectrophoresis. When applied for size-based sorting of DNA molecules, our sorting method offers two major advantages compared to earlier attempts with insulative dielectrophoresis: Its continuous operation allows for high-throughput analysis, and it only requires electric field strengths as low as ∼10 V∕cm.     

Schooling as a positional good: the Brazilian metropolitan regions in recent decades

In this article, I aim to determine whether, in view of the trend of educational expansion in recent decades in Brazil, the role played by schooling in the labor market of Brazilian major metropolitan regions has changed, becoming positional rather than absolute. To this end, I analyze the influence of schooling on people’s income and occupational status. Based on data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD-IBGE) for years 1995, 2005 and 2015, I compare ordinary least squares models that use absolute and positional measures of schooling. The results show that the explanatory power is greater for positional measures than for absolute ones, and that this advantage has increased over recent decades. As a result, it is argued that although educational expansion possibly makes the chances of access to a certain absolute schooling level less unequal, it also ends up undermining the opportunity structure related to it.     

‘Foreign ownerships’ in the Premier League: examining local Liverpool fans’ perceptions of Fenway Sports Group

The ‘foreign ownerships’ apparent in the English Premier League have received little academic attention, despite being a controversial issue for football fans and commentators. This study examines local Liverpool Football Clubs fans’ perceptions of the clubs’ American ownership and to what extent criticism aimed at the owners are framed in terms of nationality. Hence, data from the ‘Red and White Kop’s’ online message board (found at www.redandwhitekop.com) were collected. This is an interactive message board used primarily by Liverpool fans. The purposively sampled data, consisting of 3,322 fan comments was analysed with a frame analyse technique advanced by Erving Goffman. The study’s main argument is that Liverpool fans have become normalized to the global features of football, thus the nationality of the clubs’ owner seems unproblematic, when they assess the club’s ownership; an ownership a significant number of fans have positive perceptions about.     

Museums as avenues of learning for children: a decade of research

In this review, we focus on the museum activities and strategies that encourage and support children’s learning. In order to provide insight into what is known about children’s learning in museums, we examined study content, methodology and the resultant knowledge from the last decade of research. Because interactivity is increasingly seen as essential in children’s learning experiences in a museum context, we developed a framework that distinguishes between three main interactivity types for facilitating strategies and activities in children’s learning: child–adults/peers; child–technology and child–environment. We identify the most promising strategies and activities for boosting children’s learning as situated in overlapping areas of these interactivity types. Specifically, we identify scaffolding as a key to enhanced museum learning. Our review concludes by highlighting research challenges from the last decade and recommendations for practice and future research on how to design, evaluate and guide theoretically-grounded educational programs for children in museums.     

一个美国人眼中的中原文化

美国人普遍以老大自居,他们对亚洲、对中国了解很少.但也有一些美国人发现中国的文化,中国的历史其实是非常迷人的,偶或有对中华文化起源感兴趣的,河南便成了他们心目中的"麦加".