Transnational fan reactions to transnational trends: Norwegian Liverpool supporters, ‘authenticity’ and ‘filthy-rich’ club owners

Despite claims that local and transnational supporters in the English Premier League (EPL) may be closer to each other in terms of commitment and ‘authenticity’, than often imagined, our knowledge about how transnational fans, as one of EPL’s global components, responds to other global developments in the league is limited, given what is known about traditional fans’ meeting with EPL’s ‘global powers’. This research investigates perspectives and attitudes of transnational fans; a set of Norwegian Liverpool supporters, and their experiences of the club’s ‘foreign’ ownership, as articulated on an interactive message board. Crucially, whereas the attitudes towards ownership are mixed, the findings suggest an adoption of ‘traditional’ fan cultures, and reinforce claims that local and transnational fan cultures perhaps are closer, and display more similarities, than imagined. Certain findings also strengthen the argument sustaining that ‘authentic’ fandom should not solely be seen in terms of geographical origins or presence inside stadiums.     

Does School Admission by Zoning Affect Educational Inequality? A Study of Family Background Effect in Estonia,Finland, and Sweden

We indicate the size of family background effects in Sweden, Finland, and Estonia – countries that differ in both the rhetoric and extensiveness of the system-level school choice policies. Family background effect is defined as the dependence of student achievement on family background characteristics, such as parental education, income, and social status. The number of books at home is used as a proxy when operationalising family background, and its effect is measured as a percentage of individual-level PISA scores. Fixed-effect regression results reveal that family background remains a powerful determinant in the educational results of 15-year-old students in all three cases, being largest in Sweden. Furthermore, we show how the family background effect is moderated by school-level choice policy, that is, how students and schools are matched. The analysis reveals that zoning policies have statistically significant negative effects on the impact of the family background effect, independent of country-level policies.     

Global channels of evidence for learning and assessment in complex game environments

In this paper, we take a designer's look at how the activities and data of learning and assessment can be structured in immersive virtual game environments called Massively Multi‐Player Online Games (MMOG). In doing so, we examine the channels of evidence through which learning and assessment activities are derived in MMOGs, offering examples of how multiple evidence channels in operation through game‐based activities can be utilised to construct rich data trails for assessment.     

Communication History

NEW AND IMPROVED: THE STORY OF MASS MARKETING IN AMERICA by Richard S. Tedlow (New York: Basic Books, 1990—$24.95, ISBN 0-465-05023-9,481 pp.)

EDISON AND THE BUSINESS OF INNOVATION by Andre Millard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990—$38.50, ISBN 0-8018-3306-X, 387 pp.)

COMPUTING BEFORE COMPUTERS edited by William Aspray (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990—$27.95, ISBN 0-8138-0047-1, 276 pp.)

AMERICAN MASS-MARKET MAGAZINES edited by Alan Nourie and Barbara Nourie (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990—$79.95, ISBN 0-313-25254-8, 624 pp.)

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA by Hazel Dicken-Garcia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989—$42.50/14.50, ISBN 0-299-12170-4 hard, 0-299-12174-7 soft, 342 pp.)

THE WATCHDOG CONCEPT: THE PRESS AND THE COURTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA by Timothy W. Gleason (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990—$21.95, ISBN 0-8138-0152-4, 160 pp.)

MUCKRAKING AND OBJECTIVITY: JOURNALISM'S COLLIDING TRADITIONS by Robert Miraldi (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990—$39.95, ISBN 0-313-27298-0, 184 pp.)     

Conceptual boundaries and distances: Students' and experts' concepts of the scale of scientific phenomena

To reduce curricular fragmentation in science education, reform recommendations include using common, unifying themes such as scaling to enhance curricular coherence. This study involved 215 participants from five groups (grades 5, 7, 9, and 12, and doctoral students), who completed written assessments and card sort tasks related to their conceptions of size and scale, and then completed individual interviews. Results triangulated from the data sources revealed the boundaries between and characteristics of scale size ranges that are well distinguished from each other for each group. Results indicate that relative size information was more readily understood than exact size, and significant size landmarks were used to anchor this relational web of scales. The nature of past experiences situated along two dimensions—from visual to kinesthetic in one dimension, and wholistic to sequential in the other—were shown to be key to scale cognition development. Commonalities and differences between the groups are highlighted and discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 282–319, 2006     

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. Noun prevalence in the vocabularies of young children and the merits of several theories that may account for this pattern are discussed.     

Information, cooperation, and the blurring of boundaries – technology transfer in German and American discourses

The aim of this paper is to examine changing discursive conceptualizations of technology transfer mechanisms for speeding up innovation in Germany and the US since World War II with particular emphasis on universities. According to our analysis, the concepts of technology transfer are getting more and more complex, taking off from a linear model of innovation to a more complex model allowing for networking and entrepreneurial activities of the universities themselves. We suggest that the discourses in both countries can be framed employing three ideal-typical models: the information and documentation model, the cooperation model, and the blurring of boundaries model. In addition to these similarities, we also discuss differences that can be traced back to broader political cultures in which technology transfer is embedded. Both similarities and differences allow for a comparative perspective which is not limited to the countries analyzed here.     

At home,song, and fika – portraits of Swedish choral initiatives amidst the refugee crisis

ABSTRACT

With the unprecedented worldwide refugee crisis, to what extent can music play a role in welcoming? In particular, how does choral music have a role in mobilising communities, generating intercultural understanding, and lifting some of the barriers that confront refugees and asylum seekers? How can such activity be seen as a benefit to the welcomers rather than only the outsider others? The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to study how selected Swedish choral directors seek to include refugees into their choirs or musical groups. Additionally, the study seeks to understand how such efforts at inclusion are received, understood, and enacted. In other words, ‘What does it mean to refugees to sing choral music in a Swedish context, how is this perceived by the Swedish musical leaders, and how is this contextualized against Swedish government policy?’ We interview five Swedish choral directors and use the data to dig deeper into the multilayered and complex matter of welcoming refugees through community music. We contend that the work of these choral directors, as genuine acts of goodwill, is a powerful way to welcome new arrivals. However, the medium of the Western European choir may be culturally remote for refugees, and these initiatives may need new models of community music engagement.     

The career development of black and white South African university students

This study investigates the possible influence of gender and culture on the career maturity and study and work role salience of South African students. Responses to the Life Role Inventory and Career Development Questionnaire of 260 first-year university students (137 white, 123 black) were analyzed. Culture was found to have a significant effect on both career maturity and study and work role salience while gender had no significant effect. Results are related to previous findings from international and South African literature. Implications for counselling are discussed.Paper presented at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling Conference, held at the University of Oporto, Oporto, Portugal, 2–5 April 1991.