Teaching Aids for Learning Languages

How can one make teaching foreign languages interesting to boys and girls? They can learn foreign languages much easier, if they go to the country in question. But as this is not possible, we have to find means to conjure up similar circumstances in our classrooms.     

Conceptions of learning and pedagogy: developing trainee teachers' epistemological understandings

This work has a particular focus on exposing important connections between trainee teachers' personal beliefs about knowledge (epistemological beliefs) and their conceptions of learning. These, the authors argue, are central to the assumptions which underpin their pedagogy when working with children in school. The link between these constructs emerged as key issues during a collaborative research project between five practitioners across two universities which explored the use of a ‘learning to learn’ (L2L) approach with a particular emphasis on postgraduate ITT courses. This seems particularly pertinent to expanding the capacity to learn of trainees, yet, to date, it has received little attention within research on L2L, given its more immediate focus within the school setting. The authors believe, however, that the climate is now ripe for research focusing on the context of lifelong learning, in particular teacher trainee learning in ITT. They argue that a focus on the role of epistemology in helping to shape teaching approaches is likely to be a key element in developing students with a capacity to reflect critically on practice.     

Understanding the Interactive Effects of Emotional Appeal and Claim Strength in Health Messages

This paper examines the interactive effects of the perceived strength of the verbal claims and the intensity and direction of the emotional appeal of public service announcements (PSAs) on audience perceptions of message effectiveness. The results show that PSAs containing strong verbal claims are rated as more effective than those with weak claims. Arousing messages with weak claims are perceived as least effective. Increasing claim strength increased memory for negative but not for positive messages. It is suggested that the combination of intense emotional appeal and weak claims may be partially responsible for the boomerang effects in antidrug campaigns.     

Lessons learned? School leadership and curriculum reform in Hong Kong

This paper examines the processes of implementing curriculum reform in schools. Specifically, it investigates how schools learn lessons from previous experiences of reform and apply them when challenged by new reforms. The context for this study is Hong Kong's New Secondary School Curriculum (NSSC), with particular reference to the subject of English Language. Research into the enactment of change over the last decade tells a story of weak leadership and management by policy makers, schools leaders and teachers. Key areas of weakness – poor management of change by school leaders, teachers' lack of understanding of the changes, and weak teacher collaboration – were pinpointed as reasons for the dismal results of curriculum change. This study investigates whether these areas of weakness were also in the implementation of the NSSC. Data collection comprised semi-structured interviews in nine secondary schools. The study reveals that lessons had been learnt from the previous experiences of implementing reform, and suggests that the capacity of schools to learn from a historical perspective should be taken into account in curriculum planning.     

Extracting the hydrodynamic resistance of droplets from their behavior in microchannel networks

The overall traffic of droplets in a network of microfluidic channels is strongly influenced by the liquid properties of the moving droplets. In particular, the effective hydrodynamic resistance of individual droplets plays a key role in their global behavior. Here we propose two simple and low-cost experimental methods for measuring this parameter by analyzing the dynamics of a regular sequence of droplets injected into an “asymmetric loop” network. The choice of a droplet taking either route through the loop is influenced by the presence of previous droplets that modulate the hydrodynamic resistance of the branches they are sitting in. We propose to extract the effective resistance of a droplet from easily observable time series, namely, from the choices the droplets make at junctions and from the interdroplet distances. This becomes possible when utilizing a recently proposed theoretical model based on a number of simplifying assumptions. Here we present several sets of measurements of the hydrodynamic resistance of droplets, expressed in terms of a “resistance length.” The aim is twofold: (1) to reveal its dependence on a number of parameters, such as the viscosity, the volume of droplets, their velocity as well as the spacing between them. At the same time (2), by using a standard measurement technique, we compare the limitations of the proposed methods. As an important result of this comparison, we obtain the range of validity of the simplifying assumptions made in the theoretical model.     

Educational Assessment in Singapore

Educational assessment in the Singapore context is shaped, to a large extent, by the country's educational policies and programmes, as well as the general principles and practices of assessment. This paper presents a profile of the assessment system in Singapore and how it complements the education system to realise the fullest potential of its precious human resources. National examinations and school-based assessments at each milestone in the education system are described so as to highlight the distinctive features of educational assessment in Singapore.     

Using Company Blogs to Win over Decision Makers

Company blogs offer publishers a media platform to build online communities around issues of interest to customers and prospects. Web 2.0 represents the fundamental shift from “old” marketing where publishers engaged in one-directional push messaging and “new” marketing where customers and prospects are also creators of content and key messages in response to their individual experiences. Whether companies decide to participate in the online conversation or not, they and their products are being discussed. To maintain credibility and support their brands, publishers must engage their audiences online. Creating a company blog as the centerpiece of a Social Media strategy can be a meaningful investment in a publisher’s longevity.