Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: an Embodied Perspective

Learners studying mechanical or technical processes via dynamic visualizations often fail to build an accurate mental representation of the system’s movements. Based on embodied theories of cognition assuming that action, perception, and cognition are closely intertwined, this paper proposes that the learning effectiveness of dynamic visualizations could be enhanced by grounding the movements of the presentation in people’s own bodily experiences during learning. We discuss recent research on embodied cognition and provide specific strategies for how the body can be used to ground movements during the learning process: (1) making or observing gestures, (2) manipulating and interacting with objects, (3) using body metaphors, and (4) using eye movements as retrieval cues. Implications for the design of dynamic visualizations as well as directions for future research are presented.     

Old Players—New Rules: Higher education institutions’ response to educational demand

Tertiary Education and Management - Performance indicators and performance-based funding are becoming integral components of higher education (HE) policy around the globe. We explore some of the...     

Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education

The Leverhulme programme of study into the future of higher education is an impressive analytical effort carried through with expediency and allowing for wide participation. However, the programme is not only an ambitious exercise in policy analysis and unorthodox planning. It also involves processes of bargaining and policy advocacy. But the demands of these different roles have not been openly examined. Thus the programme has unnecessarily rendered itself open to criticism. In particular, many of the recommendations echo a consistent plea for new institutional arrangements for central co-ordination and top-down management and control. These recommendations, however, have received little or no underpinning and are actually at odds with some of the most qualified studies of the Leverhulme programme itself. Furthermore, the programme has tended to neglect two of the most urgent tasks of policy analysis, namely to outline a range of available options - rather than to produce a broad consensus view - and to clearly spell out major value tradeoffs involved - rather than to assure that there are no significant drawbacks attached to the options being advocated.Prepared when the author was a Visiting Scholar of the Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles. The author is indebted to the Director of the Group, Professor Burton Clark, for incisive comments on some of the issues raised by the Leverhulme Programme and to Dr. Gary Rhoades of the same Group for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.     

To jump the wave or not: teachers’ perceptions of research evidence in education

This article presents a microanalysis of how a group of primary school teachers deals with research evidence in their work. Based on analysis of a group of Norwegian teachers’ interactions over issues of educational research and research-based knowledge, we find that teachers’ representations of educational research particularly center on the following issues: educational research being perceived as circular, ‘polyphonic’, and a matter of accommodation to their experience-based knowledge. These metaphors also shed light upon the dilemmas that arise when research evidence meets teachers’ more contextual knowledge. We conclude that teachers’ practice-based evidence may take new forms with an increased policy focus on research-based evidence, as well as bringing forth challenges for teacher work and professionalism.     

One of the few: the experiences of female elite-level coaches in Norwegian football

The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of female elite-level Norwegian coaches in football. More precisely, we wanted to find out the meaning of gender for these coaches’ football experiences. The results presented are based on five in-depth interviews with female elite-level coaches between 36 and 50 years of age. A feminist cultural and a gender perspective are used to understand and discuss the findings. As shown in other studies, the culture of football in Norway is very gendered. This has an impact on the female football coaches’ experiences, both in relation to how they perceive their own role, their coach education and with respect to their self-confidence and how they look upon their own chances in the job market. As a group, they represent a form of pariah femininity, and very little resistance femininity and a liberal feminist perspective, i.e. equality on the men’s premises.