Children writing funny stories: some reflections on the impact of collaborative talk

This article describes work undertaken with a class of Scottish Primary Six children (aged 10) that encouraged them to write humorous stories. It reflects on the impact of different teaching approaches, in particular exploring how teacher‐led input combined with opportunities for peer talk might serve to influence children's writing. The aims were first, to investigate whether, through ‘mini lessons’, children's story schemas could be expanded to include ideas about incongruity, and second, to discover how independent talking in pairs might encourage children to take up and reformulate ideas given in the initial teacher‐led input. During the sessions following the ‘mini lessons’, many opportunities for paired talk were offered. These were found to lead to a reinterpretation of ideas of incongruity, and to affect the selection and devising of voices for characters. The children's talk often gave evidence of a marked ability to describe humour and act it out orally, but analysis of the written stories reveals difficulties in writing down comic events. This has implications for the role of the teacher in finding ways to intervene sensitively to introduce new strategies.     

Student assessment and learning for a changing society

This article examines the traditional roles of assessment and the current demands for assessment to ‘gear up’ education systems in response to global economic changes. It argues that in the next millennium, and with the information revolution, it will be important to foster higher order skills and good learning strategies in a high proportion of our students. The article goes on to consider, set against the critical relationship among high-stakes testing, teaching and learning, the nature of high-quality assessment programmes. It will present evidence of impact of the national assessment programme on teaching in England and Wales in the United Kingdom.     

Knowledge governance within clusters: the case of small firms

Despite the vast literature on knowledge management, little research has addressed the specificities of knowledge integration at the cluster level. Moreover, the literature on clusters has not focused on the role that governance may play in knowledge management. Anchored in a knowledge-based perspective, this paper aims at bridging the two fields, filling the gap by analysing the role of cluster governance in knowledge management. An empirical study of two small French firm clusters was carried out based on 29 interviews. The data analysis consisted essentially in content analysis. The clusters studied were characterized by distinct knowledge management processes. In both cases, governance was necessary in order to support knowledge integration by member firms. Our results suggest that establishing an initial common knowledge base seems to be a prerequisite in order for the external knowledge identification and acquisition processes to take place. The activist role played by governance also seems more efficient than that of a broker. We discuss these results and their implications for policy-makers and cluster members.     

Funding,Time, and Mentoring: A Study of Research and Publication Support Practices of ARL Member Libraries

ABSTRACT

This study is an exploration of how Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions encourage and support their librarians engaged in research and publication. Using an online survey sent to members of the ARL library directors’ listserv, the authors gathered information about the role of research and publication in the respondents’ evaluation systems, the approaches used to support this activity, the respondents’ own records of research and publication, and their opinions about which approaches have the most impact. The results indicate that funding, time, and mentoring are the most frequently used approaches to promote research and publication productivity.     

The potential role of citizen conservation in re-shaping approaches to murals in an urban context

Public visual spaces, populated by a blend of community murals, unauthorised street art, and historic painted mercantile signs, are often the mark of an urban environment that is both progressive and eclectic. Changes in the aesthetic and cultural value of these urban mural forms have led to an increase in the appreciation and, in some instances, promotion of their artistic merit and cultural significance as examples of public art. However, examining the significance of these works, with a view to implementing a conservation approach is problematic. This is due to a number of practical and theoretical considerations that are primarily a result of the ephemeral existence of urban murals outside conventional exhibition spaces, and issues associated with their often fragmented ownership and uncertain authorship. Consequently, larger thinking on the interpretation, conservation assessment, and advocacy for the conservation of urban murals are required. Key to defining and implementing such strategies is contextualising the public visual spaces that these murals occupy and, as part of this, the local and wider communities’ perception of these murals as culturally significant objects as well as fostering awareness and understanding of appropriate measures aimed at their conservation. This paper examines the role of citizen science, or crowd-sourcing, of local community members in establishing a conservation dialogue and generating conservation- relevant data on urban murals. It looks specifically at a project involving a collection of in situ historic painted mercantile signs — also known as ghost signs — in the City of Port Phillip, Melbourne, Australia. The project fostered the establishment of an informed and open dialogue between conservation specialists and participants from the local community on the significance of local ghost signs whilst transferring knowledge on conservation processes and assessment methods. Working directly with community members, a programme was designed in which conservation and community knowledge of these urban art forms, could be collected and exchanged across digital platforms. This enabled researchers to examine how citizen science can be utilised as a research tool as well as a means to advocate for the conservation of collections of urban murals. It created the opportunity to consider the role of non-specialists and shared authorities in the collection and collation of conservation- relevant data and how information generated from what we call citizen conservation projects, can inform the way in which conservators evaluate and prioritize the conservation of urban cultural heritage. The data gathered and interpreted proved to be the most effective means of ‘conserving’ these often ephemeral forms of cultural material.