城市梦想

[1]当我最近第一次计划到巴黎旅行时,我无法克制自己的激动——我把计划告诉给愿意听我讲话的每个人。单单谈论这次旅行就非常激动人心。[2]但我没有预料到的是它似乎总是以特别方式而且是带着某种情感影响到了其他人。我不会变得无动于衷,每个人都会说“真不错”。不,通常我感受到的是渴望的神情或评论——或者是过于乐观的凝视。[3]为我修鞋的男人眼中真的充满了泪水,将眼睛看向别处。[4]“我什么地方也没去过,”他说。“我这一辈子一直在干活。”他的妻子,他说,从来没有想到去旅行。他成年的孩子仍然需要他提供一些资金帮助。[5]我对触发…     

Using educational theory and research to refine agricultural extension: affordances and barriers for farmers’ learning and practice change

Purpose: To examine the factors that support and hinder farmers’ learning and to investigate the impact of an innovative learning program on farmers’ practice change.

Design/methodology/approach: Individual interviews and focus group discussions were held with 24 farmers over 20 months. Observations were made of these farmers as they participated with eight agricultural and social scientists in a range of innovative experiences to learn about chicory and plantain establishment and management. These learning experiences were designed around evidence-informed educational pedagogies. Data sets were analyzed using NVivo to determine common themes of affordances and barriers to learning and actual practice changes.

Findings: The affordances for learning and practice change include belonging to a learning community, enhancing self-efficacy, engaging with scientists, seeing relative advantage, reinforcing and validating learning, supporting system’s integration and developing an identity as learners. Barriers to learning and practice change include issues of: trialability, complexity, compatibility and risk.

Practical implications: The importance of basing new models of extension around evidence-informed pedagogies known through educational research to promote learning and practice change.

Theoretical implications: Sociocultural theory and self-efficacy theories of learning are critical to the success of effective agricultural extension programs.

Originality: To date, little empirical research about the affordances and barriers for pastoral farmers’ learning has been based on contemporary educational research.     

Conservation and metaphor acquisition in hearing-impaired children. Some relationships with communication mode, hearing acuity, schooling, and age.

This study focused on conservation and metaphor acquisition in 35 hearing-impaired children who used different modes of communication and who spanned a wide age range. Children who used either cued speech or oral-aural communication modes were tested at two different school sites. Relationships were determined between the dependent variables, conservation and metaphor, and the independent variables of age, degree of hearing loss, years of schooling, and mode of communication. Findings revealed a significant positive relationship between conservation and metaphor in both communication modes. Significant relationships between age and metaphor and between age and conservation were also found, suggesting that experience plays an important role in understanding both of them. Neither conservation nor metaphor was significantly related to either degree of hearing loss or communication mode. The conservation order of acquisition was number (91%), weight (60%), volume (50%), and liquid (46%). Suggestions for teachers based on the findings are presented.     

Exploring the domestic relationship between mega-events and destination image: The image impact of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games for the city of London

Contemporarily, the hosting of mega-sport-events (MSEs) is one of several strategies used by cities and governments to bring about improvements in a place’s image and recognition. With that in mind, the overall aim of this study, underpinned by theoretical-methodological social representation theory, was to evaluate the domestic image impact of hosting the 2012 Summer Olympic Games for the city of London, and in doing so, whether any image-transfer (or co-branding) processes occurred between the place and event. In addition to adding to the emergent body of work aimed at using social representation theory to measure place image, the authors are among the first to employ a matched-sample research approach to measuring the impact of an MSE on the domestic perceptions of the host. Employing an abductive research strategy, a survey was carried out among the domestic English population (n = 156) to identify cognitive and affective image components, in the form of social representations, of London as a city (or its place brand), the Olympics as a MSE, and the 2012 Games as a one-off event. The content and the structure of the pre-and post-event social representations were established (using image elements cited by at least 15% of the respondents), analysed (using hierarchical cluster analysis) and then compared (within- and between items) to determine whether any changes or image transfer occurred. The findings of this research reveal that the pre-event concerns regarding the hosting of the London 2012 Olympics and the potential of the event to negatively impact the city’s pre-established image, were, to a degree, fulfilled. Conversely, from an event perspective, respondents perceived the Olympics as a somewhat successful enterprise.