Students’ interests for personalized learning: an analysis guide

The lack of alignment between, on the one hand, what schools seek to teach and, on the other, the students’ interests and learning objectives is leading to increasing numbers of students who are unable to derive meaning from school activities. Personalized learning strategies represent one of the most powerful ways to help students attribute meaning and personal value to their learning. This paper has two interrelated objectives. The first is to present a guide to the analysis of educational practices that work with and from students’ interests. This tool makes it possible to identify the potential of practices to reinforce and promote the meaning and personal value that students attach to their school learning. The guide is structured around three large blocks (personalization strategies, conceptions of interests, and design and development of practices), which describe the dimensions, subdimensions, questions, and levels for the analysis. The second objective is to illustrate use of the guide by analyzing two practices designed and implemented in primary school classrooms, characterized by a focus on students’ learning interests. The paper concludes by highlighting the main contributions of the guide presented, identifying some limitations, and pointing to future lines of research.

     

Resistant Matters: Tents,Tear Gas and the “Other Media” of Occupy

From tents to tear gas, objects and architectures of resistance speak to us across the transnational Occupy Movement. More than background scenery or mere props for action, these objects have their own stories to tell about how they mediate and communicate political struggle. Informed by the revitalisation of materialism and object-oriented analyses, this paper draws together affect theory, “post-ANT” scholarship and social movement studies to explore particular nonhuman elements of resistance as “other media.” Beyond those practices already seen to be part of the communications ecology of protest (alternative media, demonstrations, speeches, performative actions), I argue that other technological infrastructures and interfaces make and mediate political communication at sites of resistance in ways that are significant but often overlooked in existing scholarship.     

How patenting informs VC investors – The case of biotechnology

In the presence of asymmetric information, economic agents need to communicate their quality to investors and other parties. This paper investigates how information generated during the patenting process affects the ability of new ventures to attract VC financing. While much of the literature on information asymmetries focuses on patent applications, we argue that the entire examination process should be considered, including information that emerges in the course of patent examination and review. We test several hypotheses using a sample of British and German companies that seek venture capital. We find that the filing of patent applications is positively related to VC financing. Moreover, the examination process at the patent office generates valuable technological and commercial information via search reports, citations and opposition procedures which affect the likelihood of VC financing. Our results suggest that the patenting process supports investors in updating their expectations regarding the quality of new ventures.     

企业竞争力研究进展述评

对近年来企业竞争力相关文献进行了较全面的回顾和逻辑梳理,分别从经济学分析框架和管理学分析框架两个视角综述了企业竞争力理论范式的演进历程,并根据文献研究,将企业竞争力的来源及评价方法进行了描述性统计和分类比较.在深入剖析现有文献的基础之上,分析当前文献研究的主要特点和存在的一些不足之处,同时,提出了进一步发展和完善的研究方向.     

Cortisol Reactivity to Social Stress as a Mediator of Early Adversity on Risk and Adaptive Outcomes

Children chronically exposed to stress early in life are at increased risk for maladaptive outcomes, though the physiological mechanisms driving these effects are unknown. Cortisol reactivity was tested as a mediator of the relation between prenatal substance exposure and/or early adversity on adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. Data were drawn from a prospective longitudinal study of prenatal substance exposure (N = 860). Cortisol reactivity was assessed at age 11. Among African Americans, prenatal substance exposure exerted an indirect effect through early adversity and cortisol reactivity to predict externalizing behavior, delinquency, and a positive student–teacher relationship at age 11. Decreased cortisol reactivity was related to maladaptive outcomes, and increased cortisol reactivity predicted better executive functioning and a more positive student–teacher relationship.     

Complexities and Challenges of Researching Student Completion and Non-completion of HE Programmes in Europe: a comparative analysis between England and Norway

There is a growing interest in policy research on student completion and non-continuation and bodies such as the European Commission and OECD are focusing on the subject. There is also increasing national interest in the issue in many countries and they are looking to each other for input on effective policies. However, there are significant social, economic and educational differences between national systems across Europe, making this a very challenging project. The aim of this article is to study challenges and complexities in researching student non-completion of higher educqtion programmes in Europe. We use the case of two contrasting countries — England and Norway — to help to identify some of the differences, challenges and complexities that are relevant when creating an approach for analysis that can be used more widely to explore ‘non-completion’ across different countries in Europe and beyond.     

Discursive Strategies of Civil Disagreement in Public Dialogue Groups

This case study investigates how participants in public dialogue sessions engaged in what they term “civil disagreement.” These sessions encouraged participants to explore a wide range of policy options on a public issue and consider diverse perspectives and possibilities for action. Using Action Implicative Discourse Analysis, we examine civil disagreement as a discursive problem. We argue that “civil disagreement” in public dialogue sessions is temporally bound, involves extended engagement in disagreement, and is viewed as productive by group members. Group members use discursive strategies such as challenging through questions, rearticulating claims while acknowledging other perspectives, and editing or reframing. Group members also use silence to demonstrate listening or to indicate their assessment of the situation as finalized. These discursive strategies demonstrate aspects of participants' situated ideals about public dialogue, which are related to their role in the disagreement and their construals of time. We offer practical implications for facilitators' use of guidelines, discussion of timing, and awareness of the multiple meanings of silence during disagreement.