Economic Changes Resulting from Seoul 1988: Implications for London 2012 and Future Games

South Korea has often been considered a successful host nation after the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and their apparent positive economic, cultural, social and environmental legacies. The purpose of this essay is to offer an analysis of economic growth as a consequence of earlier Olympic Games and to extrapolate to the 2012 London Olympic Games and beyond to the forthcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. It is the intention of this essay to examine previous studies, economic indices of world banks and reports of each Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (OCOG). The hypothesis is that the Olympic Games have not positively influenced the economic growth of the host nations. The essay explores this conclusion with reference to London 2012. The essay will reveal past negative influences of the Olympic Games and ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC): ‘What is the IOC's responsibility to the host city after the Games?’ Finally, the essay will propose and recommend an economic tool to the IOC to ensure sustainable outcomes after the Games.     

Confidence versus Performance as an Indicator of the Presence of Alternative Conceptions and Inadequate Problem‐Solving Skills in Mechanics

This study investigated the use of performance–confidence relationships to signal the presence of alternative conceptions and inadequate problem‐solving skills in mechanics. A group of 33 students entering physics at a South African university participated in the project. The test instrument consisted of 20 items derived from existing standardised tests from literature, each of which was followed by a self‐reported measure of confidence of students in the correctness of their answers. Data collected for this study included students’ responses to multiple‐choice questions and open‐ended explanations for their chosen answers. Fixed response physics and confidence data were logarithmically transformed according to the Rasch model to linear measures of performance and confidence. The free response explanations were carefully analysed for accuracy of conceptual understanding. Comparison of these results with raw score data and transformed measures of performance and confidence allowed a re‐evaluation of the model developed by Hasan, Bagayoko, and Kelley in 1999 for the detection of alternative conceptions in mechanics. Application of this model to raw score data leads to inaccurate conclusions. However, application of the Hasan hypothesis to transformed measures of performance and confidence resulted in the accurate identification of items plagued by alternative conceptions. This approach also holds promise for the differentiation between over‐confidence due to alternative conceptions or due to inadequate problem‐solving skills. It could become a valuable tool for instructional design in mechanics.     

Palabra escrita,interpretación oral: Los libros de texto en la clase

Resumen

Investigaciones recientes sobre el uso de la lengua escrita muestran que las interpretaciones de los textos escritos son construcciiones sociales. Este artículo intenta mostrar cómo las interpretaciones de las lecciones del libro de texto se construyen en la interaction verbal que se da en el salón de clases. La relación social con la lengua escrita se enmarca dentro de la estructura de la clase y el uso del texto modifica las pautas de interacción y del discurso docente.     

Collaborative Meaning-Making and Dialogic Interactions in Critical Friends as Co-Authors

ABSTRACT

From this year-long study, we offer new perspectives for being and becoming critical friends as co-authors. Informed by the Transactional Theory of Reading, a narrative view of experience and feminist communication theory, we positioned ourselves as collaborative, active meaning makers who could read and make meaning from our lived experiences and who could disrupt and problematize our narrative lives as teacher researchers. Through use of a collaborative conference protocol, we discovered what it means to be and to become critical friends who can co-author narrative understanding of self in the study. We have revisited the concept of critical friendship by repositioning our coauthoring as not just a resource for the completion of a better end product, but also as a way of being and knowing that enables an individual to revisit, reignite, disrupt, problematize and challenge one’s past and present storied lives.     

Conservation development in the partially sighted child

A comparative study of conservation development in partially sighted, sighted, and sighted blindfolded children at four age levels (6–7, 8–9, 10–11, and 12–15 yrs.) was assessed. Conservation on tasks of mass, weight, and volume were evaluated using Piaget and Inhelder's (1941) prediction, judgment, and explanation questions. The significant differences were found between groups, task, and age level. Visually impaired children's performance was inferior to sighted children at all age levels, while little difference was found between partially sighted and blindfolded children's performance. For all three groups, conservation of mass was easiest, followed by conservation of weight, then volume. The findings support the notion of a developmental lag in cognitive skills for partially sighted children.