On Scholars and Pragmatists and Fitting It All In

The author looks back on his career as an academic in Australia, tracing both his own and higher education's descent into pragmatism. In particular, he re‐examines 25 years later the AVCC working party report on Teaching Methods in Australian Universities of which he was a co‐author.     

大海诗人与朗费罗

把大海当作知音,当作既不能摆脱的心中的哈姆雷特又不能使之拥有一刻平静的累尔提斯,这是现代人的理念。拜伦和雪莱在诗中创造了大海;海涅把大海当作知音,向它诉说自己的爱情;华兹华斯将大海当作道德感化的力量;伯朗宁一反诗人们的常态,以自己的方式热爱着大海;在马休·阿诺德心中,大海是命运之声,传达的是失意和绝望;雨果与大海交流就像跟谦卑的朋友说话一样,发出的高谈阔论是前所未有的。那些抒情诗人们也都无不如此……但唯独在朗费罗心中,大海呈现给他的是康特·阿诺德斯眼中那威武的战舰;听到的只有水手们豪放而美妙的歌声,这歌声让人…     

Verbal inactivity in tutorial groups,under conditions of varying preparation and leadership

The effects of variations in preparation and leadership on verbal inactivity in tutorial groups were investigated in a field-experimental setting. A factorial, randomized, longitudinal design was employed, with controls imposed over many of the identifiable extraneous effects. Four groups (n = 15) discussed problematic case study material under conditions of varying preparation (prepared vs. unprepared) and leadership (emergent vs. assigned leadership), for eight consecutive weekly sessions of one hour's duration. The principal hypotheses were tested by Chisquare analysis, and a cautious approach was adopted to the interpretation of statistically significant results, in that preparation or leadership effects were only taken as being of any theoretical or practical significance if they reached significance in at least three of the eight discussion sessions. Both preparation and leadership influenced verbal inactivity in groups. The obtained leadership effects were explained in terms of interaction-expectation theory, and behaviour modelling.