A Jamesonian analysis of “flat world” imagery in education discourse

This article presents a discourse analysis of Kylene Beers’ presidential address to the 2009 conference of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE-USA). The address, titled “Sailing over the Edge: Navigating the Uncharted Waters of a World Gone Flat,” calls teachers to reject the standardized education of the industrial order and to harness the creativity at the heart of the “flat world” (i.e. global, knowledge-based capitalism). The discourse analysis focuses on the figure of the “flat world” – an increasingly common image in education research – and asks how the speech uses the figure of the “flat world” to reimagine the role of education under global capitalism. Mobilizing the ideas of Fredric Jameson, the Marxist literary critic, the article asks how the speech's story of education in the “flat world” offers “an imaginary resolution of a real contradiction” between industrial and knowledge-based capitalisms.     

Should Trump Bother with an Education Agenda?

The principal opportunities awaiting the Trump administration in K–12 education are only loosely related to the candidate’s campaign comments about advancing school choice and reducing the federal Education Department. Recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act signals that Congress will be loath to re-open the major federal K-12 programs for amendment. Bright opportunities away in connection with the Perkins Act, special education and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), as well as various domains--beginning with the Office for Civil Rights--that beg for strategic deregulation.     

Ultrasound and cadaveric prosections as methods for teaching cardiac anatomy: a comparative study

This study compared the efficacy of two cardiac anatomy teaching modalities, ultrasound imaging and cadaveric prosections, for learning cardiac gross anatomy. One hundred and eight first-year medical students participated. Two weeks prior to the teaching intervention, students completed a pretest to assess their prior knowledge and to ensure that groups were equally randomized. Students, divided into pre-existing teaching groups, were assigned to one of two conditions; "cadaver" or "ultrasound." Those in the cadaver group received teaching on the heart using prosections, whereas the ultrasound group received teaching using live ultrasound images of the heart. Immediately after teaching, students sat a post-test. Both teaching modalities increased students' test scores by similar amounts but no significant difference was found between the two conditions, suggesting that both prosections and ultrasound are equally effective methods for teaching gross anatomy of the heart. Our data support the inclusion of either cadaveric teaching or living anatomy using ultrasound within the undergraduate anatomy curriculum, and further work is needed to compare the additive effect of the two modalities.     

Parental support of numeracy during a cooking activity with four-year-olds

While research demonstrates the importance of numeracy-related activities performed at home for young children's mathematics achievement, few studies involve observational studies of the processes which support children's mathematical learning at home. On this premise, this study reports evidence from numeracy-related interactions between parents and their four-year-old child during cookery sessions at home. Numeracy group parents who received instructions to incorporate additional mathematics into the activity provided significantly more numeracy guidance and also created more opportunities for their children to practice advanced mathematics. Comparison group parents provided enough numeracy guidance to complete the recipe but rarely provided extensive or advanced numeracy guidance. Children in the numeracy group generated significantly more correct math responses during the activity than comparison group children, though there were no significant differences on the post-test. The findings suggest the need to raise parental awareness of opportunities to support and encourage mathematics in activities at home.     

J.S. Mill’s inductive methods in artificial intelligence systems. Part II

In the second part of this article we define the relationship of derivability of hypotheses from fact bases, which is used to detect different types of correctness of JSM reasonings. A correspondence is established between the total correctness of JSM reasonings and tolerance spaces. Inductive methods of residues and concomitant variations are formalized and the appropriate strategies of the JSM reasoning are defined. Using the rules of plausible inference for the method of concomitant variations operational definitions of dynamic patterns in fact bases. Features of the JSM method for the automatic generation of hypotheses in intelligent systems as a means of knowledge discovery are also discussed.     

Audience‐perceived anxiety patterns of public speakers

Gray's neurological theory of anxiety (1982, 1990; Gray & McNaughton, 2000) predicts that state anxiety will decrease with continuous exposure to a fear arousing stimulus. Previous studies of psychological and physiological state anxiety patterns during public speaking have reported a pattern of progressively decreasing anxiety levels consistent with this phenomenon, known as habituation. In the current report, the extent to which the state anxiety behaviors of speakers conform to the habituation pattern is examined. In the first of two studies, 30 novice speakers presented informative speeches to audiences of 18 to 20 fellow students. These speeches were videotaped and replayed in their entirety for observers (N=30) who rated the severity of each performer's speech anxiety behaviors. In the second study, each videotaped presentation was divided into one‐minute segments and presented in random order to a new set of observers (N=25). Procedures in the second study were designed to control for rater expectations that state anxiety would decline over time. Overall, behavioral measures of public speaking state anxiety displayed a continually declining pattern associated with habituation.     

Participating in a Collaborative Action Learning Set (CAL): beginning the journey

Action learning is being increasingly utilised as a strategy to underpin practitioner focused development and research projects in healthcare generally and nursing in particular. Whilst facilitators of and participants in action learning have a variety of resource materials to guide their practice and participation, there continue to be few systematic and/or evaluative accounts of the experience of participating in action learning for potential action learning participants to draw upon. This paper attempts to address this agenda. The paper presents an interpretive evaluation of the experience of nurses participating in action learning as the learning strategy underpinning a 3-year emancipatory practice development/practitioner research programme. In particular, the paper focuses on the experience of ‘joining a learning set’. This focus has been adopted as the theory of action learning emphasises the principle of ‘voluntariness’, but yet action learning is increasingly being pre-prescribed as a component of development and research programmes. Such was the case with the programme reported on in this paper. The paper describes an approach used to evaluate learning that was adopted in this programme and in particular the initial evaluation stage that focuses on participants' feelings about joining an action learning set. The data collection and analysis processes are described and the key themes arising from the analysis (‘self-preservation’ versus ‘development of self’) discussed. It is concluded that working with principles of enlightenment is essential to successful action learning and the transformation of workplace cultures.