Enhancing communicative spaces for fieldwork education in an inland regional Australian university

The diversity of fieldwork education models and practices ranges from mandatory to voluntary, from graded to ungraded, from paid to unpaid spectrums and they vary in length from less than a week to up to one year. Colleagues who work in the same university but in different schools, faculties or campuses are often so busy working within their discipline‐specific arena that there seems to be little opportunity to learn from and collaborate with other disciplines about fieldwork education programs. This paper provides a report on a project that trialled and evaluated an online debate with university staff about fieldwork education issues. The aims were to establish a sustainable university‐wide fieldwork education discourse, to break down profession‐specific silos, to inform the development of university‐wide fieldwork education benchmarks and to foster fieldwork education leadership through online debates. The findings demonstrate that, collectively, participants shared a wealth of experience and wisdom that remained largely untapped at a university‐wide level. Participants’ evaluation highlighted the perceived value of creating a communicative space for a fieldwork education discourse and it exposed aspects of the online environment and time constraints as its biggest barrier.     

How gender fair are German schoolbooks in the twenty-first century? An analysis of language and illustrations in schoolbooks for mathematics and German

Schoolbooks convey not only school-relevant knowledge; they also influence the development of stereotypes about different social groups. Particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, many studies analysed schoolbooks and criticised the overall predominance of male persons and of traditional role allocations. Since that time, women’s and men’s occupations and social functions have changed considerably. The present research investigated gender portrayals in schoolbooks for German and mathematics that were recently published in Germany. We examined the proportions of female and male persons in pictures and texts and categorized their activities, occupational and parental roles. Going beyond previous studies, we added two criteria: the use of gender-fair language and the spatial arrangements of persons in pictures. Our results show that schoolbooks for German contained almost balanced depictions of girls and boys, whereas women were less frequently shown than men. In mathematics books, males outnumbered females in general. Across both types of books, female and male persons were engaged in many different activities, not only gender-typed ones; however, male persons were more often described via their profession than females. Use of gender-fair language has found its way into schoolbooks but is not used consistently. Books for German were more gender fair in terms of linguistic forms than books for mathematics. For spatial arrangements, we found no indication for gender biases. The results are discussed with a focus on how schoolbooks can be optimized to contribute to gender equality.     

The German Media Start-up Opinary: Inventing Tools for Readers’ Opinion-Sharing Online—Reinventing User Engagement on News Websites

Users of news websites increasingly desire to state their opinion on a current issue discussed online. The usual way to do so is writing a comment. However, only few people make use of the comment section and some newsrooms cannot afford to keep it permanently open. The German media start-up Opinary develops visual interactive tools trying to change the way users share opinions. Its founders want to make a new form of user engagement possible.     

From visuo-motor interactions to imitation learning: behavioural and brain imaging studies

We review three areas of research and theory relating to the involvement of motor processing in action observation: behavioural studies on imitation learning, behavioural work on short-term visuomotor interactions, and related neurophysiological and neuroimaging work. A large number of behavioural studies now indicate bi-directional links between perception and action: visual processing can automatically induce related motor processes, and motor actions can direct future visual processing. The related concept of direct matching (Rizzolatti et al., 2001) does not, however, imply that observed actions are transduced into a corresponding motor representation that would guarantee an instant and accurate imitation. Rather, studies on the mirror neuron system indicate that action observation engages the observer's own motor prototype of the observed action. This allows for enhanced action recognition, imitation recognition, and, predominantly in humans, imitation and observational learning. Despite the clear impact of action observation on motor representations, recent neuroimaging work also indicates the overlap of imitation learning with processes of non-imitative skill acquisition.     

Reading ‘the Whole of World History’: An Investigation into Benjamin and Colportage

This essay charts the evolution of colportage in Walter Benjamin's body of writing. Originally referring to a form of popular literature peddled by travelling salesmen, Benjamin morphed the term into the ‘colportage phenomenon of space’, where he endowed it with a more abstract connotation referring to a form of embodied perception that could bridge distinctions between near and far and past and present, giving one access to ‘the whole of world history’. By holding a magnifying glass to this term, this essay elucidates the relevance of colportage in its historical context and unpacks its manifestations in Benjamin's essays, with iterations that often confuse boundaries between the material and the phenomenological. This essay further clarifies how Benjamin's handling of colportage exists alongside his studies of surrealism and his explorations into experience in modernity.     

Biomechanics of elite recumbent handcycling: a case study

In the presented research, a kinematic and electromyographic study was performed on one world-class male elite handbiker (UCI class H3.2). Activity of 14 muscles of the upper body were measured with surface electromyography (EMG), and a motion analysis of the athlete’s movement was performed concurrently for different backrest positions, crank lengths, and crank heights at three power levels (130, 160 and 190 W). Kinematics in terms of elbow and wrist angle, muscular on-off timing, EMG amplitudes, and integrated EMG were calculated. Results showed that little changes occurred for kinematic parameters and changes in position led to a shift in muscular timing. However, no indication for immediate improvement to the athlete’s preferred original position could be observed.     

Der Zusammenhang von Schulleitungshandeln,Unterrichtsgestaltung und Lernerfolg

Indicators and instruments for determining and measuring school quality within inspection systems are usually based on frameworks for inspection. These frameworks rely heavily upon school and teacher effectiveness research. Thus, a central assumption is that the effectiveness and improvement-oriented school conditions, as measured within an inspection, are related to student achievement. It is unclear if this assumption really holds true, as empirical evidence is still lacking. This study uses data from a random sampling of schools (n = 37) and teachers (n = 1663) and the achievement data from students (n = 23,943) to validate the interpretations and uses of school inspection results regarding the factor school leadership. The study follows Kane’s argument-based approach for validation. Results reveal that principals of schools with recurrent high student achievement very often demonstrate instructional leadership. It is evident that these principals are also leading in a fundamentally different way from principals in schools with lower achievement in that they lead with the specific school context in mind. The study demonstrates that it is possible to make inferences from scores provided by school inspections and to generalize from them. However, this generalizability does not extend to making extrapolations or decisions based on these scores. The analyses make it clear that providing feedback solely on the strengths and weakness of a school is insufficient when it comes to stimulating school improvement through inspection.     

Value orientations and action conflicts in students’ everyday life: An interview study

The assumption that today’s German students are able to successfully combine synthesis achievement values and well-being values appears to be overly optimistic when regarded from the perspective of motivational psychology. The results of a qualitative-quantitative interview study with 25 students indicate that achievement and well-being values may come into conflict in everyday life. Incentives for achievement and well-being rarely co-occur in the same action domains. Whereas the school context is dominated by achievement incentives, leisure time is dominated by well-being incentives. Since both achievement and well-being are appreciated by most students, they should be prone to experience frequent everyday action conflicts. The motivational characteristics of postdecisional action conflicts are described on the phenomenal level and their possible impairing effects for learning processes are pointed out. Finally, alternative forms of value synthesis, which might be realized more successfully, are discussed.     

Seriously Entertained: Antecedents and Consequences of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Entertainment Experiences With Political Talk Shows on TV

This study's purpose is twofold: to introduce a new format into existing political entertainment research (“serious” political talk shows) and to establish a more specific definition of entertainment in a political context. To do so, the authors rely on a two-process-model of entertainment experiences. A telephone survey (N = 230) was conducted to analyze the antecedents and consequences of eudaimonic and hedonic entertainment experiences and to look into politically relevant variables and their distribution among viewers and nonviewers of such talk shows. The results highlight the importance of introducing new entertainment concepts and their relations to other relevant political and motivational variables into the research of political entertainment. More specifically, the findings demonstrate how entertainment experiences contribute to viewers' feeling of being informed and point out several differences between viewers and nonviewers concerning their internal political efficacy and political interest. Finally, looking at political talk shows from an audience perspective extends previous content-based taxonomies.