Expert versus novice users: Power rules in virtual space

This study sought knowledge of the decision-making used by learners when interacting with multi-media environments. Mounting evidence on related thinking processes appeared to expose a gap in the prior knowledge, vocabularies and values used when entering cyberspace. We were curious to know about the decision making judgements made by learners and any associated rules or strategies they had developed to interact with new and emerging information technology environments. How decisions are undertaken are considered major issues for educational institutions at local, national and global levels with ramifications for civic and community life. In a sample drawn from a senior high school and university we investigated students’ responses to different questions including: What ways of knowing are used by learners? What codes of behaviour apply? Are they age and gender related? The responses provide a rich and fascinating insight to the ways in which people are interacting with the new media environments. ‘Experts’ versus ‘novices’ appeared to provide the major distinction.     

Local States of Emergency: The contradictions of neo-liberal governance in education in New Zealand

In the present paper, we argue that neo-liberal governance regimes are deeply contradictory and that these contradictions are increasingly evident within the education sector. Drawing on a case study of the consequences of restructuring in education in New Zealand, arguably a paradigm case of neo-liberal governance, we suggest the state is faced with a dilemma about how best to manage these tensions and contradictions within the framework of the political rationality itself. One strategy is to isolate and localise these problems in order to contain and manage the risks associated with them. We identify five variants we argue can broadly be viewed as local states of emergency.     

Piketty,capital and education: a solution to,or problem in,rising social inequalities?

Abstract

When Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century was released in 2014, it became an overnight success. Piketty focused on the concentration of wealth in a tiny social elite, and showed that their wealth had increased following the financial crisis in 2008. Yet the value of Piketty’s book offers something more than this for social scientists concerned with social inequalities. His work on a large data-set of long-run income and wealth statistics illustrates that the assumptions and models which have guided the work of neoclassical economists are flawed, but that societal arrangements matter. Yet despite this insight, Piketty’s solution to the problem of inequality is to argue that ‘… the best way to reduce inequalities with respect to labor … is to invest in education’. In this article I argue that there are major problems with this proposed solution and outline three lacunae that need to be addressed.     

‘Quality and quantity’: the value of online seminars for media and cultural studies undergraduates

Much previous research into the effectiveness of CMC has suffered from a lack of clarity or of consistency in the adoption and explication of coding typologies or taxonomies. This has reduced the opportunities for comparison between studies and for the accumulation of evidences to guide pedagogy. In addition, most studies of CMC have used postgraduate students from the sciences, mathematics and engineering as their subjects. There is a notable dearth of studies with undergraduate students and, in particular, with students in the arts, social sciences and humanities. In this study, 104 undergraduate students on media‐related programmes undertook a three‐week online discussion (CMC) on the nature of cultural globalisation. The quality of the discussion was evaluated using an enhanced taxonomy rooted in Bloom and other more recent writers. The pattern of dialogue was also mapped and represented graphically. The results suggest that CMC as a method for enhancing peer‐led discussion of theoretical concepts, with media arts undergraduates, can be very effective. This article makes a contribution to thinking about the evaluation of CMC learning experiences and offers recommendations on maximising the quality for the learner of such experiences.     

Information Needs of a Young Nation: Rebuilding Library Services in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Timor-Leste is an emerging young nation that has many ambitious plans for its people. After a long period of conflict major projects focus on rebuilding the country, including education. Libraries are regarded as an essential part of the young nation's intellectual capital development. The authors will focus on the opportunities and challenges that face the country's national university, Universidade Nacionál Timór Lorosa’e Timor-Leste (UNTL), in the redevelopment of its library and services.     

Building community capacity and social infrastructure through landcare: a case study of land grant engagement

In the struggle to remain true to their technical assistance and civic engagement missions in an era of shrinking budgets and increasingly complex accountability claims, land grant universities have developed different engagement strategies to contribute to the development of surrounding communities. Drawing on Flora and Flora’s (in Ann Am Acad Polit Soc Sci, 48, 1993) assertion that a strong and “entrepreneurial” social infrastructure is critical for facilitating lasting change and development in communities (particularly rural communities), this article presents a case study of a land grant university’s engagement with a community landcare group from the perspective of building social capacity in surrounding communities. This case explores Virginia Tech’s involvement in facilitating and supporting Catawba Landcare using three theoretical frames—Ronald Heifetz’s concept of “holding environments” as a safe and facilitated space where social learning can occur; ecological and social entrepreneurship and the roles and functions required to support these forms of entrepreneurship; and the concept of learning action networks in which otherwise disparate partners are linked under common goals and collectively learn how to manage the situation at hand. Using these three theoretical frames, this paper posits landcare as a model of engagement for land grant universities thus contributing to the construction of social infrastructure.     

Science Professional Learning Communities: Beyond a singular view of teacher professional development

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are frequently being used as a vehicle to transform science education. This study explored elementary teachers' perceptions about the impact of participating in a science PLC on their own professional development. With the use of The Science Professional Learning Communities Survey and a semi-structured interview protocol, elementary teachers' perceptions of the goals of science PLCs, the constraints and benefits of participation in PLCs, and reported differences in the impact of PLC participation on novice and experienced teachers were examined. Sixty-five elementary teachers who participated in a science PLC were surveyed about their experiences, and a subsample of 16 teachers was interviewed. Results showed that most of the teachers reported their science PLC emphasized sharing ideas with other teachers as well as working to improve students' science standardized test scores. Teachers noted that the PLCs had impacted their science assessment practices as well as their lesson planning. However, a majority of the participants reported a differential impact of PLCs depending on a teacher's level of experience. PLCs were reported as being more beneficial to new teachers than experienced teachers. The interview results demonstrated that there were often competing goals and in some cases a loss of autonomy in planning science lessons. A significant concern was the impact of problematic interpersonal relationships and communication styles on the group functioning. The role of the PLC in addressing issues related to obtaining science resources and enhancing science content knowledge for elementary science teachers is discussed.     

Scale and the evolutionarily based approximate number system: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

Crosscutting concepts such as scale, proportion, and quantity are recognised by U.S. science standards as a potential vehicle for students to integrate their scientific and mathematical knowledge; yet, U.S. students and adults trail their international peers in scale and measurement estimation. Culturally based knowledge of scale such as measurement units may be built on evolutionarily-based systems of number such as the approximate number system (ANS), which processes approximate representations of numerical magnitude. ANS is related to mathematical achievement in pre-school and early elementary students, but there is little research on ANS among older students or in science-related areas such as scale. Here, we investigate the relationship between ANS precision in public school U.S. seventh graders and their accuracy estimating the length of standard units of measurement in SI and U.S. customary units. We also explored the relationship between ANS and science and mathematics achievement. Accuracy estimating the metre was positively and significantly related to ANS precision. Mathematics achievement, science achievement, and accuracy estimating other units were not significantly related to ANS. We thus suggest that ANS precision may be related to mathematics understanding beyond arithmetic, beyond the early school years, and to the crosscutting concepts of scale, proportion, and quantity.     

Briefly noted

Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait, by Paxton Hibben. New York: Doran (now Doubleday, Doran &; Company, Garden City), 1927: pp. 390.

D. L. Moody: A Worker in Souls, by Gamaliel Bradford. New York: Doran, 1927: pp. 320.

Intercollegiate Debates (Volume VIII). Edited by Egbert Ray Nichols. New York: Noble and Noble, 1927: pp. viii, 565.

Debating as an Educator. By John G. Sims, Jr. Published by the author, Box 652, Fort Worth, Texas, 1926: pp. 112.

Four Speeches by Abraham Lincoln Hitherto Unpublished or Unknown. With an introduction by Earl Wellington Wiley, The Ohio State University Press, 1927: pp. 112.

An Introduction to the Drama. Edited by J. B. Hubbell and J. O. Beatty. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927.

Talking. By J. B. Priestley. New York: Harper &; Bros., 1926.

An Essay on Conversation. By Henry W. Taft. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927

Conversation. By Olive Heseltine. New York: E. P. Dutton &; Co., 1927.

The Road to Xanadu. By John Livingston Lowes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927: pp. xviii, 639.

The Function and Forms of Thought. By Albert E. Avey. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927: pp. xii, 395.

Demosthenes and His Influence. By Charles Darwin Adams. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927: pp. 184. $1.75.

Les idées politiques d'Isocrate. By Georges Mathieu. Paris: So‐ ciété d'éditions Les Belles Lettres, 1925: pp. 228.

Integrity in Education and Other Papers. By George Norlin. New York: Macmillan, 1926: pp. vi, 231.

Spoken Thought. By Lily C. Whitaker. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1927: pp. x + 596.

Training for Speaking. By Paul Berton. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1926.

Stammering and Its Treatment. By Samuel D. Bobbins. Boston: Boston Stammerers’ Institute, 1926; 12 mo, Cloth; pp. 121.

Our Times. Volume II, America Finding Herself. By Mark Sullivan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1927.