Autonomy of Artistic Expression for Adult Learners with Disabilities

When an art tutor adopts the role of assistant to a disabled artist it is difficult not to move from helping with the physical handling of materials on the one hand into the actual creative process on the other, thus influencing how the artwork looks. Ecas is an Edinburgh‐based charity which promotes opportunities for physically disabled people to be self‐fulfilled and to participate in all aspects of society. They run, among other things, traditional art classes and computer classes. The use of computer technology (CT) in art seemed to offer the chance for self‐fulfilment for disabled artists by increasing control over artistic choices and providing for self expression with only minimal assistance required from others. Ecas decided to fund a research project in the form of a ten‐week pilot course and the data collected during the trial confirmed these possibilities and it was clear that adult learners with disabilities could benefit from CT in order to have greater autonomy in the creation of their art than before. In particular the program Corel Painter IX.5 and various graphics tablets proved to be a powerful arsenal for self‐expression without having to wait for a tutor to tape paper to a board, replenish paint, change brushes attached to a head pointer or any one of the many and varied problems disabled students had with traditional art materials.     

创造非存在物初探

本文假定有些对象(例如福尔摩斯)是不存在的.关于这些对象,人们是应该采取实在论的立场,还是反实在论的立场呢?根据实在论,一个包含非存在对象的可能世界的域与该可能世界上的存在对象具有什么性质、做出什么行为无关;根据非实在论,一个包含非存在对象的可能世界的域依赖于该可能世界上的存在对象具有什么性质、做出什么行为.这里的分歧在于,非存在对象出现在(一个世界的)量化/指称域中是否依赖于(在该世界中)存在对象具有哪些性质,特别地,比如是否依赖于能够讲述故事的情感生物的行为?在<走向非存在>(牛津大学出版社,2005)一书中,我给出了一种内涵语言的语义学,以实在论的方式来处理非存在对象.本文旨在提供一种非实在论的语义学,以非实在论的方式来处理非存在对象.实在论解释是定域的,与此不同,非实在论解释是变域的.在非实在论语义下,关于非存在对象的非实在论直觉可被尊重,这主要体现在对非存在对象和存在对象之间的"依存"关系的分析.关于非存在对象,本文和<走向非存在>分别以非实在论和实在论的方式来处理,这使进一步的比较和选择工作成为可能.     

University–School Partnerships in English Pre-service Teacher Education: A Dialogic Inquiry into a Co-teaching Initiative

Evidence has been accumulating for some time about the impact of standards-based education reforms on schools and schooling, but there has been little research investigating the influence of these reforms on university-based initial teacher education (ITE). This article critically inquiries into the effects of these reforms on an ITE co-teaching project where a secondary English teacher in a school was seconded to work for a year as a teacher educator in an Australian university in a praxis-based partnership. Using Cavarero’s framing of ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives, and Bakhtinian discourse theory, the authors present three autobiographical narratives exploring different perspectives on their experiences in the co-teaching partnership. The article affirms the value of school–university praxis partnerships for speaking back to standards-based reforms, but acknowledges that this speaking back involves complex relational and dialogic work in grappling with institutional and system-wide policies and practices.     

Contemporary Classics? The Early Onset of Influence of Articles Published in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals, 2010–2015

Citation analysis is a valuable method for tracking the growth and transmission of scientific knowledge. In criminology and criminal justice, such analyses tend to be focused on “classic” works or on highly cited scholars over many years. As an alternative approach, we focus on work that has been cited rather quickly – what we term the “early onset” of impact. In doing so, we identified 221 of the most highly cited peer-reviewed articles, authored by 480 scholars, which were published in criminology and criminal justice journals between 2010 and 2015. Analyses reveal wide variation in substantive topics and methodological approaches, as well as a substantial gender gap with respect to authorship. Additional analyses provide insight into both journal and institutional/program prestige. We conclude with directions for future research and stress the importance of tracking over time articles that appear to be off to an early start with respect to scholarly impact.     

The bright and dark side of writing motivation: Effects of explicit instruction and peer assistance

The authors investigated the impact of explicit instruction and peer-assisted writing on students' writing motivation and self-efficacy for writing. Eleven teachers and their 206 fifth- and sixth-grade students participated in a 2 (explicit instruction vs. writing opportunities without explicit instruction) × 2 (peer-assisted writing vs. writing individually) experimental intervention study with a pretest-posttest design. The four experimental conditions were compared with a business-as-usual (BAU) condition. The five-week interventions were implemented in authentic classes by regular class teachers, who received a prior professional development training. Multilevel analyses showed that students who wrote with a peer were more autonomously motivated at posttest than BAU students. Additionally, BAU students and students receiving explicit instruction were more controlled motivated than students who were offered ample writing opportunities while practicing individually. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed in view of realizing a bright pathway towards autonomous writing motivation.     

Adolescents’ Perceptions of Young People with Severe Learning Difficulties: the effects of integration schemes and frequency of contact

Educational integration schemes for children with severe learning difficulties are based partially on the assumption that the presence of these children in schools will increase the extent to which they are accepted by their peers. However, psychological theories of intergroup behaviour suggest that physical presence alone is unlikely to have this effect. In the present study, the intergroup and interpersonal attitudes towards young people with learning difficulties of 128 adolescents in integrated and nonintegrated schools were examined. Results showed no clear differences between the attitudes of children in the two types of school. The frequency of participants’ contact, not the type of school attended, led to more positive expectations about meeting a young person with learning difficulties. In addition, females were found to be more positive than males on several measures. The implications of these results for the methods and content of future research that could inform the process of educational integration are discussed.