Use and Perceptions of E-books by Academic Staff in Further Education

This article reports on a study of the awareness, perceptions and use of e-books by academic staff in Further Education (FE) colleges throughout Northern Ireland (NI). It is the first comprehensive study of e-book use by FE faculty in NI and fills a significant gap in the research literature on e-books in education, which has tended to focus on Higher Education and the university setting. Data was collected through an online survey which was distributed to FE faculty across NI. The findings show that although FE academic staff are receptive to e-books and welcome them as a resource, poor reading experience and lack of awareness of relevant titles have had an impact. In particular, the research found that 40% of academic staff, in post less than five years, had not used e-books. Greater availability of titles, promotion, and better integration within teaching and learning emerge as key requisites for effective service delivery and enhancement of e-books within FE, as does the need for better targeted instruction and training aimed at academic staff. Understanding patrons' views, awareness, needs, habits and expectations in relation to e-books is crucial to help direct collection content while budgets remain tight and physical space limited.     

God does not play dice: causal determinism and preschoolers' causal inferences

Three studies investigated children's belief in causal determinism. If children are determinists, they should infer unobserved causes whenever observed causes appear to act stochastically. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds saw a stochastic generative cause and inferred the existence of an unobserved inhibitory cause. Children traded off inferences about the presence of unobserved inhibitory causes and the absence of unobserved generative causes. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds used the pattern of indeterminacy to decide whether unobserved variables were generative or inhibitory. Experiment 3 suggested that children (4 years old) resist believing that direct causes can act stochastically, although they accept that events can be stochastically associated. Children's deterministic assumptions seem to support inferences not obtainable from other cues.     

Assessing students' ability to trace matter in dynamic systems in cell biology

College-level biology courses contain many complex processes that are often taught and learned as detailed narratives. These processes can be better understood by perceiving them as dynamic systems that are governed by common fundamental principles. Conservation of matter is such a principle, and thus tracing matter is an essential step in learning to reason about biological processes. We present here multiple-choice questions that measure students' ability and inclination to trace matter through photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Data associated with each question come from students in a large undergraduate biology course that was undergoing a shift in instructional strategy toward making fundamental principles (such as tracing matter) a central theme. We also present findings from interviews with students in the course. Our data indicate that 1) many students are not using tracing matter as a tool to reason about biological processes, 2) students have particular difficulties tracing matter between systems and have a persistent tendency to interconvert matter and energy, and 3) instructional changes seem to be effective in promoting application of the tracing matter principle. Using these items as diagnostic tools allows instructors to be proactive in addressing students' misconceptions and ineffective reasoning.     

Reconceptualising the curriculum: from commodification to transformation

This article inveighs against the prevalent commodified discourse in Higher Education especially as it impacts on curriculum planning, quality assurance and learner typologies. It expresses a concern that educational research, in offering models drawn, but now divorced from, practice, may contribute to this negative impact. As an example, a polarised model distinguishing features of ‘traditional’ from ‘emerging’ curricula is criticised as contributing to this commodification; as diminishing the status of university teachers, as offering an instrument to reductive quality assurance systems and as militating against the disciplines operating as communities of practice. In contradistinction to this dichotomizing model, but extrapolating from the same article, a ‘both/and’ model outlining elements of process- and discipline community-based ‘transformational curricula’ is offered. It is perhaps impossible to write about the evils of externalised models and reductively abstract discourse without contribut ing to that very effect. The article therefore ends with two voices which are not those of educational researchers.     

From Mentorship to Tenureship: A Storied Inquiry of Two Academic Careers in Education

This article details a narrative inquiry journey between a novice pretenured professor and an experienced tenured professor from 2005 to 2009 to illustrate collaborative mentorship. The authors examine the importance of storied inquiry in studying mentoring and describe how their narrative journey as collaborators informed their relationship and respective understandings of the tenure process. Data were collected from written narratives, correspondence, and conversations within a mentorship program. Three dimensions of narrative inquiry are used to explore the themes of writing as nurturing the mentoring relationship and the assimilation into the academy: fear and anxiety along the tenureship path, building community and a collaborative mentorship, and balance between life and academia.     

Event-Konzepte

In view of processes of individualization and pluralization, the requirements for living in modern societies result in significantly increased complexity of social constructions of reality. Especially for individualized juvenile people new forms of communities are a constitutive feature of social lifestyle progression and rearrangement. Within events a specific type of these juvenile communalities emerges. Based on two different cases, a music festival and an improvisational theater performance, this paper emphasizes a crucial similarity of events: the use of (physical) staging as a social mechanism for integration and distinction. The process of ‘eventization’ (i.e., spectacularization) provides a framework for action, in which emotional as well as mental affiliations constitute.