Acknowledging the affective in higher education

This article argues that we need richer conceptions of students as affective and embodied selves and a clearer theorisation of the role of emotion in educational encounters. These areas are currently under‐researched and under‐theorised in higher education. The first part of the article explores the literature on emotion. The second reports on a case study which aimed to map students' emotional journeys over their first year at university. These data highlight the importance of relationships, students' changing emotions over the year, their perceptions of their academic studies and understandings of life at university. The article concludes that it is important to understand the affective dimension in pedagogic encounters and the lifeworld of students, and that it is possible to do so without a collapse into therapeutic discourses.     

The Effect of Relationship on Children's Distributive Justice Reasoning

Kindergarten, third-grade, and sixth-grade children were told 2 stories about a group of children who made artwork that was subsequently sold at a craft fair. The characters in one story were described as friends, while the characters in the other story were described as strangers (relationship condition). 1 character in each story was presented as the oldest in the group, 1 as the most productive, and 1 as the poorest. Children were asked to allocate 9 dollars to the 3 characters under each relationship condition, provide rationales for those allocations, and rate the fairness of 4 different patterns of allocation. Older children allocated more money to needy friends than to needy strangers and more to productive strangers than to productive friends. Kindergartners' allocations and fairness ratings did not vary with relationship. Rationales for allocation judgements suggested that equality was the most salient principle for decisions at all ages, but the older children provided rationales based on benevolence more often than younger children when characters were presented as friends.     

ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families,computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable debate about the growing gap between the so‐called information‐rich and information‐poor. Such concerns have led to high‐profile information technology policy initiatives in many countries. In Australia, in an attempt to ‘redress the balance between the information rich and poor’ by providing ‘equal access to the World Wide Web’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make ‘technology affordable for all Australians’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we examine four families, one of which had long‐term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access, and three of which took advantage of the Virtual Communities offer to get home computer and Internet access for the first time. We examine their engagement with ICT and suggest that previously disadvantaged family members are not particularly advantaged by their access to ICT.     

The inheritance of behavioral wildness in house mice (Mus musculus L.)

Fourteen behavioral measures were ranked according to their ability to differentiate performances of a wild population of mice from three domestic inbred strains. These “wildness” rankings were then analyzed for their ability to predict genetic and Genotype by Environment interactions. Genetic parameters were derived from analysis of three inbred domestic strains and their three hybrid crosses via the diallel technique of genetic analysis. Genotype by Environment interactions were assessed both as mean differences in stock performances resulting from rearing in a laboratory vs naturalistic environment and as differences in environmental variability within stock genotypes. Behavioral characters ranking high on “wildness” failed to demonstrate any unitary pattern of Genotype by Environment interactions. The diallel genetic analysis revealed many examples of additive variation but relatively few examples of dominant variation. An extremely wide range of interactions occurred between genotype and rearing environments, with “wildness” and “developmental homeostasis” concepts both failing to account for all the observed interactions.     

Edulabs AGIRE project – evaluation of ICT integration in teaching strategies

The AGIRE project, under the Edulab concept, aims to promote the adoption of innovative teaching practices. This paper reports the support strategies used to evaluate the teacher practices at the end of a teacher training course (TTC) and analyse its impact on teacher technology integration, using a design-based methodology. Teachers’ initial perception was gathered using an online questionnaire comprising ICT personal and professional competencies. The questionnaire results and the classroom observations showed that the majority of teachers were at the level of ICT adoption, before attending the TTC, reaching the adaptation level of integration of ICT, after the TTC. A variety of teaching strategies (flipped classroom, collaborative work, …) and technologies (interactive white boards, tablets, videos, …) were explored. The results sustain the thesis that, with proper support, ICT can be integrated in educational contexts in an innovative way and contribute to the development of teachers’ digital literacy.     

Aquatic-Aerobic Exercise as a Means of Stress Reduction during Pregnancy

The goals of this research were to explore the current literature regarding associations between psychological stress and adverse fetal outcome, associations between aerobic exercise and psychological stress reduction, and associations between aerobic exercise and fetal outcome. The published studies that were located provide evidence of the following: 1) Stress reactivity increases physiologically during pregnancy, 2) pregnant women may experience additional stressors that are usually not experienced in a nonpregnant state, 3) psychological stress in pregnancy is associated with adverse fetal outcome, 4) exercise can be a method of stress reduction, 5) exercise in pregnancy is not associated with adverse fetal outcome, and 6) exercise in pregnancy may provide benefit to the fetus. Data were analyzed from an original study and associations were reported between psychological stress-management activities and participation in aquatic aerobic exercise classes. No reports were available investigating an exercise-induced reduction in psychological stress with fetal outcome.     

From the Didactic to the Dialectic—Intercultural Exchanges in Contemporary Counsellor Education

Within the context of the growing development of intercultural counsellor education, the question of how different cultures reconceptualize and transform Western counselling theories for their own context is an important one. In this intercultural exchange in education, concepts such as ‘globalization’, ‘indigenization’ and ‘universalization’ have an impact on the education process. This paper briefly explores these terms and movements and then highlights findings from a research project that took place with a group of counselling graduates in Hong Kong examining how they undertook the processes of reconceptualization and transformation. The dialogical process involved in that enabled participants and researcher to co-explore the process of knowledge development within the counselling education field. Implications for counsellor education are highlighted.