Extending the Conversation on Visions of Jewish Education: The Danger of Recipes

This articles extends the conversation begun by Levisohn in volume 71:1 of this journal, and continued by a number of respondents in volume 71:2. These articles identify two notable themes among the responses: The first is the issue of pluralism, and the tension between vision and exclusion. Despite the best of intentions, it seems unavoidable that vision-driven institutions must necessarily exclude certain ideas, certain practices, and most painfully, certain people; standing for something must always mean not standing for everything. Second, several respondents are concerned in one way or another with the very nature of an educational vision. Particularly, the question arises whether the construction of a vision around the key question, “What is an educated Jew?”, is limiting, either intellectually or practically. Beyond discussing these two themes, the article extends the conversation about vision in Jewish education by raising a concern, which the author attributes to Franz Rosenzweig, about the way in which a commitment to organizing institutions according to vision may obscure the fundamental need for openness and spontaneity in educational arrangements.     

Student‐teachers' perspectives on positive and negative social processes in school

In recent years, the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status in England have placed new emphasis on student‐teachers' ability to become integrated into the ‘corporate life of the school’ and to work with other professionals. Little research, however, has been carried out into how student‐teachers perceive the social processes and interactions that are central to such integration during their initial teacher education school placements. This study aims to shed light on these perceptions. The data, gathered from 23 student‐teachers through interviews and reflective writing, illustrate the extent to which the participants perceived such social processes as supporting or obstructing their development as teachers. Signals of inclusion, the degree of match or mismatch in students' and school colleagues' role expectations, and the social awareness of both school and student‐teacher emerged as crucial factors in this respect. The student‐teachers' accounts show their social interactions with school staff to be meaningful in developing their ‘teacher self’ and to be profoundly emotionally charged. The implications for mentor and student‐teacher role preparation are discussed in this article.     

On Going (Way) Beyond One’s Data: A Proposal to Restrict Recommendations for Practice in Primary Educational Research Journals

To counteract what we see as a growing research-reporting concern, we propose the following editorial-policy change regarding the content of primary research articles in educational research journals: Contributors should restrict their discussion and conclusions to their data and not offer recommendations for educational practice nor speculate about the educational policy implications of their research. We believe that this change will be beneficial for maintaining a separation between evidence and opinion concerning the legitimate warrants of empirical research. We suggest viable accompaniments and alternatives to authors offering practical recommendations and policy speculations in primary-research journal articles. Among these is to rely on all sources of evidence, including systematic research syntheses based on the aggregated contribution of multiple research studies from different sources, with recommendations for practice tailored to specific situations so that both their validity and utility will be increased. It is hoped that our proposed policy change will initiate a conversation among researchers, editors, reviewers, and educational-policy experts with respect to the scope and purpose of primary research journal articles.     

University Students as Creators of Personal Knowledge: an alternative epistemological view

Abstract

This paper takes the form of a position statement followed by three responses from colleagues located in different institutions of higher education. The resulting colloquium is concerned, among other things, with the role of the academic within higher education and with the notion of freedom as it relates to the definition and development of that role. It sets itself against the traditional notion of ‘academic freedom’ and explores alternative constructions of academic professionalism. Freedom remains central to these constructions; but an outward‐looking emancipatory notion of freedom, not an inward‐looking and self‐interested notion. The practices that are documented in the paper and the issues that these raise are a direct consequence of this preoccupation with reconstructing the moral bases of academic professionalism. The paper reaches no firm conclusions, but highlights a number of key differences within a shared emancipatory project: differences shaped by the institutional and cultural contexts of higher education and, in particular, by the gendering of the academic workplace; differences inscribed in the conditions and divisions of labour within higher education and, more specifically, in the organisational structures of support for professional growth and development; differences of value and purpose that help determine what, for each of the authors, it means to be an academic. The form of the paper, with its emphasis on the examined life as deliberative and public, reflects this preoccupation with achieving principled agreement through the recognition and exploration of difference.     

Information retrieval in the workplace: A comparison of professional search practices

Legal researchers, recruitment professionals, healthcare information professionals, and patent analysts all undertake work tasks where search forms a core part of their duties. In these instances, the search task is often complex and time-consuming and requires specialist expertise to identify relevant documents and insights within large domain-specific repositories and collections. Several studies have been made investigating the search practices of professionals such as these, but few have attempted to directly compare their professional practices and so it remains unclear to what extent insights and approaches from one domain can be applied to another. In this paper we describe the results of a survey of a purposive sample of 108 legal researchers, 64 recruitment professionals and 107 healthcare information professionals. Their responses are compared with results from a previous survey of 81 patent analysts. The survey investigated their search practices and preferences, the types of functionality they value, and their requirements for future information retrieval systems. The results reveal that these professions share many fundamental needs and face similar challenges. In particular a continuing preference to formulate queries as Boolean expressions, the need to manage, organise and re-use search strategies and results and an ambivalence toward the use of relevance ranking. The results stress the importance of recall and coverage for the healthcare and patent professionals, while precision and recency were more important to the legal and recruitment professionals. The results also highlight the need to ensure that search systems give confidence to the professional searcher and so trust, explainability and accountability remains a significant challenge when developing such systems. The findings suggest that translational research between the different areas could benefit professionals across domains.     

B-52“同温层堡垒”型战略轰炸机(上)

从50多年前波音公司研制的YB-52首次升空开始,B-52“同温层堡垒”（Stratofortress）型战略轰炸机一直是展示美国军事力量以及美国政府在必要情况下于任何时间和地点使用武力的军事意志的重要标志。目前,美军仍然没有显示出替换这种轰炸机的迹象,作为波音公司研发杰作之一的B-52仍将是美军在21世纪的一种关键性武器装备。     

He Asked Me What!?—Using Shared Online Accounts as Training Tools for Distance Learning Librarians

ABSTRACT

This study explores the idea of creating a knowledge base from shared online accounts to use in training librarians who perform distance reference services. Through a survey, follow-up interviews and a case study, the investigators explored current and potential use of shared online accounts as training tools. This study revealed that the participants viewed the concept positively, but many encountered barriers to effectively employing a local knowledge base as a training tool.