Becoming an Architect: The Role of Work-Based Learning in Architect Training

This article examines the work-based placements of trainee architects in the United Kingdom to examine how trainees become architects. The trainee architects in this study experienced varying levels of participation and responsibility during their yearlong placements. Despite this diversity, developing the trainees on placement was found to be integral to the professional role of the architect. The university-based element of architecture training focused almost exclusively on abstract design while their placements involved practical problem-solving. However, the apparent tension between these elements encouraged the trainees to integrate architectural theory and practice while on placement so they developed both aesthetically and technically. Moreover, the trainees’ presence in the studios helped to nurture fresh design and so helped to feed the central design core of architectural practice. Nevertheless, the trainees’ experience of working in an architectural studio on placement often confounded their expectations of architects’ practice. Yet, becoming an architect retained its personal significance. Issues remain, though, around the unequal access to opportunities on placement and how this inequality might affect trainee architects’ learning.     

Deepening the connections: Liberal education and global learning in college

Kevin Hovland and Carol Geary Schneider champion the importance of a twenty‐first‐century liberal education and provide examples of essential learning outcomes that make global and civic learning central and pervasive.     

The role of socioeconomic status in Chinese word reading and writing among Chinese kindergarten children

Reading and Writing - The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status...     

Scientific Education,Girls’ Schools and the Industrial Fund: a research note

During the 1950s a group of major companies launched the Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education in Schools to build and equip laboratories in independent and direct grant schools. The Industrial Fund remains as one of the most impressive industrial initiatives in school education. It is sometimes criticised for either neglect or parsimony towards girls’ schools. This research note provides a brief account of the initiation and operation of the Industrial Fund. Although the Industrial Fund did provide fewer resources for girls’ schools this outcome stemmed from using the same and not different criteria for boys’ and girls’ schools and reflected the state of schools at the outset of the Industrial Fund.     

Onset of channeling during DNA electrophoresis in a sparse ordered post array

The “channeling hypothesis” of DNA electrophoresis in sparse, ordered arrays of posts predicts that the DNA will move through the array relatively unhindered if (i) the spacing between the posts is larger than the DNA coil and (ii) the electric field lines are straight. We tested this hypothesis by studying the electrophoretic separation of a small plasmid DNA (pUC19, 2686 base pairs) and a large, linear DNA (λ-DNA, 48 500 base pairs) in a hexagonal array of 1 μm diameter posts with a pitch of 7 μm. At low electric field strengths, these DNAs are separated due to the long-lived, rope-over-pulley collisions of λ-DNA with the posts. The resolution is lost as the electric field increases due to the onset of channeling by the λ-DNA. Using a diffusive model, we show that channeling arises at low electric fields due to the finite size of the array. This channeling is not intrinsic to the system and is attenuated by increasing the size of the array. Higher electric fields lead to intrinsic channeling, which is attributed to the disparate time scales for a rope-over-pulley collision and transverse diffusion between collisions. The onset of channeling is a gradual process, in agreement with extant Brownian dynamics simulation data. Even at weak electric fields, the electrophoretic mobility of λ-DNA in the array is considerably higher than would be expected if the DNA frequently collided with the posts.