Transformative Professional Learning Within Schools: Relationship to Teachers’ Beliefs, Expertise and Teaching

Although scholarship and research have demonstrated the positive impact of professional learning on academic teaching and learning, an inadequate amount of research has examined how professional learning is associated with transformative teaching for equity, diversity and social justice. This survey study explored the relationship between professional learning and teachers’ beliefs about diversity, transformative expertise, and transformative teaching by comparing two models of professional learning in 25 small urban elementary schools. Results indicated that factors in both the process and transformative content models predicted differences in teachers’ reported beliefs, expertise, or teaching. While some factors such as learning to teach for social justice consistently predicted increased transformative practices, other factors failed to predict or were associated with decreased transformative practices. After discussing the findings, implications for practice, theory and research are offered.     

How do congressional members appear on the web? Tracking the web visibility of South Korean politicians

The web visibility of politicians has substantial implications for the internet and politics. In this regard, the present paper examines the web visibility of South Korea's 18th National Assembly members. This study identifies those members with the highest web visibility and determines the factors affecting their web visibility by using a set of socio-demographic variables indicating web visibility. The concept of web visibility is operationally defined as the number of web mentions of each congressional member. Web mentions of the name of each congressional member were collected across many platforms, including blogs, images, news, and websites, by using a Naver search tool based on the API, and relationships between the web visibility of the members and their socio-demographic attributes (their gender, age, term, constituency, and party affiliation) were analyzed using Kruskal–Wallis, Median, and Mann–Whitney U tests. The most visible politicians in the Korean webosphere had highly qualified political careers and prominence, and the difference in politicians' web visibility depended on their political attributes (their term, constituency, and party), not on their demographic attributes (their gender and age). These findings suggest that politicians who build political power and influence through their political career in the offline world are likely to be more visible in the webosphere. Further, an integrated indicator based on politicians' web visibility status can reflect their “ubiquitous presence” in Korea's digitalized society.     

Cell separation and transportation between two miscible fluid streams using ultrasound

This paper presents a two-stream microfluidic system for transporting cells or micro-sized particles from one fluid stream to another by acoustophoresis. The two fluid streams, one being the original suspension and the other being the destination fluid, flow parallel to each other in a microchannel. Using a half-wave acoustic standing wave across the channel width, cells or particles with positive acoustic contrast factors are moved to the destination fluid where the pressure nodal line lies. By controlling the relative flow rate of the two fluid streams, the pressure nodal line can be maintained at a specific offset from the fluid interface within the destination fluid. Using this transportation method, particles or cells of different sizes and mechanical properties can be separated. The cells experiencing a larger acoustic radiation force are separated and transported from the original suspension to the destination fluid stream. The other particles or cells experiencing a smaller acoustic radiation force continue flowing in the original solution. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effective separation of polystyrene microbeads of different sizes (3 μm and 10 μm) and waterborne parasites (Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium parvum). Diffusion occurs between the two miscible fluids, but it was found to have little effects on the transport and separation process, even when the two fluids have different density and speed of sound.     

Exploring the Usefulness of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory in Assessing Student Learning in Science Courses

We explore the utility of George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory, specifically his repertory grid technique, to the assessment of student learning in undergraduate science courses. We provide an in-depth review of the assumptions underlying Personal Construct Theory and how these were reflected in the repertory grid technique Kelly developed. We explain how an adapted version of the repertory grid, sharing some yet not all of Kelly's assumptions, was utilised as a research tool in a recent study involving science instructors and their students. We argue that as well as having applicability as an innovative research tool, an adapted version of Kelly's repertory grid is a useful heuristic for university teachers when used as a classroom assessment technique (CAT) and indicate several features it shares with the more widely-known conceptual mapping technique, which has been used in the study of science teaching and learning for many years. We conclude by highlighting several advantages the use of repertory grids has for both students and instructors.     

Making learning visible in initial teacher education: a pedagogical characterisation scheme

This paper reports the development of a scheme of characterising pedagogical practices in initial teacher education classes. The scheme is intended to provide baseline data on classroom pedagogical practices in Singapore’s sole provider of initial teacher education (ITE). This study is original in that the research team has found no reports of independent research to characterise, through video analysis of classroom practices, the pedagogical practices experienced during ITE. By characterising the pedagogical practices of a purposive sample of ITE lessons run at the National Institute of Education Singapore, this study contributes an initial scheme to produce detailed and layered representations of pedagogical practices through video recordings, which opens a new approach to research on teacher education. The implications with regard to teacher education policy and practice will be discussed.     

Formation control and collision avoidance for a class of multi-agent systems

In this paper, a control scheme is proposed for a group of elliptical agents to achieve a predefined formation. The agents are assumed to have the same dynamics, and communication among the agents are limited. The desired formation is realized based on the reference formation and the mapping decision. In the control design, searching algorithms for both cases of minimum distance and tangents are established for each agent and its neighbors. In order to avoid collision, an optimal path planning algorithm based on collision angles, and a self-center-based rotation algorithm are also proposed. Moreover, randomized method is used to provide the optimal mapping decision for the underlying system. Two examples and analyses are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of the new control scheme.     

提心吊胆的华尔街

The war in Iraq, terrorism, rising oil prices-and now the threat of higher interest rates-are all preying on the market. There comes a point in virtually every bull market when     

从孟、荀看战国儒家政治文化之演进

孟子与荀子的政治观从表面上看大多是对立的，但在实际上并不矛盾，他们往往说的不是一个层面上的问题。就其政治大思路而言，二者是一致的，都倡导人治，都是道德主义的，有其“同归而殊途”的内在逻辑。