Epistemic constraint and teaching style

An experimental study investigated the influence of informational dependence on information appropriation as a function of epistemic authority’s styles. In a 2×2 design, university students were informed that acknowledging epistemic dependence was related either to academic success or to academic failure, and were exposed to controversial information from an epistemic authority that used either an authoritarian or a democratic style. The main dependent variable was the extent to which participants appropriated the controversial information. Firstly the results showed that students were more inclined to admit that their own academic competence depended on the information delivered by the teachers when epistemic dependence was related to success rather than to failure. Secondly, the admittance of dependence had a different impact on information appropriation according to the authority’s style. Admittance increased appropriation under a democratic style whereas it decreased appropriation under an authoritarian style.     

Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity,executive functions and prefrontal brain oxygenation in children: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Despite accumulating evidence that regular exercise improves executive functioning, the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms have rarely been investigated. The present study aimed to compare cognitive performance as well as task-specific concentration changes in oxygenated haemoglobin in the prefrontal cortex between children with higher and lower moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Physical activity was measured over 7 consecutive days using actigraphy. Afterwards, participants (N = 50) completed verbal fluency tests (VFTs) and mental arithmetic (MA) for the assessment of cognitive flexibility and working memory capacity. During the tasks, changes of oxygenated haemoglobin were measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Using average MVPA of 11-year-old children as cut-point, the sample was divided into children with lower and higher MVPA. Analyses of variance revealed no significant differences in correct and false responses on the cognitive tests between groups. With regard to oxygenated haemoglobin, no group differences were found for concentration changes in response to the cognitive tasks. In conclusion, VFTs and MA increased children’s activation in prefrontal regions associated with cognitive flexibility and working memory, respectively. However, these executive functions and cortical activation were not different between children with lower and higher MVPA.     

Mixed order robust adaptive control for general linear time invariant systems

We provide a solution to the adaptive control problem of an unknown linear system of a given derivation order, using a reference model or desired poles defined in a possibly different derivation order and employing continuous adjustment of parameters ruled by possibly another different derivation order. To this purpose, we present an extension for the fractional settings of the Bezout’s lemma and gradient steepest descent adjustment. We analyze both the direct and indirect approaches to adaptive control. We discuss some robustness advantages/disadvantages of the fractional adjustment of parameters in comparison with the integer one and, through simulations, the possibility to define optimal derivation order controllers.     

Segmentation of Cinema Audiences: An Exploratory Study Applied to Young Consumers

The cinema exhibition sector in Spain, as well as in the rest of Europe, is a dynamic sector characterised by the present growth of multiplexes and consumer demand after a long period of decline. These changes make it relevant to analyse the cinema attendees' profile from a marketing perspective. To this end, we have developed an exploratory study on segmentation applied to the young cinema attendees. Doing so, we have found three different groups according to benefits sought in their going to the cinema and other demographic and behavioural variables. On the basis of information as such, specific marketing objectives could be set and more efficient strategies designed and implemented.     

Certain Changes to Training Companies Due to Social Web Development

Companies use many different marketing strategies in order to make their products known and place their corporate images and brandings in the market. Besides, nowadays, being on the Intemet is a must for every company striving for success. The development and implementation of Web 2.0 or social web are threatening the basis of the ways of mixing with other people. A company devoted to open and distance learning, such as Master-D Corporation, a clear example of how a proper and planned use of the different possibilities offered by the Web 2.0, based on blogs, allows a company to achieve bigger market shares and brand positioning following the win-win principle. Blogs are, undoubtedly, channels of communication that prove the power of attraction of good information. These changes are affecting everybody and, in particular, companies and institutions related to people＇s education, teaching and training for their inclusion in society and labor market. This essay brings up some reflections in two ways： The first one deals with some reasons why education is also related to the concept of ＂company＂; and the second one deals with how these changes generated by Web 2.0 are affecting some training companies, represented in this case by Master-D,     

Cross‐Linguistic Lexical,Grammatical, and Discourse Performance on Oral Narrative Retells Among Young Spanish Speakers

This study investigated relations among microlevel and macrolevel domains of oral narrative retells within and across the languages of Spanish‐speaking bilingual children. Fifty‐six first and second graders (M_age = 7 years, 3 months) were assessed on a retell task in Spanish and English. Two statistical analyses were conducted: (a) correlations within and across microlevel lexical (number of different words) and grammatical (mean length of utterance‐word and subordination index) domains and (b) hierarchical regression to determine the influence of microlevel domains on a macrolevel discourse score. Results highlighted a number of significant within‐ and cross‐language correlations, and identified vocabulary as a significant predictor of macrolevel discourse scores within both languages, while grammar was a predictor within English only.     

Reviewing the differences in size,composition and structure between the personal networks of high‐ and low‐performing students

An interesting aspect in the current literature about learning networks is the shift of focus from the understanding of the “whole network” of a course to the examination of the “personal networks” of individual students. This line of research is relatively new, based on small‐scale studies and diverse analysis techniques, which demands for more empirical research in order to contextualize the findings and to meta‐analyze the research methods. The main objective of this paper is to review two research questions posed by a previous British Journal of Educational Technology contribution by Shane Dawson in order to know whether the differences in personal network composition impact on the performance of students. The two questions were defined by Dawson as follows: (1) Are there significant differences in personal network composition between high‐ and low‐performing students? and (2) Do high‐performing students have larger personal networks than their low‐performing peers? In addition, the “clustered graphs” method used in this study allows the inclusion of the structural analysis of personal networks. In doing so, a new research question is addressed: (3) Are there significant differences in personal network structure between high‐ and low‐performing students? This paper tries to answer these questions in the context of two undergraduate, inter‐university and fully online courses, and two different technology‐enhanced learning environments (a virtual learning environment and a personal learning environment) where interactions took place indirectly through shared resources. The results show that the network behaviors of high‐ and low‐performing students' are strongly correlated, and that high‐performing students developed larger personal networks than low performers.     

On not becoming ‘a mere empirical existence’: exploring ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives in pre-service English teachers’ writing

Standards-based reforms of education favour narrow forms of teacher professional learning tied to generic standards and pre-determined, measurable outcomes. In high-stakes accountability-driven environments, in schools and initial teacher education programs, educators are rarely encouraged to inquire into their work and professional identities through narrative writing. This article describes and analyses an assessment task in a pre-service teacher education course wherein students explore dialogic forms of critical autobiographical writing as part of an ongoing process of examining and clarifying their views and values about English teaching. Drawing on Cavarero, we argue that the writing these preservice teachers do provides a space for them to negotiate ‘what’ and ‘who’ narratives as they journey to become English teachers. Their writing productively grapples with generic ‘what’ stories such as what standards documents attempt to tell about English teaching, and the ‘unrepeatable uniqueness’ of ‘who’ stories developed out of their individual cultural, educational and linguistic difference.     

Cell encapsules with tunable transport and mechanical properties

We utilized a microfluidic device with hydrodynamic flow focusing geometry to produce uniform agarose droplets in the range of 50 to 110 μm. The transport property of the thermally gelled particles was tailored by layer-by-layer (LBL) polyelectrolytes coating on the surface and was measured via the release rates of Rhodamine B. The mechanical strength of the capsules was further enhanced by a coating of silica nano-particles in addition to polyelectrolyte coatings. We demonstrated that yeast cells can be successfully encapsulated into agarose capsules.