Thoughts on Engineering Education

The writer recently spent a year as Visiting Professor of mechanical engineering at Lehigh University, Bethehem, Pa. As a result of this visit and incidental visits to other Universities and laboratories in the U. S. A. and England, some thoughts on engineering education are here set down. First, comparisons are drawn between American and British engineerinig schools, and then analyses of the curricula in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering are made in order to discover the common content. From this emerges a fairly generally accepted common core which may be used as a yardstick or norm and as a starting point for any revision. Interesting educational trends are evident, both in curricula and physical equipment. These are reviewed and suggestions as to the future are made.     

Aspirations of Indian inventors moderated by patenting experience,age and sector

In this hyper-competitive era, patents are an essential input to realizing sustainable competitive advantage. However, individual differences exist in patenting filing behavior and behaviors related to commercialization of patents. This study explores these behaviors in the context of three demographic variables. The demographic variables are patenting and commercialization experiences of inventors, age and sector. Further, aspirations of these inventors are assessed using external motivators of wealth, fame, and concern for societal welfare, and internal motivators such as pragmatism. The findings of this empirical study (n = 116) suggest that sector and age determine differences in personal internal motivators more than patent commercialization experience. Implications of the study are discussed.     

Infants' attention to patterned stimuli: developmental change from 3 to 12 months of age

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and attention termination phases. Infants' peak look durations indicated that prior to 26 weeks there was a linear decrease with age for all stimuli. Older infants' look durations continued to decline for patterns but increased for Sesame Street and faces. Measures of heart rate change during sustained attention and the proportion of time spent in each phase of attention confirmed infants' greater engagement with the more complex stimuli.     

Demographic characteristics and rates of progress of deaf and hard of hearing persons receiving substance abuse treatment

A lack of demographic information and data related to the achievement of short-term goals during substance abuse treatment among persons who are deaf or hard of hearing dictated the need for the study. New York State maintains a database on all individuals who participate in treatment. Within this database, 1.8% of persons in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) were also deaf or hard of hearing. As hypothesized, members of the deaf and hard of hearing sample were older, likelier to be white, and likelier to be female, relative to the SUD-only group. For both groups, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine had the highest rates of reported use. Achievement of short-term goals in the areas of alcohol use, drug use, vocational/educational goals, and overall goals indicated no differences between the deaf and hard of hearing group and the SUD-only group. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Stability, change, and correlates of the peer relationships of young children with mild developmental delays

The peer relationships of young children with mild developmental (cognitive) delays recruited at 4-6 years of age were examined in a longitudinal study across a 2-year period. Results revealed only modest increases in children's peer interactions, a high degree of intraindividual stability, and the existence of a poorly organized and conflict-prone pattern of peer interactions. Child cognitive and language levels as well as family stress and support were associated with children's peer interactions. A subgroup was identified of initially low interactors who were at especially high risk for future peer interaction problems. These findings further underscore the importance of designing and implementing early intervention programs in the area of peer relationships for children with mild developmental delays.     

Middle‐class struggle? Identity‐work and leisure among sixth formers in the United Kingdom

This paper explores the ways in which sixth‐form students in Milton Keynes negotiate their identities and the symbolic significance they attach to leisure activities in the process of doing this. The paper draws upon qualitative, young‐person‐centred interviews with sixth formers in state and private schools. We address the investments of sixth formers in constructing themselves as autonomous individuals and argue that they do so from a position of middle‐class subjects‐in‐the‐making. Through an inversion of Willis’ (1977 Willis, P. 1977. Learning to labour, Aldershot: Gower.  [Google Scholar]) (focus, our concern is to make explicit the implicitly middle‐class identities sixth formers were forging. We argue that the identity‐work of sixth formers plays a part in the reproduction of school‐based class inequalities by pathologising working‐class students while constructing themselves as bourgeois liberal individuals.     

The professional engagement model of academic induction into on-line teaching

Current developments in tertiary education settings are resulting in a second wave of academics using on-line technologies in their teaching, providing universities with a considerable professional staff development challenge. The case study presented here illustrates one way of responding to this challenge. Overall, the literature suggests that professional development that is discipline-specific and located in a community-of-practice is more likely to be relevant and productive than a centralized, decontextualized approach. We propose an alternative hybrid model of 'professional engagement' for on-line teaching that attempts to build on existing discipline-specific workplace structures. This includes recruiting academic on-line teaching advisers for each school in the faculty, showcasing existing exemplary practice, and setting up 'professional engagement groups' with a support team. The main advantages of the model are its responsiveness to patterns of academic work and to the immediate needs of academics, the way it enhances the visibility of exemplars of academic work, its cost-effectiveness and scalability, and the complementarity of local and centralized support systems. Limitations include the time needed to build up such staff engagement, an apparent lack of visibility, and difficulty in measuring outcomes.