普契尼：150年的感动

普契尼(1858-1924)被认为是威尔第之后最伟大的意大利歌剧作曲家。但让人意外的是,当时很多音乐评论家对其作品的评价不高。例如在1896年《波希米亚人》首映后,一位意大利评论家写道:《波希米亚人》在我们的抒情戏剧史上不会留下多少痕迹。即使在今天,仍然有很多评论家认为普契尼的作品过于伤感,过于甜蜜;他的曲调太明显,最后几幕软弱无力。然而大众并不这样认为,要证明这点,只需把过去一百多年来全世界的票房收入列出即可。普契尼擅长戏剧、欢快的歌曲和优美的通俗剧;他也擅长热情明晰的旋律、和声与配乐法。无可否认,他创作了音乐史上最受欢迎的几部歌剧(中国的歌剧迷肯定对《图兰朵》当年在北京太庙上演的重大场景记忆犹新)。在普契尼出生150年后,他的音乐仍然跨越国界,感动着台下的每一位观众。     

How newly qualified primary teachers develop: A case study in rural Eritrea

This paper reports on the professional development of a small group of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who began their careers in four rural schools in Eritrea. These teachers were monitored over a period of four years from 2001 to 2004. Their development as primary practitioners was recorded by videoing and observing their classes and by interviews and informal discussions held over the period. The ways in which they developed and the factors involved in this development are analysed and discussed.It is hoped that this research offers an insight into the challenges faced by newly qualified teachers in small rural communities, often very much dependant on their own resources and those of the local community. This indicates ways in which the current programme and on-going in-service provision may be targeted in future. An important point is made that in spite of the unusual circumstances of education in Eritrea this research provides insights that are relevant to other sociocultural contexts.     

My tongue on your theory: the bittersweet reminder of every-thing unnameable

ABSTRACT

Across research in UK Higher Education, the most immanent demands for quality have taken the shape of the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The theorist, Martin, is cautious of the relationship academics have engendered with the process of the REF, asking are we actually creating a Frankenstein monster, becoming complicit in generating quality thresholds and standards that will become our own tormentors? I am taken by the idea of the monster when pursuing alternative discourses of childhood in educational research – fear of its potential to torment seduces me with the promise of dis-order, de-formity, chaos and mutation. The aim of this paper is to resist a fixed, knowable form of ‘quality’ (in) research, moving between the idea of ‘monster’ and the formlessness of ‘monstrosity’ to oppose the epistemological, ontological and ethical paradigms of reason.     

Children's Comparisons of the Recency of Two Events from the Past Year

Research on memory for time has been limited by the difficulty of disentangling several of the fundamentally different processes that contribute to a chronological sense of the past. This study used a developmental approach to isolate one of these processes, impressions of distances in the past. Large samples of children between 3 and 12 years were asked to judge which was longer ago, their birthday or Christmas (and, in one study, Halloween and Thanksgiving). Even children under 6 years of age were able to discriminate the recency of their birthday and Christmas with great accuracy when the events were widely separated and one was within the past several months. The ability to discriminate recency on these scales appears to be a basic property of human memory that changes little with development. Other information about the locations of the events and their relative times of occurrence could only be interpreted correctly by children older than 9 years.