高校在线教育渐成主流

如今的美国正面临着快速增长的学生债务,面对这样一个对整体经济产生负面影响的社会问题,在线教育也许是一个比较理想的解决办法。与传统大学相比,在线教育费用极低,不受时间和空间的限制,而且还可以为学生量身定制课程。无论如何,在线教育的浪潮已经到来。     

History of Computers and Computing

JOHN VON NEUMANN AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN COMPUTING by William Aspray (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990—$35.00, ISBN 0-262-01121-2, 376 pp.)

A HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING edited by Stephen G. Nash (New York: Association for Computing Machinery [ACM) Press; co-published by Addison-Wesley, 1990—price not given, ISBN 0-201-50814-1, 359 pp.)

GLORY AND FAILURE: THE DIFFERENCE ENGINES OF JOHANN MULLER, CHARLES BABBAGE AND EDVARD SCHEUTZ by Michael Lindgren, translated by Craig G. McKay (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990—$45.00, ISBN 0-262-12146-8, 414 pp.)

IBM'S 360 AND EARLY 370 SYSTEMS by Emerson W. Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, and John H. Palmer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991—$37.50, ISBN 0-262-16123-0, 819 pp.)     

Inequality/difference in New Zealand education: Social reproduction and the cognitive habitus

A programmatic study of inequality/difference in New Zealand education has been carried out, for a quarter of a century, within a family resource framework that has supported both theoretical and empirical research. Although deeply influenced by Bourdieu's theories of social and cultural reproduction, its adherence to a realist philosophy of science means that its structure-disposition-practice explanatory schemes cannot be represented as Bourdieusian. This article takes the concept of habitus (as a set of learned dispositions)and argues that durable embodied cognitive schemes, acquired by children in classed environments, are a principal cause of observed class variation in educational performance. This view challenges accounts in which 'ability'is regarded as 'socially constructed'. The entire history of the sociology of education might be written in terms of its struggle against the dominant influence of IQ theory as an explanation of inequality/difference in education. It is not clear that our discipline has yet been successful in that struggle. These matters are discussed with reference to empirical data on the association between social class and educational achievement in New Zealand. The evidence suggests that class patterns of attainment, particularly on standardized tests designed to assess verbal intelligence, support the thesis that cognitive operations effected by the cognitive habitus are fundamentally involved in the reproduction of inequality/difference. It seems that the primary effects of socialisation may be more important than the secondary effects that many sociologists have taken as their proper area of concern. Some policy implications of this thesis - which is neither a move to encode IQ theory in a radical discourse nor an attempt to reinstate classical deficit theory - are discussed in the context of state-sponsored possibilism currently being imposed on many educational systems.     

CIO省钱有道

据行业组织Business Roundtable对110名美国CEO进行的调查显示,今年美国的经济增幅只有可怜的1.3%.这是自9·11事件后及2002年网络泡沫破裂后,CEO们预测的最低幅度的增长率.     

Learning and identity in overlapping communities of practice: Surf club, school and sports clubs

Large numbers of children and young people spend their weekends and holidays engaged in the activities of over 300 surf clubs across Australia each summer. Long term membership in these clubs, beginning from as young as five years of age, forms a significant part of children's and young people's development yet surf clubs have yet to receive recognition from researchers in either the education or physical education fields as significant learning sites. Within the context of growing recognition of learning as an ongoing, multidimensional and life-long process this represents an oversight in the literature that this paper sets out to redress. Employing the concepts of communities of practice and situated learning (Lave & Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) it examines four young people's experiences as members of a Victorian surf club as a community of practice. It also compares the experiences of these young people in the surf club with those arising from membership in their schools and sports clubs.     

Teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour in schools: a psychological perspective

This article reports on an investigation into school teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour from a psychological perspective. The inter-disciplinary nature of this research bridges the understanding between educational and psychological perspectives on disruptive behaviour. This article discusses evidence that for the most troubled pupils, effective behaviour management at school necessitates a more nurturing and collaborative approach alongside current disciplinary policy. Two studies are reported which examine teachers’ perceptions of disruptive behaviour at school. Discussion focuses on findings of a postal questionnaire sent to 426 primary and secondary schools across England, regarding teachers’ perceptions on the extent to which pupils can control their disruptive behaviour. A further 122 primary schools were sent the questionnaire via SurveyMonkey. The findings illustrate that there is variation in how teachers in primary and secondary schools regard their pupils’ behaviour. Implications of the findings are discussed with reference to attachment theory.