The Different Dimensions of Dimensional Analysis

Checking both sides of an equation to make sure the units are right is something we tend to do as a matter of course (or should!). But as this article will try and illustrate, there is more to this routine procedure than meets the eye.     

Only a game? Player misery across game boundaries

ABSTRACT

Videogames often confront players with frustratingly difficult challenges, fearsome enemies, and tragic stories. As such, they can evoke feelings of failure, sadness, anger, and fear. Although these feelings are usually regarded as undesirable, many players seem to enjoy videogames which cause them. In this paper, I argue that player misery often originates from a fictional or lusory attitude which brackets game events from real-life, making the player’s emotions solely relevant within the game context. As they are part of the game themselves, these negative emotions can be enjoyed and easily relativized, since players can acknowledge that their cause is ‘only a game’. However, there are feelings of misery associated with the playing of videogames which are not caused by either the game’s fiction or challenge. In the last part of this paper, I describe a qualitatively different kind of player misery: one that is caused by elements that are not perceived as part of the game by the player, and is not bracketed from real life by a lusory or fictional attitude.     

Creating teacher capacity in Early Childhood Education and Care institutions implementing an authoritative adult style

The being together intervention intends to raise teacher capacity in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions and promote social and emotional development in preschoolers by implementing an authoritative (warm and predictable) adult style in the institution. An authoritative adult balances between building up high quality interactions with children, while at the same time having a predictable structure with clear norms and social expectations in the learning environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate what helped the ECEC institutions to successfully implement the program principles and core components, and what were the challenges. The staff groups of seven Norwegian ECEC institutions in different municipalities who took part in the innovation were interviewed at the beginning and before the end of the first year of implementation. Data analysis identified five success criteria in the implementation process; strong commitment to the authoritative adult style, strong focus on the implementation process, advanced support systems, highly involved leaders, and a collective orientation. These elements resulted in a shared vision and an academically grounded practice in the ECEC institutions. Staff members without formal professional training and a lack of written documentation in the ECEC institutions should be given more consideration in further improvement of the capacity building.     

Educational Publishing in China: Status Quo,Problems and Counter Measures

In China, educational publishing is devoted to publishing mainly textbooks and teaching materials. For a long time, education publishing has dominated others in China’s publishing industry. However, after entering the new century, especially in the last 2 years, there has been the impact of changes in the College-Entrance Examination, the Invitation to Bid for Compilation and Publication of Textbooks, government procurement and Scientific and Technological Advancement for supplementary books. Therefore, publishing for education has been losing its previous major role and dominance. For making a leap forward and breakthrough in educational publication, we must open up a new train of thought for the development of educational publishing, we need three distinct transformations: first, change in publishing mode from extensive to intensive growth. Second, transformation from variety-scale to market-scale expansion. Third, transformation from being just a provider of content to one providing both content and services.