An inquiry-based practicum model: What knowledge,practices, and relationships typify empowering teaching and learning experiences for student teachers,cooperating teachers and college supervisors?

The author examines an inquiry-based teaching/learning model involving diverse members of learning communities. A triad of cooperating teachers, student teachers, and a college supervisor engaged in ongoing and purposeful discourse to explore the teacher–learner (expert–novice) reciprocity, school culture and social relations. In their efforts to broaden and deepen their intellectual exchange, they interrogated their own and one another's beliefs, values, and perspectives about who owns knowledge and how knowledge is distributed/shared. This reflective and reflexive process helped to enhance their knowledge, practices, relationships, and practicum experience.     

The Exhibition on Catholic Culture: Dialogues and Negotiations at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

The first exhibition in Vietnam to feature Vietnamese Catholics was held from December 10, 2008 to June 10, 2009 at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. The theme of this exhibition was “Catholic Culture as an Intrinsic Part of Vietnamese Culture.” The exhibition was organized by a State‐run museum against a background of difficult relations between the State and its Catholic communities. This article explores how the exhibition was conceived, and how the ideas of the curators were implemented by examining negotiations among different stakeholders involved in the exhibition.     

Are You A Leader? How We Learned to Stop Asking

Smith College initiated an ePortfolio pilot project to guide students in documenting key learning experiences and in linking those experiences to Smith's institutional mission of “developing leaders for society's challenges” (Smith College, 2011 Smith College. 2011. Mission of Smith College. Retrieved from http://www.smith.edu/about_mission.php. [Google Scholar]). Twenty-one college students volunteered to participate in the pilot, based on the integrative knowledge portfolio process and informed by research in the fields of narrative psychology, integrative learning theory and ePortfolio theory. This article discusses the process of guiding students in integrative learning through the development of ePortfolios and through a curriculum, which engaged them in understanding and articulating their own learning, as well as in connecting it to the college mission.     

Activism,identity and service: the influence of the Asian American Movement on the educational experiences of college students

This article emphasises two major themes that address the influence of the Asian American Movement: (1) encouraging students to broaden the discourse on race and ethnic relations by redefining categories and challenging prevalent assumptions; (2) an increased tolerance and frequency in course offerings that examine and centralise the histories, literature and political underpinnings of Asian Americans and ethnic (i.e. Japanese) specific communities, which has equipped students to engage in discourse and community action. Countering dominant narratives through unification and education is the means by which Asian American students fought for representation and fair treatment.     

‘Will I learn what I want to learn?’ Usable representations, ‘students’ and OECD assessment production

Amid growing debates around international assessment tools in educational policy, few have critically examined how students themselves are cast in policy tool production processes and discourse. Drawing on Stuart Hall's concept of representation, we show how higher education (HE) ‘students’ are constructed, fixed and normalized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initiative. Based on an analysis of AHELO texts, we argue that the OECD, during the early stages of test production, fixes and circulates the meaning of ‘students’ as represented objects. We identify and analyze two distinct representational practices at work in AHELO texts: classifying and organizing, and marking. We posit that by fixing images of the student as an object of learning and as a consumer–investor subject, the OECD creates ‘usable’ representations of ‘students’ to claim jurisdiction over teaching and learning in HE and to justify intervention through standardized testing.     

The effect of performance support and training on performer attitudes

While training has been a proven and heavily relied on intervention to impart job‐enabling information to performers, its ability to have a positive effect on job performance has been demonstrated to diminish over time. One intervention that has been adopted by performance technologists to provide ongoing support is an electronic performance support system (EPSS). The study presented here examined the effect of EPSS and training on user attitudes. Results revealed that participants receiving only EPSS and those receiving training and EPSS had significantly higher attitudes than participants who received only training. Recommendations on how to best combine and implement these performance interventions based on these data are discussed.     

Effects of turf and cleat footwear on plantar load distributions in adolescent American football players during resisted pushing

Metatarsal and midfoot injuries are common in American football. Footwear design may influence injury rates by altering plantar foot loading patterns in these regions. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of cleat design on in-shoe plantar foot loading during a football-specific, resisted pushing task. Twenty competitive football players (age 14.7 ± 1.8 years, height 1.72 ± 0.10 m, and mass 71.8 ± 26.9 kg) completed three trials of pushing a weighted sled at maximal effort in a standard shoe (CLEAT) and artificial turf-specific shoe (TURF), with flexible in-shoe force measuring insoles. Repeated measures ANOVAs identified mean differences in maximum force and relative load under all regions of the foot. Results showed higher forces in the CLEAT under the medial (p < 0.001) and lateral (p = 0.004) midfoot, central (p = 0.007) and lateral (p < 0.001) forefoot, and lesser toes (p = 0.01), but lower forces in the hallux (p = 0.02) compared to the TURF shoe. Additionally, relative loading was higher in the CLEAT under the medial (p < 0.001) and lateral (p = 0.002) midfoot and lateral (p < 0.001) forefoot, but lower in the medial forefoot (p = 0.006) and hallux (p < 0.001) compared to the TURF shoe. The two shoes elicited distinct plantar loading profiles and may influence shoe selection decisions during injury prevention or rehabilitation practices.     

Dean-flow-coupled elasto-inertial three-dimensional particle focusing under viscoelastic flow in a straight channel with asymmetrical expansion–contraction cavity arrays

In this paper, 3D particle focusing in a straight channel with asymmetrical expansion–contraction cavity arrays (ECCA channel) is achieved by exploiting the dean-flow-coupled elasto-inertial effects. First, the mechanism of particle focusing in both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids was introduced. Then particle focusing was demonstrated experimentally in this channel with Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids using three different sized particles (3.2 μm, 4.8 μm, and 13 μm), respectively. Also, the effects of dean flow (or secondary flow) induced by expansion–contraction cavity arrays were highlighted by comparing the particle distributions in a single straight rectangular channel with that in the ECCA channel. Finally, the influences of flow rates and distances from the inlet on focusing performance in the ECCA channel were studied. The results show that in the ECCA channel particles are focused on the cavity side in Newtonian fluid due to the synthesis effects of inertial and dean-drag force, whereas the particles are focused on the opposite cavity side in non-Newtonian fluid due to the addition of viscoelastic force. Compared with the focusing performance in Newtonian fluid, the particles are more easily and better focused in non-Newtonian fluid. Besides, the Dean flow in visco-elastic fluid in the ECCA channel improves the particle focusing performance compared with that in a straight channel. A further advantage is three-dimensional (3D) particle focusing that in non-Newtonian fluid is realized according to the lateral side view of the channel while only two-dimensional (2D) particle focusing can be achieved in Newtonian fluid. Conclusively, this novel Dean-flow-coupled elasto-inertial microfluidic device could offer a continuous, sheathless, and high throughput (>10 000 s⁻¹) 3D focusing performance, which may be valuable in various applications from high speed flow cytometry to cell counting, sorting, and analysis.