Exceptional Female Students of Color: Academic Resilience and Gender in Higher Education

In researching the exceptional academic performance of 31 female and 19 male low socioeconomic college students of color, three distinctly female approaches to exceptional achievement arose from the data. These included the inordinate degree of familial resistance faced by the females and their approaches to that resistance, the value and importance of post-college goals and ambition, and the presence of effective cross-gender mentoring relationships. The impact of racial, ethnic, class and gender-based identities in relation to academic performance is also explored. Erik E. Morales  earned his B.S. and Ph.D. from New York University and his M.Ed. From William Paterson University. He is currently an assistant professor at New Jersey City University in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. His research interests are academic resilience and the retention of college students of color.     

Epistemology,ontology and ethics: ‘galaxies away from the engineering world’?

Philosophy of technology/philosophy of science has recently become part of the curriculum of engineering degree programmes in Denmark. However, to what extent do teachers of engineering see it as meaningful for students to work with relatively abstract philosophical concepts such as epistemology, ontology and ethics as part of engineering degree programmes? And what, if any, are the complexities and difficulties in implementing philosophical questioning into engineering curricula? Do teachers tend to see philosophy of science as a kind of ‘Trojan horse’ – an unwelcome idea that will defocus engineering degree courses and steal time from more important subjects? Or do they see it as a necessary and welcome addition to engineering curricula that will result in more qualified and free-thinking engineering graduates? Subsequently these issues are discussed in the light of findings in an empirical case study carried out by the authors at their Institute.     

Extending the concept of publication: factbases and knowledgebases

The concept of a ‘publication’ no longer applies only to printed works; information technology has extended its application to several other types of works. This article describes a facility called the Common Knowledge Library that publishes modules of formally structured information representing facts and knowledge of various kinds. Publications of this new type have some characteristics in common with databases, and others in common with software modules; however, they also share some important characteristics with traditional publications. A framework for citation of previous work is important in order to provide an incentive for contributors of such modules. Peer review – the traditional method of quality assurance for scientific articles – must also be applied, although in a modified form, for fact and knowledge modules. The construction of the Common Knowledge Library is a cumulative process; new contributions are obtained by interpreting the contents of existing knowledge sources on the Internet, and the existing contents of the Library are an important resource for that interpretation process.     

dMath: a European project for the restatement of mathematics teaching

In this article the main characteristics of the dMath project are introduced. With the mathematical modules developed within this project a new tool is made available to the different users as a support of the teaching and learning of mathematics in the context of EHEA and of the Bologna declaration.     

Dutch Cooperation Schools as Democratic Communities: A Constructive Perspective from Dewey’s View on Democracy in Education

In this article, the authors reflect on the results of their previous research at cooperation schools in the Netherlands, where students and teachers from nonaffiliated and Christian backgrounds come together. Dewey’s perspective on educating democratic values is combined with empirical results of this research, answering the question what Dewey’s concept contributes to the reflection on the relation between values and religious education at these schools. This article shows that this reflection and the implementation of value-based religious education offers opportunities for schools that face the challenge of practicing encounter between students from different backgrounds.     

Genetic and environmental influences on early literacy

Prereading and early reading skills of preschool twin children in Australia, Scandinavia and the United States were explored in a genetically sensitive design (max. N=627 preschool pairs and 422 kindergarten pairs). Analyses indicated a strong genetic influence on preschool phonological awareness, rapid naming and verbal memory. Print awareness, vocabulary and grammar/morphology were subject primarily to shared environment effects. There were significant genetic and shared environment correlations among the preschool traits. Kindergarten reading, phonological awareness and rapid naming were primarily affected by genes, and spelling was equally affected by genes and shared environment. Multivariate analyses revealed genetic and environmental overlap and independence among kindergarten variables. Longitudinal analyses showed genetic continuity as well as change in phonological awareness and rapid naming across the 2 years. Relations among the preschool variables of print awareness, phonological awareness and rapid naming and kindergarten reading were also explored in longitudinal analyses. Educational implications are discussed.     

The RKW: A new approach towards technology transfer. methods for the promotion of innovation in small- and medium-sized companies

The ‘Rationalisierungskuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft’ (RKW) is a German management institute and productivity centre. The RKW analyses and promotes rationalisation measures, assists mainly small- and medium-sized enterprises in the rationalisation of firms and plants, and supports adaptation, cooperation and expansion efforts, as well as the introduction of new processess and products.RKW services — provided by the central office in Frankfurt a.M. and the regional centres in the Länder — are not so much dependent on progress in the fields of science, research and technology, but rather on the analysis and determination of short-term and long-term development trends and of the demand situation of companies and branches of industry, and on the transfer into practice of new knowledge pertaining to rationalisation.The main instruments of the services of the RKW are consulting operations on selected problems of individual enterprises in connection with work in the fields of information, documentation, management training, inplant training, and systematic performance control. The horizontal and vertical organisation and coordination of these measures are an example for integrated technology transfer where scientific and technical knowledge, products, and inventions are not only transferred in a onw-way process from science into the economy but where, through organisational changes in connection with supporting and integrating measures, both areas interact with each other. In this respect the RKW differs from other institutions such as the National Research Development Corporation in the UK or the NASA Technology Utilization Program in the USA.     

Sustainable transition of electronic products through waste policy

The European Union's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive makes a challenging case for transition theory and its different aspects, as it represents an ongoing and still open-ended case. At present the objectives of the directive are not met: the amount of electronic waste is increasing, and the resulting waste is poorly managed. With its starting point in the multi-level perspective of transition theory, this case study analyzes how the outcome of the WEEE directive is constituted in the interplay between the somewhat detached regimes of electronics and waste management. The two regimes are described and analyzed together with the underlying regulatory principle of extended producer responsibility, which has guided the design of the directive. Conflicting interpretations of sustainability, in combination with a simplistic understanding and agency introduced from the top-down, has eliminated waste minimization as the main outcome of the directive. The concluding discussions raise the issues of the role of sustainable niche initiatives in electronics compared to multi-regime interaction. Guiding visions may need to be supplemented with other alignment devices in order to support co-evolution of regimes and coherent actions within transition processes.     

Running speed increases plantar load more than per cent body weight on an AlterG® treadmill

AlterG® treadmills allow for running at different speeds as well as at reduced bodyweight (BW), and are used during rehabilitation to reduce the impact load. The aim of this study was to quantify plantar loads borne by the athlete during rehabilitation. Twenty trained male participants ran on the AlterG® treadmill in 36 conditions: all combinations of indicated BW (50–100%) paired with different walking and running speeds (range 6–16 km · hr^–1) in a random order. In-shoe maximum plantar force (Fmax) was recorded using the Pedar-X system. Fmax was lowest at the 6 km · hr^–1 at 50% indicated BW condition at 1.02 ± 0.21BW and peaked at 2.31 ± 0.22BW for the 16 km · hr^–1 at 100% BW condition. Greater increases in Fmax were seen when increasing running speed while holding per cent BW constant than the reverse (0.74BW–0.91BW increase compared to 0.19–0.31BW). A table is presented with each of the 36 combinations of BW and running speed to allow a more objective progression of plantar loading during rehabilitation. Increasing running speed rather than increasing indicated per cent BW was shown to have the strongest effect on the magnitude of Fmax across the ranges of speeds and indicated per cent BWs examined.