Religious activism in a secular world: the rise and fall of the teaching congregations of the Catholic Church

In Europe, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are characterised not only by processes of secularisation, but also by religious reactions to the perceived secularisation of society. In the Catholic Church, the rise of active congregations constitutes a prominent part of this reaction. With their work “in the world”, the members of the active congregations (brothers and sisters) had to represent and disseminate religious values in a modernising and secularising world. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, many of them became active in the field of education. Until well into the twentieth century, teaching sisters and teaching brothers were a customary feature in the system of Catholic education. This article provides a theory-driven historical–sociological and historical–educational analysis of this form of religious activism in the field of education. Overall, its focus is on mechanisms of social differentiation and inclusion in modern society at large, and on the opportunities and problems they create for fields such as religion and education. Empirically, the focus is on the rise and fall of the congregations of teaching brothers and teaching sisters in the Low Countries, especially Belgium.     

The tipping point: F-score as a function of the number of retrieved items

One of the best known measures of information retrieval (IR) performance is the F-score, the harmonic mean of precision and recall. In this article we show that the curve of the F-score as a function of the number of retrieved items is always of the same shape: a fast concave increase to a maximum, followed by a slow decrease. In other words, there exists a single maximum, referred to as the tipping point, where the retrieval situation is ‘ideal’ in terms of the F-score. The tipping point thus indicates the optimal number of items to be retrieved, with more or less items resulting in a lower F-score. This empirical result is found in IR and link prediction experiments and can be partially explained theoretically, expanding on earlier results by Egghe. We discuss the implications and argue that, when comparing F-scores, one should compare the F-score curves’ tipping points.     

Real and rational variants of the h-index and the g-index

The definitions of the rational and real-valued variants of the h-index and g-index are reviewed. It is shown how they can be obtained both graphically and by calculation. Formulae are derived expressing the exact relations between the h-variants and between the g-variants. Subsequently these relations are examined. In a citation context the real h-index is often, but not always, smaller than the rational h-index. It is also shown that the relation between the real and the rational g-index depends on the number of citations of the article ranked g + 1. Maximum differences between h, h_r and h_rat on the one hand and between g, g_r and g_rat on the other are determined.     

Dewey's Transactional Constructivism

Constructivism is very influential in education. However, its underlying ideas and assumptions have not yet been critically analysed sufficiently. In this paper, I argue that John Dewey's analyses of the transaction of organism and environment can be read as an account of the construction processes that lie beneath all human activity. Dewey's work anticipates, if it does not explicitly articulate, much of what is important and interesting about constructivist epistemology and constructivist pedagogy. The paper is devoted to a reconstruction of the formulation of this transactional constructivism, and to an analysis of its consequences for a constructivist understanding of communication and education.     

The Autonomy of Communication and the Structure of Education

Traditional analyses of education are subject centered. Education is either viewed from the perspective of the educator (teaching, parenting) or from that of the pupil (learning, child development). These analyses do not facilitate the study of education as a social phenomenon. This paper aims for the clarification of the 'conditio socialis' of education. It highlights the autonomy of social systems vis-à-vis their environment. Communication is described as the constitutive element of social systems. Education is analyzed as a process within which a double system-reference comes into play, viz. to social systems and to human beings. The structure of education is analyzed in the context of this interaction between social systems and human beings. In this context, the improbability of successful education comes to the fore.     

How is Education Possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education

The following text is the result of our ongoing discussions about the notion of intersubjectivity and its significance for an understanding of the process of education.Rather than merging our sometimes diverging ideas into one single line of argument, we decided to try if we could make the movement of divergence and convergence of our thoughts visible in the text itself.
Although we definitely explore different pathways, these pathways lead to a similar insight.This is, that it is not the educator who educates, but that it is the educational 'situation'—a situation constituted though not determined by the interaction between the educator and the student—which educates.This educational situation, which one of us describes as an 'in between space', emerges from the interaction between the educator and the student.In this respect we can say that it results from the difference between the partners in education.The in-between space of education is an emerging reality, which not only comes into existence as a result of the difference between the partners in education but in fact only exists in this difference.
It is precisely in this respect that the form of the following article provides an example of what we want to say about the process of education.The point is, to put it briefly, that this article contains or expresses a meaning that results from the difference between the two texts, but this meaning is neither something that can be attributed to the two texts as such (in this sense this emerging meaning is constituted though not determined by the two texts), nor—and this is crucial—is it something that can be articulated in any positive way in a third text.The interaction between our two texts therefore creates a reality that results from the difference between the texts and only exists in this difference.The order of authorship expresses the fact that the first author wrote the left column and the second author the right column.     

Automated LED tracking to measure instantaneous velocities in swimming

In this paper a video-based method to automatically track instantaneous velocities of a swimmer is presented. Single cameras were used to follow a marker (LED) attached to the body. The method is inspired by particle tracking techniques, traditionally used in the field of fluid dynamics, to measure local velocities of a fluid flow. During the validation experiment, a white LED was attached to the hip of a swimmer together with a speedometer. A swimmer performed four different stroke types. The velocity profiles using LED tracking were captured and showed less noise than the speedometer measurements. Only at times when the marker disappeared above the water surface due to body role in front crawl and backstroke swimming did the LED tracking fail to capture the athlete’s motion. The algorithm was tested in a 2D case with a single LED to illustrate the proof of principle, but should be suitable for implementation in a 3D analysis or multiple LED analysis.     

Book editors in the social sciences and humanities: an analysis of publication and collaboration patterns of established researchers in Flanders

Book editors in the social sciences and humanities play an important role in their fields but little is known about their typical publication and collaboration patterns. To partially fill this gap, we compare Flemish editors and other researchers, in terms of career stage, productivity, publication types, publications with domestic and international collaboration as well as the number of (international or all) unique co‐authors, co‐editors and associated book chapter authors. The results show that editors are mostly established researchers, especially in the social sciences, produce more book chapters and monographs than do other researchers, and are more productive. Nevertheless, editors collaborate less than do other researchers, both in terms of publications and in number of co‐authors. Including book chapter authors in the editors' collaboration networks makes those networks substantially larger, demonstrating that editors do not mainly call upon authors from their existing collaboration network when choosing book chapter authors in the edited books. Finally, editors seem to co‐author with their book chapter authors slightly more often after the publication of the edited book than before.     

Disciplinary Networks and Bounding: Scientific Communication Between Science and Technology Studies and the History of Science

This article examines the communication networks within and between science and technology studies (STS) and the history of science. In particular, journal relatedness data are used to analyze some of the structural features of their disciplinary identities and relationships. The results first show that, although the history of science is more than half a century older than STS, the size of the STS network is more than twice that of the history of science network. Further, while a majority of the journals in the STS network are connected by weak ties, about half of the history of science network consists of strong ties. The history of science network is thus more cohesive than the STS network. The relatively strong cohesion within the history of science network is associated with comparatively high degrees of intra-disciplinary communication, but comparatively weak ties to only a few related disciplines. The analysis also shows that very few members of the history of science cliques are situated on the shortest path between both specialties. Moreover, given the relatively impermeable nature of the history of science network, the latter partially depends on STS to reach some of the neighboring disciplines.