Exhibiting monstrosity: Chang and Eng, the 'original' Siamese twins

Chang and Eng, the two young men who would eventually be known around the world as the ‘original’ Siamese twins, arrived in the West in 1829. They were brought to the West to be examined by medical men and to be exhibited to the general public. Throughout the 19th century in Britain and the US, ‘monstrosities’ such as Chang and Eng, as well as a host of other people with unusual anatomies, were considered both spectacles worthy of public display and edifying medical subjects with the potential to build on medical knowledge. The unique case of Chang and Eng illustrates that the boundary between what is of legitimate medical interest and what is considered merely spectacle is often blurred.     

Advancing text-analysis to tap into the student voice: a proof-of-concept study

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching and courses (SETs) are part of the fabric of tertiary education and quantitative ratings derived from SETs are highly valued by tertiary institutions. However, many staff do not engage meaningfully with SETs, especially if the process of analysing student feedback is cumbersome or time-consuming. To address this issue, we describe a proof-of-concept study to automate aspects of analysing student free text responses to questions. Using Quantext text analysis software, we summarise and categorise student free text responses to two questions posed as part of a larger research project which explored student perceptions of SETs. We compare human analysis of student responses with automated methods and identify some key reasons why students do not complete SETs. We conclude that the text analytic tools in Quantext have an important role in assisting teaching staff with the rigorous analysis and interpretation of SETs and that keeping teachers and students at the centre of the evaluation process is key.     

A case for climate justice education: American youth connecting to intragenerational climate injustice in Bangladesh

Abstract

In this paper, I present evidence for framing climate change education around social justice. More specifically, I provide empirical support for framing climate change education around intragenerational climate justice, and argue that this frame can influence youth in industrialized, wealthy nations to become mobilized, climate-engaged individuals. To do so, I apply critical qualitative analysis to narratives from American youth who participated in a global climate change education program in Bangladesh. My findings include the importance of contextualizing climate justice, framing climate change around humans, implicating ourselves in the problem and recognizing our own obligations in mitigation, seeing climate change as real and tangible, being in a place impacted by climate change, feeling solidarity with those impacted, and recognizing social injustice and power disparities within climate change impacts. Based on these findings, I recommend an approach that provides context, nuance, and personal connection to an otherwise abstract global problem.     

大学课程设计自学指南:如何设计课程以促进意义深远的学习

作为大学老师,为了达到好的教学效果,我们必须能够做好两项活动,既要做好课程设计,又要做好师生互动.就这两项活动而言,我们的课程设计能力常常是制约因素.《创造意义深远的学习经历:大学课程整合设计方案》一书作者,美国奥克拉荷马大学教学发展项目部主任迪·芬克博士撰写了一份大学课程设计的自学指南,旨在给大家介绍一套系统有效的课程设计程式,帮助大家学会怎样进行课程设计.指南包括课程整合设计的三个主要阶段,每阶段包括开篇的介绍性评价,读者可以加以使用的工作簿,以及读者在课程设计过程中可以对自己提出的一些问题,以对自己的设计实践进行推敲.     

Reclaiming teacher intellectualism through and for inclusive education

Inclusive education, understood as a pedagogical commitment to schooling experiences that value diversity and promote equitable participation for all students, has not been broadly taken up in practice in the United States. Much of the research in this field suggests that teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education are the primary barrier to its successful spread and enactment. With this study, a year-long multiple case study design, I sought to understand how those teachers who do pursue inclusivity sustain themselves and their inclusive work in a national discourse that does not systemically value inclusivity. I found that schools worked as deskilling spaces; that enacting inclusivity was a tool for teachers to navigate these exclusionary climates and reclaim an intellectual self; and that an intellectual community was a key support for teachers to enact inclusive practices and in some cases even supported the reclaiming of the school as an intellectual space. These findings suggest that inclusive education can be thought of and enacted as a form of a resistance to audit culture, but that to do so requires ‘strategic transgression’ often in the form of flexible pedagogies. Additionally, providing teachers with an intellectual community and supporting them to navigate an exclusionary climate may be essential for the individual sustainability of enacting these practices have the potential to contribute to the spread of inclusive education.     

What Happened on July 21st: An Investigation of Trauma and Trigger Warnings in the English Classroom

The controversy surrounding trigger warnings has highlighted a mystifying confound in post-secondary education. Faculty, students and school bureaucracies are divided. While trigger warning proponents emphasise the value of protecting students with trauma histories from unscaffolded exposure to content related to sexuality, violence, race and political strife, agonists interpret the trigger warning as a threat to academic freedom, artistry and professor autonomy. This paper presents an episode that occurred at a prominent school of education, in which an instructor’s choice of content triggered a post-traumatic response in a student. As the story unfolds, the narrative shifts back and forth between the instructor’s and the student’s experience of the event. The piece concludes with a commentary made by a clinical psychologist and trauma expert, who weighs in on the challenges confronting both professors and students, as each attempts to navigate handling emotionally charged, potentially triggering contents in the post-secondary classroom.     

Development Without Learning?

It is usually assumed that for cognitive development to occur, children need to receive feedback about the success of their endeavours. Such views are implicitly contained in the design of most educational programmes, especially those that are based on computer‐assisted learning. Two studies are reported which challenge these assumptions. The studies investigate Karmilojf‐Smith's ideas about the cognitive processes underlying the development of the ability to balance beams on a fulcrum. Karmiloff‐Smith suggests that at a certain and limited phase of development, children may largely ignore the information from feedback and development will occur due to internal cognitive reorganisation. Our findings provide some support for this view in that at this phase of development no difference was found between children who did and did not receive feedback about success.     

A Surgical View of Anatomy: Perspectives from Students and Instructors

As curricular emphasis on anatomy in undergraduate medical education continues to evolve, new approaches to anatomical education are urgently needed to prepare medical students for residency. A surgical anatomy class was designed for third- and fourth-year medical students to explore important anatomical relationships by performing realistic surgical procedures on anatomical donors. Under the guidance of both surgeons and anatomists, students in this month-long elective course explored key anatomical relationships through performing surgical approaches, with the secondary benefit of practicing basic surgical techniques. Procedures, such as left nephrectomy, first rib resection for thoracic outlet syndrome, and carotid endarterectomy, were adapted from those used clinically by multiple surgical subspecialties. This viewpoint commentary highlights perspectives from students and instructors that suggest the value of a surgical approach to anatomical education for medical students preparing for procedure-oriented residencies, with the goals of: (1) describing the elective at the authors' institution, (2) promoting similar efforts across different institutions, and (3) encouraging future qualitative and quantitative studies of similar pedagogic efforts.     

Effects of Vicarious Racism Exposure via the Media on College Students of Color: Exploring Affect and Substance Use

Given the potential negative effects of vicarious racism, we sought to examine the impact of vicarious racism via the media on college students of color. Using a sample of 217 college students of color, we analyzed positive and negative affect and craving for alcohol and marijuana before and after exposure to media stimuli. Split‐plot analysis of variance results revealed a statistically significant interaction effect between time and group for negative affect, but not cravings for substances.     

The effectiveness of the GeoGebra Programme in the development of academic achievement and survival of the learning impact of the mathematics among secondary stage students

Education and Information Technologies - The objective of this research is to identify the effectiveness of the GeoGebra program in developing academic achievement and ensuring survival of the...