Reach to Teach ICT: Issues and Compromises

This paper outlines some implications for pupils’ learning and for teachers of information and communication technology (ICT) in primary or elementary education of using complete ‘reach and teach’ resource and lesson plan solutions to support a national scheme of work. The example resources referenced in the paper are ‘The LCP ICT Resource Files for Schools’, designed to enable teachers to deliver the ICT National Curriculum requirements for England and are structured to closely follow the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) scheme of work. The authors of the LCP ICT Resource Files became aware that there was a widespread takeup of their materials and that, therefore, the resources had potentially a substantial impact upon practice in many schools.Models of curriculum provision are presented and characteristics of good practice are adduced which the author recommends to those who write, review or evaluate complete teaching solutions for ICT.     

Delegating and Distributing Morality: Can We Inscribe Privacy Protection in a Machine?

This paper addresses the question of delegation of morality to a machine, through a consideration of whether or not non-humans can be considered to be moral. The aspect of morality under consideration here is protection of privacy. The topic is introduced through two cases where there was a failure in sharing and retaining personal data protected by UK data protection law, with tragic consequences. In some sense this can be regarded as a failure in the process of delegating morality to a computer database. In the UK, the issues that these cases raise have resulted in legislation designed to protect children which allows for the creation of a huge database for children. Paradoxically, we have the situation where we failed to use digital data in enforcing the law to protect children, yet we may now rely heavily on digital technologies to care for children. I draw on the work of Floridi, Sanders, Collins, Kusch, Latour and Akrich, a spectrum of work stretching from philosophy to sociology of technology and the “seamless web” or “actor–network” approach to studies of technology. Intentionality is considered, but not deemed necessary for meaningful moral behaviour. Floridi’s and Sanders’ concept of “distributed morality” accords with the network of agency characterized by actor–network approaches. The paper concludes that enfranchizing non-humans, in the shape of computer databases of personal data, as moral agents is not necessarily problematic but a balance of delegation of morality must be made between human and non-human actors.     

Community of practice and metacapabilities

Continuous reinvention of the organization through learning is a key feature of knowledge management (KM). Responsive change requires the development of organizational structures, processes and cultures that foster the capability to create and learn new knowledge, while abandoning dated knowledge and business processes no longer appropriate to the business environment. The business drivers of past success risk promoting complacency and failure to adapt responsively to environmental change, making the strategic quality of continuous responsive adaptive change a critical and elusive business success factor. On-going adaptability requires the learning and synthesis of a set of capabilities, or metacapabilities that contribute the kinds of skills and knowledge that underlie the process of change and core competency building. Merging metacapabilities with a value chain-specific core competency will allow all three strategic qualities – value creation, difficult to imitate and responsive adaptive change – to be satisfied. In very complex and dynamic environments management should pay consideration to the structures that facilitate the development of a learning culture capable of redefining functions and organizational purpose in response to the environmental changes. What is required is a learning structure that allows for the questioning of the organizational paradigm relative to the business environment, stimulates and supports the development of metacapabilities while providing the larger aligning supportive context that is process focused at a system level. Community of practice, a key KM application, may be one potentially useful metaphor for describing such a structure.     

Reflections on knowledge management from a critical systems perspective

This paper considers some significant aspects of knowledge management (KM) from a critical systems thinking (CST) point of view. CST prides itself on theoretical awareness and methodological sophistication, and these are the traits brought to bear in analysing the organisational models and well-known concepts used in KM. The results call into question the idea that the Japanese version of KM is best seen as resting upon an organic model and the notion that the Eastern tradition of thought has a monopoly on recognising the significance of tacit knowledge. The need for a prolonged dialectical debate between KM and CST is established.     

Globalisation and Governance: Educational Policy Instruments and Regulatory Arrangements

For more than a decade, the economic, social, political and cultural effects of globalisation have been central topics of debate. Those who see globalisation as a combination of economic transactions and worldwide telecommunications tend to believe that its impact is profound, inasmuch as it is fundamentally altering the way in which we live and creating hybrid cultural styles. No country is immune from the effects of globalisation, and controversy continues to reign about its positive and negative consequences. The present study identifies and examines numerous challenges posed by globalisation and their implications for educational restructuring, with special attention being given to new forms of governance; the relation between the state, the market and civil society; and governmental policy instruments for education.     

Can Pre-entry Characteristics Account for the Ethnic Attainment Gap? An Analysis of a Flemish University

Research in Higher Education - Discussions about social justice imply discussions about higher education. After all, a whole set of literature has illustrated how ethnic minority students face all...     

Re-visiting Hiroshima: The Role of us and japanese history textbooks in the construction of national memory

This paper originates from the perspective that school textbooks are crucial organs in the process of constructing legitimated ideologies and beliefs and are a reflection of the values considered important by powerful groups in society. This claim is explored through investigating the manner in which a selection of history textbooks in use in US and Japanese schools invites students to understand the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Linking narrative with historical analysis, the paper presents evidence which suggests that US and Japanese children are provided with a narrow view of the past which in promoting asense of unity and patriotism limits the development of a critical historical consciousness.     

Impact of light intensity on flowering time and plant quality of<Emphasis Type="Italic">Antirrhinum majus</Emphasis> L. cultivar Chimes White

Shades of different light intensities (29%, 43%, 54%, 60% or 68%) along with control (no shade) were studied to observe their effects on the flowering time and plant quality. A hyperbolic relationship was observed between different light intensities under shade, and time to flowering. The total number of flower buds showed a curvilinear relationship with light intensities. Growth parameters related to the plant characteristics such as plant height, leaf area and plant fresh weight were improved under shading treatments at the expense of flowering time and number of flower buds. However, both linear and polynomial models applied assumed that cultivar Chimes White was equally sensitive to light intensity throughout development.     

Are frequent users of social network sites good information evaluators? An investigation of adolescents’ sourcing abilities (¿Son los usuarios frecuentes de las redes sociales evaluadores competentes? Un estudio de las habilidades de los adolescentes para identificar,evaluar y hacer uso de las fuentes)

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the relationship between teenagers’ use of social networking sites (SNS) and their sourcing abilities. Sourcing is defined as students’ ability (1) to discriminate reliable and unreliable links based on source characteristics, (2) to value source criteria as means to select information resources and (3) to select reliable texts based on source characteristics. One hundred and forty-six students (M age = 14.7 years old) completed three sourcing tasks, a questionnaire on SNS use, as well as language and memory skills tests. We found that SNS frequency of use negatively predicted both participants’ ability to select the most reliable source among two conflicting sources on the same topic and their ability to cite source features when justifying their choice. SNS frequency of use was unrelated to students’ assessment of source criteria, but vocabulary level was positively related to performance in this task. We discuss various explanations for the observed relationship between teenagers’ SNS communication and their critical appraisal of information sources, and we propose avenues for instructional interventions aimed at fostering information skills.     

Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning

The present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of threshold concepts within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are troublesome, after the work of Perkins (1999). It was argued that these twinned sets of ideas may define critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners, and their teachers. The present study aims (a) to examine the extent to which such phenomena can be located within personal understandings of discipline-specific epistemological discourses, (b) to develop more extensively notions of liminality within learning that were raised in the first paper, and (c) to propose a conceptual framework within which teachers may advance their own reflective practice.