Adult higher education in the Netherlands: National policy and local practice

Policy papers published by the Ministry of Education and Science in the Netherlands show that the government is strongly interested in the concept of recurrent education. One possible way of implementing this idea is through university level evening programs. In the Social Science Faculty of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam the evening program in sociology (which was established through the institution's own initiative) has recently taken on an institutionalized character. This article reports the results of research on the first year's experience of the day and evening students who began their studies in 1974. Attention is devoted to evening student recruitment, motives to take up university study and sociology in particular, minimum conditions within the institution's infrastructure, the curriculum and output. University evening education in general is also discussed and some policy conclusions are formulated regarding the realization of university evening education in the Netherlands.Translation: Drs. Ray Jurkovich.     

Paulo Freire and the pedagogical traditions of the subject English

I seek here to explain and elaborate on how and why Paulo Freire’s work has significance for educators in today’s ‘affluent’ west, not least in reminding us powerfully of core critical and celebratory values at a time when many teachers, and not only of English, feel under huge pressure – a pressure that in fact verges on the oppressive. My focus here is on native language teaching and learning – English, in effect – thus echoing Freire’s concern for critical literacy and pedagogy and how these may relate constructively to fundamentally Romantic traditions of English pedagogy.     

Microfluidic devices fitted with “flowver” paper pumps generate steady,tunable gradients for extended observation of chemotactic cell migration

Microfluidics approaches have gained popularity in the field of directed cell migration, enabling control of the extracellular environment and integration with live-cell microscopy; however, technical hurdles remain. Among the challenges are the stability and predictability of the environment, which are especially critical for the observation of fibroblasts and other slow-moving cells. Such experiments require several hours and are typically plagued by the introduction of bubbles and other disturbances that naturally arise in standard microfluidics protocols. Here, we report on the development of a passive pumping strategy, driven by the high capillary pressure and evaporative capacity of paper, and its application to study fibroblast chemotaxis. The paper pumps—flowvers (flow + clover)—are inexpensive, compact, and scalable, and they allow nearly bubble-free operation, with a predictable volumetric flow rate on the order of μl/min, for several hours. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we combined the flowver pumping strategy with a Y-junction microfluidic device to generate a chemoattractant gradient landscape that is both stable (6+ h) and predictable (by finite-element modeling calculations). Integrated with fluorescence microscopy, we were able to recapitulate previous, live-cell imaging studies of fibroblast chemotaxis to platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), with an order-of-magnitude gain in throughput. The increased throughput of single-cell analysis allowed us to more precisely define PDGF gradient conditions conducive for chemotaxis; we were also able to interpret how the orientation of signaling through the phosphoinositide 3-kinase pathway affects the cells’ sensing of and response to conducive gradients.     

Child sexual abuse prevention education: A review of school policy and curriculum provision in Australia

The past four decades have seen increasing public and professional awareness of child sexual abuse. Congruent with public health approaches to prevention, efforts to eliminate child sexual abuse have inspired the emergence of prevention initiatives which can be provided to all children as part of their standard school curriculum. However, relatively little is known about the scope and nature of child sexual abuse prevention efforts in government school systems internationally. This paper assesses and compares the policies and curriculum initiatives in primary (elementary) schools across state and territory Departments of Education in Australia. Using publicly available electronic data, a deductive qualitative content analysis of policy and curriculum documents was undertaken to examine the characteristics of child sexual abuse prevention education in these school systems. It was found that the system-level provision occurs unevenly across state and territory jurisdictions. This results in the potential for substantial inequity in Australian children’s access to learning opportunities in child abuse prevention education as a part of their standard school curriculum. In this research, we have developed a strategy for generating a set of theoretically-sound empirical criteria that may be more extensively applied in comparative research about prevention initiatives internationally.     

红色

面对周围人的友善。生病的我内心深深领悟到了人生的美好。我坚信:一切都会好起来的。UCLA Medical Center was a big,scary place to aneleven-year-old who was away from home for the firsttime.The sounds and smell seemed foreign.Whiteshoes squeaked(吱吱声)on the highly pohshed(光亮的)floors.People were paged over an intercom,buzzers rang,andthe faint smell of alcohol seemed everywhere.In the bed next to me,and closest to the window,was ayoung girl about my age.The first thing I noticed about herwas her beautiful eves and bright smile.I wondered how shecould seem so happy in this strange place.She had gonethrough the glass of a sliding door(拉门)and had bandages(绷带)covering the stitches(缝线).I knew she had to be in somepain,but she WaS friendly and a welcome companion.It was the late 1950s and a tumor(瘤)had been discoveredin the bone marrow of my right ankle.