Poetic Experience: Found or Made?

This article considers the arguments for seeing work rather than response as key to poetic experience, and therefore to the development of such experience in the classroom. This is worth exploring not only in terms of the 1iterature/literacy curriculum, but with respect to the curriculum as a whole, since poetry is often invoked as an important, and under exploited, resource for the development of both cross‐curricular learning and responsible and sustainable citizenship. However, there is a danger of the poetic being reduced in such arguments to a vague and philosophically suspect notion of self‐expression grounded in ‘response’. This can be exacerbated by the adherence to the notion of a pre‐existing Romantic Ego that often characterises ‘personal growth’ approaches to Englis/language teaching.     

Community,culture and identity: geography,the National Curriculum and Wales

ABSTRACT

The 1988 Education Reform Act legislated for a National Curriculum not for one nation but for two, Wales and England. This article reviews the way in which attempts to develop a distinctive curriculum in Wales for one subject, geography, were thwarted by the dominance among key policy‐makers in England of views about the study of place which were unsympathetic to the idea of the school curriculum being a vehicle for the development of a sense of community and national identity. Drawing on evidence from a survey of secondary school geography teachers in Wales, it considers the extent to which the teaching of geography is seen by teachers as a means of achieving such educational goals.     

Machine behaviourism: future visions of ‘learnification’ and ‘datafication’ across humans and digital technologies

ABSTRACT

This paper examines visions of ‘learning’ across humans and machines in a near-future of intensive data analytics. Building upon the concept of ‘learnification’, practices of ‘learning’ in emerging big data-driven environments are discussed in two significant ways: the training of machines, and the nudging of human decisions through digital choice architectures. Firstly, ‘machine learning’ is discussed as an important example of how data-driven technologies are beginning to influence educational activity, both through sophisticated technical expertise and a grounding in behavioural psychology. Secondly, we explore how educational software design informed by behavioural economics is increasingly intended to frame learner choices to influence and ‘nudge’ decisions towards optimal outcomes. Through the growing influence of ‘data science’ on education, behaviourist psychology is increasingly and powerfully invested in future educational practices. Finally, it is argued that future education may tend toward very specific forms of behavioural governance – a ‘machine behaviourism’ – entailing combinations of radical behaviourist theories and machine learning systems, that appear to work against notions of student autonomy and participation, seeking to intervene in educational conduct and shaping learner behaviour towards predefined aims.     

Modeling parameters that characterize pacing of elite female 800-m freestyle swimmers

Pacing offers a potential avenue for enhancement of endurance performance. We report here a novel method for characterizing pacing in 800-m freestyle swimming. Websites provided 50-m lap and race times for 192 swims of 20 elite female swimmers between 2000 and 2013. Pacing for each swim was characterized with five parameters derived from a linear model: linear and quadratic coefficients for effect of lap number, reductions from predicted time for first and last laps, and lap-time variability (standard error of the estimate). Race-to-race consistency of the parameters was expressed as intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The average swim was a shallow negative quadratic with slowest time in the eleventh lap. First and last laps were faster by 6.4% and 3.6%, and lap-time variability was ±0.64%. Consistency between swimmers ranged from low-moderate for the linear and quadratic parameters (ICC = 0.29 and 0.36) to high for the last-lap parameter (ICC = 0.62), while consistency for race time was very high (ICC = 0.80). Only ~15% of swimmers had enough swims (~15 or more) to provide reasonable evidence of optimum parameter values in plots of race time vs. each parameter. The modest consistency of most of the pacing parameters and lack of relationships between parameters and performance suggest that swimmers usually compensated for changes in one parameter with changes in another. In conclusion, pacing in 800-m elite female swimmers can be characterized with five parameters, but identifying an optimal pacing profile is generally impractical.     

Teachers' Beliefs and Practices in Relation to their Beliefs about Questioning at Key Stage 2

This study examines the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their practices at Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11) in relation to the use of questioning. Data were collected from interviewing and observing Key Stage 2 teachers at four schools in the West of England. A Straussian approach to grounded theory is followed broadly in order to analyse the data. In contrast to the findings of previous studies, which suggested a mismatch between teachers' beliefs and practices in that teachers, in certain respects, do less than they claim, the research revealed that teachers use a variety of skills during their teaching that they may not always be aware of. It is also argued that teachers do not share researchers' language to express the way they teach.     

TOWARD A SEMIOTIC THEORY OF CHOICE AND OF LEARNING

A bstract .  In this essay, Andrew Stables and Stephen Gough explore some of the implications for educational policy and practice of a view of living (and, therefore, of learning) as semiotic engagement. Such a view, Stables and Gough argue, has the potential to displace or circumvent essentially Cartesian models currently dominant within learning theory (cognitivism and responses to it) and within neoclassical economics (rational choice and responses to it). It thus enables synergies between theories of learning and of economic behavior, allowing for greater consistency in thinking about (but not necessarily prescribing for) both educational policy and provision, on the one hand, and curriculum and pedagogy, on the other. In addition, the authors claim that giving semiotics a foundational role in educational thinking provides a basis for the broader development of liberal political thought within a postmodern cultural context.     

Knowledge Management in the NHS: positioning the healthcare librarian at the knowledge intersection

This paper defines what is meant by Knowledge Management, investigates how it interlinks with new ways of delivering health care and gives a synopsis of a study that investigated issues around implementation of Knowledge Management across a sample of healthcare librarians. Areas of investigation that are related to Knowledge Management include: HSG(97)47, evidence‐based medicine, clinical governance, information and communication technologies, and the changing role of the healthcare librarian. A diagram is included in this paper which illustrates how the healthcare librarian interacts with resources, staff and practices, so contributing to the knowledge base of health care. The paper concludes that Government policy, new technologies and the push towards the practice of information age medicine are forcing changes throughout the NHS. Recognition of Knowledge Management is still in its infancy in the NHS—it calls for major change in organizational thinking and acceptance by the librarian that their service must also be subject to continuous improvement.     

玻意耳定律教学浅析

在总结教学经验的基础上,通过封闭气体问题的深化训练,对玻意耳定律的运用教学作了简要分析     

Managing Sudden Loss

Managers often face tough, emotional situations at work. One of the biggest is guiding employees and departments successfully through the loss of a coworker. Not only are there emotional components but there are also more technical and procedural responsibilities that may be overlooked. These facilities, technological, and human resources tasks need to be handled sensitively and in a timely manner. Remembering whom to contact, what property needs to be considered, and how to produce final paychecks are just a few of the concerns managers will face in a trying time. This guide aims to serve as a checklist of the basic components and tasks managers will face after the sudden loss of an employee.     

Art and sonic mining in the archives: methods for investigating the wartime history of Birmingham School of Art

Abstract

Absconditi Viscus (or Hidden Entries) is a series of sound compositions based on the history of Birmingham School of Art during the First World War. Sound artist Justin Wiggan explored the concept of historical sonic information that although lost could still potentially permeate the archival record and the fabric of the school building. Each sound piece has also been synchronised with brainwave frequencies in order to stimulate a listener’s brain activity in an attempt to connect them with the time period, the physical building and the emotional impact of the war. This creative, experimental – and potentially controversial – assertion of phonic excavations and sonic mining as method challenges us to rethink both affect and the archival record in relation to the history of education.