What happens to the girls? gender,work and learning in Canada's ‘new economy’1

Policies hailing lifelong learning in the so‐called New Economy promote equitable knowledge work and work‐related learning opportunities for all. Gender is hardly mentioned in these discourses; some might assume gender is ‘resolved’ in a new economy emphasizing entrepreneurism, technology, knowledge creation and continuous learning. However a closer look reveals that gendered inequity persists both in access to and experience of these learning opportunities. Indeed, familiar issues of women, work and learning are exacerbated in the changing contexts and designs of work comprising the so‐called New Economy. This is argued in the frame of Canada's most recent policies on work and learning, drawing from contemporary Canadian studies and statistics to underline the point. Current provisions for girls' and women's vocational education in Canada are assessed in light of these issues, focusing on particular learning needs of girls and gendered issues they face in entering the labour market of the New Economy. To move beyond a critical analysis and outline a possible way forward, four directions for change are suggested: more gender‐sensitive career education for girls; sponsored vocational education for women; management education in gendered issues arising in the changing economy; and critical vocational education in both schools and workplaces.     

数字技术赋能我国医疗治理现代化建设研究

数字技术的快速发展为我国实现医疗治理现代化提供了可行的操作路径。文章在分析数字技术赋能医疗机构和医生、政府、社会群体等多元主体、提升医疗服务供给能力、普惠性和公平性、友好性和便利性等方面作用基础上,探讨了数字技术赋能医疗治理现代化建设的4个重点问题,即数字医疗基础设施建设、数字技术采纳的影响因素、数据资产属性确权、数据安全与科技伦理。基于国际数字医疗应用场景,提出推动数字技术赋能我国医疗治理现代化建设的对策建议：以道路自信为核心、以医疗情景驱动为引擎、以技术融合应用为抓手,聚焦数字技术价值创造引导多元主体协同治理,融入全球创新、承担大国责任、倡导科技向善。     

Integration of Play, Learning, and Experience: What Museums Afford Young Visitors

This paper examines important factors in maximizing children’s experiential learning in the context of inquiry-based children’s museums. Learning is understood as situated in physical, social, and interactive context that is best achieved when children have opportunities to engage in play-based inquiry. Recommendations for maximizing children’s learning in museums, supporting children’s interactions with peers and adults, and offering affordances for children’s play are discussed.     

Modeling referential actions in 6- to 18-month-old infants: a precursor to symbolic understanding

Social precursors to symbolic understanding of pictures were examined with 100 infants ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months. Adults demonstrated 1 of 2 stances toward pictures and objects (contemplative or manipulative), and then gave items to infants for exploration. For pictures, older infants (12, 15, and 18 months) emulated the adult's actions following both types of demonstration trials. For objects, infants did not emulate actions following either stance at any age. The findings suggest that infants enlist their imitative learning skills in the context of learning the conventions of action on pictorial symbols. The data are interpreted as pointing to the importance of social learning in developing an understanding of the referential function of pictorial symbols.     

Learning in and beyond school gardens with cyber-physical systems

This design-based research study considers the learner-generated design and refinement of a school garden. We report one enactment of the Connected Gardening project in order to illuminate and understand how a fourth-grade class organizes and refines its garden plot using observations of the physical environment and evaluations of data from a networked digital probe. By examining the ways individuals, materials, and activities influence, and are influenced by, one another, our qualitative analysis characterizes interplay among an ecosystem, a garden and graphical representations of environmental indicators in real time and over time. We consider the novel affordances of such a cyber-physical systems for supporting participatory culture within yet beyond school classrooms.     

Facilitating Meta‐learning in Art and Design Education

Art and design programmes are educationally unique in that students themselves play a central role in determining their own learning needs. To be successful in their study, art and design students are required to operate with a high degree of independence and self‐direction. Developing the skills for greater self‐reliance requires students to become aware of their conceptions of the subject of study, and of themselves as learners in a particular learning context. Developing greater self‐awareness as a learner and becoming more independent in one's learning is captured by the concept of meta‐learning. In this article I present an alternative strategy to prevalent diagnostic approaches to assist in developing a student's capacity for meta‐learning in the subject context of art and design. An inquiry cycle was created to provide a structure within which to facilitate generative thinking about learning through engaging with fundamental questions related to the subject of learning (art and design) rather than the learning subject (i.e. the student). This method represents a departure from existing approaches to engaging students in meta‐learning. A pilot study used to trial the effectiveness of this strategy is also presented here. The inquiry map, and the conceptual base upon which it was developed, were found to be useful ways to structure reflective thinking about learning and to assist in developing a student's conception of the subject.