British Colonial Administrations’ registry systems: a comparative study of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Recordkeeping in twentieth century colonial states has been ignored by scholars, or at best regarded as the result of a monolithic process of migration of metropolitan practices. Registries provided the principal organ of recordkeeping in British government systems of administration. This comparative study of the registries in the neighbouring territories of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) reveals the true extent of metropolitan British influence, exposing an absence of centralised advice, and a consequent dependence upon individual innovation. This engendered divergent and sometimes weak recordkeeping regimes. The effects of this included the diminution of fiduciary responsibility and administrative accountability.     

Imperatives for regular collection inventories: A New Zealand university library's experience

This paper describes three imperatives for collection inventory work at the University of Canterbury (UC) Library. Learning experiences from UC Library's first full inventory in 2005 were used to develop a regular and sustainable method of conducting future inventories. The first need for inventory arose as a result of an organized crime ring that targeted valuable books in libraries throughout New Zealand. Findings from library customer surveys in 2003 and 2005 gave rise to a second imperative which was to take prompt, proactive action regarding items missing from the shelves. As UC Library begins moving items to offsite storage, a third imperative arose for correctly accounting for what UC Library actually holds. As pressure comes on staffing resources this additional and significant collection management task has had to be achieved without extra staff. Good communication, clarity of responsibilities and breaking down the work into manageable amounts all became vital to the overall success of managing inventory work.     

Optical Pulsars and Black Arrows: Discoveries as Occasioned Productions

The current article represents a methodological proposal. It seeks to address the question of how one might recognize a discovery as a discovery without knowing in advance what is available to be discovered. We propose a solution and demonstrate it using data from a study previously reported by J. Roschelle (1992) Roschelle, J. 1992. Learning by collaborating: Convergent conceptual change. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2: 235–276. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]. Roschelle investigated 2 students' developing understandings of certain abstract features of Newtonian mechanics while working within a computer-based microworld, the Envisioning Machine. We employ an approach we term discovery as occasioned production to reexamine his data. Such an approach proceeds stepwise from the identification of some matter discovered, working backward to see just where that matter entered the conversation and then, finally, tracing from that point forward to illuminate how the proposal for a possible discovery was ultimately transformed into a discovery achieved. The notion of “evident vagueness,” borrowed from H. Garfinkel, M. Lynch, and D. Livingston's (1981) Garfinkel, H., Lynch, M. and Livingston, D. 1981. The work of discovering science construed with materials from the optically discovered pulsar. Philosophy of Social Science, 11: 131–158. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] account of the discovery of an optical pulsar, emerges as an important feature of our analysis. Following H. Garfinkel (2002) Garfinkel, H. 2002. Ethnomethodology's program: Working out Durkheim's aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield..  [Google Scholar], we present our findings as a “tutorial problem” and offer a suggestion for how a program of practice studies in the learning sciences might be pursued.     

Managing Uncertainty During Collaborative Problem Solving in Elementary School Teams: The Role of Peer Influence in Robotics Engineering Activity

This study investigated how interaction with peers influenced the ways students managed uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in a 5th-grade class. The analysis focused on peer responses to individuals’ attempts to manage uncertainty they experienced while engaged in collaborative efforts to design, build, and program robots and achieve assignment objectives. Patterns of peer response were established through discourse analysis of work sessions for 5 teams engaged in 2 collaborative projects. Three socially supportive peer responses and 2 unsupportive peer responses were identified. Peer interaction was influential because students relied on supportive social response to enact most of their uncertainty management strategies. This study provides a useful theoretical contribution to understanding the roles of peer interaction in collaborative problem solving. Conceptualizing collaborative problem solving as a process of negotiating uncertainties can help instructional designers shape tasks and relational contexts to facilitate learning.     

The role of model building in problem solving and conceptual change

This study examines the effects of the activity of building systems models for school-based problems on problem solving and on conceptual change in elementary science classes. During a unit on the water cycle in an Asian elementary school, students constructed systems models of the water cycle. We found that representing ill-structured problems as system models improves problem solving as well as creating beneficial conceptual change related to the topic.     

Criminal justice doctoral programs in the United States and Canada: Findings from a national survey

Characteristics of 13 doctoral programs in criminal justice and criminology are examined. Features described include the age and size of the programs, representation of women and minorities among faculty and graduate students, admissions requirements and admissions activity, financial support available to graduate students, and characteristics of the curricula. Criminal justice doctoral programs vary widely on each of these characteristics.     

Practicality in Virtuality: Finding Student Meaning in Video Game Education

This paper looks at the conceptual differences between video game learning and traditional classroom and laboratory learning. It explores the notion of virtual experience by comparing a commonly used high school laboratory protocol on DNA extraction with a similar experience provided by a biotechnology themed video game. When considered conceptually, the notion of virtual experience is not limited to those experiences generated by computer aided technology, as with a video game or computer simulation. The notion of virtuality can apply to many real world experiences as well. It is proposed that the medium of the learning experience, be it video game or classroom, is not an important distinction to consider; instead, we should seek to determine what kinds of meaningful experiences apply for both classrooms and video games.     

Participative Leadership: Perspectives of Community College Presidents

This grounded theory study addressed the issue of how community college presidents foster active, broad-based participation in campus decision-making processes. This study was based on in-depth interviews with nationally recognized community college presidents selected on the basis of their work in implementing participative governance within their respective institutions. The findings of this study are presented according to the emergence of four axial categories, and a core category is described and explained. Participative leadership is highly interactive and dynamic. Perhaps most importantly, participative leadership is a developmental process for building environments for broad participation. The core category, Visioning Participative Environments, reveals the centrality of the visioning process throughout each sequence of the participative leadership process. This model identifies and explains key participative leadership practices that flow from the theoretical cornerstones.     

A Constructive Development Approach to Assessing Variations within a Community College Population

This study utilized a constructive-developmental approach to accomplish 3 purposes: to create a developmental stage profile for a population of students attending a single community college, to analyze variations within and between subpopulations, and to explore the implications for administrators and planners seeking to provide supportive environments for different populations of students. The resulting profile indicated a wide range of variation within the overall population and significant variations between traditional and non-traditional age students. Implications for educational programming and supportive services were identified by using a constructive-developmental approach as an interpretive framework.