Disenchanted Evenings: The social organization of talk in parent-teacher consultations in UK secondary schools

Parent-teacher consultations represent something of a 'black hole' in our understanding of educational practices. This study, based on audio-recordings, examines the structure and the fine detail of these brief encounters. We identify some similarities with doctor-patient consultations. Teachers are accorded the right to give an uninterrupted 'diagnosis'; and they maintain knowledge differentials through their use of specialist vocabularies and professional registers, while down-playing parents' deployment of their own 'privileged' knowledge of the student. However, we argue that teachers do not unequivocally have the upper hand: that issues of power, identity, competence and moral conduct are at stake for all involved. The complex negotiations and skirmishes that take place during these encounters testify to their precarious location on the boundary between the two institutions of home and school. In requiring homes to render themselves visible, schools also, fleetingly, expose themselves to the risk of critical scrutiny from those on the outside.     

Technology in the Hands of the Extension Officers‐‐Agricultural Extension in Jamaica and Ghana

This paper describes a technology‐based research pilot project currently being undertaken by The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) with Jamaica's Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and the Women in Food and Agricultural Development (WIFAD) in Ghana. A feasibility study undertaken concluded that the use of video with non‐linear field‐based video production equipment can be effective in demonstrating farming techniques. The premise is that video production can be done at the parish/regional level, allowing farmers and agro‐food processors to directly relate to the information relevant to their own agricultural contexts and situations. The paper describes the findings of the feasibility study and the mix of media that has been utilised for the pilot.     

A microfluidic device to study cancer metastasis under chronic and intermittent hypoxia

Metastatic cancer cells must traverse a microenvironment ranging from extremely hypoxic, within the tumor, to highly oxygenated, within the host''s vasculature. Tumor hypoxia can be further characterized by regions of both chronic and intermittent hypoxia. We present the design and characterization of a microfluidic device that can simultaneously mimic the oxygenation conditions observed within the tumor and model the cell migration and intravasation processes. This device can generate spatial oxygen gradients of chronic hypoxia and produce dynamically changing hypoxic microenvironments in long-term culture of cancer cells.