From Obstacle to Growth Dewey's Legacy of Experience‐Based Art Education

In the last decades theories that emphasise visitors’experience as the key element in the process of meaning‐making have influenced art education in museums considerably. However, there is remarkably little evidence in practice that museums shape their exhibits and educational tools by the actual experiences of visitors. Because museum education is still too much knowledge‐based, people often do not come to understanding or engagement of thinking. This article demonstrates this inconsistency and its consequences based on visitors’conversations during a museum visit while looking at contemporary art. In order to engage visitors into their own thinking and create lasting experiences, the article also investigates Dewey's ideas about experienced‐based education and inquiry learning. The study especially shows that experiences felt as obstacles for interpretation are extremely suitable to stimulate, deepen and improve visitors’engagement in the inquiry cycle.     

Schools and Moral Education: Conformism or Autonomy?

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education.     

Instructions for authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for authors     

Denominational School Identity and the Formation of Personal Identity

Three important factors determine the institutional identity of denominational (Christian) schools: their interpretation of the religious truth claim, their conception of the nature of education, and their view of cultural differences as content of education. We investigate conceptually which of these interpretations of identity are consonant with a view of education as a place where the personal identity of students is constructed. We interpret personal identity in a narrative way, as a permanent process of reflexive construction where consistency over time is not seen as an ideal, given the plurality of postmodern culture.     

Safety and Efficacy of Mobility Interventions in Patients with Femoral Catheters in the ICU: A Prospective Observational Study

Introduction

There are limited data describing mobility interventions provided to patients with femoral catheters. The purpose of this study was to examine the incidence of femoral catheter related adverse effects during physical therapy (PT) sessions in a cardiovascular intensive care unit (ICU).

Methods

This was a prospective, observational study and included patients with at least one femoral catheter. Data were collected after each PT session.

Results

There were 77 subjects with a total of 92 femoral catheters (50 arterial, 15 central venous, and 27 dialysis) treated. A total of 210 separate PT sessions occurred with 630 mobility activities including sitting on side of bed, standing at the bedside, transfers to stretcher chair or regular chair, and walking. There were no catheter related mechanical or thrombotic complications during any of the PT sessions.

Conclusions

Physical therapy sessions, including standing and walking were feasible and safe in cardiovascular ICU patients with femoral catheters who met the criteria for mobility interventions. The results from this study support the hypothesis that early mobilization in patients with femoral catheters is important to minimize functional decline and provide evidence that the presence of femoral catheters alone should not be a reason to limit progressive mobility interventions.Key Words: physical therapy, ICU, early mobilization, femoral catheter     

Personalization in the public sector: An inventory of organizational and user obstacles towards personalization of electronic services in the public sector

The public sector more and more deploys personalized e-government services. Personalization offers great opportunities to make communication more effective and efficient, to infer and predict citizens' behavior and to even influence behavior. However, some drawbacks must be considered. Important organizational barriers hinder the implementation of personalized e-government services and important user obstacles, such as access, trust, control, and privacy, have to be overcome to make fruitful use of those personalized e-government services.     

School and teacher factors associated with frequency of ICT use by mathematics teachers: Country comparisons

This paper explores school and teacher factors that are associated with the frequency of use of ICT by mathematics teachers. The SITES 2006 data base was used to compare countries with a relative high percentage of frequently ICT-using mathematics teachers (HIMA countries) with countries with a relative low percentage of frequently ICT-using mathematics teachers (LOMA countries). Meaningful effect sizes (≤?0.5 or ≥0.5) for 29% of the items in the SITES 2006 database were found. The findings suggest that mathematics teachers in HIMA countries, more than in LOMA countries apply a learner-centered approach in their educational practice and have a focus on life long learning competencies. In addition, compared to LOMA countries, school leaders in HIMA countries, are active in stimulating the use of ICT and encouraging teachers to apply new ways of teaching and learning. The school level items of the SITES 2006 database with meaningful effect size were factor-analyzed resulting in five factors: 1. active communication, 2. school leadership development, 3. assessment orientation, 4. ICT use by school leaders and 5. Bottom–up change orientation. Country profile scores for HIMA and LOMA countries and for culturally comparable countries were generated to illustrate how these country profiles can be used to inform ICT policy.     

Knowledge sharing in inter-unit cooperative episodes: The impact of organizational structure dimensions

We study how classic organizational structure dimensions should be altered to be more adapted to organizational knowledge sharing. In particular, we look at the dimensions: coordination, centralization, formalization, and specialization, in their relationship to the concept of knowledge sharing. Empirical data was collected by means of a questionnaire in two companies. Our findings indicated that expected relationships, such as the negative effect of centralization or the positive effect of lower formalization, were not found. Interdependency and knowledge complexity, caused by specialization, had an important interacting effect on the relationship between coordination and knowledge sharing. A comparison between the two companies revealed that the organization-specific context in which the coordination is applied influences the potential of this coordination for knowledge sharing.     

Objects of study, objectivity and objectivation in attribution research

These short comments try to develop an argumentation in favour of broadening perspectives in attribution research in academic settings. A distinction is made between research purposes that merely aim at developing existing attribution paradigms, or that on the contrary aim at a better understanding of the function of these attributions in a broader societal context. According to the author such a broadening of perspectives also necessitates an analysis of different positioning in society.