Distance training for operating equipment: A cost‐benefit and return‐on‐investment analysis

Abstract

This study takes the perspective of an equipment vendor that is providing training on its equipment. The study shows that the total cost of Remote Access Distance Learning (RADL), training provided over a voice and data network, is higher than the total cost of classroom‐based training (CBT). However, the profits from RADL are higher than the profits from CBT, since it is possible to charge students a higher price for RADL than for CBT.     

Response to Woods – When rewards and sanctions fail: a case study of a primary school rule‐breaker

This paper proposes a postmodernism and cultural studies influenced collorary to Cynthia Dillard's notion of "an endarkened feminist epistemology." The paper illustrates that Dillard has developed the notion principally as enabling of a project of recueillement : the articulation of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm. What remains unaddressed in this project (albeit understandably), is the question of what difference difference makes within an endarkened epistemology. Illustrating that difference always compounds and complicates matters, the paper proceeds to draw on postmodernist and cultural studies theory to work with the ways in which race, gender, and sexual orientation interplay to produce an articulation that does not displace the notion of an endarkened feminist epistemology but rather runs parallel and acts as a corollary in the same dual project of contributing to both the "uriously belated" examination of race and racism in educational research in general, and the development of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm in particular.     

Additional support needs reforms and social justice in Scotland

New additional support‐needs legislation in Scotland sought to recognise the way in which poverty, as well as individual impairment, contribute to the creation of children's difficulties in learning. As well as identifying a wider range of needs, the legislation sought to provide parents, irrespective of social background, with more powerful means of challenging local authority decisions on resource allocation, with the aim of delivering a fairer system. This paper uses Scottish Government statistics and family case studies drawn from an ESRC‐funded project (RES‐062‐23‐0803) to examine the links between social deprivation, the identification of additional support needs and parents' ability to use the new dispute resolution mechanisms. There is a strong association between the identification of additional support needs and social deprivation and this is particularly marked in relation to non‐normative difficulties, such as social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, compared with normative difficulties such as blindness and deafness. Statutory educational plans, which provide greater rights to additional resources and formal dispute resolution mechanisms, are disproportionately distributed to parents in more advantaged neighbourhoods. Parents from middle‐class backgrounds appear to be able to use their social and cultural capital more effectively to challenge local authority decisions. The paper concludes that some funding for additional support needs should be allocated on the basis of social deprivation, but there continues to be a need for the assessment and resourcing of individual needs, since poverty has material consequences for individual children, whose difficulties may be overlooked if an entirely systemic approach is adopted. There is a need for greater investment in advocacy service to enable parents from poorer backgrounds to exercise their rights.     

It's All Very Well,in Theory: Theoretical Perspectives and Their Applications in Contemporary Pedagogical Research

Current debates about educational theory are concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power and thereby issues such as who possesses a “truth” and how have they arrived at it, what questions are important to ask, and how should they best be answered. As such, these debates revolve around questions of preferred, appropriate, and useful theoretical perspectives. This paper overviews the key theoretical perspectives that are currently used in physical education pedagogy research and considers how these inform the questions we ask and shapes the conduct of research. It also addresses what is contested with respect to these perspectives. The paper concludes with some “cautions” about allegiances to and use of theories in line with concerns for the applicability of educational research to pressing social issues.     

Critical Religious Education and the National Framework for Religious Education in England and Wales

In our teaching, research, and community service, both of us have sought to engage and extend the work of interfaith education. We write from our perspectives as a Jewish educator and as a Christian educator. Both of us have experienced the gifts and challenges this work engenders. The purpose of this article is simple: to offer a typology for understanding several of the active strategies for interfaith education. By demonstrating some of its strengths and challenges, we hope to spark a discussion and generate new practices.     

Modern languages and special educational needs: a review of research

The Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 requires that all pupils of secondary school age should have equal access to a broad and balanced curriculum. The inclusion of language studies within the statutory framework of the Northern Ireland curriculum has led to a significant expansion in the teaching of modern languages to pupils with special educational needs. Many teachers are now faced with the task of teaching pupils who hitherto would have been excluded from the language department and some teachers in special schools now have to teach a language with which they themselves are unfamiliar. This paper is the first stage of a research and development project funded by the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (NICCEA); it examines some research evidence relating to the challenge of teaching languages to pupils with special educational needs.     

Comment on ‘Performance analysis in football: A critical review and implications for future research’

Abstract

MacKenzie and Cushion (2013) recently reviewed performance analysis research in association football (soccer). Their critical review focused on several themes related to methodological approaches such as sample size, match context and operational definitions and the implications of research findings to professional practice. In this response letter, we comment on additional pragmatic concerns regarding these key themes as well as some of the difficulties commonly faced when conducting performance analysis research.     

Bodies,Meanings and Movement: A Comparison of the Language of a Physical Education Lesson and a Feldenkrais Movement Class

In Western societies since (and probably before) Descartes, the human body has been objectified and alienated from the self, something to be subdued, managed and more recently worked upon as symbol of self-value. Sport and exercise are sites where the objectification of the body has been traditionally promoted. In recent times with the scientisation of elite sport and the commodification of bodies in sport, the objectification of the body has taken new forms and achieved greater prominence. Physical education as the school site for body work has been implicated in the process of objectification and alienation. The traditional practices of physical education, including choices in teacher language, position bodies as objects, and movement as an instrumental outcome of practice. Not all movement practices, however, subscribe to this approach. This paper will compare the language practices of teachers in a physical education lesson and a Feldenkrais movement class as these constitute different forms of embodiment, different selves. Its purpose is to provide further resources for critical reflection on the ways in which pedagogical practices position students and contribute to the shaping of particular forms of subjectivity.     

‘I came like the thunder and I vanish like the wind’: exploring genre repertoire and document work in the Assemblea operai e studenti of 1969

This paper will examine a suite of documents generated within one Italian post-war social movement as a means to explore four assertions: (a) that the common practice of addressing the printed word generated by social movements primarily as bearers of linguistic and conceptual content (‘texts’) too often comes at the price of ignoring certain fundamental matters of which the materiality of these documents can inform us; (b) that, connected to this, the lenses of genre and genre repertoire offer important means of deepening our readings not only of the content of social movement documents, but also the broader context of their production and use; (c) used with care, understandings of genre, genre repertoire and the materiality of documents can likewise inform the efforts of those working—in the community, in the history and heritage professions, and at the intersection of all three—to preserve and manage such documents; (d) reflections upon genre, genre repertoire and the materiality of documents may also contribute to the ongoing development of a critical information studies.     

Student perceptions of an upper-level, undergraduate human anatomy laboratory course without cadavers

Several programs in health professional education require or are considering requiring upper-level human anatomy as prerequisite for their applicants. Undergraduate students are confronted with few institutions offering such a course, in part because of the expense and logistical issues associated with a cadaver-based human anatomy course. This study describes the development of and student reactions to an upper-level human anatomy laboratory course for undergraduate students that used a regional approach and contemporary, alternative teaching methods to a cadaver-based course. The alternative pedagogy to deliver the curriculum included use of commercially available, three-dimensional anatomical virtual dissection software, anatomical models coupled with a learning management system to offer Web-based learning, and a new laboratory manual with collaborative exercises designed to develop the student's anatomical skills and collaborative team skills. A Likert-scale survey with open-ended questions was used to ascertain student perceptions of the course and its various aspects. Students perceived that the noncadaver-based, upper-level human anatomy course with an engaging, regional approach is highly valuable in their learning of anatomy. anatomy.