现代主义、台湾文学和全球化趋势对文学体制的冲击

“现代主义”和“台湾文学”是我多年关注的课题，两者都在全球化加速的21世纪初受到不小冲击，产生了一些质变，使得许多旧有的研究典范不再适用，鞭策我们去探寻更具诠释力的分析框架。比如说，以东亚为范畴的比较文学框架。全球化和区域整合是一体的两面；近20年来的全球化趋势下，东亚地区茁生了一个强劲的、生气盎然的文化市场，区域内部的文化交易量骤增，学者们也开始用心思索这个地区所呈现的、有别于西方的现代性样貌。全球化趋势下新的文化生态逐渐成形，随之而来的是文类位阶的调整和美学意识的转变。或许回溯一下“文学”当初被型构成一个现代性体制时的历史状态，可以提供一些有用的线索，帮助我们透视正在发生的诸多看来颇为陌生的文化现象。     

Internationalisation and distance education: a Hong Kong case study

The accelerating globalisation of world economic relations has been paralleled by a progressive internationalisation of higher education, including the use of distance education. But the modification of distance education materials and the provision of local tutorial support are only rarely undertaken, despite the fact that in social science and the humanities such materials are culturally saturated. This Hong Kong case study in teacher education examines the issues, describes the opportunities and difficulties involved, and argues that cultural adaptation merits a higher priority than at present.     

One Teacher Trainer's Perspective on a Sample of Academic Educational Research Papers

In this study a teacher trainer analyses 56 papers from the journal Educational Studies and, applying specific criteria, determines the extent to which their content can be said to have applications to and implications for educational practice. Section 1 of the study explores the general context of the sample papers. Findings here show that in this set of papers the academic research is conducted and written almost exclusively by staff within Schools of Education in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs); that the authorship includes a higher proportion of males than females; that research style is mainly empirical and that gender may play a role in the research style itself; and, significantly for this study, that the titles of these papers, when considered exclusively, imply a close association with the classroom context. In Section 2, a systematic scrutiny of the content of a sub-sample of the papers reveals a significant trend of potential, as opposed to actual relevance to educational policy and practice—at variance with the findings for the study of their titles alone in Section 1. Additional findings are that there is little evidence in the papers of direct collaboration between HEIs and schools. Finally, Section 3 contains the author's personal reflections on communication of the research message within the sample and ways are suggested in which the writing in academic journals generally might be made 'barrier-free' to the wider educational community. Concluding comments tend to be made as appropriate within the body of the paper at the point of discussion. The main conclusion briefly considers the role of Initial Teacher Training tutors in Higher Education, and the issue of monitoring language and communication style in academic research.     

Young Children's Spatial Representations Developed through Exploration of a Desktop Virtual Reality Scene

Virtual Reality (VR) technology seems to offer the opportunity of designing 3D worlds and navigation activities which provide settings that are close to children's everyday experiences, capitalising on their enthusiasm for videogame-like technologies.This paper describes how different types of exploration of a VR scene by 6[emsp4 ]y-old children affected their performance in a series of spatial tasks. Individual children explored a desktop virtual world where we varied both the visual perspective on the VR scene (route vs. survey view) and the level of exploration control (active vs. passive movement). We measured children's knowledge of the spatial layout of the environment through their memory of objects' location in the virtual scene and through the analysis of their wayfinding abilities within the scene.The results indicate that children were able to develop and display different levels of allocentric knowledge about the virtual world depending on the way they had familiarized with it and on the characteristics of the task demands. This finding contributes to inform the design of VR technologies aimed at supporting or evaluating spatial abilities in children of this age.     

Mexican American and European American College Students' Beliefs About Causes,Cures, and Sources of Help for Anxiety

Mexican American and European American college students rated an empirically derived list of the causes, cures, and sources of help for anxiety. Main effects were obtained for ethnicity on ratings related to cures and one source of help for anxiety. There were also significant differences in ratings of cause and cure beliefs for anxiety between men and women. Level of acculturation, however, was not found to be related to ratings among the Mexican American participants.