Doing,being, becoming: a historical appraisal of the modalities of project-based learning

Any pedagogy of media practice sits at the intersection between training for employment and education for critical thinking. As such, the use of projects is a primary means of structuring learning experiences as a means of mirroring professional practice. Yet, our understanding of the nature of projects and of project-based learning is arguably under-theorised and largely taken for granted. This paper attempts to address this issue through a synthesis of the literature from organisational studies and experiential learning. The article aims to shift the debate around project-based learning away from an instrumentalist agenda, to one that considers the social context and lived experience of projects and re-conceptualises projects as ontological modalities of doing, being and becoming. In this way, the article aims to provide a means for thinking about the use of project-based learning within the media practice curriculum that draws on metaphors of discovery, rather than of construction.     

Divergences in learning and memory among wild zebrafish: Do sex and body size play a role?

Given its diverse ecological distribution, zebrafish has great potential for investigations on the effect of habitat characteristics on cognition. Studies were conducted on four wild-caught zebrafish populations to understand the role of native habitat, sex, and body size in determining learning through a novel task associated with a food reward. The habitat variables, namely, the relative abundances of zebrafish and predatory fish and the substrate and vegetation diversity, were quantified during fish sampling. Fish were subjected to a novel task to find a food reward in a maze over successive training trials followed by a test for memory. Performances of subjects were based on time taken to find the food reward and number of mistakes made during trials, and tests for memory. The experiments revealed significant differences in learning rates and memory across populations. Males made significantly fewer mistakes than females only within two populations. No relationship between performance and body size was observed. The differences in learning and memory among wild zebrafish could be due to differences in predation, complexity, and stability of the native habitats. These findings suggest the possible role of multiple interacting factors in determining learning and memory among populations and point to a need for incorporating effects of several factors in future studies.     

Stabilization of collective formations with speed and controller gain heterogeneity and saturation

This paper studies collective formations of multi-agent systems, modeled with unicycle dynamics, while admitting heterogeneity in both controller gains and speeds of the agents along with saturation on the controller outputs. This addresses a practical scenario where the speeds are usually nonidentical and the controller gains may vary due to imperfect implementation. The paper analyzes the effect of both heterogeneous controller gains and speeds simultaneously on the collective formations obtained by optimizing the average linear momentum of the group of agents. A detailed analysis of the two-agent system is given in the paper and some results on the locus of the collective centroid with varying controller gains are obtained. Effect of saturation is also studied for two cases when the controller gains are bounded and when the control efforts are bounded. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the theoretical findings.     

Bourdieu, 'Habitus', and Educational Research: Is it all worth the candle?

A recent critique of educational research published by the Office of Standards in Education has declared, largely on the basis of research reported in this journal, that Bourdieu- and particularly the concept of habitus- appears to have little to offer educational research. This proposition is considered in a critical evaluation of the origin of habitus in Bourdieu's work and its ability to fulfil its theoretical functions. It is concluded that there is no serious alternative but for those whose task it is to provide scientific accounts of social processes to engage with the concepts of disciplined thought - including that of Bourdieu.     

Reciprocal working by education, health and social services: lessons for a less-travelled road

The 2001 Gulliford Lecture was given by Professor Roy McConkey, of the University of Ulster. In this article, based on his lecture, Roy McConkey reflects on some of the themes in Ron Gulliford's work from the 1960s. These themes still seem relevant to our work with pupils and students with special educational needs today. Roy McConkey focuses, in particular, on collaboration between practitioners from different professional backgrounds. He invites the reader to reflect on some of the strengths of current practice and to consider the ways in which these initiatives might be taken forward. This article closes with a set of strategies that could be used to develop innovative, holistic, inter-agency approaches in future.     

The effects of recognition and recall study tasks with feedback in a computer-based vocabulary lesson

Should computer-based study tasks use multiple-choice or constructed-response question format? It was hypothesized that a constructucted-response study task (CR) with feedback would be superior to multiple-choice study tasks that allowed either single or multiple tries (STF and MTF). Two additional recognition study task treatments were included that required an overt constructed response after feedback (STF+OR and MTF+OR) in order to control for possible confounding caused by response form mismatch between the recognition study task and recall posttest. Graduate students (N=133) were randomly assigned to one of the five computer-delivered treatments. Relative to STF, posttest effect sizes were: STF 相似文献