Creating a New Borderland on the Screen

Abstract

This article deals with the outcome of an educational research project conducted at the University of Ghent. ¹ 1. A project on the authority of the Ministry of Education (Flemish Community, Belgium): ‘An empirical research into the possibilities and problems in creating a European dimension in the teaching of literature’ (supervision: N. Rowan, G. Schelstraete, R. Soetaert). We started creating new teaching materials for teaching literature from a European perspective, and ended up with the conviction that the opening up of the traditional (ie national) literary canon should lead to a global revision of the literature course design. In such a revision the multimedia hypertext should play a key role, as we try to illustrate with two hypermedia applications on classic European novels: Don Quixoteand Robinson Crusoe.     

A cause of water-sensitivity in modern oil paint films: The formation of magnesium sulphate

Unvarnished twentieth-century oil paintings are often sensitive to aqueous swabbing, a method routinely employed by conservators for surface cleaning. This study proposes a connection between sensitivity and the presence of magnesium sulphate heptahydrate which has been identified on the surface of some of water-sensitive paintings. The probable source of magnesium is magnesium carbonate, an additive in some twentieth-century oil paints, which has reacted with atmospheric sulphur dioxide (SO₂). Films made using modern manufactured paints and formulations made in the laboratory were exposed to gaseous SO₂ and raised relative humidity and examined using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction to characterize the crystalline entities. Films containing magnesium carbonate formed magnesium sulphite and sulphate hydrates. Films containing zinc oxide were also investigated. These formed zinc and sulphur containing salts. Sensitivity to swabbing with water before and after exposure was evaluated. Films that developed salts, demonstrated increased sensitivity to aqueous swabbing after exposure to SO₂. Findings suggest that increased water sensitivity may be due to a combination of the formation of hygroscopic degradation products and to weakening of the paint film due to salt-induced disruption of the surface.     

Figures of Disengagement: Charles Taylor,Scientific Parenting,and the Paradox of Late Modernity

In this essay Luc Van den Berge and Stefan Ramaekers take the idea(l) of “scientific parenting” as an example of ambiguities that are typical of our late‐modern condition. On the one hand, parenting seems like a natural thing to do, which makes “scientific parenting” sound like an oxymoron; on the other hand, a disengaged stance informed by the latest scientific findings is uncritically demanded of parents, as such an approach is conceived of as a panacea. Instead of taking sides in this discussion, the authors seek a way to make sense of it, drawing upon the work of Charles Taylor, who offers a striking account of our contingent modern condition as well as of our ontological human constitution. They focus particularly on two examples Taylor gives where the contingent self‐understanding does not coincide with our timeless human features. This opens a space for what might be considered paradoxes in our late‐modern Western culture. This essay thus confronts Taylor's philosophy with the new parenting discourse to reveal how our moral horizons have evolved. Following this approach, the authors both expand on Taylor's thinking about our late modernity and at the same time try to assess the new scientific parenting discourse.     

One episode, two lenses

A deep understanding of students?? learning processes is one of the core challenges of research in mathematics education. To achieve this, different theoretical lenses are available. The question is how these different lenses compare and contrast, and how they can be coordinated and combined to provide a more comprehensive view on the topic of study. To investigate this, one single episode is analyzed with two theoretical lenses, the instrumental genesis perspective and the onto-semiotic approach. The results from this joint analysis provide a rich view on the observed phenomena and help to identify the affordances and constraints of each of the two theoretical approaches and to articulate them. This way, the networking of theories proves to affect theoretical advancements.     

Sports and Violence Reflected in the Mirror of Modern Societies: Sport Ambiguities

The theory of Norbert Elias, with regard to the ‘civilising process’, widely taken up and nourished by his epigons such as Eric Dunning, does not fully explain the reasons why sport, far from systematically pacifying, tends equally to reproduce or amplify certain violent tendencies in societal groups, when it does not in itself constitute the germ of the violence in the heart of contemporary societies. In fact, Elias considers the ‘new’ social configuration as a tool used to control violence, forgetting that the institutionalisation of budding practices also bears witness to social and societal transformations, including free time, access to education, growth of cities, the economic development of states, circulation of goods, merchandise and people, the forming of the media and communication cultures, and the dissemination of information and cultural models. The purpose of this study is to show how his singular posture prevents Elias from understanding all the facets of sport as being prey to its own tensions and contradictions, particularly when it is a case of examining the ‘educational’ positions of the activity reflected in the mirror of the socio-historical conditions of the production of culture and the ways in which the practice of sport has been instrumentalised.     

Sport and Civilisation: Violence Mastered. From the Lack of a Definition for Violence to the Illusory Pacifying Role of Modern Sports

Following the seminal works of Norbert Elias, with regard to the ‘civilising process’, modern sports are generally considered by the scientific community as being, on the one hand, a privileged means that has long facilitated and contributed to ‘the control and learning of the self-control of impulses’ and, on the other, as a political device, which has facilitated, by penetrating into the private sphere in a restrained and play-oriented fashion, the state's monopoly of violence. They are also considered to have facilitated the socio-genesis of modern states. But is this link so evident that this ‘new’ social configuration can be considered a new tool at the service of violence control? Acceptance is so strong that one can almost forget the contradictions, at least the questions, which can and should emerge from this proposition. It should in fact face up to criticism on a certain number of concrete points: definition of violence, rejection of the long-term view, sport be strictly considered in the light of the pacification of habits and social control, hooliganism, etc. This introductory article presents a series of reflections which aim to enrich Elias's theory by underlining both its accuracy and its weak points.     

Cognitive-motor dual-task ability of athletes with and without intellectual impairment

Cognition is important in many sports, for example, making split-second-decisions under pressure, or memorising complex movement sequences. The dual-task (DT) paradigm is an ecologically valid approach for the assessment of cognitive function in conjunction with motor demands. This study aimed to determine the impact of impaired intelligence on DT performance. The motor task required balancing on one leg on a beam, and the cognitive task was a multiple-object-tracking (MOT) task assessing dynamic visual-search capacity. The sample included 206 well-trained athletes with and without intellectual impairment (II), matched for sport, age and training volume (140 males, 66 females, M age = 23.2 ± 4.1 years, M training experience = 12.3 ± 5.7 years). In the single-task condition, II-athletes showed reduced balance control (F = 55.9, P < .001, η² = .23) and reduced MOT (F = 86.3, P < .001, η² = .32) compared to the control group. A mixed-model ANCOVA revealed significant differences in DT performance for the balance and the MOT task between both groups. The DT costs were significantly larger for the II-athletes (?8.28% versus ?1.34% for MOT and ?33.13% versus ?12.89% for balance). The assessment of MOT in a DT paradigm provided insight in how impaired intelligence constrains the ability of II-athletes to successfully perform at the highest levels in the complex and dynamical sport-environment.     

Evolution of the personal teaching models of prospective secondary school science teachers as expressed through metaphors

This study analyses the evolution of the personal metaphors of 31 science graduates enrolled in a Master’s degree course in Secondary Education Teaching during the 2012–13 academic year. The instrument used was an open questionnaire that included asking the participants to make drawings representing the roles of the teacher. Four categories of metaphor were considered: behaviourist/transmissive, cognitivist/constructivist, situative/socio-historical, and self-referential. It was found that most of the prospective teachers were indeed able to conceptualize their roles in the form of metaphors. Comparison of the results before and after the teaching practicum revealed no changes in most of the participants’ metaphors and associated models. Instead, these appeared to be firmly set already at the beginning of the Master’s course, and remained uninfluenced by either the course or the practicum. Only a minority of the participants showed changes in their metaphors—5 with progressive changes, and 5 with regressive changes.     

An international online survey of the practices and perceptions of higher education professors with respect to the assessment of learning in the classroom

In a context where public action must demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency, and where the links between teaching and the quality of learning are regularly highlighted, it seems relevant to identify the trends and logic that govern university professors’ decisions with respect to the modes of learning assessment favoured within the framework of their delivery of teaching services. Moreover, given that university teaching practices are changing rapidly due to the introduction of different views of the learning process, one might conclude that the same holds for assessment practices. Through our research work, we led to the development of a trilingual (English, French and Spanish) online survey devoted to an international investigation into the classroom assessment practices of higher education teachers. This survey proposes an online platform that will allow institutions of higher learning to document some of their current practices and to compare observed trends with what is happening elsewhere, in accordance with differing missions and traditions. These research notes are thus intended to describe the survey itself and to show how the questionnaire and individual items were structured, in addition to providing an overview of treatments within and between institutions that followed the testing.     

The effect of distributed practice on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics

In this study the effect of the reduced distribution of study activities on students’ conceptual understanding of statistics is investigated in a quasi-experiment. Conceptual understanding depends on coherent and error free knowledge structures. Students need time to construct such knowledge structures. A curriculum reform at our university resulted in statistics courses which were considerably shortened in time, thereby limiting students’ possibility to distribute study activities. Independent samples of students from before and after the reform were compared. To gauge conceptual understanding of statistics, students answered open ended questions in which they were asked to explain and relate important statistical concepts. It was shown that the reduction of distributed practice had a negative effect on students’ understanding. The finding that condensed courses make it more difficult for students to reach proper understanding of the subject matter is of interest for anyone who is engaged in reforming curricula or designing courses.