Sitting in Silence: Managing Aural Body Rhetoric in Public Restrooms

Proposing an enhancement to the concepts of verbal and corporeal rhetorics, this article offers the concept of aural body rhetoric, arguing that nonvocal sounds produced by the body can also provide rhetorical messages, create rhetorical challenges and prompt the conscious management of bodily sounds, particularly in panopticonic spaces (panauricons) in which the body is hidden from view. Using the urinary sounds made by transsexual men in public restrooms as an example, this article examines this space as a panauricon that creates a rhetorical challenge for these men and has prompted the dissemination of various rhetorical strategies within the community of transmen in the United States.     

Psychometric quality of a student evaluation of teaching survey in higher education

Student evaluations of teaching (SET) are used globally by higher education institutions for performance assessment of academic staff and evaluation of course quality. Higher education institutions commonly develop their own SETs to measure variables deemed relevant to them. However, ‘home-grown’ SETs are rarely assessed psychometrically. One potential consequence of this limitation is that an invalidated instrument may not provide accurate information for the intended purposes. Moreover, in the absence of psychometric assessment, the students’ voices collected by the SETs often fail to provide insight relative to their intended purpose. The present study evaluates a ‘home-grown’ SET using a Rasch model and confirmatory factor analysis. Our results identified weaknesses in two areas: the rating categories and the number of items used to measure the intended constructs. Suggestions are provided to address these weaknesses. This work provides an additional tool set for critical analysis of SET that is generally applicable for a variety of institutions, including those in Asia.     

Keller's Personalized System of Instruction: the search for a basic distance learning paradigm

This paper presents research results and arguments supporting the possibility of using Keller's Personalized System of Instruction as a basic paradigm for distance learning. A study connected with PSI at Athabasca University is reported and discussed. A list of advantages and disadvantages of PSI as a basic paradigm for distance learning is also presented and discussed. The report concludes by suggesting that a paradigm for distance learning would facilitate communication on distance learning activity and that PSI would provide a basic paradigm for distance learning while still allowing for educational variations within distance learning to occur and develop.     

How should I regulate my emotions if I want to run faster?

The present study investigated the effects of emotion regulation strategies on self-reported emotions and 1600?m track running performance. In stage 1 of a three-stage study, participants (N?=?15) reported emotional states associated with best, worst and ideal performance. Results indicated that a best and ideal emotional state for performance composed of feeling happy, calm, energetic and moderately anxious whereas the worst emotional state for performance composed of feeling downhearted, sluggish and highly anxious. In stage 2, emotion regulation interventions were developed using online material and supported by electronic feedback. One intervention motivated participants to increase the intensity of unpleasant emotions (e.g. feel more angry and anxious). A second intervention motivated participants to reduce the intensity of unpleasant emotions (e.g. feel less angry and anxious). In stage 3, using a repeated measures design, participants used each intervention before running a 1600?m time trial. Data were compared with a no treatment control condition. The intervention designed to increase the intensity of unpleasant emotions resulted in higher anxiety and lower calmness scores but no significant effects on 1600?m running time. The intervention designed to reduce the intensity of unpleasant emotions was associated with significantly slower times for the first 400?m. We suggest future research should investigate emotion regulation, emotion and performance using quasi-experimental methods with performance measures that are meaningful to participants.     

Generalizing the dynamic field theory of the A-not-B error beyond infancy: three-year-olds' delay- and experience-dependent location memory biases

Thelen and colleagues recently proposed a dynamic field theory (DFT) to capture the general processes that give rise to infants' performance in the Piagetian A-not-B task. According to this theory, the same general processes should operate in noncanonical A-not-B-type tasks with children older than 12 months. Three predictions of the DFT were tested by examining 3-year-olds' location memory errors in a task with a homogeneous task space. Children pointed to remembered locations after delays of 0 s to 10 s. The spatial layout of the possible targets and the frequency with which children moved to each target was varied. As predicted by the DFT, children's responses showed a continuous spatial drift during delays toward a longer term memory of previously moved-to locations. Furthermore, these delay-dependent effects were reduced when children moved to an "A" location on successive trials, and were magnified on the first trial to a nearby "B" location. Thus, the DFT generalized to capture the performance of 3-year-old children in a new task. In contrast to predictions of the DFT, however, 3-year-olds' responses were also biased toward the midline of the task space-an effect predicted by the category adjustment (CA) model. These data suggest that young children's spatial memory responses are affected by delay- and experience-dependent processes as well as the geometric structure of the task space. Consequently, two current models of spatial memory-the DFT and the CA model-provide incomplete accounts of children's location memory abilities.     

Action learning in John Lewis

A small group of training professionals within the John Lewis Partnership set up an action learning group about 2 years ago. The main aim was to explore the technique for our own learning and development. The timing and lifespan of the group reflected the generally strategic and long-term nature of our projects. One of these was to introduce action learning to a group of operational managers in one of our department stores. Key benefits which arose for this group were: the opportunity to spend time thinking about one aspect of work in a focused way; the learning that arose both about the action learning experience as well as about our projects; the challenge provided by the group, which proved an incentive to move work along quickly; the bonds of trust and support established which have continued after the group ended it's life. We have been able to learn from our own experience and that of the pilot operational managers group to help us expand both the use and the usefulness of action learning for the organization.     

The influence of policy and context on teachers’ social media use

Research on teachers’ use of social media has typically assumed that it is a) driven by a need for professional learning and b) best understood in terms of individual motivations. In this study, we use a dataset of nearly 600,000 tweets posted to one or more of 48 Regional Educational Twitter Hashtags associated with 44 U.S. states. To explore the influence of local contextual factors on hashtag- and account-level activity in these hashtags, we use an analytic approach heretofore uncommon in social media-focussed education research: generalised linear and multilevel modelling. At the hashtag level, higher numbers of teachers within a state, proportions of students receiving subsidised meals, student-to-teacher ratios, and amounts of state spending per child are associated with more activity within a regional hashtag; by contrast, more left-leaning state governments and citizenries are associated with less activity. At the account level, more experienced accounts and accounts in more right-leaning states contribute more tweets to these hashtags. These findings reinforce established understandings of Twitter as a site for teacher learning; however, they also underline the importance of acknowledging other important purposes of teachers’ Twitter use, including receiving emotional support and engaging in activism. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic

• Many teachers use Twitter (and other social media platforms) for professional purposes.
• Teachers have identified professional learning—among other purposes—as motivating their use of Twitter.
• Regional Educational Twitter Hashtags are diverse learning spaces for teachers and other education stakeholders.

What this paper adds

• Local context and policy factors help influence teachers’ use of Twitter.
• Teachers may turn to Twitter because of a lack of emotional or political support—not just a lack of material support or professional development opportunities.
• Individual and idiosyncratic factors remain important in explaining teachers’ engagement with social media.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Informal spaces like social media may supplement formal support mechanisms for teachers.
• Teachers’ use of social media may help administrators and policymakers identify existing gaps to be repaired in those formal support mechanisms.
• Support for teachers should be conceived holistically and include emotional and political support.

     

Defending Qualitative Change: The View From Dynamical Systems Theory

A central controversy in developmental science, enflamed by nativist accounts, is whether development is best viewed as a series of qualitative or continuous changes. This article defends the notion of qualitative change from the perspective of dynamical systems theory (DST). Qualitative change within DST refers to the shift that occurs when a system goes from one attractor state through an instability into a different attractor state. Such changes occur on the second‐to‐second timescale of behavior. Thus, developmental analysis must always stay local, grounded in the real‐time attractor states around which behavior is organized. This article also demonstrates that qualitative and continuous change should not be cast in opposition. They are aligned concepts that work together across multiple timescales.