Economic globalization: which side are we on?

Economic globalization is a powerful force which changes the relationship between markets and states, and places the world economy ahead of national economies. In this article, I explore the globalization doctrine and describe the impact of economic globalization on Canada. I suggest a role for university adult educators and call for university extension and continuing education staff to become more vocal in their opposition to inequality.     

Theory and practice in Finnish teacher education: a rhetorical analysis of changing values from the 1960s to the present day

Our aim in this article is to examine the relationship between theory and practice in Finnish teacher education from the 1960s to the present. We identify four different periods to represent this relationship based on our analysis of national committee and evaluation reports. Theory and practice gradually converged, culminating in a research-based agenda that reflects the current situation. This relationship between theory and practice also reflects the ideal teacher of different times and what a teacher’s working orientation should be. We use rhetorical analysis and the concept of a ‘philosophical pair’ introduced by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca to interpret this development.     

Stochastic block model reveals maps of citation patterns and their evolution in time

In this study we map out the large-scale structure of citation networks of science journals and follow their evolution in time by using stochastic block models (SBMs). The SBM fitting procedures are principled methods that can be used to find hierarchical grouping of journals that show similar incoming and outgoing citations patterns. These methods work directly on the citation network without the need to construct auxiliary networks based on similarity of nodes. We fit the SBMs to the networks of journals we have constructed from the data set of around 630 million citations and find a variety of different types of groups, such as communities, bridges, sources, and sinks. In addition we use a recent generalization of SBMs to determine how much a manually curated classification of journals into subfields of science is related to the group structure of the journal network and how this relationship changes in time. The SBM method tries to find a network of blocks that is the best high-level representation of the network of journals, and we illustrate how these block networks (at various levels of resolution) can be used as maps of science.     

Internally Incentivized Interdisciplinarity: Organizational Restructuring of Research and Emerging Tensions

Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: (1) in the allocation of platform resources, (2) in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, (3) in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding.

     

Forward acceleration of the centre of mass during ski skating calculated from force and motion capture data

The purpose of this paper was to present and evaluate a methodology to determine the contribution of bilateral leg and pole thrusts to forward acceleration of the centre of mass (COM) of cross-country skiers from multi-dimensional ground reaction forces and motion capture data. Nine highly skilled cross-country (XC) skiers performed leg skating and V2-alternate skating (V2A) under constant environmental conditions on snow, while ground reaction forces measured from ski bindings and poles and 3D motion with high-speed cameras were captured. COM acceleration determined from 3D motion analyses served as a reference and was compared to the results of the proposed methodology. The obtained values did not differ during the leg skating push-off, and force–time curves showed high similarity, with similarity coefficients (SC) >0.90 in the push-off and gliding phases. In V2A, leg and pole thrusts were shown to contribute 35.1 and 65.9% to the acceleration of the body, respectively. COM acceleration derived from ground reaction forces alone without considering the COM position overestimated the acceleration compared to data from motion analyses, with a mean difference of 17% (P < 0.05) during leg push-off, although the shapes of force–time curves were similar (SC = 0.93). The proposed methodology was shown to be appropriate for determining the acceleration of XC skiers during leg skating push-off from multi-dimensional ground reaction forces and the COM position. It was demonstrated that both the COM position and ground reaction forces are needed to find the source of acceleration.     

Cognitive Correlates of the Covariance in Reading and Arithmetic Fluency: Importance of Serial Retrieval Fluency

This study examines the core predictors of the covariance in reading and arithmetic fluency and the domain-general cognitive skills that explain the core predictors and covariance. Seven-year-old Finnish children (N = 200) were assessed on rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness, letter knowledge, verbal counting, number writing, number comparison, memory skills, and processing and articulation speed in the spring of Grade 1 and on reading and arithmetic fluency in the fall of Grade 2. RAN and verbal counting were strongly associated, and a constructed latent factor, serial retrieval fluency (SRF), was the strongest unique predictor of the shared variance. Other unique predictors were phonological awareness, number comparison, and processing speed. Findings highlight the importance of SRF in clarifying the relation between reading and arithmetic fluency.     

Night Awakening and Its Association With Executive Functioning Across the First Two Years of Life

Longitudinal associations between signaled night awakening and executive functioning (EF) at 8 and 24 months in children with (≥ 3 awakenings, n = 77) and without parent-rated fragmented sleep (≤ 1 awakening, n = 69) were studied. EF was assessed with the Switch task at 8 and 24 months. At 24 months, behavioral tasks and parental ratings of EF (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function–Preschool version) were also used. In the Switch task, children with fragmented sleep were less able to learn stimulus sequences and inhibit previously learned responses than children without fragmented sleep. The groups differed only marginally in parental ratings of EF, and no differences were found in behavioral EF tasks. These results suggest that eye movement-based measures may reveal associations between sleep and EF already in infancy and toddlerhood.     

Does Training in Syllable Recognition Improve Reading Speed? A Computer-Based Trial With Poor Readers From Second and Third Grade

Repeated reading of infrequent syllables has been shown to increase reading speed at the word level in a transparent orthography. This study confirms these results with a computer-based training method and extends them by comparing the training effects of short syllables and long frequent and infrequent syllables, controlling for rapid automatized naming. Our results, based on a sample of 150 poor readers of Finnish, showed clear gains in reading speed regarding all trained syllables, but a transfer effect to the word level was evident only in the case of long infrequent syllables. Rapid automatized naming was associated with initial reading speed, but not with the training effect.     

The Use of Social Media for Artist Marketing: Music Industry Perspectives and Consumer Motivations

This research addresses the question of why consumers use social media especially in relation to music consumption and how music industry companies could improve their social media efforts by matching company strategies with consumer motives. Four case studies and four focus groups with 28 participants were conducted. As a result, this study found five motives for social media participation: (1) access to content, (2) sense of affinity, (3) participation, (4) interaction, and (5) social identity, in decreasing order of effect. For managers this study set out a detailed social media strategy that corresponds with components of consumer motives for participation at decreasing levels of effect.