Punditry as a reward system: audience construction and the logics of the punditry sphere

The article explores the relationship between the punditry sphere and democracy by analyzing how pundits and media organizations think about their audience. It also examines the role of punditry in the political environment in which the media organizations operate. Using Portugal as an example, the study draws on data gathered from interviews with pundits, journalists and news editors. Findings suggest that pundits and media organizations construct a punditry sphere that revolves around the circles of power. The article argues that this conception of the punditry sphere reflects the reward system under which pundits and media organizations work. Punditry seems to be a field primarily oriented to pundits themselves and to managing their stakes in the public arena while operating as a sphere where media organizations rework their relations with and within established powers, where politicians hold a special place. This construction reflects the co-dependence between media organizations and circles of power in Portugal and offers organizational-structural understanding of the logics of the punditry sphere and the role pundits play in public communication.     

Working with practitioners’ perspectives: supporting father involvement in family services in England

The paper draws on a study aiming to work with practitioners’ perspectives to support involvement through family services. Data were collected from a cluster sample of practitioners conducting father groups in south-west England. The paper focuses upon working with their perspectives. Two issues in their perspectives were associated with ‘masculinity’ and ‘blocks’ preventing father involvement. Using an interventionist-based method known as the ‘change laboratory’, conducted through a series of development work research (DWR) workshops, practitioners reflected on contradictions in their practice. Implications from the study suggest that, first, if practitioners identify contradictions with which they work, they can explore possibilities for developing their work. Second, being an involved father may be played out differently in terms of identity, according to social and cultural contexts. By implication, practitioners can help fathers to express themselves in several identities and support them in their understanding, through being part of a group.     

The interplay between structure and agency in the enactment of STEM policy

In their paper, Hoeg and Bencze argue that current STEM curriculum guidelines prioritise the training of a workforce in detriment of a democratically grounded education for citizenship. We agree that there is an insufficient questioning about which type of citizenship STEM curricula would favour and wish to contribute to this debate by (1) problematising different meanings and aspects of citizenship in different models of democracy and (2) exploring the dialectical nature of structure and agency in the discursive construction of educational (policy) discourse. We also discuss results from recent empirical research about teachers’ ideas on citizenship education in order to challenge views that assume a linearity between educational policy and its enactment.     

Becoming Teacher: A/r/tographical Inquiry and Visualising Metaphor

A great deal has been written about the representational use of metaphor to understand teacher candidates’/new teachers’ conceptions of teacher practice. This article will discuss recent research that explored secondary visual art teacher candidates’/new teachers’ visualising of visual metaphors to provoke their a/r/tographical inquiry into their perceptions of practice. This article engages with the Deleuzian conception becoming as well as the ontology of difference to provoke the reimagination of metaphor in research. We offer new understandings about visualising the visual in research and the methodological implications of relational research practices.     

“Oh Yeah,I’m Mexican. What Type are You?” Changing the Way Preservice Teachers Interpret and Respond to the Literate Identities of Children

This writing describes a literacy project between preservice teachers enrolled in a small university in Montana and an inner city school classroom in Kansas. It shows how the preservice teachers and children negotiate meaning at the beginning of the project as well as what the preservice teachers were learning from the children and from their teacher, Scott. Twenty-three third grade children exchanged letters, cards, drawings, autobiographies, and writing about shared literature with 24 preservice teachers for 10 weeks. Scott, the third grade teacher who assisted with the project, was a former student in Rita’s university language arts classroom and was strongly committed to demonstrating to preservice teachers the rewards of teaching in an inner city classroom ... particularly those coming from communities where people of color or linguistic diversity were few. Through shared written responses and the negotiation of meaning between two age groups, this project opened pathways for greater insight into the cultures and lives of children that the university students might otherwise not have known. It also provided myriad glimpses into the lives of real children, each with his or her own interests, life experiences, and expressive modalities thus shaping the perceptions of the preservice teachers about their role as teacher in supporting and responding to the individual strengths of each child.     

Trinucleotide repeats and neuropsychiatric disorders

Expansions of trinucleotide repeats at the level of genomic DNA are increasingly recognized as a cause of a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. Triplet repeat disorders are commonly classified into two groups, those with moderate CAG expansions that result in a polyglutamine stretch in the gene products and those with very long expansions, usually non-CAG, that are not translated. The triplet repeat intergeneration and intra-generational instability, and genetic anticipation characterize disorders. Most of the diseases caused by expanded CAG repeat share common features, which include neurodegeneration, a dominant pattern of inheritance and widespread expression of the gene products with neuronal loss restricted to distinct subset of neurons. Neurodegenerative changes associated of CAG expansion disorders is explained in terms of intra and extra cellular aggregation of mutant gene products, the insoluble nature of the protein(s) being attributed to the presence of polyglutamine stretches, hence their neurotoxic effects. methods based on poymerase chain reaction have become handy in the diagnosis of these genetic disorders. Progress in transgenic animal models for these disorders will be critical for understanding the progress of these disorders and for testing new therapeutic strategies.     

Speed isn’t everything: a study of examination marking

The question of whether marking speed is related to marking accuracy is important for training examiners and planning realistic marking schedules. We explored marking speed in the context of a past examination for an international biology qualification for 14‐ to 16‐year‐olds. Forty‐two markers with differing backgrounds experimentally marked 23 diverse examination questions. All responded to questionnaires about times taken to mark two of four samples of candidate responses. We demonstrated a positive practice effect for inexperienced markers, who became significantly faster during the course of their marking whilst maintaining their accuracies; there was no clear trade‐off between speed and accuracy. The benefits of marking practice and background experience are distinct phenomena. To improve accuracy, longer term investments in education and experience are needed.     

The EUCLIDES methodology and portal An on-line learning environment utilizing PBL and ICT

This paper presents the EUCLIDES （Enhancing the Use of Cooperative Learning to Increase Development of Science Studies） project （134246-LLP-1-2007-1-IT-1-COMENIUS-CMP）, which aims at introducing and pilot-testing an innovative teaching and training methodology, based on the constructivist approach and on problem-based learning （PBL）, through the use of information communication technology （ICT） instruments. This methodology has been developed for the study of science subjects and, is currently used in some European schools of secondary education, involving teachers and students. A moodle platform has been developed to enforce the application and use of the methodology. Through this platform, teachers can monitor the progress of the work of the students and intervene as facilitators when it is necessary to provide further co-ordination, pose questions and suggest problem-based approaches. The use of the platform secures that the teachers remain distant from the students allowing students to work by themselves and find solutions to the problems posed.     

Mapping the discipline history of education

Inaugurated in 2013, this collective research programme aims to construct an international mapping of the history of education that accounts for recent developments in the field. Our goal is to create a current and retrospective assessment of the discipline’s institutional grounding and of the knowledge produced by its practitioners, stretching across national and cultural borders. Ultimately, the programme will help to increase interactions among scholars and facilitate the creation of collaborative research agendas, thereby augmenting the standing and visibility of the discipline.

This text will briefly introduce the programme’s conceptual basis, explaining the methodological steps taken to ensure the comparability of data gathered and the transnational and transcontinental character of the study’s design. In the second section, we will zoom in on doctoral students’ dissertations, which are the optimal way to study a discipline’s development and potential. Doctoral students and recent graduates are part of a tradition, a school of thought, and yet they constitute that tradition’s replacement and renewal. Therefore, as graduate students carry forth the disciplinary torch, they hold the future of the field in their hands.