Good and Evil in Popular Children's Fantasy Fiction: How Archetypes Become Stereotypes that Cultivate the Next Generation of Sun Readers

This article considers how the depiction of good and evil as discernibly polarised opposites in the most popular of juvenile fantasy texts cultivates a perception in children that the real world is similarly organised. It questions whether the archetypes presented in such texts are in fact stereotypes that, far from enlarging children's constructions of individuals, groups and movements within broader human society, limit conceptual development. It proposes that the dichotomised view of good and evil that these texts promote, rather than cultivating a broad educated outlook, prepares readers more adequately for the simplistic polarities of the tabloid press.     

基于本体论的情报学实在性研究

介绍了波普的“三世界”观点,以及布鲁克斯运用“三世界”观点阐释情报学的哲学意义,而提出的情报学理论。从波普的“三世界”本体论及布鲁克斯的情报学理论出发,提出了基于马克思辩证唯物主义的情报学实在性观点。     

Does a contextualized theory of planned behavior explain why teenagers stay in virtual worlds?

Academics and business practitioners are intrigued by the factors that foster continued user engagement in virtual worlds (VWs). It is unclear how, and to what extent, existing theories can explain their continued use. As young people constitute the majority of VW users, understanding the reasons for their continued use intentions is important. Taking the distinctive features of VW services into account, such as the visibility of users’ actions to other users, we contextualize the Theory of Planned Behavior and investigate the role of teenagers’ attitudes, social influences and perceived behavioral control as the determinants of their continued intention to use VW. We then apply a set of constructs from prior Information Systems (IS) literature to decompose these constructs. By analyzing primary data collected from 923 users of Habbo Hotel, a leading virtual world for teenagers, this study confirms the role of users’ intrinsic motivation, interpersonal influence and self-efficacy as key constituents of sustained user engagement in VWs. In addition, we demonstrate that decomposing these three established constructs can capture many of the key contextual characteristics of VWs. The study contributes to the literature by showing that IS theories and constructs are appropriate for the VW setting and teenage users.     

Behavioral Explanations in Intelligent Tutor Systems for Training using Causal Models

This article reports the findings of a demonstrator project to evaluate how effectively Immersive Virtual Worlds (IVWs) could support problem-based learning. The project designed, created and evaluated eight scenarios within Second Life (SL) for undergraduate courses in health care management and paramedic training. Evaluation was primarily qualitative, using illuminative evaluation which provided multiple perspectives through interviews, focus groups and questionnaires with designers, facilitators, learning technologists and students. Results showed that SL provided a rich, engaging environment which enhanced authenticity of the scenarios, though there were issues of access and usability. The article concludes by drawing together the lessons learned which will inform educators who seek to design and develop learning scenarios in this medium.     

The Evolution of Agency: Spectra of Bioagency and Cyberagency

This article examines nonhuman agency, or the capacity of nonhumans to carry out goal-directed action. The central argument is that agency should be conceptualized not as a binary (someone/something does or does not have agency) but rather as a spectrum, with degrees of agency. Based upon an empirical study of the design and use of frog dissection simulations (cyberfrogs) in high school biology classes, the author develops two parallel spectra of agency, bioagency and cyberagency, to describe the degrees of agency experienced by biological life forms and technologies. These spectra put agency into an evolutionary perspective, comparing how humans evolved agency over time to how technologies are now evolving agency. The article concludes with challenges for future research to further explore the validity and implications of a notion of cyberagency that evolves over time, can be represented on an analog spectrum, and is independent of human agency.     

Learning in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds for adults （e.g. Second Life）, youth （e.g. Habbo） and children （e.g. Whyville） have a great potential for learning and teaching practices for enriching wider public and engendering collective experience and collaboration. Informal learning environments such as virtual worlds offer children and adults various intellectual and sensory activities or flow experiences according to Csikszentmihalyi. Virtual worlds promote social interaction and offer visitors an opportunity for various interactive activities which can sometimes not be realized in real life education. Children and adults can explore and learn in a different way and from a different perspective, also with educational games. The paper deals with learning possibilities and opportunities in educational virtual worlds. Virtual worlds can introduce quality learning environment and offer new challenges in the educational field.     

赛博空间在"三个世界"和"第三空间"的位置

卡尔·波普尔的"三个世界"理论和亨利·列斐伏尔的"第三空间"可以用来认识和把握赛博空间.赛博空间是以人为根基,依据网络技术多媒体技术等具有物理实体特征的信息技术为物质基础建构的数字空间或概念空间.我们应该从多角度,全面地认识赛博空间的哲学意蕴.     

Likes and loathing in the middle time: how adolescents time–space their figured literacy worlds

Based on data from a researcher-generated activity and with the overall objective to gain insight into how students talk about themselves as readers, the study examines how, in a conversation with two classmates and a research assistant, 12–13-year-old students embrace or reject different figured worlds related to literacy. The analysis demonstrates how a number of figured literacy worlds with different chronotopic contours that include different value systems and offer different options for actions and identity can be identified in the students’ narratives. In addition, the analysis shows how the interview situation constitutes a space in which literacy-in-school as a chronotope dialogically merges with other chronotopic literacy worlds outside school. Findings from the study indicate a need for analytical attention to dialogical and narrative symbolic aspects in and youths’ investment processes regarding literacy, if we are to understand how literacy worlds contribute to shaping the ways in which children and youths engage in different literacy activities and invest in literacy acquisition.     

‘You Norwegians think we female Muslims are not free’: enactment of gendered positional identities during transition stages

This article describes two young Norwegian ethnic-minority girls in their efforts to involve social networks and to position themselves as learners in the transition between lower and upper secondary school. The article explores how they experience future possibilities represented by education and how they use resources in negotiating their everyday lives. We use the concept of social gendered positional identities to study how educational choices are individually and collectively formed and enacted in these girls’ everyday figured worlds. The study builds on ethnographic data collected by following two classmates across multiple settings over two years. We develop biographical cases to demonstrate how cultural factors relevant to learning emerged in particular contexts. The article concludes that gendered positions and choices made in educational transitions are connected and that meta-reflections on personal identity can help students to make decisions about the future.