Disability,Stigma and Otherness: Perspectives of Parents and Teachers

This qualitative study explored the perspectives of parents and teachers in the US with regard to the meaning and implications of disability in the context of schoolling, and of raising a child with a disability. The findings revealed broad conceptual differences in the perspectives of these two groups. Teachers’ beliefs were generally consistent with medical model perspectives on disability as biologically defined. Parents’ interpretations, more aligned with a sociocultural paradigm, were situated in the cultural meanings ascribed to disability and linked with issues of stigma, marginalisation and access. The findings also revealed the existence of master narratives on families of children with disabilities, entrenched in assumptions of pathological functioning and negative outcomes among these families. Implications for professional–family partnerships in the education of students with disabilities are discussed.     

国内《孟子》英译研究二十年

本文从译本研究、译介史和译者研究三个方面对近二十年国内学术期刊上发表的有关《孟子》英译研究的文章进行了梳理和分析,探讨了当前学术界在《孟子》英译研究方面所取得的成就及问题所在。     

A Comparison between Two Tragic Women

Both Marguerite and Pan Jin-lian are famous tragical female images. Corrupt social system and the hypocrisy of the moral system are the roots of the two women’tragedy. Facing the fate of injustice, Mar...     

应重视发挥审美文化的伦理教化功能

中国传统审美观与伦理观是统一的,审美与伦理存在着同源起点,审美伦理具有教化功能,但是在当前中国社会转型期的审美文化出现了伦理价值偏离。这对建设和谐社会造成了消极影响,因此构建和谐伦理观背景下的审美文化就成了当务之急。     

Feedback on feedback practice: perceptions of students and academics

While feedback is widely considered central to student learning, students across the higher education sector commonly report dissatisfaction with the feedback they receive. In contrast, academics often feel they provide quality and informative feedback. This article explores and compares the perceptions of students and academics with regard to feedback practice. The paper presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted with academics and students at the School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University. It highlights the perceptions of academics and students with regard to preferences for different types of feedback, timeliness of feedback, students’ engagement and interest in feedback, quality feedback and satisfaction with current practice. The findings indicate a significant discord between staff and students in relation to certain aspects of feedback practice, namely opinions on students’ engagement and interest in feedback, satisfaction with current practice and feedback preference. Similarities in viewpoints were also found in relation to quality feedback.     

Teen Perceptions of the Promotion of Safer Sexual Practices: A Focus Group Study

Teens' own thoughts on fostering safe sexual practice are important perspectives in promoting adolescent sexual health yet are relatively absent in the literature. This focus group study explored teens' perceptions about the supports and challenges that exist as teens strive to engage in healthy sexual practices. Seventy-five teens participated in 11 focus groups using a semi-structured interview guide. School-based health centers provided the setting and facilitated sample recruitment. Focus groups were audiorecorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using the focus group guide as a template and typologies, or clusters of concepts, were extracted to establish teen perceptions of the factors that support and challenge their ability to engage in safe sexual practices. The socio-ecological model provided the framework to identify these factors within the individual, family/parent, relational (peer/partner), community, or societal spheres of influence. Results discussed the importance of parents, the value of confidentiality, respect for teen decision-making, relationships skills, developmental aspects of the adolescent years, and social interpretations of gender. These findings revealed important considerations as adults develop policies, messages, and programs designed to promote safe sexual behavior in teens.     

Ethics and Artificial life: From Modeling to Moral Agents

Artificial Life (ALife) has two goals. One attempts to describe fundamental qualities of living systems through agent based computer models. And the second studies whether or not we can artificially create living things in computational mediums that can be realized either, virtually in software, or through biotechnology. The study of ALife has recently branched into two further subdivisions, one is “dry” ALife, which is the study of living systems “in silico” through the use of computer simulations, and the other is “wet” ALife that uses biological material to realize what has only been simulated on computers, effectively wet ALife uses biological material as a kind of computer. This is challenging to the field of computer ethics as it points towards a future in which computer and bioethics might have shared concerns. The emerging studies into wet ALife are likely to provide strong empirical evidence for ALife’s most challenging hypothesis: that life is a certain set of computable functions that can be duplicated in any medium. I believe this will propel ALife into the midst of the mother of all cultural battles that has been gathering around the emergence of biotechnology. Philosophers need to pay close attention to this debate and can serve a vital role in clarifying and resolving the dispute. But even if ALife is merely a computer modeling technique that sheds light on living systems, it still has a number of significant ethical implications such as its use in the modeling of moral and ethical systems, as well as in the creation of artificial moral agents.     

消费主义伦理批判

随着＂消费社会＂的兴起,消费主义取代新教伦理成为支配资本运作的价值观基础。消费主义的支配作用使自然、社会、人及人的思想走向了＂单向度化＂,人类的生存和发展面临着一系列伦理困境与危机,思想与现实之间的批判性张力消失殆尽。面对这样的历史与思想语境,需要我们发挥道德哲学的否定性批判功能,在对消费主义的伦理反思与批判中,回归消费的本质,重新确立一种＂合理的＂消费伦理观,超越消费主义。对西方消费主义的伦理批判与超越,将为当今中国社会消费的和谐发展和新型社会秩序的形成提供富有启迪性的学理资源。     

Student perceptions of quality feedback in teacher education

Many reports have identified a perceived lack of quality in regard to assessment feedback in higher education contexts. One research study in 2007 on undergraduate university students found that less than half of the students (46%) collected their formative feedback, suggesting that from their perspective feedback clearly was not fulfilling the role it should. This is a study of 465 graduate students and 101 undergraduate students studying teacher education at a major Australian university. The study investigated what students perceived to be effective, quality feedback based upon their extensive higher education experiences. Students identified preferences in regard to form, detail and timing of assessment feedback. The data were collected by means of pen and paper survey and identified which strategies the students perceived to be the most effective, particularly within the context of large cohort teaching and written assessment formats. Findings agreed with research elsewhere regarding problems with assessment feedback quality and quantity, but students also provided clear indications of how realistic improvements could be made in terms of assessment feedback processes and strategies.     

Approaches to studying and perceptions of the academic environment among university students in Pakistan

There has been a paucity of research on the experiences of students at Pakistani universities. A survey of over 900 students at two universities examined their approaches to studying and perceptions of their courses. Evidence was obtained for a deep approach, a surface approach and two aspects of a strategic approach. Their perceptions were based upon the instructional practices, the acquisition of generic skills, the appropriateness of the assessment and of their workload, and the available learning resources. A higher‐order analysis revealed two broad dimensions of the student experience in Pakistan. Students who had positive perceptions tended to adopt a deep approach, to prefer courses, teaching and assessment that supported their understanding and to be engaged and reliable in their studies. However, students who had negative perceptions tended to adopt a surface approach and to prefer courses, teaching and assessment that reinforced this approach through the bare transmission of information.