多文化团队的效率

跨文化团队在现今的企业活动中起到很重要的作用.但是由于组织成员的文化背景不同所导致的摩擦和冲突会对创新团队的效力有抑制作用.问题的原因主要是在于对任何团队的构成及绩效首先都要进行一般假设,而这些假设大都是以文化为背景提出来的.所以对于成功进行跨文化团队的协作重要的一点是组织成员应具有一定的跨文化协调能力,这种能力不是通过企业短期的培训就能实现的,而必须通过更加集中的塑造才能实现.本文以每周四小时的一年大学课程为例来说明跨文化协调能力.     

Experimental university classes and “the best that has been thought”

In the latest in a series of articles on experimental courses at Kent State University, the authors study how students perceive such classes in terms of a liberal arts cultural education versus a values oriented education. The results determine that subject matter interest was the prime motivation for students to enroll in experimental classes. The results also suggest an openness and variety of student interest that seems unaware of a liberal arts core of the best that has been thought.     

Interaction and gender — Findings of a microethnographical approach to classroom discourse

The aim of the present study is to reconstruct teacher-student acting to find out whether there are gender-specific methods of managing classroom situations and gender-related patterns of interaction. The findings reveal that over the long run the gender of the participants is immaterial. There are, however, gender-related modifications of the ordinary interaction patterns. They result from gender-specific practices on the part of the students and from the corresponding actions on the part of the teachers. Five types of gender-related modifications have been reconstructed. The methods which enable students to participate successfully in the interaction process have become more common for the boys than for the girls. Therefore the boys appear more mathematically competent than the girls.     

Combined updating on science and pedagogy for experienced teachers

This paper describes the structure and unique features of an inservice training course for science teachers (Pädagogik und Fachdidaktik für Lehrer, PFL). The course is based on the view that most issues of classroom practice are at the same time issues of pedagogy, methodology and subject knowledge. Therefore, the close connection between the participants' work required during the course and their teaching situation is most important: the teachers selected issues of direct concern to their daily work, performed research on these issues by methods of action research, analysed their findings, took appropriate action and documented the process in written form. They were supported by a team of mentors. A preliminary evaluation indicates a high degree of satisfaction of the participants and provides suggestions for the improvement of initial teacher education. In the PFL-project inservice science teacher education is considered not only an opportunity for professional development of individual teachers, but also a contribution to the development of science education and—in a larger context—school development.     

Some practical approaches to a course on paraconsistent logic for engineers

This paper describes a non-classical logic course primarily indicated for graduate students in electrical engineering and energy engineering. The content of this course is based on the vision that it is not enough for a student to indefinitely accumulate knowledge; it is necessary to explore all the occasions to update, deepen, and enrich that knowledge, adapting it to a complex world. Therefore, this course is not tied to theoretical formalities and tries at each moment to provide a practical view of the non-classical logic. In the real world, the inconsistencies are important and cannot be ignored because contradictory information brings relevant facts, sometimes modifying the entire result of the analysis. As consequence, the non-classical logics, such as annotated paraconsistent logic – APL, are efficiently framed in the approach of complex situations of the real world. In APL, the concepts of unknown, partial, ambiguous, and inconsistent knowledge are referred not to trivialise any system in analysis. This course presents theoretical and applicable aspects of APL, which are successfully used in decision-making structures. The course is divided into modules: Basic, 2vAPL, 3vAPL, 4vAPL, and Final Project.     

Speech acts by mother and child: Determining their nature and form

The goal of the present study was to determine to what extent the psychological, social, and cultural features of the communication situation affect the production of speech acts during an interaction between an adult and a child. Variations in the nature of the speech acts produced (assertive, directive, expressive, and commissive) and in their linguistic form (imperative, declarative, interrogative, and exclamative) were studied in relation to three variables describing the communication situation: (a) a psychological variable, the mother’s child-raising style (coercive or inductive) which was assessed using a questionnaire on parental control behavior (MCCP, Tessier, Pilon, & Fecteau, 1985); (b) a social variable, the social role of the speaker (mother or child); and (c) a cultural variable, the origin of the dialogue partners (French or Canadian). For each cultural sample, 15-minute dialogues were recorded while 10 pairs of mothers in interaction with their 5 and 6 year old daughters performed a task involving drawing on a computer. The results suggest that for children between the ages of 5 and 6, the production of speech acts is mainly controlled by the social characteristics of the communication situation rather than by its psychological and cultural features. Mothers appear instead to be sensitive to all three kinds of factors. Moreover, the four types of speech acts were found to differ in their frequency of occurrence, linguistic form, and reaction to the psychological, social, and cultural characteristics of the communication situation. Finally, this study suggests that the effects of these characteristics on speech act production are not uniform, but vary according to the index under consideration.