Forming an effective partnership with a dedicated LabAssistant: A software shell for engineering laboratory exercises

This paper describes the structure and use of LabAssistant, a software shell purposely written to run alongside engineering laboratory exercises and provide support to students undertaking the exercises. The structure of LabAssistant enables tutors to deliver their own laboratory sessions within the shell using only basic spreadsheet skills. LabAssistant is intended to be used in conjunction with in-depth, analytical laboratory exercises and its features include text entry, numerical input and checking (including verification of calculated values and provision of appropriate feedback), graph sketching, data plotting and report generation. Feedback from students confirms that LabAssistant has enhanced the learning experience, encouraging active engagement, building confidence and assisting progression through the exercise, even using the data and information input during the session to generate the majority of their laboratory write-up automatically. From the tutor's perspective, the provision of immediate and continual help to the students is a significant enhancement to the quality of the learning experience. LabAssistant complements the tutor who is now able to deal effectively with deeper conceptual difficulties and larger student numbers. The facility to verify all calculated values and the creation of a report in a standard electronic format are significant aids to the marking of student submissions.     

Grand Innovation Prizes: A theoretical,normative, and empirical evaluation

This paper provides a systematic examination of the use of a Grand Innovation Prize (GIP) in action – the Progressive Automotive Insurance X PRIZE – a $10 million prize for a highly efficient vehicle. Following a mechanism design approach we define three key dimensions for GIP evaluation: objectives, design, and performance, where prize design includes ex ante specifications, ex ante incentives, qualification rules, and award governance. Within this framework we compare observations of GIPs from three domains – empirical reality, theory, and policy – to better understand their function as an incentive mechanism for encouraging new solutions to large-scale social challenges. Combining data from direct observation, personal interviews, and surveys, together with analysis of extant theory and policy documents on GIPs, our results highlight three points of divergence: first, over the complexity of defining prize specifications; secondly, over the nature and role of incentives, particularly patents; thirdly, the overlooked challenges associated with prize governance. Our approach identifies a clear roadmap for future theory and policy around GIPs.     

Fresh thinking about academic development: authentic,transformative, disruptive?

We highlight three ways of conceptualising and enacting academic development: firstly as authentic, practice-based activity, secondly in terms of a new transformative paradigm for academic development units (ADUs), and thirdly as a space for disruption. We illustrate these conceptualisations through our investigation of the practice of internal secondment of faculty to ADUs. We report our findings from a sector-wide survey of Scottish higher education institutions and a series of in-depth interviews with secondees and their managers in two Scottish universities. We recommend further investigations to identify new ways of enacting authentic, practice-based, transformative, and disruptive academic development.     

Using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal,political and pedagogical spaces

Autobiographical queer life narratives are communicative spaces where queer teachers take up personal issues of being, becoming, and belonging in contextual and relational analyses of their situated experiences. In this work w/e consider the challenges and risks involved in this research, which, when shared and probed in classroom spaces, is a dangerous exposition of the queer self. With these challenges and risks in mind, w/e examine how our narratives provide fugitive knowledge to inform a pedagogy of ‘resist-stance’ that recognizes, respects, and engages queer identity, difference, history and culture. W/e provide examples of this pedagogy, discussing teaching strategies currently being used to connect the personal, the political and the pedagogical in classroom spaces. W/e also speak of the difficulties of living out this pedagogy as transformative teaching to transgress queer erasure in hetero-normative educational practice.     

Students with autism in regular classes: a long-term follow-up study of a satellite class transition model

Students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are increasingly being educated within mainstream schools. While there is often an assumption that students with ASD who are academically capable will succeed in an inclusive educational placement, previous research has indicated that this is not always the case. Indeed, it seems that students with ASDs are often not equipped to cope with the social and communication demands of a mainstream classroom. Autism Spectrum Australia's (Aspect) satellite class programme aims to address this gap by blending specialised intervention with strategies to prepare students and receiving schools for transition to more inclusive educational placements. A long-term follow-up study comprising a parent survey of satellite class graduates and four detailed case studies was undertaken to determine whether these classes led to successful placement of students with ASD in more inclusive educational settings. Results indicated that a majority of graduates remained placed in more inclusive educational settings. Overall, parents were satisfied with the programme. Attendance at a satellite class was just one of a number of factors associated with positive outcomes in late adolescence. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for teachers and school staff planning for and supporting students with ASDs in their transition to inclusive educational settings.     

Development projects and their host institutions: Are they compatible?

This paper suggests that a major cause of the poor performance of institution-building projects in developing countries lies in the potential incompatibility of the development project (whether in the education sector or elsewhere) with the host institution into which it is introduced (for example, a ministry department, college or research institute). This incompatibility originates in the different organisational culture to which each subscribes. This has the unfortunate consequence in many cases, and in particular in countries with weak infrastructure and low levels of expertise, of the project serving to decrease rather than to increase local capacity. In this respect the project acts as a counter-developmental rather than a developmental force. It is suggested that this situation cannot be rectified unless either the project or the host institution changes its organisation culture, which is unlikely to happen.

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel geht von der Annahme aus, daß die unzureichenden Ergebnisse der Projekte für die Errichtung von Institutionen in Entwicklungsländern folgenden Ursprung haben: die potentielle Unverträglichkeit der Entwicklungsprojekte (ob auf dem Bildungssektor oder in anderen Bereichen) mit der Gastinstitution, in die sie integriert werden sollen (z. B. Ministeriumsabteilungen, Fachhochschulen oder Forschungsinstitute). Diese Unvereinbarkeit ergibt sich aus der unterschiedlichen Organisationskultur jeder Institution. Als Konsequenz verringern diese Projekte lokale Kapazitäten oft anstatt sie zu erhöhen. Dies gilt besonders für Länder mit geringer Infrastruktur und niedrigem Fachwissen. In dieser Hinsicht wirkt das Projekt einer Weiterentwicklung des Landes eher entgegen. Es wird angenommen, daß diese Situation nicht verändert werden kann, solange entweder das Projekt oder die Gastinstitution seine Organisationsstruktur verändert. Dies erscheint dem Autor unwahrscheinlich.

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Resumen Este trabajo indica que una de las principales causas de la deficiente realización de proyectos destinados a la creatión de instituciones en países en desarrollo reside en la potencial incompatibilidad entre los proyectos de desarrollo (ya sea en el sector de la educación o en otros sectores) y la institutión anfitriona en la que el mismo es implantado (por ejemplo, un departamento de un ministerio, un colegio o un instituto de investigación). La incompatibilidad se origina en las respectivas diferencias de cultura organizacional. En muchos casos, y particularmente en aquellos países que cuentan con una infraestructura pobre y con bajos niveles de experiencia, esto trae la infortunada consecuencia de que el proyecto no ayude a aumentar las capacidades locales, sino que, al contrario, más bien las reduzca. En este sentido, el proyecto actúa más como fuerza anti-desarrollo que como fuerza de desarrollo. La autora sugiere que la situación no puede ser remediada, salvo que el proyecto o la institución anfitriona cambien su cultura organizacional, lo cual es improbable que suceda.

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Résumé Cet article suggère qu'une des causes majeures de l'inefficacité des projets constitutifs d'institutions dans les pays en développement réside dans l'incompatibilité potentielle du projet de développement (que ce soit dans le domaine de l'éducation ou ailleurs) avec l'institution d'accueil dans laquelle il est introduit (par exemple, un service ministériel, une université ou un institut de recherche). Cette incompatibilité naît des différentes cultures d'organisation dont participent le projet et l'institution. Cela a pour conséquence malheureuse que, dans de nombreux cas, en particulier dans les pays présentant une infrastructure faible et un savoir faire insuffisant, le projet contribue non pas à augmenter mais à diminuer les capacités locales. A cet égard, le projet va à l'encontre du développement au lieu de le promouvoir. Cette situation ne peut, selon l'auteur, être corrigée qu'à condition que le projet ou l'institution d'accueil modifie sa culture d'organisation, ce qui a peu de chance de se produire.

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This article is an adaptation of a paper which was presented at the Oxford Conference on The Role of the State in Educational Development in September 1993. The original paper is included in a forthcoming publicaiton by Turner J. (ed) The State and the School, London: Falmer.     

White middle‐class parents,identities, educational choice and the urban comprehensive school: dilemmas,ambivalence and moral ambiguity

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.     

Listening to children’s views of spiritual and metaphysical concepts: A new dimension to educational psychology practice?

Educational psychologists (EPs) have for many years been developing techniques for listening to children. The aim of the present research was to investigate ways of listening to the “spiritual” views of children in order to develop questions that educational psychologists might use as part of the assessment repertoire. The study explored children’s spiritual concepts such as their purpose for “being on the planet” and the “meaning of their life”. The findings suggest that primary and secondary school children from mixed religious backgrounds can respond to spiritual questions in a clear way. In addition, most children believed that spiritual views influence how children behave. Further research is required to explore whether children’s views of spiritual concepts are linked to learning and progress in school and in life.     

龙虾怎样奏“乐”

自然界的动物在遭遇危险的时候,有各种各样的御敌招数,如毒蛇喷射毒液,章鱼喷出墨汁,电鳗放电,壁虎断尾求生等,还有的动物变换身形、虚张声势以吓唬敌人,而龙虾的防卫术则尤其别具一格。