Learning about energy: The influence of alternative frameworks,cognitive levels,and closed-mindedness

This article reports on a two-part study designed (a) to find the relation, if any, between junior high school students' alternative frameworks on energy held prior to instruction and their cognitive level of operations, either preformal or formal, and (b) to determine the relation, if any, between junior and senior high school students' success or failure in learning about energy and their alternative frameworks, their levels of cognitive operations, and their tendencies toward open- or closed-mindedness. In Part 1, we found no significant relation between junior high school students' prior alternative frameworks on energy and their cognitive levels of operations. In Part 2, we found that significantly better learning outcomes were achieved by students who had higher cognitive level scores. We also found that the extent to which students succeeded in learning the energy concept was a function of their prior knowledge. That is, certain alternative frameworks held prior to instruction may have facilitated the learning process. Finally, we found that the two groups (i.e., those who succeeded in learning about energy and those who did not) could not be distinguished according to scores in open- or closed-mindedness. These finding reinforce the assumption that learning is more domain specific than earlier theorists believed.     

A conceptual framework to analyse the multiscalar politics of education for sustainable peacebuilding

A critical and more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationship between projects of peacebuilding and educational provision is starting to develop. Drawing on an epistemological and ontological anchor of critical realism, and a methodology informed by the application of cultural political economy analysis and the strategic relational approach to understanding educational discourses, processes and outcomes, we illustrate how the ‘many faces’ of education in conflict-affected situations can be better theorised and conceptually represented. In doing so, we link goals of peacebuilding to those of social justice, and reinvigorate the notion of education playing a transformative rather than a restorative role in conflict-affected contexts. Making such ideas concrete, we provide examples of how such an analytical framework can be employed to understand the multi-faceted relationship between education and projects of social transformation in conflict-affected environments across the globe.     

A FORGE OF CONSENSUS

The Spanish transition to democracy constituted an exceptional journalistic period which started with the death of the dictator Franco in 1975 and finished in 1978, the year in which a new democratic Constitution, currently in force, was approved by referendum. During those years, the Spanish political system changed radically from a dictatorship to a full democracy similar to the democracies enjoyed by Western European countries. This article proves the hypothesis that the majority of newspapers supported the main guidelines of political reform and the strategy of consensus led firstly by the francoist reformist elite and by the opposition political parties afterwards. The research method is a content analysis focused on the introduction of democratic values in newspaper editorials and applied to twelve newspaper titles which covered the ideological spectrum within the Spanish journalistic scene. This piece of research could be likewise considered as a contribution to the particular histories of the analysed dailies during those critical years.     

Ritual Television

As in other southern European countries, television was introduced in Portugal in the second half of the 1950s through the founding of a public broadcasting station. Reception was implemented very gradually over the 1960s, by conspicuously developing collective ways of viewing. In this text, we draw on oral history in order to retrace relevant habits, events and content especially for women, a particular type of audience in the markedly patriarchal context of the Estado Novo dictatorship. Within the context of collective reception of early television in Portugal, we highlight a type of experience that was particularly significant for some female audiences: the reception of Catholic transmissions. The concepts of hegemony, ritual and everyday practices assist in the analysis of such memories. These conspicuous television rituals seemed to regulate female practices, but they could also offer women some opportunities for new experiences.     

Response–food delay gradients for lever pressing and schedule-induced licking in rats

Eight food-deprived Wistar rats developed stable patterns of lever pressing and licking when exposed to a fixed-time 30-s schedule of food pellet presentation. The rats were trained to lever press by presenting the lever 10 s before the programmed food delivery, with the food pellet being delivered immediately upon a lever press. The operant contingency was then removed and the lever was inserted through the entire interfood interval, being withdrawn with food delivery and reinserted 2 s later. On successive phases of the study, a protective contingency postponed food delivery if responses (lever presses or licks) occurred within the last 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, or 25 s of the interfood interval. Lever pressing was reduced at much shorter response–food delays than those that reduced licking. These results demonstrate that reinforcement contributes to the maintenance of different response patterns on periodic schedules, and that different responses are differentially sensitive to delays.     

International trends in health science librarianship: Part 4 – Four Southern European countries

This is the fourth in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in four Southern European countries in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors are from Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Future issues will track trends in Latin America and Central Europe. JM