Older adults’ perceived sense of social exclusion from the digital world

ABSTRACT

A great deal of information and many services can now be accessed digitally. In order to make use of such services, however, it is necessary to have some form of Internet access. A lack of involvement in digital society may produce new forms of social exclusion. Older adults are particularly at risk of Internet-related social exclusion, since they tend to use the Internet less than younger adults. Little is known, however, about whether this lower level of Internet use among older people is in fact accompanied by a sense of social exclusion. In order to investigate the subjective sense of digital social exclusion resulting from a lack of Internet usage, we conducted a secondary analysis of a representative, cross-sectional telephone survey of 1,037 adults aged 65 years and over and living in Switzerland. We found that 33% of “onliners” reported that they would feel socially excluded were they to stop using the Internet, compared with 14% of “onliners” who felt socially excluded on account of their lack of Internet use. Our analyses show that onliners’ attitudes toward Internet use and the variety of online applications available were related to their sense of social exclusion. By contrast, offliners’ attitudes toward Internet use and their feelings of loneliness in general were predictors for their sense of social exclusion as a result of not using the Internet. The results of the study as well as its implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Achievement goals and school achievement: The transition to different school tracks in secondary school

During the transition from elementary school to secondary school, in Germany, students are assigned to different school tracks, academic or non-academic, that differ markedly in compositional and institutional characteristics, e.g., the level of cognitive activation and performance standards are higher in academic tracks than in non-academic tracks. Currently, there is a lack of research examining the changes in achievement goals (mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals) and in the association between achievement goals and school achievement during the transition to these different school tracks. There were 1646 students who participated in a large-scale, three-wave longitudinal study from Grade 4 to Grade 6. While results revealed only slight differences between the two school tracks, the three types of achievement goals declined over time. In elementary school mastery-approach goals were positively and performance-approach goals negatively associated with school grades. After the transition to secondary school mastery-approach goals predicted school grades positively, whereas performance-approach goals negatively influenced achievement (academic track). Overall, the results indicate that between-school-tracking plays a minor role for the development of achievement goals and the relation between goals and achievement.     

Classroom Management jenseits des Schulunterrichts

To enable teaching to take place as a teacher-learner interaction, the participants must mutually coordinate their behaviour. The teaching staff in particular are expected to take responsibility for the results of such coordination processes, i.e. for the sequence of activities which take place from one moment to the next in lessons. But how do they manage to control the actions of the learners and thus create (dis)continuity in the lessons? This question, which is rooted in the tradition of classroom management, is all the more relevant if the learners cannot be assumed to be willing to comply or if compliance cannot be easily demanded—which applies to some extent to teaching events for adults. In this article, the results of a microethnographic video study are presented to show the methods which the participants use at the beginning of adult and vocational education courses to influence the actions of other persons. A case study is used to illustrate how the teacher deals with problems in classroom flow control by the contextually appropriate use of various regulation methods, and thus plays a role in creating the (dis)continuity which shapes the sequence of events in the lessons. This especially underlines the potential of non-verbal forms of expression to herald a change of activities. This approach to research involves a shift in the perspective of adult education professionalism research from the ex-post analysis of professional knowledge to the in-situ observation of professional skills. With the aid of video-based (micro-)ethnographic approaches, the forms which the teaching staff routinely use to deal with specific action requirements are made visible with a high degree of empirical resolution. This extends the application of ethnographic methods. The classroom management discourse from school teaching is brought into a theoretical and empirical dialogue with course and interaction research in adult education. And finally, this creates a basis which enables the appropriateness of educational action variants to be discussed in an empirically meaningful way in the light of normative teaching theories.     

Mind the gap: Holocaust education in Germany,between pedagogical intentions and classroom interactions

The injunction to learn from history is a key feature of German debates over the politics of memory and history, which, since the end of World War II, have been seen primarily pedagogical. Thus, state schools were asked to serve as society’s central location for memory and learning. Research on history education has rarely addressed questions about how instruction on the history of National Socialism (NS) plays out in practice, about how ambitious educational goals are implemented at the level of actual instruction, or about the challenges that teachers and students face when they are asked to address such a morally fraught topic. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored these issues using analyses of concrete classroom experience. The paper is based on four carefully selected case studies. The first looks at how a contemporary account of the issue and its moral implications are handled in the classroom. The second examines the consequences for classroom discussion of a discrepancy between teacher expectations and student interpretations of an excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The third also addresses a discrepancy, focusing on the institutionalized generation gap in school. Finally, the fourth case shows how instructional communication benefits when participants assume a reciprocal, though not always articulated, consensus opinion on NS. The interpretation of the cases illustrates how both the organizational framework of schools and the specific conditions of classroom interaction shape the treatment of NS. Classroom interactions are strongly influenced by the quirky, often unexpected, ways that students appropriate knowledge—ways that often conflict with the intended content of the lesson and with public expectations for the treatment of Germany’s past. The analysis reveals a tension between the under-moralization and the over-moralization of teaching the Holocaust, and a tension between the need to represent the crimes of NS adequately, and to fulfill the goals of moral education.     

Enhancing self-regulated learning by writing learning protocols

Learning protocols are a self-guided way of writing that allows for elaboration and reflection on learning content. In an experimental study (N = 103), we supported protocol writing with prompts to elicit important strategies as postulated by a cyclical model of self-regulated learning. Students received either (a) no prompts, (b) cognitive prompts, (c) metacognitive prompts, (d) mixed prompts without, or (e) including prompts for planning of remedial strategies. Prompting all essential sub-processes of self-regulated learning (group e) fostered students' comprehension best. Thus, with appropriate support, writing can serve as a beneficial medium helping students to self-regulate their understanding of subject matter.     

Hematocrit and flow rate regulate the adhesion of platelets to von Willebrand factor

Primary hemostasis and blood clotting is known to be influenced by the red blood cell volume fraction (hematocrit) in blood. Depressed or elevated levels of red blood cells can lead to vascular perfusion problems ranging from bleeding to thrombus formation. The early stage of hemostasis and thus blood clotting in all vessel sections from the arterial to the venous system involves the adhesion of platelets to von Willebrand factor. Here we present experimental and theoretical results showing that the adhesion probability of platelets to von Willebrand factor is strongly and nonlinearly dependent on hematocrit and flow rate. Interestingly, the actual binding forces are not markedly different, which suggest that the origin of such behavior is in the distribution of platelets. Using hydrodynamic simulations of a simple model, we explicitly show that the higher the hematocrit and the flow rate, the larger the amount of platelets residing close to the wall. Our simulation results, which are in excellent agreement with the experimental observations, explain why such phenomena occur. We believe that the nonhomogeneous red blood cell distribution as well as the shear dependent hydrodynamic interaction is key for the accumulation of platelets on the vessel wall. The work we present here is an important step forward from our earlier work on single molecules and extends into the collective cellular behavior of whole blood. It sheds new light on the correlation between hematocrit and the initial steps in hemostasis and thrombosis, and outlines advances for the treatment of vascular diseases associated with high levels of red blood cells. These results are not only highly relevant for the field of hemostasis and the physics of blood clotting but are also of powerful impact in applied science most obviously in drug delivery and colloidal science.     

Dependency-based IT Governance practices in inter-organisational collaborations: A graph-driven elaboration

In an ever more globalised world IT (Information Technology) managers increasingly have to support value creation within inter-organisational collaboration settings. Such organisational forms with their inherent complexity require specific approaches for their IT management within. Especially important for unleashing the chances of networked arrangements is the right form of IT Governance. Choosing the right arrangement for IT Governance is heavily dependent on understanding the concepts on which such business constellations are built. In this paper we provide therefore first a systematically derived, graph-based perspective on the key terms of inter-organisational collaboration. Based on this understanding of concepts and structured representations of inter-organisational dependencies we present interorganisational governance practices for IT. Specifically, we assign accountabilities to top executive roles from both IT and business. By keeping a holistic perspective, the insights gained in this study are highly relevant for strategic information management in terms of Business-IT Alignment as well as monitoring and controlling of inter-organisational information infrastructures in a rapidly changing business environment.