Understanding the Language of Information Literacy

Understanding the language of information literacy is necessary for the effective use of library resources. The results of a recent study indicate that undergraduate students lack such an understanding, and the authors recommend that librarians, working with faculty, reassess information literacy terms. This article examines what is involved in reassessing these terms by drawing on several ideas from the philosophy of language, which provides a foundation for grasping the semantic challenges librarians face in educating users. Any reassessment of information literacy terms should recognize their ordinary and specialized use and aim for the holistic expression of core concepts, however complex they may be.     

A tapered channel microfluidic device for comprehensive cell adhesion analysis, using measurements of detachment kinetics and shear stress-dependent motion

We have developed a method for studying cellular adhesion by using a custom-designed microfluidic device with parallel non-connected tapered channels. The design enables investigation of cellular responses to a large range of shear stress (ratio of 25) with a single input flow-rate. For each shear stress, a large number of cells are analyzed (500–1500 cells), providing statistically relevant data within a single experiment. Besides adhesion strength measurements, the microsystem presented in this paper enables in-depth analysis of cell detachment kinetics by real-time videomicroscopy. It offers the possibility to analyze adhesion-associated processes, such as migration or cell shape change, within the same experiment. To show the versatility of our device, we examined quantitatively cell adhesion by analyzing kinetics, adhesive strength and migration behaviour or cell shape modifications of the unicellular model cell organism Dictyostelium discoideum at 21 °C and of the human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 at 37 °C. For both cell types, we found that the threshold stresses, which are necessary to detach the cells, follow lognormal distributions, and that the detachment process follows first order kinetics. In addition, for particular conditions’ cells are found to exhibit similar adhesion threshold stresses, but very different detachment kinetics, revealing the importance of dynamics analysis to fully describe cell adhesion. With its rapid implementation and potential for parallel sample processing, such microsystem offers a highly controllable platform for exploring cell adhesion characteristics in a large set of environmental conditions and cell types, and could have wide applications across cell biology, tissue engineering, and cell screening.     

Muted transitions

This analysis concentrates on the case of a child, Jenny. The paper suggests that the concept of liminality may hold the key to an understanding of muted subject positions like the one assumed by Jenny in a school class. Liminality is proposed as a way of conceptualizing transitions where the subject in question transgresses established rules and regulations. The claim of this paper is that these particular ways of becoming an othered subject are normalized and that, in this process, Jenny’s fellow pupils become even more themselves while Jenny goes unnoticed. The concept of liminality paves the way for an understanding of imperfect and inconclusive transitions such as Jenny’s.     

‘And what language do you speak at home?’ Ethnocentrism and cultural openness in teacher–parent interactions in disadvantaged and ethnically segregated schools

ABSTRACT

This article, based on a deep ethnography in schools located in a disadvantaged multicultural context in Geneva (Switzerland), questions the way in which the local school system and teachers comprehend the cultural diversity of students and their parents. Oscillating between recognition and assimilation, teachers publicly adhere to discourses that emphasise cultural diversity, while limiting its expression, especially when a student encounters school difficulties. Teachers’ meetings with parents are significantly influenced by the majority perspective, leaving the parents with little place to express their own needs. Nonetheless, within the conversation, some parents are able to assert practices that differ from those promoted by the host society. Ultimately, it seems that, in the absence of a multicultural position, teachers are limited to adopting hybrid practices that create unease and are evidence of limited understanding of multiculturality.     

The Story of Alpha – In Three Parts

The article presents a retrospective history of the ALPHA series of publications. This action-research project (later called "cooperative research") on literacy and basic education is divided into three periods of seven years each. The first one, "Construction", involved assisting the nascent literacy movement in Québec and Canada by given it a theoretical, critical and ideological basis. In the second period, "Ruptures", the project distanced itself somewhat from the literacy movement, whose success, according to the author, was dubious. During the same period ALPHA systematised its critical function and internationalised its field of research. The third phase, "Wanderings", involved a different research paradigm, in which the project explored basic education at community level in connection with local development initiatives. This biographical/autobiographical account ends with the last publication ALPHA 2000, evincing an ecological vision for alternative education and sustainable communities, partly documented in the Arab countries.     

Social routines,pragmatic schemas,and schemes in how children distribute objects between the ages of three and six

Past research on social marking and pragmatic reasoning schemas suggest that cognitive processing modes are first elaborated by children when are carying out regulating social routines in the course of which they learn to produce the responses that satisfy the demand of their environment. The data of five experimental studies with 3–6 year old children, for object distribution tasks, are reported here. The data of the three first experiments show that the social routines evoked by the objects to be processed have a dual effect, influencing both the representation of the partition to be made, as well as the procedures used to make them. The data of the two last experiments seems to attest that, in training situations, the utilization of routine-evoking tasks promotes the construction of more general schemas, by the attribution of an operative meaning to the linguistic expressions used to characterize the states to be attained, and the transformations to be applied in order to attain them.     

Disagreement Makes Us Strong?

Abstract Museums are mirrors of national, regional, and local identities, functioning as self portraits of nations, regions, and cities. But to what extent do city museums, for instance, actively and consciously reflect the ethical, political, or social dilemmas, contradictions, and conflicts that drive and impact the cities they serve? As concepts of democracy expand in the twenty‐first century, can museums be platforms for dialogue and solution‐building? What hinders museums in facilitating equal access to culture for everyone and encouraging a plurality of voices to speak? Like many other city museums, the Museum of Copenhagen is forced, enticed, and lured by the complexity, richness, and challenges of contemporary urban cultures to re‐examine its vision and methods, seeking a new relevance and presence for itself within the city.     

Standards for the academic veterinary medical library.

The Standards Committee of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section was appointed in May 2000 and charged to create standards for the ideal academic veterinary medical library, written from the perspective of veterinary medical librarians. The resulting Standards for the Academic Veterinary Medical Library were approved by members of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section during MLA '03 in San Diego, California. The standards were approved by Section Council in April 2005 and received final approval from the Board of Directors of the Medical Library Association during MLA '04 in Washington, DC.     

From ‘cultivators of the soil’ to ‘citizen-soldiers’: physically active education and the nation at Maryland Agricultural College

In 1866, military drill and instruction became part of the curriculum of Maryland Agricultural College as a result of the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, a law setting the terms for the establishment of agricultural colleges across the USA. The introduction of military instruction meant a direct inclusion of physically active coursework that preceded the widespread emergence of organized physical education courses in American educational institutions. However, this was not the first time physical activity was used and discussed at the college: previously, the uses of physical activity at the college wholly entailed outdoor agricultural practice in which students applied pedagogical training about agricultural techniques in the field. In this paper, we examine early Maryland Agricultural College printed discourse from 1859 to 1886, studying how the college shifted focus from idealizing the Republican male citizen as a physically active farmer or ‘cultivator of the soil’ in the years preceding the American Civil War to a physically active ‘citizen-soldier’ in response to the social and political effects of the conflict. Our analysis sheds light on the historical place of such physical activity coursework within the larger historical narrative of American physical education's emergence, and also provides useful historical context for critically viewing linkages between physical culture, nationalism, agricultural education and the military in contemporary physical education.