Current Understanding, Support Systems, and Technology-led Interventions for Specific Learning Difficulties

In January 2019, the Government Office for Science commissioned a series of 4 rapid evidence reviews to explore how technology and research can help improve educational outcomes for learners with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs). This review examined: 1) current understanding of the causes and identification of SpLDs, 2)the support system for learners with SpLDs, 3)technology-based interventions for SpLDs 4) a case study approach focusing on dyscalculia to explore all 3 theme

A transdisciplinary study of embodiment in HCI, AI and New Media.

The aim of this thesis is to report on a transdisciplinary approach, regarding the complexity of thinking about human embodiment in relation to machine embodiment. A practical dimension of this thesis is to elicit some principles for the design and evaluation of virtual embodiment. The transdisciplinary approach suggests, firstly, that a single discipline or reality is, on its own, not sufficient to explain the complexity and dynamism of the embodied interaction between the human and machine. Secondly, the thesis argues for thinking of transdisciplinary research as a process of individuation, becoming or transduction, that is, as a process of mediation between heterogeneous approaches rather than perceiving research as a stabilized cognitive schema designed to accumulate new outcomes to the already-there reality. Arguing for going beyond the individualized approaches to embodiment, this thesis analyzes three cases where the problems that appear in one case are resolved through the analysis of the following one. Consisting of three phases, this research moves from objective scientific ¿reality¿ to more phenomenological, subjective and complex realities. The first study employs a critical review of embodied conversational agents in human¿computer interaction (HCI) in a learning context using a comparative meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was applied because most of the studies for evaluating embodiment are experimental. A learning context was selected because the number of studies is suitable for meta-analysis and the findings could be generalized to other contexts. The analysis reveals that there is no ¿persona effect¿, that is, the expected positive effect of virtual embodiment on the participant¿s affective, perceptive and cognitive measures. On the contrary, it shows the reduction of virtual embodiment to image and a lack of consideration for the participant¿s embodiment and interaction, in addition to theoretical and methodological shortcomings. The second phase solves these problems by focusing on Mark Hansen¿s phenomenological account of embodiment in new media. The investigation shows that Hansen improves on the HCI account by focusing on the participant¿s dynamic interaction with new media. Nevertheless, his views of embodied perception and affection are underpinned by a subjective patriarchal account leading to object/subject and body/work polarizations. The final phase resolves this polarization by analyzing the controversial work of Alan Turing on intelligent machinery. The research provides a different reading of the Turing Machine based on Simondon¿s concept of individuation, repositioning its materiality from the abstract non-existent to the actual-virtual realm and investigating the reasons for its abstraction. It relates the emergence of multiple human¿machine encounters in Turing¿s work to the complex counter-becoming of what it describes as ¿the Turing Machine compound¿.Ministry of Higher Education in the Sultanate of Oma

EFL classrooms in the new millennium : selected papers from the 40th FAAPI conference

The following themes are well represented in this collection: • Global citizenship, diversity, and interculturality • Multimodality: information literacy and multiliteracies • ICT in education • Latest trends in teaching EFL, ESP, and EAP • Distance education, blended learning, and autonomy Such topics illustrate the prism that ELT has become in our country and the different levels and situated narratives of expertise and lived experiences found across our country and beyond. ELT and EFL in the new millennium demand and generate not only new skills, new questions, new concerns, but also the opportunity for us to look at the past and reflect on the present in order to create a future collaboratively

2018 FSDG Combined Abstracts

https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg_abstracts/1000/thumbnail.jp

Un-strangering 'the stranger' in a strange land : a multi-perspective, participant-led, exploration of in/ex-clusion in NZ mainstream high schools - privileging the voices of senior 'high-functioning' autistic students : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

New Zealand’s (NZ) ‘inclusive’ school policies enable autistic students to attend a mainstream school of their choice, with the expectation they will belong, feel accepted, contribute, and participate in ‘school life’. Research has typically focused on biogenetic origins and diagnostic specificity, providing medicalised and stereotypical ways of understanding autistic people. Few qualitative studies have explored autistic students’ understandings and everyday lived experiences of ‘being autistic’ and ‘being in an inclusive mainstream high school’. Excluding their voice from research, necessarily constrains development of policy, pedagogy, and praxis, which might facilitate more inclusive experiences for this population of students. This study was the first in NZ to focus on the lived experiences of autistic adolescents in their senior years (Levels 1-3 NCEA). A multi-perspective, qualitative phenomenological design enabled three tertiary students, three parents, and seven advocates, to augment contributions from five high-functioning autistic adolescents. This research was underpinned by a feminist standpoint epistemology and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, privileging first person experiences and contextual influences. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis enabled participants’ understandings and experiences to be explored. Tertiary students illumined how medical model understandings of disability constrained and enabled identity formation in high school and implicated being understood. Most of the autistic participants drew on neoliberal ‘governmentality’ to problematise barriers to inclusion, namely ‘governance’ (dominant culture, school rules, and regulation of ‘space’), teacher performativity, and curriculum management. Salient interpersonal barriers included authoritative teachers, social cliques, ‘invisible’ bullying, and ‘one-off’ grievances. ‘Being excluded’ was painful and resulted in feeling ‘de-valued’, impacting motivation and opportunities for success. Facilitators to inclusion were embedded within meaningful interactions, demonstrative care, and common interests, aiding a sense of acceptance, and belonging, but not always resulting in ‘contributing’ and ‘participating’. High school was experienced by autistic participants as a political site where in/ex-clusion ‘gets done’ through ordinary technologies that ‘sift and shift’ students, according to sameness and difference, or ontological ‘otherness’. This study addresses prominent diagnostic and identity issues, academic and social achievement, and support, all of which are primary concerns for educationalists (including educational psychologists) striving to understand inclusion and improve outcomes for autistic students

A COMPARISON BETWEEN MOTIVATIONS AND PERSONALITY TRAITS IN RELIGIOUS TOURISTS AND CRUISE SHIP TOURISTS

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the motivations and the personality traits that characterize tourists who choose religious travels versus cruises. Participating in the research were 683 Italian tourists (345 males and 338 females, age range 18–63 years); 483 who went to a pilgrimage travel and 200 who chose a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Both groups of tourists completed the Travel Motivation Scale and the Big Five Questionnaire. Results show that different motivations and personality traits characterize the different types of tourists and, further, that motivations for traveling are predicted by specific —some similar, other divergent— personality trait

The Moving Page

This paper investigates transitional states of spaces between images, moving images, and the use of sketchbook/page works through a questioning and auto-ethnographic approach to research and practice. Viewing illustration as a refexive space, the investigations demonstrate exchangesbetween authorship, interaction, narrative, time, and space. Valuing the ‘in-between’ states that exist between the unfnished and fnished, the research questions notions of in-fux, moving, nebulous states. Through alternative publishing forms, the research concerns dissemination through emerging digital platforms

The Moving Page

This paper investigates transitional states of spaces between images, moving images, and the use of sketchbook/page works through a questioning and auto-ethnographic approach to research and practice. Viewing illustration as a refexive space, the investigations demonstrate exchangesbetween authorship, interaction, narrative, time, and space. Valuing the ‘in-between’ states that exist between the unfnished and fnished, the research questions notions of in-fux, moving, nebulous states. Through alternative publishing forms, the research concerns dissemination through emerging digital platforms