Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

The troubled relationship between architecture and aesthetic: exploring the self and emotional beauty in design

As its title informs us, this research has a double agenda: investigating the troubled relationship between architecture and its generated aesthetic since the early 1940s when the Self was repressed - the Eye and the ‘I’ - as well as exploring, through my test-bed project, a design process where feelings and emotions are an integral part. My research is an investigation into what seems to be a great paradox within architectural discourse. While good architecture or brilliant buildings tend to be judged by their capacity to produce an aesthetic experience, many architects claim they generate architecture in response to rational utilitarian issues, often insisting on removing themselves as personalities from the design process. This down-plays the direct relationship between personal judgement and visual discrimination, a position which has broader cultural implications. After a short decade (1977-88) of free imagination, lateral thinking and celebrating the Self, from the late 1980s the intellectualisation and further rationalisation of the architectural design process came again to the fore and became an authorial voice substituting the Self by introducing either philosophy, math or both to the design process. Investigating this troubled relationship took place alongside exploring the creation of an emotional environment within the architectural context; ways in which space becomes emotionally charged. G. Bachelard’s exposition of issues contained within poetry teaches us that like poetry, visual poetic images might release people into reverie, the state of mind in which the eidetic memory is accessed. The wonder and beauty of nature is a constant reminder of wonderful possibilities - with great relevance to architecture. My intention is not to depict or describe nature, but to evoke human emotions (as nature does) through the architectural spaces that I design. Using and evoking poetic images in the design process forming the preludes to emotive architecture. Spatial-Depth or Depth–Scape were two equivalent terms I coined for a new architectural spatial pursuit; it is the spatial-depth quality and effect that I explored which I believe is the aspect of my research that is a contribution to the field of architectural design. A new spatial concept and a new architectural language that substitutes the ubiquitous and already old Modern planar architecture. Opposed to the prevalent topological surface, with continuous and consistent skins, an exuberant ‘inside-out’, complex three dimensionally with an enhanced depth to be inhabited or involved with at close distance. A new spatial quality engulfed with emotional triggers such as the manifold silhouettes in the interactive time-cycled Light and Acoustic Installation - an emotional beauty. For architecture, aesthetics has the power to synthesise poetic and emotional values and at the same time give coherence to the design itself

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Book

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Boo

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Research on Teaching and Learning In Biology, Chemistry and Physics In ESERA 2013 Conference

This paper provides an overview of the topics in educational research that were published in the ESERA 2013 conference proceedings. The aim of the research was to identify what aspects of the teacher-student-content interaction were investigated frequently and what have been studied rarely. We used the categorization system developed by Kinnunen, Lampiselkä, Malmi and Meisalo (2016) and altogether 184 articles were analyzed. The analysis focused on secondary and tertiary level biology, chemistry, physics, and science education. The results showed that most of the studies focus on either the teacher’s pedagogical actions or on the student - content relationship. All other aspects were studied considerably less. For example, the teachers’ thoughts about the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards the goals and the content, and the teachers’ conceptions of the students’ actions towards achieving the goals were studied only rarely. Discussion about the scope and the coverage of the research in science education in Europe is needed.Peer reviewe

Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation

Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio­-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-­UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc