Textiles as Material Gestalt: Cloth as a Catalyst in the Co-designing Process

Textiles is the common language within Emotional Fit, a collaborative research project investigating a person-centred, sustainable approach to fashion for an ageing female demographic (55+). Through the co-designing of a collection of research tools, textiles have acted as a material gestalt for exploring our research participants' identities by tracing their embodied knowledge of fashionable dress. The methodology merges Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, co-design and a simultaneous approach to textile and garment design. Based on an enhanced understanding of our participants textile preferences, particular fabric qualities have catalysed silhouettes, through live draping and geometric pattern cutting to accommodate multiple body shapes and customisation. Printedtextiles have also been digitally crafted in response to the contours of the garment and body and personal narratives of wear. Sensorial and tactile interactions have informed the engineering and scaling of patterns within zero-waste volumes. The article considers the functional and aesthetic role of textiles

Transforming educational experience for children, parents and teachers practitioner research from the CDI/NUIM Masters Programme 2013

The purpose of this action research thesis was to implement an evidence based initiative that could help better engage students in school. This research investigated factors that affected students' choice of Leaving Certificate Science subjects and devised actions that would enable and inform this choice. The factors affecting student choice were investigated using qualitative and quantitative methods of enquiry. The research was set against a drop in the numbers of students choosing science subjects for Leaving Certificate (Smyth and Hannan, 2006). The research took place in a community school in the south west area of Dublin.

Aesthetic Autopsy. Collective Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Art from Angola

Angolan history is mainly a history of wars. After the long anti-colonial fight (1961 – 1974) that ended with the independence of the country in 1975, a civil war between the former independence movements started. In the 1980s, Angola was the venue for a proxy war between the Socialist bloc and Western countries, supporting the different protagonists fighting on Angolan territory. After the crumbling of cold war ideologies in 1989, the war continued as a struggle for political hegemony and access to natural resources until 2002, devastating lands, economy and social structures. These historical events might have led to trauma with the utmost probability. Nevertheless, there is no public discourse on the civil war and no reconciliation policy. This might be due to its adjacency, suggesting that traumatising events need several years before being far away enough to be talked about. But still there are some approaches by contemporary artists worth to look at. In this paper I critically explore the perspectives employed by the artists dealing with these topics. My central question is, if art might offer another, maybe even alternative perspective on engagement with the memory of the civil war that goes beyond the normative truth and reconciliation discourse dominant in southern Africa that focuses on forgiveness. Can art be a coherent form to remediate memory or is it actually rather pointing towards the unrepresentability of trauma

Learning with worked-out problems in Manufacturing Technology: The effects of instructional explanations and self-explanation prompts on acquired knowledge acquisition, near and far transfer performance

In the present research, two different explanatory approaches – namely, instructional explanation and self-explanation prompts – were applied in worked-out-problem-based learning (learning with worked-out problems) in a computer-assisted instructional environment in the domain of manufacturing technology. This research aims at comparing the effects of both explanatory approaches on topic knowledge acquisition, near transfer performance, and far transfer performance. Additionally, this research also attempts to examine the impact of topic interest on the aforementioned variables, in addition to the relationships between topic interest, mental effort, and learning outcomes. A total of 76 second-year students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The pre- and post-tests were used to measure topic knowledge acquisition, near-transfer performance, and far-transfer performance, whereas topic interest and mental effort were measured by means of Topic Interest Questionnaire and NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) respectively. The analysis outcomes revealed that the self-explanation prompts approach was significantly superior to the instructional-explanation approach in terms of topic knowledge acquisition and near transfer performance. In addition, the results demonstrated that the impact of topic interest was significantly noticeable on far transfer tasks, but not on topic knowledge acquisition and near transfer tasks. On the other hand, the relationship between mental effort investment and test performance was not statistically significant. Finally, an equivocal relationship, which varied depending on the treatment conditions, was discovered between topic interest, mental effort, and test performance. (DIPF/orig.)In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurden zwei unterschiedliche Lehrmethoden – instruktionale Erklärung und Aufforderung zur Selbsterklärung – angewandt auf das Lernen mit Lösungsbeispielen in einer computergestützten Lernumgebung, die thematisch im Bereich der Fertigungstechnik angesiedelt ist. Die computergestützte Lernumgebung bestand aus einer vom Autor erstellten Lernsoftware, die mit Macromedia Authorware entworfen und entwickelt wurde. Hauptziel der Studie war ein Vergleich der Effekte beider Lehrmethoden auf die Aneignung von Sachwissen sowie die Leistung beim nahen und weiten Transfer. Außerdem wurden die Auswirkungen von Gegenstandsinteresse auf die zuvor genannten Kriterien untersucht und die Beziehungen zwischen Gegenstandsinteresse, mentaler Anstrengung und Lernergebnissen. Insgesamt wurden 76 Studierende im zweiten Jahr ihres Studiums an der Fakultät für Technische Bildung, Universität Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), nach dem Zufallsprinzip in drei Gruppen aufgeteilt: Selbsterklärungsaufforderung (SE: n = 25), instruktionale Erklärung (IE: n = 25) und Kontrollgruppe (n = 26). Mit Pre- und Post-Tests wurden die Aneignung von Sachwissen sowie die nahe und weite Transferleistung erhoben. Gegenstandsinteresse und mentale Anstrengung wurden mit dem Topic Interest–Fragebogen und dem NASA-TLX gemessen. Das Statistik-Paket für die Sozialwissenschaften (SPSS) wurde verwendet, um die Hypothesen an den gesammelten Daten zu prüfen. Die Hypothesenprüfung erfolgte mittels quantitativ statistischer Auswertungsverfahren (Korrelation, Varianzanalyse). (DIPF/Orig.

Threadscape

Describes the author\u27s creation of her thesis exhibition, an installation of textile sculpture titled Threadwork. In this thesis, the artist explains how labor shapes the content of her work and how she translates experiences from her past into textile art. Includes color photographs of her exhibition as well as of artworks which inspired her

Returning home: heritage work among the Stl'atl'imx of the Lower Lillooet River Valley

This article focusses on heritage practices in the tensioned landscape of the Stl’atl’imx (pronounced Stat-lee-um) people of the Lower Lillooet River Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Displaced from their traditional territories and cultural traditions through the colonial encounter, they are enacting, challenging and remaking their heritage as part of their long term goal to reclaim their land and return ‘home’. I draw on three examples of their heritage work: graveyard cleaning, the shifting ‘official’/‘unofficial’ heritage of a wagon road, and marshalling of the mountain named Nsvq’ts (pronounced In-SHUCK-ch) in order to illustrate how the past is strategically mobilised in order to substantiate positions in the present. While this paper focusses on heritage in an Indigenous and postcolonial context, I contend that the dynamics of heritage practices outlined here are applicable to all heritage practices

Memory and history: Oral techniques in the East African context

Some historians have always erred in ignoring oral history methods, as it is always assumed wrongly that the only reliable and trustworthy source of history is the written word. The aim of this article is to underscore the nature and significance of oral histories, which rely on the memory of the narrators. In the case of both Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s and Wole Soyinka’s literary works, their respective childhood experiences are well captured, as they employ both the use of postcolonial and autobiography theories in their theoretical frameworks. In its methodology, this article relied heavily on extensive literature review, oral interviews and archival sources. In seeking to demonstrate the significance of oral history for the preservation of memory and for the writing of history in Africa, the author intends to build from both the above literary works and other theohistorical materials so as to convey the message that the methodology used in chronicling East African oral history, the history of Christian doctrines, Church history or social histories will require us to go beyond postcolonial theory and the theory of autobiography in order to harvest the rich and forward-moving historiographies that remain unexplored and/or unpublished altogether. Contribution: Memory as a critical tool that moves humanity forward is the main subject of this article. The article is relevant to the journal HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies and the world of scholarship as it undertakes a multidisciplinary approach in engaging literary works with theo-historical works in order to build the case for oral techniques in modern scholarship

Living heritage conservation

Living Heritage is characterized by ‘continuity’, in particular those historic places that are still a ‘living’ part of their community. In China, the mainstream of living heritage conservation is shifting from commodity-oriented renewal to culture-oriented and people-centred revival, which has obviously displayed in many planning practices. This paper centres on the connotation of living heritage and explores its applications approaches through two conservation practices in Nanjing, China. In the first project, the author conceived a brand-new way of protecting and revealing historic streets, named ‘Reflection Alley’. It treats the street as an open museum, utilizing current semi-dismantled remains, providing a stage for dialogues between history and modernity, endowing the historic legacy with a sustainable future. In the second project, a ‘Five-stakeholder Platform’ is set up to support the progressive revitalization of a historic district. Through in-depth community engagement, the design team have developed a three-phase planning guide helping locals to protect and repair their residences thus stimulating the vitality of community life. The paper provides solutions for the implementation of culture-oriented and people-centred revival through the interaction between tangible and intangible parts and the connections to community