Educational inclusion and critical neuroscience: Friends or foes?

Momentum is continuing to grow in the circulation of neuroscientific discourse, informing aspects of how we live but affecting too how we think about education and learning. Neurologically-informed intrusions into education frequently align with psychology which has until now largely adopted a ‘medical model’, supporting policies and practices which ultimately invoke psychopathology and arguably render individual young people more vulnerable to various forms of social and educational exclusion. This paper urges caution in respect of understandings of educational neuroscience that focus on individual deficits and diagnoses. Rather it holds in mind the broader historical context for neuroscience and its implications for our understandings of what it is to be human in the 21st. century and thereafter for education and learning. Theoretical resources from critical and affective neuroscience but also critical educational psychology are brought together specifically to support the principles of inclusionist policies and practices in education

‘Just deal with it’: neoliberalism in dyslexic students’ talk about dyslexia and learning at university

There are different ways of theorising dyslexia and different ways of constructing meanings around dyslexia in different learning contexts. This paper considers the role of neoliberalist ideology in shaping conversations about dyslexia and ‘fairness’ during two focus group conversations analysed as part of a study into the discursive construction of dyslexia in higher education. Ideological analysis was undertaken with reference to Gee's discourse analysis and Willig's concept of the use of discursive resources in interaction. Investigation identified neoliberalist ideology as a powerful voice within the analysed texts, and as directive for identity and action. This paper argues that recognition of the ways in which neoliberalist ideology shapes everyday conversation about learning and learning differences is vital in the construction and maintenance of fairer higher education in the UK

An fMRI study of parietal cortex involvement in the visual guidance of locomotion

Locomoting through the environment typically involves anticipating impending changes in heading trajectory in addition to maintaining the current direction of travel. We explored the neural systems involved in the “far road” and “near road” mechanisms proposed by Land and Horwood (1995) using simulated forward or backward travel where participants were required to gauge their current direction of travel (rather than directly control it). During forward egomotion, the distant road edges provided future path information, which participants used to improve their heading judgments. During backward egomotion, the road edges did not enhance performance because they no longer provided prospective information. This behavioral dissociation was reflected at the neural level, where only simulated forward travel increased activation in a region of the superior parietal lobe and the medial intraparietal sulcus. Providing only near road information during a forward heading judgment task resulted in activation in the motion complex. We propose a complementary role for the posterior parietal cortex and motion complex in detecting future path information and maintaining current lane positioning, respectively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved

Psychological assessments of young people in family courts: Relationality, experience, representation and the principle of "do no harm"

This paper considers the conduct of psychological assessments of young people in family courts and research into those professional practices. It extends the potentially progressive construct of reflective practice (Family Justice Council / British Psychological Society, 2016) by attending to issues of relationality, experience and representation which are not routinely prioritized in some assessment and training models and, significantly, it instantiates Harre’s claim for ‘qualitative psychology as science’ (2004:1). The responsibility of psychologists conducting assessments of young people in family courts in England and Wales is to work in the “best interests of the child” (Unicef, 1989, DoH, 1989). It is argued that some assessment practices are better able than others to attend both to scientific and ethical issues since assessment practices do not merely report truths about a young person but construct the young person and the psychologist in a dynamic causal bind. Narrative methodology is utilized in a fictional case vignette, firstly, to highlight the problematics of dominant epistemologies in psychology and secondly, to demonstrate the importance to scientific formulation of ontological possibilities in the dyad between practitioner and young person. The paper has implications for all psychologists who conduct assessments or research in statutory or legal contexts

A versatile high resolution objective for imaging quantum gases

We present a high resolution objective lens made entirely from catalog singlets that has a numerical aperture of 0.36. It corrects for aberrations introduced by a glass window and has a long working distance of 35mm, making it suitable for imaging objects within a vacuum system. This offers simple high resolution imaging for many in the quantum gas community. The objective achieves a resolution of 1.3{\mu}m at the design wavelength of 780nm, and a diffraction-limited field of view of 360{\mu}m when imaging through a 5mm window. Images of a resolution target and a pinhole show quantitative agreement with the simulated lens performance. The objective is suitable for diffraction-limited imaging on the D2 line of all the alkalis by changing only the aperture diameter, retaining numerical apertures above 0.32. The design corrects for window thicknesses of up to 15mm if the singlet spacings are modified

On the equivalence of strong formulations for capacitated multi-level lot sizing problems with setup times

Several mixed integer programming formulations have been proposed for modeling capacitated multi-level lot sizing problems with setup times. These formulations include the so-called facility location formulation, the shortest route formulation, and the inventory and lot sizing formulation with (l,S) inequalities. In this paper, we demonstrate the equivalence of these formulations when the integrality requirement is relaxed for any subset of binary setup decision variables. This equivalence has significant implications for decomposition-based methods since same optimal solution values are obtained no matter which formulation is used. In particular, we discuss the relax-and-fix method, a decomposition-based heuristic used for the efficient solution of hard lot sizing problems. Computational tests allow us to compare the effectiveness of different formulations using benchmark problems. The choice of formulation directly affects the required computational effort, and our results therefore provide guidelines on choosing an effective formulation during the development of heuristic-based solution procedures