Discursive mobile phone practices and informal rules

This paper uses Discourse Analysis (DA) to investigate the socially\ud constructed discursive practices of mobile phone use; specifically it examines the\ud informal rules of mobile phone use. It qualitatively investigates mobile phone use\ud within an Australian cultural context. „Discourse theory begins with the\ud assumption that all objects and actions are meaningful, and that their meaning is a\ud product of historically specific systems of rules‟ (Howarth 2000, p. 8). Evidence\ud of socially constructed textual meanings related to mobile phone use is found in\ud the informal rules created (and practiced); those that in some way govern the use\ud of mobile phones. The research reveals that there are divergences and\ud inconsistencies within the discourse of mobile phone use, and illustrates that\ud individuals make differing personal choices in similar social contexts

Developing researchers in the arts and humanities: lessons from a pilot programme to develop discipline-specific research skills

Although increasing emphasis is placed on the provision of research training for doctoral students, much of the support currently available is generic in nature, rather than tailored to the student’s particular field(s) of study. In this paper, I briefly review UK graduate education for arts and humanities research students, and some of the ways in which the distinctive demands of their discipline(s) shape the research student experience and hence their development needs. I describe the design and delivery of a pilot programme of discipline-specific research skills development, co-ordinated by the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies, which aims to address such needs; and I evaluate its success. I conclude with some recommendations for future practice; in particular, I argue that doctoral training provision is more effective when it involves a subject-specific approach in which practising academics from the discipline(s) play a significant role – both in terms of fostering an improved level of student engagement with the programme, and of delivering training and development opportunities which are tailored to the student’s particular context and needs

C*-algebraic normalization and Godement-Jacquet factors

We observe how certain distribution on $\mathrm{GL}(n)$ that generates Godement-Jacquet $\gamma$-factors appears naturally in the C*-algebraic normalization process for standard intertwining integrals on $\mathrm{SL}(n+1)$.Comment: Final version, to appear in Contemp. Mat

Oscar Mallitte's Andaman photographs (1857-8)

This article examines the first Andaman Islands photographs, which were taken by the photographer Oscar Jean-Baptiste Mallitte during a Government of India survey whose brief was to find a site for a penal colony for mutineers and rebels sentenced to transportation after the Great Revolt of 1857. The Mallitte prints were long assumed to be lost or destroyed, but recently they have been discovered in the Queen's Collection at Windsor Castle. The article looks at the photographs as representations of the Andamans landscape and peoples just before permanent colonization, and focuses on a deeply affecting set of images of an Islander kidnapped by the survey party and taken back to Calcutta. As the photographic process was described in some detail in various contemporary publications, and because the photographs were widely copied and published as engravings, the images can be used to interrogate some of the textual and visual interconnections and slippages that were implied during the Islands' written and visual production and transformation. The article suggests that the photographs and their connected texts – visual and discursive – are of huge importance as signifiers of the violence of colonization, as evidence of some of the ambivalences that characterized the use of convict forced labour in colonization, and as a ‘missing link’ that enables us to examine some of the ways in which the Islands and its peoples were constructed and represented through the trope of colonial ‘tropicality’

Cooperative Learning in Scotland. Perspectives on the role of cooperative learning in supporting curricular policy and innovation

The stated aim of the new Curriculum for Excellence is to deliver an education system in Scotland that meets the demands of the 21st Century. The new curriculum has been the subject of controversy relating to its capacity to support learning and the approaches to learning and teaching it advocates. The changes in curriculum require developments, for some practitioners, in how learning and teaching takes place with a focus on active learning. This paper explores whether one active learning strategy, cooperative learning, can assist teachers in delivering the new curriculum. Cooperative learning is a pedagogy that has been the focus of significant research in the United States and Canada with developing interest in a variety of countries (Gillies 2000; Gillies & Boyle 2005; Johnson 1993; Johnson 1985; Kagan & Kagan 2009; Slavin 1984; Weigmann 1992) but to date the research in the UK is limited. This paper explores findings on cooperative learning in a global context and through a case study in Scotland. The case study reported in this paper reflects on the responses of pupils to the introduction of cooperative learning in a secondary school in Scotland and the ways in which this approach appeared to support them in developing the four capacities of the new curriculum