Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark

Review of Timothy Clark\u27s Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept

Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic by Whitney A. Bauman

Review of Whitney A. Bauman\u27s Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic

Threshold concepts in literary studies

This essay proposes a series of “threshold concepts” for literary studies: text, meaning, context, form, and reading. Each term carries both commonsense understandings and disciplinary understandings, which differ from each other drastically. The disciplinary understandings entail far “more” than the commonsense ones. Unless such differences are named and explained clearly, unacknowledged commonsense understandings may hinder students ability to learn equally unacknowledged disciplinary understandings. The naming and describing of such contrasting sets of understandings and of the differences between them is an act of disciplinary introspection—a scholarly and pedagogical act vital for understanding and teaching any complex body of knowledge. In addition to proposing threshold concepts for literary studies specifically, then, this essay encourages and offers a model for teacher-scholars in any discipline to undertake the same disciplinary work

Attending to the Act of Reading: Critical Reading, Contemplative Reading, and Active Reading

How students read influences how they learn. In particular, in order for students to learn to read more deeply or on a /oig/oer level, they need to learn to read actively. While many scholars and teachers appear to take active reading for granted, possibly assuming students will come into such “study skills” on their own, I propose that we should make concerted efforts to help students understand and adopt such habits as underlining, writing comments in the margins, asking questions, rereading, and so forth. In this essay, I survey recent work on critical reading, contemplative reading, and active reading and present a set of practices for teaching active reading

\u3cb\u3ePersonal Reflection:\u3c/b\u3e Teaching in the Shadow of a Dead God

Excerpt: Potter (2013) argues that even though many college teachers have adopted constructivist practices and perspectives, the “foundations” of Western higher education remain objectivist through and through. In the title metaphor of his essay, “objectivism” is the dead god. Constructivism killed it conceptually. But materially and ideologically speaking, its shadow still hangs over everything we do. While we work to deeply engage learners in their own learning, the structures and infrastructures of our institutions assume a superficial understanding of learning and thereby undermine our efforts

Scaffolding Critical Reading

Teachers in any discipline where reading matters should practice a robust scaffolding pedagogy to teach critical reading, in contrast to the more common but less direct approaches that often leave students to learn or not learn these skills themselves. In this essay, I describe how to adapt established methods for teaching writing (including templates) to teaching reading. To answer critics who might find the approach too “reductive,” I turn to scaffolding theory, which calls for purposefully—but temporarily—reductive teaching. Finally, I present qualitative and quantitative evidence from three years of an American literature course to show how a scaffolding approach can help students read critically

Threshold Concepts in Literary Studies

This essay proposes a series of “threshold concepts” for literary studies: text, meaning, context, form, and reading. Each term carries both commonsense understandings and disciplinary understandings, which differ from each other drastically. The disciplinary understandings entail far “more” than the commonsense ones. Unless such differences are named and explained clearly, unacknowledged commonsense understandings may hinder students ability to learn equally unacknowledged disciplinary understandings. The naming and describing of such contrasting sets of understandings and of the differences between them is an act of disciplinary introspection—a scholarly and pedagogical act vital for understanding and teaching any complex body of knowledge. In addition to proposing threshold concepts for literary studies specifically, then, this essay encourages and offers a model for teacher-scholars in any discipline to undertake the same disciplinary work

“It’s like my life but more, and better!” - Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and fantasy-based social play

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2011 A B Academic Publishers.Digital technology has opened up a range of new on-line leisure spaces for young people. Despite their popularity, on-line games and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in particular are still a comparatively under-researched area in the fields of both Education and more broadly Youth Studies. Drawing on a Five year ethnographic study, this paper considers the ways that young people use the virtual spaces offered by MMORPGs. This paper suggests that MMORPGs represent significant arenas within which young people act out a range of social narratives through gaming. It argues that MMORPG have become important fantasy spaces which offer young people possibilities to engage in what were formally material practices. Although this form of play is grounded in the everyday it also extends material practices and offers new and unique forms of symbolic experimentation, thus I argue that game-play narratives cannot be divorced from the everyday lives of their participants

Calcium-sensing receptor antagonists abrogate airway hyperresponsiveness and inflammation in allergic asthma

Airway hyperresponsiveness and inflammation are fundamental hallmarks of allergic asthma that are accompanied by increases in certain polycations, such as eosinophil cationic protein. Levels of these cations in body fluids correlate with asthma severity. We show that polycations and elevated extracellular calcium activate the human recombinant and native calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR), leading to intracellular calcium mobilization, cyclic adenosine monophosphate breakdown, and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphorylation in airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells. These effects can be prevented by CaSR antagonists, termed calcilytics. Moreover, asthmatic patients and allergen-sensitized mice expressed more CaSR in ASMs than did their healthy counterparts. Indeed, polycations induced hyperreactivity in mouse bronchi, and this effect was prevented by calcilytics and absent in mice with CaSR ablation from ASM. Calcilytics also reduced airway hyperresponsiveness and inflammation in allergen-sensitized mice in vivo. These data show that a functional CaSR is up-regulated in asthmatic ASM and targeted by locally produced polycations to induce hyperresponsiveness and inflammation. Thus, calcilytics may represent effective asthma therapeutics

Computer- or web-based interventions for perinatal mental health: A systematic review

Background: Treating prenatal mental health issues is of great importance, but access to treatment is often poor. One way of accessing treatment is through computer- or web-based interventions. Reviews have shown that these interventions can be effective for a variety of mental health disorder across different populations. However, their effectiveness for women in the perinatal period has not been reviewed. This review therefore aimed to provide a first overview of computer- or web-based interventions for women's perinatal mental health issues by systematically identifying and reviewing their characteristics and efficacy. Methods: Twelve electronic databases were searched for published and unpublished literature using keywords, supplemented by hand searches. Data were extracted for characteristics of the intervention and the study, study findings and the methodological quality was assessed. Results: The majority of the eleven eligible studies were randomized controlled trials. Interventions were targeted at depression, stress, and complicated grief during the antenatal or postpartum period or the time after pregnancy loss. Findings suggest that computer- or web-based interventions targeted at improving mental health, especially depression and complicated grief, may be effective. Limitations: Findings and their generalizability is limited by the heterogeneity of reviewed interventions and study designs, as well as methodological limitations. Conclusions: This systematic review constitutes the first synthesis of research on computer- or web-based interventions for perinatal mental health issues and provides preliminary support that this could be a promising form of treatment during this period. However, there are significant gaps in the current evidence-base so further research is needed