Co-creating an educational space

In this paper I generate my living educational theory as an explanation of my educational influences in learning as I research my tutoring with practitioner researchers from a variety of workplace backgrounds. I will show how I have closely inter-related the teaching learning and research processes by providing opportunities for participants to accept responsibility for their own learning and to develop their capacity as learners and researchers. My PhD enquiry ‘How am I creating a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness?’ (Farren, 2006) was integral to the development of my own practice as higher education educator. I clarified the meaning of my embodied values in the course of their emergence in practice. I try to provide an educational space where individuals can create knowledge in collaboration with others. I believe dialogue is fundamental to the learning process. It is a way of opening up to questions and assumptions rather than accepting ready-made solutions. The originality of the contribution is in the constellation of values and understandings I use as explanatory principles in my explanations of educational influence. This constellation includes the unusual combination of an educational response to the flow of energy and meaning in Celtic spirituality and the educational opportunities for learning opened up by digital technology

Sports Celebrity Influence on the Behavioral Intentions of Generation Z

The research is to determine what the effects, if any, professional athlete endorsers or spokespersons have on the generation Z cohort. There is a relative lack of published research that investigated the influence sport celebrity endorsers had on generation Z. This study primarily focused on the exploration of the role sports celebrities play as vicarious role models for members of generation, as well as touched upon whether sports celebrity endorsers affected generation Z’s behavioral intentions. In addition, the influence sports celebrity endorsers had on females in comparison to males was also studied. It was found that sports celebrity spokespersons or endorsers act as vicarious role models for specifically generation Z. It was also concluded that sports celebrity spokesperson or endorsers influence Generation Z’s behavioral intentions

Educational influences in learning with visual narratives

In this presentation, we intend to show, through the use of digital video, our understanding of ontological values of a web of betweenness and pedagogy of the unique (Farren, 2004) as they are lived in practice with students, in this case, practitioner-researchers on award bearing programmes. We both work with a sense of research-based professionalism in which we are seeking to improve our educational practice with our students in action research enquiries 'how do I improve what I am doing?' The visual narratives, in the form of digital video clips, of our educational practice, include our engagement with practitioner-researchers as we seek to understand our educational influences in their learning so that we can "influence the education of social formation" (Whitehead, 2004a & b). This relates to the idea of social formations as defined by Bourdieu (1990) and points to the way people organise their interactions according to a set of regulatory values that can take the form of rules. In studying our own education practice, with the help of digital video, we hope to influence the education of social formations so that others will begin to question their underlying values, assumptions and epistemologies that inform their practice. The purpose of this paper is to communicate to a wider audience and network with other higher education educators through visual narratives of our work in higher education. There is a lack of research in how educators in higher education are influencing the education of their students. This area of research is one which we develop through this paper

THE WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS OF CIVIL SERVICE TYPISTS. General Research Series Paper No. 93, June 1978

Following conferences for Superintendents and Supervisors of Civil Service typists convened by the Department of the Public Service, the authors of this report were asked to carry out a survey of facts and attitudes relating to all typists employed in government offices in Dublin. This necessarily involved an acquaintance with their work and working conditions. One of the authors therefore made use of previous experience in industry to work as a typist in a Departmental typing section, while the other visited typing sections in other Departments. The information gained from this participative observation and from interviews was then used to construct two questionnaires. The first of these was specifically about the work the typists did, the size and type of work groups to which they belonged, the officials they typed for, their Supervisors, and their pre-employment training. The same questionnaire contained a number of general questions of the kind usually incorporated in questionnaires addressed to office and industrial workers; these were taken from job satisfaction studies carried out in Ireland and elsewhere and, where necessary, modified. The second questionnaire sought to establish the effect of the location of the typists’ work on their lives outside work. Unlike most social surveys which are based on samples, the present study encompassed practically every Civil Service typist working in Dublin in 1972

‘Transformative Pedagogy’ in Language Teacher Education

‘Transformative language pedagogy’ (‘transformative pedagogy’) emerged from three systemically linked, qualitative studies carried out by the author in collaboration with educators at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, King’s College London, and Boston College, MA, and neighbouring, post-primary schools. The context for the studies is language teacher education. ‘Transformative pedagogy’ enhances the social-psychological model of autonomous language teaching and learning by underpinning it with an intercultural and moral-philosophical foundation. It supports the target language teacher in developing a more encompassing, professional identity that incorporates practitioner-researcher and leader. Researching practice requires justifying pedagogical decisions by testing that they are evidence informed and based on moral values and opening them to external scrutiny. An original model for ‘transformative research’ is outlined

GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSE: THE GENETIC UNDERPINNINGS OF ROOT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND RHIZODEPOSITION IN SORGHUM

Plants are some of the most diverse organisms on earth, consisting of more than 350,000 different species. To understand the underlying processes that contributed to plant diversification, it is fundamental to identify the genetic and genomic components that facilitated various adaptations over evolutionary history. Most studies to date have focused on the underlying controls of above-ground traits such as grain and vegetation; however, little is known about the “hidden half” of plants. Root systems comprise half of the total plant structure and provide vital functions such as anchorage, resource acquisition, and storage of energy reserves. The execution of these key functions via root system architecture and root exudation directly determines plant performance, and thus reproductive fitness. Despite the significance of roots, the genetic controls contributing to their variation have gone understudied due to the technical difficulties associated with below-ground phenotyping. Domesticated plants provide an excellent framework for studying the genomic underpinnings of phenotypic diversity due to the telescoped evolutionary time frame under which artificial selection took place. The rapid evolution of domesticates from their extant antecedent affords direct observations of derived traits and their underlying genetic controls. Sorghum, a globally important domesticated grass species with a small diploid genome, few genetic repeats, and a wide variety of adaptations, serves as a good model for studying selection during domestication. Domesticated S. bicolor is an annual accession with large seeds and flowering organs compared to its wild relative, S. propinquum. Comparatively, S. propinquum is perennial with dense rhizomes and small flowering panicles. Due to their distinctly opposing root systems, a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population formed from a cross between S. bicolor and S. propinquum was used to identify the specific root morphological and metabolic adaptations that derived from domestication. The RIL population was phenotyped using high-throughput image analysis to locate the underlying genomic factors controlling derived traits via high-density Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) mapping. Nine novel QTL influencing root morphology were identified. No QTL were identified for metabolic exudation; however, crown root growing angle was found to be a statistically significant predictor of the percentage of carbon and nitrogen in the rhizosphere. The relationship between steep growing angles and increased rhizosphere carbon and nitrogen suggests that increased exudation was derived during domestication. Candidate genes and pathways were identified including those that encode meristem transcription factors, plant hormone receptors, and actin trafficking. These findings advance our understanding of the underlying genomic factors controlling root system architecture (RSA) and root exudation that were selected during the domestication of Sorghum. The results of this study can be integrated into breeding programs for the establishment of elite root lines used to mitigate the effects of current and future environmental challenges of croplands in a sustainable manner

How am I creating a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness with a new epistemology for educational knowledge?

In this paper, I report on my Doctoral research. My PhD thesis examines the growth of my educational knowledge and development of my practice, as higher education educator, over six years of self-study. I demonstrate how I am contributing to a knowledge base of practice by creating my ‘living educational theory’. Whitehead (1989,2004a) claims that values are embodied in our educational practice and their meanings can be communicated in the course of their emergence in practice. He encourages us to account for our own educational development through the creation of our ‘living educational theory’ and using our values as living standards of judgement we can judge the validity of our claims to educational knowledge. I clarify the meaning of my educational values in the course of their emergence in my practice-based research. My values have been transformed into living standards of judgement that include a `web of betweenness` and a `pedagogy of the unique`. The `web of betweenness` refers to how we learn in relation to one another and also how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can enable us to get closer to communicating the meanings of our embodied values. A `pedagogy of the unique` respects the unique constellation of values and standards of judgement that each practitioner-researcher contributes to a knowledge base of practice. My research is timely as there is now a growing interest in applied and practice-based research. In a UK discussion document entitled ‘Assessing Quality in Applied and Practice-based Educational Research’, Furlong and Oancea, (2005, p. 8) suggest that “action research and reflective practice are models that offer arguments against the idea that applied research is only focused on use and that it does not and cannot contribute to more theoretical knowledge production while at the same time achieving changed practice” (ibid)

Old Norse loanwords in modern Irish

This study questions the received wisdom that surviving Old Norse loanwords in modern Irish are fewer than 50 in number and are mostly shipping-related. The eventual goal is a complete survey of all Old Norse loanwords still “in common use in modern Irish” (Greene 1976: 80), since nothing of the sort has been found in the literature. In the interim, this study proposes a list of 67 words, extant in modern Irish only insofar as they are attested in the principal modern dictionaries, and which in light of available evidence are “of probable Old Norse origin” by direct borrowing. For quantitative purposes, these are counted on the basis of one Irish word per Old Norse etymon and are categorised into semantic domains according to the framework of the Loanword Typology Project (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009), itself an adaptation of the semantic domains proposed in Buck (1949). It is demonstrated that Old Norse loanwords in Irish overwhelmingly belong to the broad category of “culture vocabulary” but are not majoritarily connected with shipping. The main study is followed by a qualitative description of patterns of formal and semantic change observed in the data. These include derivational developments, diachronic semantic changes since Middle Irish, cross-domain semantic shifts and synchronic polysemies in modern Irish. The discussion focuses on extra-linguistic causal explanations for change, but also suggests that some mainstays of cognitive lexical semantics such as prototypicality and radial networks are better-equipped than fixedly categorial semantic domains to account for change after borrowing

Using the Internet for professional development

This paper reports on a short course that used the Internet in the context of a professional peer group learning environment. The course made use of the WebCT conferencing system. This system allows messages to be kept in a central location. As it is asynchronous, a receiver can read a message and respond to it at a time convenient to them. Extracts from different forums are presented that provide examples of the types of communication that took place and participants perceived advantages and disadvantages of online communication

Polyfluorinated compounds via free-radical reactions of alcohols and diols

Site-selective incorporation of fluorocarbon substituents into organic molecules is a field of continuing interest, and a variety of approaches have been reported. The research described within this thesis is concerned with the functionalisation of C-H bonds adjacent to primary or secondary hydroxyl units via free-radical additions to fluoroalkenes. A range of cyclic and acyclic alcohols and diols have been functionalised in this manner, and both substituent and electronic effects on the radical process have been investigated. Further functionalisation of the polyfluoroalkylated products has been performed, giving a range of new fluorinated systems, and an investigation into the chemistry of these systems has begun