Educational foundations in Trinidad and Tobago: Reformulating a Masters course and building a learning community

The context of this study is a Masters course in educational foundations, adjusted from an overall theoretical format to one which places heavy emphasis on the social interaction of participants toward the building of a community of learning. In a learning community, situations arise which require of its members social competencies conducive to positive social interaction. Subsequent to the course re-format, a qualitative case study was undertaken to gather responses over two course offerings. Data were analysed from teacher-participants, lecturers and tutors, as well as from sections of an assignment. Teacher experiences reveals that success in building a learning community needs scaffolding through in-depth sensitization into what a learning community entails. The challenge to lecturers is to examine their commitment to an emphasis on community building rather than discrete disciplinary knowledge in the philosophy, psychology and sociology of education

Size distribution and number concentration of the 10nm-20um aerosol at an urban background site, Gennevilliers, Paris area

International audienceThe purpose of this study is to quantify the exposure of people to the submicronic particles, and especially ultrafine/nanoparticules (< 100 nm) at an urban background site in the Paris area. Since 2003, two particle sizers have been used every year for a winter five weeks campaign

UNA PLEGARIA PARA TLALOC

UNA PLEGARIA PARA TLALO

When bad is cool: violence and crime as rites of passage to manhood

Modern society has brought greater opportunities for peer groups to play relatively greater and increasingly unsupervised roles in the lives of young men as they grow up. At the same time social and economic circumstances have created pressures for adults, who previously played a central role in guiding and mentoring young people, to become less important in their lives. The increased influence of peer groups has a strong impact upon the codes of masculinity that many boys aspire to and plays a central role in policing which masculinities are considered ―acceptable. A potent combination of obligations for boys to act like ―real men and of pressures to eschew roles that have become discredited as soft, gay or feminine seems to be driving young men towards dangerous, risk-taking hyper-masculinities. The net outcome of these processes is for violence and crime to be increasingly seen as premiere ways of proving one's manhood in front of those who matter most to boys: their peers