Cultural and religious barriers to learning in basic astronomy : A South African study

Studies in astronomy education have shown that socio-cultural factors combine with everyday human experience to create learning difficulties that are unique to this field. The history of astronomy also shows a complex link between science and religion. The foundations of modern astronomy lie in religious beliefs and practices, but over time, in the West, as science grew ever more powerful in explaining the apparently mechanistic processes of nature, the beliefs and understanding associated with scientific explanations came into conflict with those of the Christian church. In Africa, Western religious and scientific beliefs were brought by the missionaries, and imposed onto already existing beliefs systems. From colonial times to the present, Western knowledge has been privileged over local knowledge in African formal schooling. Little recognition has been given to the learning difficulties that may be caused in situations where the knowledge system taught at school is different to that imbibed through home and culture. The difficulties of epistemic access have been highlighted through the development of socio-cultural constructivist theories of learning. This study, which is based on the sociocultural constructivist theories of cultural border crossing and collateral learning, represents an investigation of the learning difficulties experienced by South African first year university students who study a compulsory course in basic astronomy called 'The Earth in Space'. The sample was thus a convenience sample, made up of 191 students who took the course between 2000 and 2004. The investigation was carried out using a pre-instruction questionnaire to record the precourse knowledge of the students. The questions that were asked focused on knowledge related to some of the key concepts in basic astronomy, such as an understanding of the nature of stars, the rotation and revolution of the earth and the phases of the moon. These questions had the dual purpose of benchmarking South African students' knowledge of the scientific explanations for these phenomena against similar international studies, as well as establishing the prevalence of cultural or traditional ideas held by these students. After the course had been completed, a post instruction questionnaire was used to establish students’ views on the difficulties they had experienced in learning in the course. This was followed up by semi-structured interviews with 25 of the students. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analysed using two methods: the first used a deductive coding system where the students’ responses were allocated to chosen categories, i.e. whether they conformed to the explanations of Western Modern Science or to cultural knowledge and beliefs, or both. The second method used a computer software programme, Atlas.ti, where each statement made by the student was recorded and coded, leading to an inductive, fine-grained analysis of their responses. The results from the pre-instruction questionnaire indicated that South African students display similar poor levels of knowledge in this field, to students from other Western and non-Western countries. The explanation for this lies in the fact that understanding the scientific explanations requires the ability to think abstractly, and to be able to construct complex mental models, in situations where the processes involved run counter to normal daily experience. However, the explanations given by the South African students also indicated that there were epistemological and ontological issues, related to conflicting beliefs in terms of culture and religion, which exacerbated the barriers to border crossing in this field. However, the data indicated that students did not find it as difficult to cross the barriers created by cultural or traditional beliefs as those caused by fundamentalist Christian beliefs. The biggest obstacle to learning related to conflict between creationist and scientific accounts of the formation of the Earth and Universe. While this is not unusual, as shown by studies carried out in the United States, where religious students are also affected by the apparent conflict between Christianity and science, the most significant finding of this study related to the existence and extent of this conflict in Black African students. In post-1994 South Africa, the revision of the national education system has resulted in a science curriculum that recognizes 'other ways of knowing'. These refer specifically, however, to Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) rather than religious beliefs. The curriculum does not acknowledge that African ontology is religious. It also does not recognize the duality of this ontology in terms of African Traditional Religion and Christianity, which is the stated religion of the majority of Black South Africans. The findings of this study indicate that because of the nature of African philosophy, religious ways of knowing need to be explicitly acknowledged as one of the 'other ways of knowing'. Such acknowledgement by science teachers and lecturers would help to prevent these different knowledge systems from being discarded or compartmentalized, which was found to lead either to the promotion of scientism, or to the preclusion of meaningful engagement with science

Maine Craft Breweries: Sustainability Benchmarking

Sustainability can have many definitions and meanings, usually derived from the same set of parameters. For Maine, sustainable practices in the brewing industry are becoming even more important as our craft breweries are continuously growing. With environmental stewardship in natural resource management in mind, the Brewers Association (BA) has created the sustainability benchmarking tool for paying members in order to help brewers track and decrease their use of natural resources. University of Southern Maine (USM) interns have collaborated with the New England Environmental Finance Center (EFC) on a grant project, sponsored by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), to connect with Maine craft breweries and engage them in the national benchmarking tool. Through an analysis of data inputs of each brewery, the BA sustainability benchmarking tool uses algorithms to show and explain the use of natural resources for the business, and then compares them to a national benchmark to show the status of their resource use. Our team compiles data inputs to enter into the benchmarking tool for Maine breweries where they are weighed against the production data of the brewery. By assisting them to evaluate the report we can help them find cost savings through source reduction, and recommend minor changes that can lead to major differences. With the acts of performing these services for Maine breweries, we are able to promote environmental stewardship for the state and sustain our limited natural resources. References: 1Maine Department of Environmental Protection. (2019). Sustainability. Retrieved from: https:// www.maine.gov/dep/sustainability/index.htm

1st International Symposium on Gait and Balance in MS: Gait and Balance Measures in the Evaluation of People with MS

Gait and balance measures have particular potential as outcome measures in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) because, of the many hallmarks of MS disability, gait and balance dysfunction are present throughout the course of the disease, impact many aspects of a person's life, and progress over time. To highlight the importance and relevance of gait and balance measures in MS, explore novel measurements of gait and balance in MS, and discuss how gait, balance, and fall measures can best be used and developed in clinical and research settings, the 1st International Symposium on Gait and Balance in Multiple Sclerosis was held in Portland, Oregon, USA on October 1, 2011. This meeting brought together nearly 100 neurologists, physiatrists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses, engineers, and others to discuss the current status and recent advances in the measurement of gait and balance in MS. Presentations focused on clinician-administered, self-administered, and instrumented measures of gait, balance, and falls in MS

Seeing through colorblindness

In our work with fraternities and sororities, how often do we reflect on the role race plays in recruitment practices or how it shapes the experiences of members, chapters, organizations, and the fraternity community as a whole? In our estimation, not often enough. However, if we explore the history of fraternities and sororities, we learn these organizations were typically created and organized specifically around race. From the founding of Phi Beta Kappa in 1776 to the beginnings of many other organizations through the late 1960s, historically White fraternities in the United States were legally racially exclusive (Kendall, 2008), most going so far as to include racial segregation policies in their constitutions (Hughey, 2010). During this time of racial exclusion, Black collegians banded together to form Greek-letter organizations collectively referred to today as “the Divine Nine” (Kimbrough, 2003). More recently, people from other racially minority groups, including Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and others, formed Greek-letter organizations (Kimbrough, 2003)

Colour, Dress and Modernism: the Significance of Colour in Representations of Clothing in Modernist Literature by Women

This dissertation explores the significance of the colour of dress in modernist literature written by women from the beginning of World War I to the start of World War II (1914–1939). It establishes the closely interwoven connections between fashion, dress and modernist writing, and investigates the ways in which modernist literature written by women uses clothing, with a focus on colour, to represent and interrogate contemporary society and culture. It does this by drawing not only on literary criticism and fashion theory but also historical research and elements of cultural studies. Building upon previous scholarship which has explored the significance of dress and fashion in modernist fiction, this thesis demonstrates that an attentive reading of the non-essentialist nature of colour symbolism and the constant evolution of meaning allows for a still more nuanced, complex understanding of the self, contemporary modernist culture and societal concerns of the time. The thesis concentrates on the novels and short stories of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys published between 1914 and 1939, in addition to Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Nella Larsen’s two novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). These texts are chosen not only because of their similar stylistic approaches and thematic concerns, but also because they were produced in the three ‘fashion capitals’ of the world at the time – London, Paris and New York – and are particularly attuned to questions of fashion and dress. Although the focus is on these women and their work, I have included, where relevant, reference to their contemporaries, both male and female. Since colour is the primary focus, this dissertation is structured into seven chapters each concentrating on a different colour: brown, yellow, red, green, blue, white and black. For each colour I have identified key items of clothing and discuss their interpretation primarily through the lens of colour. Furthermore, I demonstrate the importance of reading the layers of meaning in dress by an examination of not only the colour but also the style, fabric and finer details of these key garments

Understanding the user experience of customer service chatbots: An experimental study of chatbot interaction design

Understanding the user experience of chatbots for customer service is essential to realize the potential of this technology. Such chatbots are typically designed for efficient and effective interactions, accentuating pragmatic quality, and there is a need to understand how to make these more pleasant and engaging, strengthening hedonic quality. One promising approach is to design for more humanlike chatbot interactions, that is, interactions resembling those of skilled customer service personnel. In a randomized experiment (n = 35) we investigated two chatbot interaction design features that may strengthen the impression of a humanlike character: (a) topic-led conversations, encouraging customer reflection, in contrast to task-led conversations, aiming for efficient goal completion, and (b) free text interaction, where users interact mainly using their own words, rather than button interaction, where users mainly interact through predefined answer alternatives. dependent variables were participant perceptions of anthropomorphism and social presence, two key concepts related to chatbot human likeness, in addition to pragmatic quality and hedonic quality. To further explore user perceptions of the interaction designs, the study also included semi-structured interviews. Topic-led conversations were found to strengthen anthropomorphism and hedonic quality. A similar effect was not found for free text interaction, reportedly due to lack in chatbot flexibility and adaptivity. Implications for theory and practice are suggested.publishedVersio