95,301 research outputs found
Supporting EU, home and foreign students in London writing final year undergraduate BA English language studies dissertations
The London Metropolitan University BA English Language Studies degree (BA ELS) attracts more than 50% “non-traditional” entrants, including many with English as a second language. This paper reports on challenges of the compulsory third year Undergraduate Dissertation, and on implementing and evaluating interventions to help students meet these challenges.
My colleague and I carried out pre- and post-module surveys of student perception and made use of an ongoing student diary from one student to determine student needs and experiences. We discovered that students find structuring their literature reviews challenging and need to be trained to see the applicability of some of the literature to their particular thesis situations. There is evidence that students in European institutions face similar challenges.
Our action research was informed by a constructivist, dialogic, pedagogic approach which, importantly, included supporting students’ writing from within their subject area. In attempting to find solutions to these problems, we were influenced by the academic literacies with its emphasis on learner differences, but more by the genre approach.
I argue that existing manuals on research Dissertations, which focus largely on topic choice, storage of notes and may need to give higher priority to structuring the literature review. Our report includes a survey of students’ attitudes and expectations regarding the Dissertation, then moves on to describe and assess changes which were made to the Dissertation in the Degree in question. The greatest focus is on the “literature review”, but we also describe changes to the module documentation (Handbook), changes to the Dissertation structure, to the process of choice of Dissertation topic, and attention to students’ time management
Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility: Military Work and Peacebuilding
The paper considers a number of important questions related to the involvement of engineers in peacebuilding and military work, including the preference of many countries for high tech weapons based security over peacebuilding, whether and in what circumstances, if any, it is justified for engineers to be involved in military work; and how engineers can persuade their colleagues to apply their skills to support peacebuilding. It is introduced by an overview of what is meant by the term military work and the extent and consequences of the use of military technology worldwide. This is followed by the applications of different approaches and theories of ethics to discuss the questions presented in the introduction. The approaches and theories applied include considerations of micro-and macro-ethics, codes of ethics, virtue ethics, considerations of gender and paradigms and the ethical imperative. Initial insights include the importance of considering the associated context and the need to avoid othering, which can make different treatment of minority groups, including the use of high tech weapons against them, seem acceptable
Remarks on countable tightness
Countable tightness may be destroyed by countably closed forcing. We
characterize the indestructibility of countable tightness under countably
closed forcing by combinatorial statements similar to the ones Tall used to
characterize indestructibility of the Lindelof property under countably closed
forcing. We consider the behavior of countable tightness in generic extensions
obtained by adding Cohen reals. We show that certain classes of well-studied
topological spaces are indestructibly countably tight. Stronger versions of
countable tightness, including selective versions of separability, are further
explored.Comment: Extended from 12 pages to 23 pages. Newly extended to 27 page
Vernacular Religion, Contemporary Spirituality and Emergent Identities: Lessons from Lauri Honko
This article examines lessons which can still be learned from Professor Lauri Honko’s research and writings, particularly for those working at the interstices of folklore and religious studies who appreciate the mutually enriching relationship between the two fields which has been the hallmark of modern Finnish and Nordic scholarship.
Three broad areas are considered here by way of illustration: the importance of studying belief and the continuing utility of genre as a tool of research; the use of folklore and material culture in the formation of cultural and spiritual identities in the contemporary milieu; and tradition ecology in relation to Celtic spirituality
The Hill Church
Approaching the main traveled road, we turned a corner and saw, over the hill, the white shiningness of the country church. It nestled cosily in a slight hollow, gleaming brightly against the somber background of a cemetery so old that the whiteness and blackness of polished stones had merged into a general greenness, highlighted by two or three new white stones
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