Review of A Language as Social Semiotic–Based Approach to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Book Revie

Editing Lives/Rewriting Public Identity: Celebrity and Authorship in Martin Amis’s Experience

Addressing the negotiation of fame by the celebrity-author, and treating authorial persona as a collectively inscribed discursive identity-text, this article examines Martin Amis’s Experience (2000) for the textual strategies used to position Amis as implied editor and to emphasise the postmodern textuality of the life being narrated

Review of Victorian Britain- An Encyclopedia

There is an old adage that if you have a large problem, the best way to tackle it is to break it down into small parts and deal with each in turn. The trouble with this theory is that if your problem is as large as the Victorian era the resultant number of parts is so huge that they resemble the unconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each individual piece having some value in its own right, but not giving an idea of the complete picture. The reign of Queen Victoria, the longest in British history, witnessed an unprecedented explosion of progress in all facets of human activity. This enormous fecundity, the number of personalities involved, the ideas expounded and the frontiers pushed back make the task of recording it all such a daunting one that one feels the compilers of this encyclopedia were very brave to contemplate it. Within the limits suggested above, I think they have succeeded

Subject leadership and design and technology

The Centre for Design and Technology Education at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) supported by The Design and Technology Association (DATA) has developed a Postgraduate Certificate in Managing School Design and Technology as part of a three-year part-time MA in Design and Technology Education. This has been run successfully for three years in five locations in England. This paper seeks to explore the development of specific leadership skills required by secondary school subject leaders of design and technology as defined by DATA’s Exemplification of National Standards for Subject Leaders. It describes a specific research project designed to investigate teaching and learning methodology. A virtual learning environment (VLE) was made available to teachers through Sheffield Hallam University’s Intranet site. The project compared the teaching and learning issues arising from teachers completing a core activity as part of the Managing School Design and Technology course. The work of two groups of teachers was observed, one being taught using traditional ‘face-to-face’ teaching methods and the other working remotely in a VLE. The research findings are discussed with a view to informing development of continuing professional development (CPD)

Thinking Critically and Negotiating Practices in the Disciplines.

David Russell, Professor of English at Iowa State University, researches writing in the disciplines and professions, consults on writing in HE, and teaches in a PhD programme in Rhetoric and Professional Communication. He spent three months in 2005 working alongside Sally Mitchell on “Thinking Writing,”, an institutional initiative at Queen Mary University of London which is influenced by US thinking and practice around “Writing across the Curriculum” and “Writing in the Disciplines” and which also draws on aspects of “Academic Literacies.

An Australian mentoring program for beginning teachers: Benefits for mentors

Mentoring programs for beginning teachers originated as response to the problems faced by novices in their transition from higher education to professional practice. However, with the spread of mentoring there has been increasing interest in the benefits of such programs for both novices and their teachers mentors. In the United States, where mentoring is a mass phenomenon, many programs provide mentors with formal training on topics such as communication, effective teaching, and theories of adult learning. Some provide rewards in the form of remuneration and/or professional credentials. The face to face mentoring experience itself is considered to provide many benefits for mentors, including renewal, reaffirmation of professional expertise, and opportunities for reflection

Editing Lives/Rewriting Public Identity: Celebrity and Authorship in Martin Amis’s Experience

Addressing the negotiation of fame by the celebrity-author, and treating authorial persona as a collectively inscribed discursive identity-text, this article examines Martin Amis’s Experience (2000) for the textual strategies used to position Amis as implied editor and to emphasise the postmodern textuality of the life being narrated

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES, AND EVALUATION OF ANES 525 APPLIED ANATOMY FOR ANESTHESIA PRACTICE: TRANSFORMATION OF A DISSECTION-BASED BASIC SCIENCE COURSE INTO A TECHNOLOGY AND CLINICALLY BASED ANATOMY COURSE FOR ANESTHESIOLOGIST ASSISTANT STUDENTS

Due to perceived economic drain on Emory University Anesthesiologist Assistant (AA) Program resources, faculty, and students, administrators called for the anatomy course to eliminate cadaver laboratory. Simultaneously, administrators encouraged faculty to design AA courses with regard to the progressive medical education pedagogic transition from traditional lecture hall dissemination of information toward experiential learning via problem-based learning (PBL) and authentic activities. Additionally, progressive medical educators advocate for inclusion of medical technology in both clinical and didactic learning environments. So although dissection of cadavers has historically been the cornerstone of anatomy instruction, advancements in medical imaging, virtual cadaver software, and digital learning media suggest that a flipped and blended course of human anatomy is possible. This study documents the transformation of a graduate level dissection-based basic science course into a technology and clinically based anatomy course. Student achievement measured via pre/posttest design demonstrated significant increases in scores, which indicates that learning occurred. Student perceptions of teaching and learning materials and instructional methods measured by a Likert-type survey questionnaire revealed learning preferences and attitudes, and showed significant correlations between key questions to support instrument validity

Electronic portfoilios for design and technology

This paper concentrates on the work of students studying design and technology education (DTE) in initial teacher education (ITE) at Sheffield Hallam University. As an early part of their course they study a module that develops their ability to design and manufacture products using a range of skills and processes. This involves the origination, collation and presentation of a portfolio of evidence to support a number of physical product outcomes design and manufactured during the semester. The submission requirements associated with this course component raise a number of teaching and learning issues relating to the generation and use of portfolios of evidence, commonly associated with the assessment of design and technology activity. These issues include: • the use of reflective processes by students in the evaluation of their own outcomes and learning is underdeveloped both specifically within DTE • submissions do not necessarily encourage active student reflection or the articulation of thought processes • the contents tend to be entirely two dimensional and do not encourage recording of three dimensional development work undertaken • they are bulky and do not easily lend themselves to display, storage and handling • maintaining the order of contents is difficult and liable to change when accessed • for security reasons, general availability and access to their contents is restricted to a few (usually only tutors) and does not easily facilitate peer scrutiny • presentation can often incur unnecessary cost for students. Electronic portfolios are becoming common in the commercial world and in some areas of education. This project examines the potential enhancement of the teaching and learning opportunities brought about by the use of elearning in ITE as an instrument for developing student capability. This small-scale study attempts to evaluate the experiences of a group of 41 students in their first year of a two year route into teaching. They were required to submit for assessment an electronic record of their design work. This made use of commonly available software uploaded to their Blackboard e-learning ‘site’. Minimum support was given to students in the use of the technology for e-portfolio production. Subsequently the project seeks to examine the contribution to the learning process of students completing this module. The methodology used by the researcher to collect data includes the use of observation, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Evidence is examined to identify occurrence and use of the following: • simple annotation of media to improve clarity and emphasis thus enabling reflection • generation of critical dialogue recording the iterative process between thinking and doing associated with designing and making • distillation of thinking and its affect on refining decision making • inclusion of animation techniques • opportunity taken by students to view the work of others made available through the associated Blackboard course • streamlining of submissions alleviating the need for the generation and storage of paper based portfolios

Invitation to the Table Conversation: A Few Diverse Perspectives on Integration

This article represents an invitation to the integration table to several previously underrepresented perspectives within Christian psychology. The Judeo-Christian tradition and current views on scholarship and Christian faith compel us to extend hospitality to minority voices within integration, thereby enriching and challenging existing paradigms in the field. Contributors to this article, spanning areas of cultural, disciplinary, and theological diversity, provide suggestions for how their distinct voices can enhance future integrative efforts