Explorando el potencial de la Teoría de la Actividad Histórico- Cultural para comprender el cambio en educación: Lecciones de un caso de estudio histórico de liderazgo en una escuela irlandesa

This paper reports a research project undertaken whose aim was to explore the possibility of using a particular theoretical framework for engaging in preliminary studies aimed at analysing specific historical instances of change in education. The change that was the focus of the investigation was a new school established by the Sisters of Mercy in Ennis, County Clare (Ireland), to replace an original school built in 1865. This was no ‘ordinary school. Instead, it was at the time deemed a model infant and primary school. While the case is of interest in its own right, the principal aim of the study was to explore the potential of cultural activity theory for engaging in historical analyses of cases of its type and using its structure, the CHAT model, as a framework for presenting results.Este artículo da cuenta de un proyecto de investigación realizado cuyo objetivo fue explorar la posibilidad de utilizar un marco teórico concreto para realizar estudios preliminares dirigidos a analizar instancias históricas específicas de cambio en la educación. El cambio que fue el foco de la investigación fue una nueva escuela establecida por las Hermanas de la Misericordia en Ennis, Condado de Clare (Irlanda), para reemplazar una escuela previa construida en 1865. No fue esta una «escuela ordinaria»; por el contrario, en ese momento se consideró un modelo de escuela infantil y primaria. Si bien el caso es de interés por derecho propio, el objetivo principal del estudio fue explorar el potencial de la teoría de la actividad cultural para enfrentarse al análisis histórico de casos de su tipo y utilizar su estructura, el modelo CHAT, como marco para presentar resultado

Measurement of Near-Bed sediment load, particle size, settling velocity and turbulence from a multi-frequency acoustic backscatter instrument

Some of the work described is supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant agreement No 101000825 — NAUTILOS

Reward is enough for convex MDPs

Maximising a cumulative reward function that is Markov and stationary, i.e., defined over state-action pairs and independent of time, is sufficient to capture many kinds of goals in a Markov decision process (MDP). However, not all goals can be captured in this manner. In this paper we study convex MDPs in which goals are expressed as convex functions of the stationary distribution and show that they cannot be formulated using stationary reward functions. Convex MDPs generalize the standard reinforcement learning (RL) problem formulation to a larger framework that includes many supervised and unsupervised RL problems, such as apprenticeship learning, constrained MDPs, and so-called `pure exploration'. Our approach is to reformulate the convex MDP problem as a min-max game involving policy and cost (negative reward) `players', using Fenchel duality. We propose a meta-algorithm for solving this problem and show that it unifies many existing algorithms in the literature

Quietly Contesting the Hegemony of the Catholic Clergy in Secondary Schooling in Ireland: The Case of the Catholic Lay Secondary Schools from Independence in 1922 to the early 1970s

From the time of Irish independence in 1922 until the mid-1960s, a cohort of small, lay-run Catholic secondary schools operated in Ireland. They functioned to fill a gap that had existed in the network of Catholic clergy- and religious order-run secondary schools and catered for the minority of the population attending the majority of the secondary schools in the country. The (Catholic) Church authorities, who monopolised secondary school education and resented the intrusion of other parties into what they considered to be their sacred domain in this regard, only tolerated the establishment of lay-run schools in districts where it was not anxious to provide schools itself. This indicated the preference of the Church for educating the better-off in Irish society as the districts in question were mostly very deprived economically. The paper details the origins, growth and development of the lay-owned Catholic secondary schools. The attitude of the Church to their existence is then considered. The third part of the paper focuses on a particular set of lay schools established amongst what had been, for a long time, one of the most neglected areas in Ireland in terms of secondary school provision by the Catholic Church, namely, the Irish-speaking districts in the remote and impoverished areas in the north-west, west, south-west and south of the country, which were officially called the Gaeltacht districts

Turbulence statistics in smooth wall oscillatory boundary layer flow

This work has been carried out within the SINBAD project, funded through the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant EP/J00507X/1). PS acknowledges the funding from the University of Aberdeen to support his Honoray Research Fellowship and funding from the Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Universit`a e della Ricerca through PRIN 2012 “Hydromorphodynamic and modeling of coastal processes for engineering purposes”. The authors acknowledge the support of the technical staff at the University of Aberdeen, especially Fluids Laboratory Technician Roy Gillanders. The experimental and numerical datasets presented in this paper are available on https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1095116.Peer reviewedPostprin

Investigating the potential of cultural-historical activity theory for studying specific transitions in the history of education

In recent years, and particularly with the emergence of cultural history, historians of education have begun to adopt a wide variety of theoretical approaches to their scholarship. Notwithstanding this, cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) remains underutilised in the field of history of education, despite being employed widely in other domains of education research. This paper illustrates the way in which CHAT offers a valuable framework for identifying and illuminating broad sweeps of change in education at local, national, and international levels, specifically by interrogating a strike initiated by female students in a religious-run teacher training college in Ireland in the 1970s. What is particularly remarkable about that strike is that these women activists were protesting at a time when Irish society was at its most conservative, when Church control was at its zenith, and when women’s rights were most restricted. Yet, these women activists were not rising up against the male dominant hegemony. Rather, they were rising up against the female religious managers of the college. Our use of CHAT, thus, focused on patriarchy perpetuated by women on women

Challenging the dominant Church hegemony in times of risk and promise: Carysfort women resist

Historically, patriarchy has been as dominant in education in Ireland as elsewhere. In the Irish context, it was promoted through the male-dominated Catholic Church, which controlled either directly or indirectly the vast majority of education institutions in the country. This dominant hegemony was most powerful during the period post-Independence, achieved in 1922, and up until the 1960s. By the 1960s, however, Irish society had begun a process of self-reflection and modernisation triggered by exposure to international ideas, the Second Vatican Council, the democratisation of education and radical changes in economic policy. This article focuses on one manifestation of this process, namely a strike initiated by female students at a female-run teacher training college in Dublin in demand of a greater voice in the nature of the curriculum taught and in the governance of the college. However, these women were protesting not against the male hegemony, rather against the women religious who perpetrated this hegemony. The focus of this study is thus on patriarchy perpetuated by women on women

Are professional footballers becoming lighter and more ectomorphic? Implications for talent identification and development

The identification and development of talent is an essential component of modern professional football. The recognition of key physical characteristics of such footballers who successfully progress through talent development programs is of considerable interest to academics and those working in professional football. Using Football Yearbooks, we obtained the height, body mass and ages of all players from the English top-division over the seasons 1973–4, 1983–4, 1993–4, 2003–4 and 2013–4, calculating body-mass index (BMI) (kg/m2) and reciprocal ponderal index (RPI) (cm/kg0.333). The mean squad size increased over these decades from n = 22.4 (1973–4) to n = 27.8 (2013–4). Height also increased linearly by approximately 1.2 cm per decade. Body mass increased in the first four decades, but declined in the final season (2013–4). Regression analysis confirmed inverted “u” shape trends in both body mass and BMI, but a “J” shape trend in RPI, indicating that English top-division professional footballers are getting more angular and ectomorphic. We speculate that this recent decline in BMI and rise in RPI is due to improved quality of pitches and increased work-load required by modern-day players. Defenders were also found to be significantly taller, heavier, older and, assuming BMI is positively associated with lean mass, more muscular than other midfielders or attackers. The only characteristic that consistently differentiated successful with less successful players/teams was age (being younger). Therefore, English professional clubs might be advised to attract young, less muscular, more angular/ectomorphic players as part of their talent identification and development programs to improve their chances of success

An empirical model for velocity in rough turbulent oscillatory boundary layers

Acknowledgements This work was conducted as part of the first author’s PhD, funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, and is also included in Dunbar (2022). The authors are grateful to Dr. Jing Yuan (Tsinghua University) for providing the experimental data from Yuan and Madsen (2014).Peer reviewedPublisher PD