An information and communications technology (ICT)-enabled method for collecting and collating information about pre-service teachers' pedagogical beliefs regarding the integration of ICT

This paper describes a method that utilized technology to collect and collate quantitative and qualitative data about pre‐service teachers’ use of networked technologies during a 12‐week undergraduate course, and the impact of this use on their pedagogical beliefs regarding the integration of information and communications technology (ICT). The technologies used captured and analysed students’ spoken and written communication while engaging in four synchronous online tasks, and also collected evaluation data from online interviews, surveys and diaries. The richness of data afforded by this ICT‐enabled method enabled the research to produce a rich narrative of how the students used the technology and provided evidence of a change in pre‐service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs during the course

A note on the diet of the Tasmanian Aborigines

The Tasmanian Aboriginal diet was drawn from marine and non-marine environments, in which food resources varied according to habitat. Alpine and rain forest environments provided a limited supply of plant food, whereas the wet and dry schlerophyll forests provided an abundant supply of plant and animal foods. The coastal zones, despite a deceptively barren appearance, supplied a consistently rich plant and marsupial food resource that was supplemented by large shellfish grounds and a seasonal abundance of birds and certain mammals

Incorporating general race and housing flexibility and deadband in rolling element bearing analysis

Methods for including the effects of general race and housing compliance and outer race-to-housing deadband (clearance) in rolling element bearing mechanics analysis is presented. It is shown that these effects can cause significant changes in bearing stiffness characteristics, which are of major importance in rotordynamic response of turbomachinery and other rotating systems. Preloading analysis is demonstrated with the finite element/contact mechanics hybrid method applied to a 45 mm angular contact ball bearing

Cardiovascular tests: use & limits of biochemical markers - therapeutic measurements of ADMA involved in cardiovascular disorders

Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an endogenously occurring methylarginine that inhibits nitric oxide synthesis. Plasma levels of methylarginines increase in renal failure and certain cardiovascular pathologies, and in patients with end stage renal failure the level of ADMA predicts the risk of cardiovascular events and overall mortality. The object of this review is to describe the mechanisms of ADMA synthesis, metabolism and uptake and to outline techniques for measuring ADMA and the pathological states in which ADMA levels are altered

Skepticism as Epistemic Naturalization

Responses to radical philosophical skepticism often interpret skeptical arguments as conceptual challenges that must be overcome if common epistemic practices are to remain justifiably practicable. Such responses treat skeptical arguments as attacks on our ability to justifiably make knowledge claims, wherein the skeptic attempts to isolate conceptual problems embedded in common epistemic processes that debar those processes from the potential to produce knowledge. In this framework, the successful skeptic reveals our constitutional epistemic blindness while the successful response defangs the skeptic’s attack on our capacity for knowledge. This paper argues that this interpretation is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the target and method of radical skepticism. Analyzing the skeptical projects of Sextus Empiricus and David Hume serves to identify a set of conceptual strategies commonly identified with “radical skepticism” that rely on pitting empirical evidence against a demanding concept of knowledge and concluding from the incongruence which emerges that the concept is unrealizable. Far from an attack on everyday knowledge claims, the overlapping strategies of these writers produce an overarching project of empirical skepticism which privileges common epistemic practices over extant philosophical definitions of knowledge by using the former to argue for the incoherence of the latter. Using the epistemic contextualism of Michael Williams as an example of a typical response that treats skepticism as a challenge to everyday knowledge claims places the nature of the common confusion between the skeptic’s target and argument in stark relief. Williams’ main criticism, that the skeptic conflates an unrealizable standard for knowledge with functional everyday standards, results in an epistemological theory which shares multiple similarities with the conclusions of empirical skepticism as described by Sextus and Hume. Williams’ worry that the skeptic demands unreasonably high standards of justification for knowledge is shared by the skeptic because it is precisely those standards that are integral to the concept of knowledge” which the skeptic aims to reveal as incoherent. At its terminus, empirical skepticism emerges as a prototypical attempt at epistemic naturalization through its swapping of a faulty conceptual analysis of knowledge with an empirical analysis of epistemic processes

When a school offers hope: An initial report of research in a special school for behaviour disordered students

This paper reports the first findings of an ethnographic research and evaluation project undertaken over two years in a school for behaviour disordered students in Sydney. These students are at-risk of school exclusion, and have frequently experienced short-term exclusion from more than one school. The John Berne School is the only such school within the Catholic system, and it is privately run by a Catholic Religious Order. This paper reports the experiences and cognitions of a graduating class of students, Yr 10 2009. In 2009 there were 12 students, all but one agreeing to be involved in this research. This project explores their understandings of their recent history and educational prospects, as well as their reflections on their own personal growth, using pen-and-paper survey and an individual interview. Additionally, this paper includes the reflections of a small group of parents who chose to be part of the research data collection by participating in a face-to-face interview. The interview data were analysed using NVivo 8. Results from the project indicate that the students marked their development as individuals as well as the achievement of the School Certificate, and expressed high regard for employment or further study. A number of students were able to reflect on significant behaviour changes in the previous couple of years while at this special school. Students identify the central roles of good relationships with staff and a diversified curriculum in helping them towards achievement at school. This research is significant because it focuses on a much under-researched group, Special Schools. Special Schools within the Catholic education system are seldom researched, this study being the first such conducted in New South Wales. This Special School is focused on addressing the educational disadvantage of a marginalised group; students with learning disabilities, behaviour disorders and contingent personal, family and social issues

The impact of synchronous inter-networked teacher training in ICT integration.

This research aimed to provide fresh perspectives and experiences in technology-based learning, in an endeavour to produce new knowledge that would further inform the literature on the utilisation of technology in education. The Case Study research (Merriam, 1988) attempted to develop an understanding of the change in pre-service teacher trainees' pedagogical practices in the integration of ICT in learning environments during a 12-week undergraduate course where synchronous networked tasks were developed and implemented. The contributions by the trainees (n=16) to the process of the iterative task design, post-task discussions, and commentaries on a Bulletin Board System, provided insights to the research question regarding changing beliefs and the impact of synchronous networking in affecting such change. This qualitative data was supported by quantitative data in the form of weekly surveys that situated synchronous and asynchronous task activities and cognitive outcomes (Knipe & Lee, 2002). In summary, the research highlighted a development of academic competencies (Morrison & Collins, 1996) considered appropriate for informed ICT integration; namely, generic, epistemic and declarative competencies. In addition, after taking into consideration the competencies developed during this Case Study, a framework consisting of four key elements, namely, the communication, the task, the learning and the technology, was drawn. It is thus anticipated that the competencies and the framework contribute new knowledge to the literature on technology in education on how best facilitate the 'informed' integration of ICT (Towndrow & Vallance, 2004) by teachers to support 'good' learning (Goodyear, 2001)

Memories made in seeing: memory in film and film as memory

Memories Made in Seeing considers the relationship between memory and film through examining what is its cultural and experiential effect, how it can show and write memory and History. Four post-war films - Muriel, or the Time of a Return (Resnais, 1963), (nostalgia) (Frampton, 1971), Level Five (Marker, 1996) and Memento (Nolan, 2000) – that are complex manifestations of thought in practice, which trace and examine film’s ability to distinctly embody and produce memory, and are part of a dialogue in form and time. To contextualise and consider memory’s effect, it is charted from the advent of film (the nineteenth century’s ‘memory crisis’, the founding and understanding of modern memory, the related ideas of Proust, Bergson and Freud), through the twentieth century (the development of a more subjective reckoning, the seeming impossibility of memory (and understanding) that followed World War II’s trauma), till its millennial disposition (multi-various considerations, the inception of prosthetic memory, the seeming need for nostalgia). The case studies’ varied forms and alignments consider the tension between the demands of narrative resolution and the mutable and open-ended nature of memory, and how different film practices seek to utilize and appraise its perceived function, relevance and production. These films are also a record of viewing experiences, which influence one another and create a narrative of personal engagement that forms and substantiates recollection. To examine this conceptual process further I contend the tension between narrative (something fixed by duration and intention) and memory’s imperatives (formal and personal) form an axis of experimentation and exploration and this correspondence is central to comprehending the ways in which films represent and invoke forms of subjective and cultural recollection. I propose that film’s unique and associative account of memory’s evolving resonances becomes a series of palimpsests, which emphasize that the experience of film is an act of re-writing and recollection and misrecollection. This context tethers the subject, is the point of initiation, and explores how memories, which are made when seen, are mutable, historical and present, essential