Diversity, Dilemmas and Transformation in Post-Compulsory Education: an Introduction to the Special Issue on Work Based Research

As governments recognize the central place of post-compulsory education in regenerating and modernizing the economic and social fabric of society (BIS 2008), it is appropriate for us as educational researchers to question whether this recognition beckons a different role for research in post-compulsory education. Much of this research is work based, using a broad interpretation of this term, and the majority of articles received by this journal (though the proportion published is a lower one) reflect this balance. Work based research in education poses particular challenges for the researcher and the practitioner, whether the focus is practitioner research, in which case the dilemmas can centre on potential role conflict between practitioner and researcher roles, or whether the work based research is observational – analyzing others’ professional practice, in which case the dilemmas can centre on power relations between researcher and researched, the politics of research, and ethical questions around care for participants and the degree of their involvement or non-involvement in the total research enterprise. This article reviews the prospects for work based research in post-compulsory education and introduces the articles in this special issue

Cooperation and defection in ghetto

We consider ghetto as a community of people ruled against their will by an external power. Members of the community feel that their laws are broken. However, attempts to leave ghetto makes their situation worse. We discuss the relation of the ghetto inhabitants to the ruling power in context of their needs, organized according to the Maslow hierarchy. Decisions how to satisfy successive needs are undertaken in cooperation with or defection the ruling power. This issue allows to construct the tree of decisions and to adopt the pruning technique from the game theory. Dynamics of decisions can be described within the formalism of fundamental equations. The result is that the strategy of defection is stabilized by the estimated payoff.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

A theoretical approach to nursing assessment

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73763/1/j.1365-2648.1985.tb00500.x.pd

Psychophysiological processes of stress in chronic physical illness: a theoretical perspective

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75576/1/j.1365-2648.1990.tb01843.x.pd

Social identity and environmental concern: the importance of contextual effects

This study draws on social identity theory to explain differences in individual support for environmental protection, a conative component of environmental concern. It argues that an individual’s identification with higher social units—community, nation, and world—strengthens its in-group solidarity and empathy and, in consequence, its readiness to protect the environment benefitting the in-group’s welfare. The study hypothesizes that country-level manifestations of social identity (1) lift individuals’ support for environmental protection above the level that their own social identity suggests (elevator effect), and (2) reinforce the effect of individuals’ social identity on their support for environmental protection (amplifier effect). Using a sample of over 30,000 individuals located in 38 countries around the world, the study finds strong evidence for the two contextual effects. The findings indicate that social identity plays an important role not just as an individual attribute but also as a central component of culture in fostering environmental concern

Branching Processes and Evolution at the Ends of a Food Chain

In a critically self--organized model of punctuated equilibrium, boundaries determine peculiar scaling of the size distribution of evolutionary avalanches. This is derived by an inhomogeneous generalization of standard branching processes, extending previous mean field descriptions and yielding $\nu=1/2$ together with $\tau'=7/4$, as distribution exponent of avalanches starting from species at the ends of a food chain. For the nearest neighbor chain one obtains numerically $\tau'=1.25 \pm 0.01$, and $\tau'_{first}=1.35 \pm 0.01$ for the first return times of activity, again distinct from bulk exponents.Comment: REVTex file, 12 pages, 2 figures in eps-files uuencoded, psfig.st

Learning from the early adopters: developing the digital practitioner

This paper explores how Sharpe and Beetham’s Digital Literacies Framework which was derived to model students’ digital literacies, can be applied to lecturers’ digital literacy practices. Data from a small-scale phenomenological study of higher education lecturers who used Web 2.0 in their teaching and learning practices are used to examine if this pyramid model represents their motivations for adopting technology-enhanced learning in their pedagogic practices. The paper argues that whilst Sharpe and Beetham’s model has utility in many regards, these lecturers were mainly motivated by the desire to achieve their pedagogic goals rather than by a desire to become a digital practitioner

Exploring the psychological rewards of a familiar semirural landscape: connecting to local nature through a mindful approach

This study analyses a 53,000 word diary of a year engaging with nature through over 200 trips to a semi-rural landscape. Thematic analysis revealed two themes; the transition from observer to nature connectedness and the ways in which the natural environment was experienced once a connection was made. These themes are discussed in relation to theories that seek to explain the positive effect of nature and nature connectedness. The findings are important as they suggest that repeated engagement with local semi-rural countryside can lead to a mindful approach and psychological rewards that do not require travel into the wilderness. The work informs further research into outcomes and processes of nature based interventions such as: trip frequency, duration and diary keeping

State authenticity

State authenticity is the sense that one is currently in alignment with one’s true or real self. We discuss state authenticity as seen by independent raters, describe its phenomenology, outline its triggers, consider its well-being and behavioral implications, and sketch out a cross-disciplinary research agenda

The Fairness Challenge in Computer Networks

In this paper, the concept of fairness in computer networks is investigated. We motivate the need of examining fairness issues by providing example future application scenarios where fairness support is needed in order to experience sufficient service quality. Fairness definitions from political science and their application to computer networks are described and a state-of-the-art overview of research activities in fairness, from issues such a queue management and tcp-friendliness to issues like fairness in layered multi-rate multicast scenarios, is given. We contribute with this paper to the ongoing research activities by defining the fairness challenge with the purpose of helping direct future investigations to with spots on the map of research in fairness