A Methodological Reflection: Deconstructing Cultural Elements for Enhancing Cross-cultural Appreciation of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage

This paper presents a practical method of deconstructing cultural elements based on the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) perspective to enhance cross-cultural appreciation of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). The author pioneered this approach during conducting two case studies as a means to enhance appreciation and engagement with Chinese ICH, such as the extraction of elements from traditional Chinese painting and puppetry with potential to support cross-cultural appreciation, as well as the establishment of an elements archive. Through integrating a series of HCI research methods, this approach provides a specific foundational framework that assists non-Chinese people to better understand the cultural significance of Chinese ICH

3D Printing in the Wild: Adopting Digital Fabrication in Elementary School Education

In recent years, digital fabrication, and especially its associated activities of 3D design and printing, have taken root in school education as curriculum-based and maker-oriented learning activities. This article explores the adoption of 3D design and printing for learning by fourth, fifth and sixth grade children (n=64) in multidisciplinary learning modules in elementary school education. School-coordinated 3D projects were not led by design experts, such as art and design teachers, designers, researchers or technical specialists, but run ‘in the wild’ by school teachers. The study was conducted by using an ethnographic research design, including field observations, non-formal interviews and a reflective questionnaire. The results indicate that, in the adoption of 3D printing activities, learning is centred on the technical skills and the usage of 3D tools. Hence, the elementary ABCs of 3D printing do not achieve the full design and creativity potential of digital fabrication that earlier research has suggested. However, the results do have implications for the potential of 3D printing projects to increase children’s empowerment. In their current state, 3D design and printing are some of the learning tools, among others, and similar achievements can be achieved with other hands-on learning technologies. In order to enhance the learning of creativity and design thinking skills, 3D activities in school should be planned accordingly.Peer reviewe

“It’s a Balancing Act!”: Exploring School/Work/Family Interface Issues Among Bilingual, Rural Nebraska, Paraprofessional Educators

Nebraska’s rural school districts have a rapidly growing Spanish-speaking student body and few qualified instructors to meet their educational needs. This investigation examined factors that promote and challenge the ability of rural Nebraska paraprofessional educators to complete an online B.S. program in elementary education, with a K-12 English as a second language endorsement. Interviews focused on the interface between school, work, and family, with special attention on family system change and adaptation. Twenty-six bilingual paraprofessional educators enrolled (or formerly enrolled) in the education program were interviewed. Twenty were first- (n = 15) or second-generation (n = 5) immigrant Latino/as. Influences of program involvement on the marital and parent-child relationships are discussed, as are implications for future work with unique populations

Divisão do trabalho e trabalho técnico nas escolas de sociedades ocidentais Work division and technical work in the Western schools

Este artigo mostra como a divisão do trabalho nas escolas dos Estados Unidos, da França e de Quebec sofre o efeito do aumento dos efetivos de agentes técnicos, essencialmente caracterizados por uma formação pré-universitária e por um trabalho de auxílio aos profissionais docentes e não-docentes (psicólogos, psicoeducadores,<A NAME="top1"></A><A HREF="#back1">1</A> trabalhadores sociais, orientadores pedagógicos). Os autores focalizam as categorias de emprego<A NAME="top2"></A><A HREF="#back2">2</A> que oferecem serviços de acompanhamento aos alunos, mais ou menos vinculados à pedagogia ou à gestão do comportamento dos alunos, o que exclui as categorias de emprego que executam tarefas administrativas (secretariado) ou manuais (zeladores, pessoal da manutenção dos prédios, motoristas de ônibus). Uma visão geral dos efetivos desses agentes escolares nos Estados Unidos, na França e em Quebec precede uma descrição sintética de suas respectivas funções. Em seguida, para melhor compreender a presença e o crescimento recente dessas categorias de emprego nos meios escolares, os autores propõem diversas pistas interpretativas ligadas a transformações que dizem respeito, cada uma a seu modo, à escola: a divisão do trabalho nas escolas, a desprofissionalização, o surgimento de um modelo comercial na educação, a massificação, a busca de novos modos de gestão dos comportamentos a-escolares baseados na empatia e a perda de legitimidade institucional (vinculada ao fato de nossas sociedades passarem de um modelo antigo de modernidade para um novo modelo de modernidade). Os autores frisam em particular o risco de ver esse pessoal técnico, que tem uma formação diferente da dos profissionais docentes e não-docentes, introduzir nas escolas um pluralismo normativo que leva a uma certa forma de instabilidade institucional.<br>This paper explores the division of work in schools and colleges from the United States, France and Quebec, and shows the impact of the increase of technical agents mainly characterized by pre-university training and auxiliary work, as compared to that of teaching and non-teaching professionals (psychologists, psychoéducateurs, social workers, careers advisers). The authors focus on the work categories that offer supervision services to children, more or less related to pedagogy or students' behavior management, which excludes the work categories that perform administrative (secretaries) or manual (janitors, building maintenance, bus drivers) tasks. An outline of the number of these school agents in the United States, France and Quebec precedes a synthetic description of their respective functions. To understand better the presence and recent growth of these categories in school environments, the authors then propose various interpretative hints related to changes that affect school in different ways: the division of work at school, deprofessionalization, the emergence of a commercial model in education, massification, the need for new models centered on empathy to manage a-school behaviors, and the loss of institutional legitimacy (linked to the fact our societies are passing from an old model of modernity to a new one). The authors particularly emphasize the risk of seeing this technical staff, whose training is different from that of the teaching and non-teaching professionals, introduce in schools a normative pluralism that may lead to a certain form of institutional instability