Effects of a cognitive acceleration program in a low socio-economic high school in regional Australia

This paper presents research on the effects of a cognitive acceleration intervention in science lessons on low socio-economic students in a government high school in regional Western Australia. Thinking Science Australia is a program currently being implemented in Australian junior high school classes. The research was conducted over two years as a case study in one school with students as they entered high school in Year 8 (n = 71). Findings show that significant cognitive gains were made, with concomitant improvement in the state-wide testing in science when participating students were in Year 9, aged 13 and 14. Teachers reported changes to the ways they teach and described the challenges in implementing the intervention program

Introduction: Governing Emergencies: Beyond Exceptionality

What characterizes emergency today is the proliferation of the term. Any event or situation supposedly has the potential to become an emergency. Emergencies may happen anywhere and at any time. They are not contained within one functional sector or one domain of life. The substantive focus of the articles collected in this special issue reflects this proliferation: they explore ways of governing in, by and through emergencies across different types of emergencies and different domains of life. In response to this proliferation, the issue opens up critical work on the politics of emergency beyond the ‘state of exception’ as dominant paradigm. Emergency is treated as a problem for government that calls for the invention of new techniques or the redeployment of existing techniques. Through this shift in emphasis, the articles in this issue disclose relations between modalities of power and emergency life that differ from the ‘lightening flash’ of a sovereign decision on the exception taken from outside of life, or the capacity to ‘mould’ an always-already emergent life from within life

Region Based Anomaly Detection With Real-Time Training and Analysis

We present a method of anomaly detection that is capable of real-time operation on a live stream of images. The real-time performance applies to the training of the algorithm as well as subsequent analysis, and is achieved by substituting the region proposal mechanism used in [9] with one that makes the overall method more efficient. where they generate thousands of regions per image, we generate far fewer but better targeted regions. We also propose a 'convolutional' variant which does away with region extraction altogether, and propose improvements to the density estimation phase used in both variants

Bringing CASE in from the cold: the teaching and learning of thinking

Thinking Science is a two-year program of professional development for teachers and thinking lessons for students in junior high school science classes. This paper presents research on the effects of Thinking Science on students’ levels of cognition in Australia. The research is timely with a general capability focused on critical thinking in the newly implemented F-10 curriculum in Australia. The design of the research was a quasi-experiment with pre and post-intervention cognitive tests conducted with participating students (n = 655) from nine cohorts in seven high schools. Findings showed significant cognitive gains compared with an age matched control group over the length of the program. Noteworthy, is a correlation between baseline cognitive score and school Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA). We argue that the teaching of thinking be brought into the mainstream arena of educational discourse and the principles from evidence-based programs such as Thinking Science be universally adopted

An Integrated Decision-Support Information System on the Impact of Extreme Natural Hazards on Critical Infrastructure

In this paper, we introduce an Integrated Decision-Support Tool (IDST v2.0) which was developed as part of the INFRARISK project (https://www.infrarisk-fp7.eu/). The IDST is an online tool which demonstrates the implementation of a risk-based stress testing methodology for analyzing the potential impact of natural hazards on transport infrastructure networks. The IDST is enabled with a set of software workflow processes that allow the definition of multiple cascading natural hazards, geospatial coverage and impact on important large infrastructure, including those which are critical to transport networks in Europe. Stress tests on these infrastructure are consequently performed together with the automated generation of useful case study reports for practitioners. An exemplar stress test study using the IDST is provided in this paper. In this study, risks and consequences of an earthquake-triggered landslide scenario in Northern Italy is described. Further, it provides a step-by-step account of the developed stress testing overarching methodology which is applied to the impact on a road network of the region of interest

Argumentation in school science : Breaking the tradition of authoritative exposition through a pedagogy that promotes discussion and reasoning

The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper builds on previous research on enhancing the quality of argument in school science, to focus on how argumentation activities have been designed, with appropriate strategies, resources and modelling, for pedagogical purposes. The paper analyses design frameworks, their contexts and lesson plans, to evaluate their potential for enhancing reasoning through foregrounding the processes of argumentation. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation. The analysis serves to highlight the potential and limitations of the design frameworks

Learning the rules of the ‘student game’: Transforming the ‘student habitus’ through [im]mobility

In recent years, a growing body of literature has emerged concerning the mobilities of students, specifically relating to the interactions between local and non-local students, which can accentuate unequal access to education; social interactions and learner outcomes. Central to much of this literature is a sense that being mobile in institutional choice is the most appropriate and expected approach to successful university life. Conversely, local students, disadvantaged by their age, history, external commitments and immobility, are thought to be unlikely to share the same ‘student experiences’ as their traditional counterparts, leading to feelings of alienation within the student community. This paper will seek to problematise this binary by examining the experiences of a group of local and non-local students studying at the University of Portsmouth using Bourdieu’s reading of habitus and capital. This is useful as it provides a more critical insight into how students’ [dis]advantaged learner identities are [re]produced through their everyday sociability. Moreover, these findings extend previous discussions of first year transitions by questioning the influence of accommodation upon the formation of identities and the initial experiences of ‘being’, or ‘becoming’ students. This paper also seeks to extend previous theoretical tendencies that privilege identity formation through mobility rather than stasis

New mobilities across the lifecourse: A framework for analysing demographically-linked drivers of migration

Date of acceptance: 17/02/2015Taking the life course as the central concern, the authors set out a conceptual framework and define some key research questions for a programme of research that explores how the linked lives of mobile people are situated in time–space within the economic, social, and cultural structures of contemporary society. Drawing on methodologically innovative techniques, these perspectives can offer new insights into the changing nature and meanings of migration across the life course.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe