Suchergebnisse

This critical action research study with Iranian nursing students examines how the innovative use of formative assessment changed the nature of learning and teaching in an academic writing class over the summer of 2012. The study draws on three sets of literature, namely critical academic writing, democratic systems of assessment including critical testing, and critical emotion theories to examine how the participants experience formative assessment, the impact of formative assessment on their writing development and on their attitudes towards and perceptions of assessment, teaching and learning academic writing and teaching and learning in general.Drawing on the analysis of varied sources of data, including lesson plans, the writing samples and the narratives of the 12 participants including myself, the research findings show that the use of formative assessment went beyond merely forming and informing learning and teaching including the associated assessment processes, to re-forming and transforming them. The findings also suggest that, besides key characteristics of formative assessment enumerated in the literature, there are other contributing factors to the complexity of assessment, as a situated and power-oriented process, and accordingly to teaching and learning academic writing. The findings reveal the complexity of participants' responses to the program, partly shaped and re-shaped by the comfort and discomfort associated with the past experiences and by the development of ‗critical hope'. The praxis of formative assessment demands that learners and teachers acknowledge and embrace the role of power and emotion through dialogic reflectivity and criticality. It also demands a close attention to time and the interplay of the past, present and future which shape and re-shape the context and the participant's experience in this context. The findings from this study demonstrates that attending to power, emotion and time opens up productive ways to teaching and assessing academic writing.

This thesis traces the origins and evolution of the ideas and concepts associated with the revolution in military affairs (RMA) with Chinese characteristics. More specifically, it identifies the group of RMA enthusiasts, tracing their patterns of activities, identifying their communication platforms and channels of influence, and examining their long-term impact on the RMA and ideas associated with it.It argues that from 1980 to 2002, the policy ideas created and advanced by this RMA epistemic community (RMA EC) were crucial in defining PLA conceptions of the RMA. In the early 1980s, they contributed to the reassessing of the international security environment and shaped the Chinese leadership's threat perception which eventually led to the shift of PLA strategic thought from preparing for imminent all-out war to peacetime army building. They also advocated a holistic, forward-looking approach to defence studies. In the mid-1980s, they proposed major PLA-wide future war studies initiatives, which resulted in introducing the concepts of local war and high-tech wars into the PLA. This eventually led to the strategy of 'local war under high-tech conditions', announced in 1993. In the 1990s, they kept expanding the RMA EC and engaged with military regions and group armies, disseminated their future high-tech war ideas to combat units and helping them create operational concepts. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they played a leading role in identifying the information aspect of warfare as the key of future high-tech wars. This made a significant contribution to updating the PLA's strategic outlook from 'local war under high-tech conditions' to 'local war under conditions of informationisation'. Moreover, they were among the first to introduce foreign advanced training methods such as computer simulation, realistic combat training and base-ised combat training. In sum, the RMA EC played a leading role in introducing foreign military ideas and adapting them to Chinese contexts, which eventually defined the RMA with Chinese characteristics.

In the historiography of both the Great War and military medicine, facial wounds (and subsequent disfigurement) are generally portrayed as the 'most piteous' of war wounds. Largely through a misconception that medical treatment was rudimentary at this time and men were left so disfigured they could only lead tragic lives, this portrayal has precluded an encompassing study of facially wounded Great War soldiers. This thesis aims to address this historical imbalance by examining the innovations made in maxillofacial (jaw and face) surgery during the period and investigating the post-war lives of disfigured British and Dominion veterans. Despite being a relatively new specialisation in the Western World, maxillofacial surgery produced unprecedented results during the Great War and the work of the Queen's Hospital in Sidcup, Kent, in the United Kingdom was at the centre of its development. In August 1917, the hospital opened as the centre for the treatment of British Empire soldiers who had sustained facial wounds. This thesis does not aim to be a comparative history across these countries, but a collected history – drawing together the experiences of men who were united by their wounds but who ultimately coped with their disfigured appearances as individuals. Histories of medicine are often written from the perspective of leading medical men and neglect the experience of the patient. While it does examine the role of the surgeon, throughout this thesis the voice of the patient can be clearly heard. The Queen's Hospital forms the nexus from which to examine the experiences of facially wounded men from the battlefield, during treatment at the hospital, and on to their post-war lives. In doing so, it becomes apparent that the treatment available was far from rudimentary, and this thesis argues that while some men did struggle in their post-war life, many more found the resilience to surmount the tragedy seemingly inherent in their wounds.

Unexpected Turbulence is a feminist, multidisciplinary study of women in non-traditional occupations. Using Australian Defence Force (ADF) pilots as a 'case', the research examines factors impacting women's selection of a flying career; identifies the gender-based barriers and challenges women pilots face through different career stages; and delivers a model for increasing women's representation in non-traditional fields. The analysis draws on seventy-five semi-structured interviews and twelve focus group discussions designed to capture women and girls' experiences in and perceptions of civilian and military piloting careers. The study also encompasses valuable practical and theoretical insights from delivering, within the ADF, a targeted implementation strategy to mitigate the numerous challenges identified throughout the research. This thesis contends that ADF women pilots face pervasive and sometimes insurmountable gender-based hurdles, both structural and cultural, at every career stage. These barriers are primarily borne from women's extremely low numerical representation and the hegemonic masculinity found within military flying. Women's lack of critical mass in this highly masculinised occupation presents some difficult choices between isolationism and adopting the dominant male paradigm. In seeking a way forward, the study highlights several essential elements in analysing and responding to the challenges faced by women in non-traditional occupations; including the value of applying a feminist lens to each research and reform stage and maintaining an occupational (not organisational) focus. The research also demonstrates the criticality of addressing both supply (choice) and demand (power) factors impacting women's choices, attitudes and experiences and translating those insights into a comprehensive strategy for delivering occupational reform. The study makes a number of significant contributions, such as extending current theoretical frameworks pertaining to gendered occupations and locating ADF women pilots as 'case' within these frameworks. Most importantly, the study also introduces an original concept called 'occupational feminism' and an applied diversity reform model called 'Feminist Occupational Intervention'; each of which has the potential to be applied more broadly in both academic research and organisations and/or industries. Occupational feminism provides a framework for bridging feminist research and human resource development practice, to significantly improve the way organisations attract, select, train, and retain women in non-traditional occupations.

Since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesian public discourse about "mainstream" Muslim identity and practice has polarized sharply into various factions. This article offers a detailed analysis of a subset of this discourse that focuses on the Ahmadiyya in order to grasp how the new normative contours of Islam are being shaped in Indonesia. I make three arguments: First, the discourse is homogenizing what was once a wide spectrum of identitarian positions, and that consequently, Islamic diversity in Indonesia is shrinking. Second, the various internally homogenized sets of arguments for and against the Ahmadiyya mis-engage with each other in a way that produces social fragmentation and further polarization. Third, these arguments produce exclusionary mechanisms that reinforce each other. Both the opponents of the Ahmadiyya and their defenders exclude Ahmadis from conceptions of an Indonesian "majority." This dynamic in Indonesian public discourse has resulted in the acceleration of the marginalization of the Ahmadiyya within an increasingly fragmented Indonesian society. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

Following its mobilisation by practitioners, the notion of social acceptability has been sparking interest and causing embarrassment among social scientists. This article contributes to the recent effort to clarify and question this notion, taking a national programme of socio-technical experimentation dedicated to smart grids in Japan as a case study. Although four "Smart Communities" have been designated, the peculiarity of this programme is the fact that the Japanese state is the initiator and supervisor of the experimentation. The latter is part of the state and private sector led strategy for producing the social acceptability of smart grids and their related products, equipments and services. This article analyses the concrete policy tools implemented, with a specific focus on the knowledge they are based upon. Smart Communities mobilise results from research in behavioural sciences (social psychology, behavioural economics) and marketing techniques in order to ensure the passive and active acceptance of users. The implementation of socio-technical experimentation allows for a hybrid way of producing social acceptability which is also part of a broader process of governmentalisation of practices that use energy which is paradoxically not based on ecological arguments. ; Dans la continuité de sa mobilisation par les praticiens, la notion d'acceptabilité sociale suscite depuis quelques années un intérêt croissant, combiné à un certain embarras, auprès des chercheurs en sciences sociales. Cet article contribue aux efforts récents de clarification et de questionnement de cette notion à partir d'un programme national d'expérimentation sociotechnique consacré aux réseaux électriques « intelligents » au Japon. Bien que quatre « Smart Communities » aient été sélectionnées pour porter cette expérimentation, ce cas d'étude présente la spécificité d'être impulsé par l'État japonais. Elles s'inscrivent dans la stratégie nationale de production de l'acceptabilité sociale des réseaux électriques « intelligents » et des ...

This book explores how social media and its advances enables citizens to empower themselves during a crisis. The book addresses the key issues related to crises management and social media as the new platform to assist citizens and first responders dealing with multiple forms of crisis, from major terrorist attacks, larger scale public disorder, large-scale movement of people across borders, and natural disasters. The book is based on the results and knowledge gained during the European Commission ATHENA project which has been addressing critical issues in contemporary crisis management and social media and smart mobile communications. This book is authored by a mix of global contributors from across the landscape of academia, emergency response and experts in government policy and private industry. This title explores and explains that during a modern crisis, the public self-organizes into voluntary groups, adapt quickly to changing circumstances, emerge as leaders and experts and perform life-saving actions; and that they are increasingly reliant upon the use of new communications media to do it." Explores how socio-technical developments have enabled citizen-based response during times of crisis and disaster; " Discusses how to facilitate the inclusion of emergent technological initiatives into organizational structures; " Features contributions from academia and practitioners, exploring the state of art in social media deployment in crisis management.

"What motivates citizens to support one party over the other? Do they carefully weigh all the relevant issues and assess which party or candidate best matches their own positions? Or do people look at politics as something more akin to a team sport-the specifics do not matter if you know what side your team is on? Understanding how and why Americans vote the way they do is central to understanding the political process. What I claim in Political Choice in a Polarized America is that individuals have core beliefs about what the government should or should not do and these attitudes explain a great deal about what party a person identifies with and votes for. Moreover, I demonstrate these attitudes' explanatory power has increased in recent decades. My thesis rests on the idea that voters generally try to support the party or candidate that best matches their orientations. However, voters' ability to successfully do so varies as a function of the signals sent by elites. Voters have an easier time connecting their own orientations with the party offerings when the parties are polarized. As a result, voters' policy attitudes explain a lot more about their partisan preferences than they did in previous eras. When the parties are polarized, people notice, even if they do not place close attention to politics. The result is an electorate divided by partisanship, policy, and ideology"--

Parental involvement has become a flashpoint in the public debate over what instructional content is appropriate for school settings. School system leaders should develop a two-pronged approach on how to respond when educators encounter conflicts with parents and families: a proactive strategy to build trust and engage parents and a reactive strategy to manage conflicts when they arise.