Recent revisions to the Conservation of Resources theory have not only reclassified categories of resources, but have also acknowledged the conceptual importance of “gain spirals” and “resource caravans” in enriching the theoretical understanding of resources. Given that teachers’ assessment literacy is a prominent yet underexplored personal constructive resource in teaching, this paper examines its role in teaching efficacy. In addition, personal energy resources are studied as antecedents to teaching efficacy. To this end, a survey based on the Chinese (...) versions of the Teacher Assessment Literacy Scale, the Teaching Efficacy Scale, the Psychological Capital Scale, and the Teacher Professional Identity Scale was administered to secondary school teachers in Henan Province, China, and 351 completed, valid surveys were returned. The findings indicated that the teachers’ assessment literacy and teaching efficacy were positively correlated, verifying that assessment literacy can influence teaching efficacy through the separate and chain mediation effects of psychological capital and professional identity. The identification of such mediating pathways has confirmed that resources owned by teachers can lead to gain spirals and full resource caravans, thus expanding the Conservation of Resources theory by positing that resources can be nested within one another. This study has theoretical implications for teaching efficacy research and the Conservation of Resources theory as well as practical implications regarding how to boost teachers’ constructive and energy resources and professional development. (shrink)

Summary In this paper we examine the reaction of the Leiden low-temperature laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to new ideas in quantum theory. Especially the contributions of Albert Einstein (1906) and Peter Debye (1912) to the theory of specific heat, and the concept of zero-point energy formulated by Max Planck in 1911, gave a boost to solid state research to test these theories. In the case of specific heat measurements, Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory faced stiff competition from Walter Nernst's Institute (...) of Physical Chemistry in Berlin. In fact, Berlin got the better of it because Leiden lacked focus. After the liquefaction of helium in 1908, Kamerlingh Onnes transformed his laboratory into an international facility for low temperature research, and for this reason it was impossible to make headway with the specific heat measurements. In the case of zero-point energy, Leiden developed a magnetic research programme to test the concept. Initially the balance of evidence seemed to be tipping in favour of zero-point energy. After 1914, however, Leiden would desert the theory in fovour, of a concept from calssical physics. A curious move that illustrates Kamerlingh Onnes's discomfort with the new quantum theory. (shrink)

At the beginning of the pandemic, many music ensembles had to stop their activities due to the confinement. While some found creative ways to start making music again with the help of technologies, the transition from “real” rehearsals to “online” rehearsals was challenging, especially among older amateur musicians. The aim of this case study was to examine the effects of this transition on three community band conductors and three older amateur musicians. Specific objectives were to explore intergenerational relationships to support (...) online group music-making; digital literacy and access in later life; and online music-making in a COVID-19 context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken. Results were analyzed from the conductors’ and older musicians’ perspectives, and common trends were combined to facilitate interpretation. The first theme showed that being part of an intergenerational ensemble contributed positively to the learning experience online. The second theme demonstrated that because both conductors and musicians were new to the online rehearsals, it contributed to attenuate the age-related digital divide that may have been observed in other studies. Regarding access in later-life, older musicians reported benefits associated with rehearsing online, specifically in terms of distance/commute, time, energy, and cost. However, for those who did not already have internet and electronic devices, the cost of acquiring all the necessary equipment to make music online could have been too high. Finally, the third theme revealed that musicians appreciated the opportunity to make music online and indicated that it was definitely better than having nothing, especially for its social aspects. In conclusion, while participants noted several challenges associated with online music-making, they were also appreciative of the opportunity to continue making music at a time when in-person rehearsals were not possible. Pedagogical implications are discussed, specifically the importance of the support network, of meeting people where they are, of learning to adapt, and of collaborative teaching. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that the important educational developments of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, which are often portrayed as new and revolutionary in nature, were in fact the culmination of an evolutionary process more than two centuries old. It also shows that popular literacy was considerably more widespread by the time of Spenser and Shakespeare than most recent studies suggest. The book treats the long period 1348–1648 as a unit by discounting the importance of the year 1485, which (...) marked the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another but had no discernible effect on educational and cultural conditions. Additionally, it argues that the massive changes of the final years of Henry VIII, which momentarily disrupted the universities and the grammar schools of the realm, were beneficial in the long run, since local energies were thereby unleashed and greater public support for educational institutions of all kinds soon materialized. A period of steady growth continued until the 1640s and 1650s, when the bitter experiences of the Civil War and rancorous arguments about the role of the universities and the grammar schools in precipitating the outbreak of hostilities caused the mainstream of public opinion to question the efficacy of advanced education, which increasingly came to be seen as a threat to established values and traditions. Thereafter an era of decline began that lasted until the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, the book treats the important contributions made by both clerics and women during the long period 1348–1648. Although laymen were the greatest beneficiaries of the steady widening of educational opportunity during those three centuries, clerics and women provided most of the funds, without which many fewer colleges, schools, and scholarships for poor boys would have been established. They did so because of their belief that improved education was necessary for the further spread of the Christian message. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Curative Work:Dana's Two Years Before The MastAllan Christensen (bio)In narrating his voyage out from Boston on the Pilgrim and his voyage home on the Alert, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., encourages an ambivalent interpretation of the experience. As one possibility, contagious sickness and forms of bondage characterize the culture of home, whereas the sailor's condition and less civilized sites offer health, romance, and freedom. But an opposite possibility is that (...) the ship resembles an unhealthy prison and the foreign settings are spoiled, and so hope resides in the curative power still emanating from the civilization of home. The two possibilities may relate to the Goethean-Carlylean pattern of Bildung, whereby the protagonist initially rebels and escapes from home but later repents and returns, recognizing that his America must be "here or nowhere" (Carlyle 1899, 156),1 in Massachusetts rather than in California. Dana indeed desires first to become entirely the sailor but then in terror before that eventuality desires to return to his identity as a Harvard scholar. With respect to the motif of literacy, the initial effort to live fully amid the bracing energies of winds and sea gives way to an appreciation of the curative force of reading and writing books. Yet the two phases are not after all so neatly opposed and divided between two halves of the story. They coexist in a tension that is sometimes also resolved.In 1842, two years after publishing Two Years before the Mast, Dana began to compose "An Autobiographical Sketch, 1815–1841." This "Sketch" (1968) creates a context for the previously published work that justifies the first of the two interpretations. His early life has already featured, in the "Sketch," many incidents of wandering away from home and of rebellion against the restrictions and injustices of society. The turbulent young protagonist especially resents the tyranny of the schoolmasters who administer floggings and later the tyranny of the authorities at Harvard College who unfairly punish a classmate. In response to this latter incident, Dana's own rebellion leads to his suspension from the college for a term, an event that he welcomes as a liberation from an oppressive educational system. The inevitability of his future career as [End Page 219] a lawyer also weighs heavily upon him and probably worsens an incapacitating crisis of 1834. Specifically, the crisis begins with a contagious disease: he catches measles, an illness that triggers a hereditary tendency toward degenerating eyesight, and reading becomes insupportably painful for him. The revulsion against books derives, as Thomas Philbrick suspects, from both physical and psychological causes (1981, 10).2 Dana seeks an occupation that will remove him not only from the necessity of reading but from the debilitating, literate civilization of New England. At this juncture the lure of a sea voyage becomes irresistible:I had many offers of free passage, but I knew a passenger's life would be insupportable without books. Partly from these considerations, but aided very much by the attractiveness of the romance & adventure of the thing, I determined to go before the mast, where I knew that the constant occupation would make reading unnecessary.(Dana 1968, 1:26–27)As opposed to the culture associated with books, the sailor's life offers health as well as romance and freedom. Omitting, then, as unnecessary any account of the intervening events narrated in Two Years before the Mast, the "Autobiographical Sketch" resumes the narrative by restating the opposition:I will take this journal up, again, from the place where my published narration ends. Upon our arrival at Boston on 22 of Sept 1836,... I was very much struck with the pallid & emaciated appearance of the gentlemen I met with, when compared with the rough, sun burnt, hardy faces which I had solely seen for the last five months. If I had been [told] that there had been a famine or fever in the city & that these persons were recovering its effects, I should have said that their appearances indicated it plainly enough. The women looked like mere shades.(Dana 1968, 1:28)In the penultimate chapter of Two Years, one of the pallid, apparently fever-stricken Bostonians had observed, on meeting the... (shrink)

Technological innovation in general, and nanotechnology development in particular, happens often disconnected from people and places where these technologies eventually play out. Over the last decade, a diversity of approaches have been proposed and developed to engage people in the innovation process of nanotechnology much earlier than in their conventional role as consumers. Such “upstream” engagements are conducted at stages when nanotechnology products and services are still amenable to reframing and modification. These engagement efforts have enhanced technological literacy among (...) stakeholders and the general public. Yet, there is still potential for other types of impacts by leveraging links between nanotechnology and people’s everyday experiences. The present study explores a novel approach for participatory nanotechnology assessment and design, called Collaborative On-site Technology Exploration. The approach allows nanoscale scientists and engineers to explore nanotechnologies where they matter to people and places. We conducted a series of COTEs in the Gateway district in Phoenix addressing community challenges of renewable energy supply, water contamination, and public health issues. COTEs are proposed as a step toward bringing together nanoscale scientists and engineers and community stakeholders in need for solutions to urban challenges. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Did Literature Stop Being Cultural?Sandy Petrey (bio)Debate over the future of French Studies in the United States has sometimes neglected a vital fact: even though the field of French Studies incorporates everything relevant to the francophone world, no single department of French Studies can be that comprehensive. If we want to teach anything serious, we must focus our collective energy and intellect on some manageable component of (...) the many topics French Studies can legitimately address. To try to cover everything is to condemn ourselves to watered-down, dumbed-down versions of history, political science, art, economics, sociology, and the many other areas pertinent to things French.I believe the makeup of French departments in the United States means that our dominant focus should remain literary. Since we aren’t going to retool ourselves so spectacularly as to master all the disciplinary perspectives relevant to the francophone world, we have to make choices. As far as I can see, the best choice is an orientation toward literary criticism, the area in which most productive scholars in French departments in the United States were trained. We’ve learned how to deal with words, and chances are very good that we will do more things that deserve doing if we address words than if we address immigration statistics, changing styles on Maghreb dance floors, or the status attached to owning a pit bull in French housing projects.This doesn’t mean that immigration statistics, dance styles, and pit bulls are forbidden topics, just that we can best approach them if our primary focus remains literary while we open secondary focuses onto other areas. Those openings can renew our field without compromising our identity, allow us to adopt the interdisciplinary concerns animating cultural studies without repudiating literature’s traditional place in foreign language programs. I categorically reject the idea that the literary studies/cultural studies opposition is absolute, that concentrating on literature imposes the necessity of ignoring dance floors and pit bulls. My answer to the question in my title, “When did literature stop being cultural?,” is that it didn’t, whether we take “cultural” in the dirty-word sense of “high culture” or the buzzword sense of “cultural studies.” Literature’s credentials among the accomplishments of high culture matter to language departments in a great many ways, but more relevant to current professional concerns is that cultural studies can address the monuments of the French literary tradition as well as the monuments of French reaction to the Spice Girls. To impose a choice between literary studies and cultural studies strikes me as horribly misguided, something like imposing a choice between breathing and eating.Yet that choice is being imposed with more and more insistence, its suicidal consequences accepted with less and less concern. At times, those preaching an either/or approach have done so in defense of literature, and I refuse the idea that literature is Emerson’s “jealous mistress” who tolerates nothing else in her domain. To study either high culture or popular culture as if the other were unworthy of concern impoverishes both, which means the literary studies/cultural studies binary is pernicious no matter which side defends it. Although the either/or model has sometimes been asserted in the [End Page 12] name of literature’s integrity, however, its most influential recent articulations have come from partisans of cultural studies. The sides have changed. Instead of the argument that the nature of cultural studies means it must be excluded from literary analysis, we now hear that the nature of literary analysis means that it must be excluded from cultural studies.Let me take as evidence the MLA’s most recent publication on trends in language and literature departments, Profession 1997, and the Russell Berman article it contains, a brief for a new form of “Graduate Education toward a Foreign Cultural Literacy.” Berman’s essay makes a strong and informed argument for interdisciplinarity, the best features of which have in Berman’s representation come together to create cultural studies. Throughout this argument, I find the scary logical and political missteps endemic to recent contentions that cultural studies and literary studies are mutually exclusive. Berman’s essay is doubly... (shrink)

To achieve environmental sustainability, the role of human capital and financial inclusion has been debated in limited empirical studies. Employing a reliable ARDL model approach, this study examines the dynamic link between human capital and ICT, financial inclusion, and CO2 emissions using the China economy dataset over the period 1998–2020. The vivacious side of human capital shows that literacy rate and average year of schooling curb CO2 emissions in long run. The results of human capital are also based on (...) facts in magnitude as well as in direction. Also, empirics unfold that digital financial inclusion significantly increases CO2 emissions. Based on these novel findings, a wide set of economic policies are repaired for environmental quality. Environmental education should be considered at early levels of education. The authorities and policymakers should fix energy-related issues through education. The China government should stimulate the educational sector to conduct a clean and green revolution that acts as a mechanism for a green and clean economy. This study's finding is more effective than the previous unlike empirical studies for policy-making because of the advanced econometric method. (shrink)

In a context where individuals are increasingly more sensitive to corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and where mobilization of savings for the energy transition is essential, our article is the first to study the drivers of online green bank adoption. By analyzing 1075 questionnaires from a panel of French individuals in charge of financial decisions in their households, we show that altruism and green consumption values are significant drivers of individuals' green banking adoption and reveal that willingness to adopt (...) a green bank is mediated by the preference for green savings. These results extend the nascent literature dealing with the link between responsible consumption and saving behaviors. Briefly speaking, green banks (and associated savings products) have the potential to enable households to express their consumption values through their investments. That said, our results suggest that households' financial well-being and financial literacy can be barriers to the mobilization of green savings. Our results also demonstrate the significant influence of information system variables, such as personal innovativeness and trust, on willingness to adopt green banking. By shedding light on the drivers of individuals' green bank adoption, our results provide valuable insights for the banking industry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Teaching Aesthetics and Aesthetic Teaching:Toward a Deweyan PerspectiveDavid A. Granger (bio)The educational writings of John Dewey continue to be invoked by scholars in education on a regular basis and in relation to a wide variety of issues, from social learning theory and situated cognition to constructivism and whole-language literacy instruction. More recently, this scholarship has begun to expand to include books and essays that look to tie Dewey's (...) aesthetics to his work in education in a substantive way. Notably, this is not something that Dewey attempted himself, since his major work in aesthetics, Art as Experience, was not published until he was seventy-five, and he seemingly had neither the time nor means at that point in his life to develop this link to his satisfaction. In addition, many educators are only familiar with Dewey's more explicitly educational writings, most of which came earlier in his career and tend to speak more of the merits of science than of art. As a result, scholars in education have only recently begun to examine the possible significance of Dewey's aesthetics for the practices of teaching and learning.1It is still the case, however, that writers on Dewey have traditionally focused their critical energies on his expansive claims for "the method of science" as a vehicle for solving numerous educational and social problems, and as the only authentic means of learning about our everyday world. Such critical attention is not, I believe, without warrant; though Dewey's use of "science" was a very loose and liberal one, he was a staunch critic of the positivistic model of science often presumed by these writers. Nonetheless, this critical focus has unfortunately led many writers to dismiss or marginalize the Dewey who, for instance, proclaims in "Art in Education—and Education in Art" that theModern preoccupation with science and with industry based on science has been disastrous; our education has followed the model that [End Page 45] they have set. It has been concerned with intellectual analysis and formularized information.... It is disastrous because it has fixed attention upon competition for control and possession of a fixed environment rather than upon what art can do to create an environment.... It is disastrous because civilization built upon these principles cannot supply the demand of the soul for joy, or freshness of experience; only attention through art to the vivid but transient values of things can effect such refreshment.2As Dewey sees it, science and other forms of knowledge are properly "handmaidens" to art, intellectual tools for enhancing the overall quality and value of human life and activity.3 This means that they are largely subordinate to the direct qualitative meaning of experience. They are, Dewey says, transformed in aesthetic experience in that they are "merged with non-intellectual elements to form an experience worth while as an experience."4 Art objects may well be the most potent and ready source of such enhanced, aesthetic experience, being intentionally created to refine and intensify in certain ways the experience of the perceiver. But they are not, to Dewey's way of thinking, the sole or even principal medium of the aesthetic. Art, he tells us, is best seen more liberally as "a quality that permeates an experience," whereby, in any number of life contexts, the meanings of objects and events become "the matter of a clarified, coherent, and intensified or 'impassioned' experience" (AE, 329, 295). If all of this can be taken to mean that art or the aesthetic, and not science, is paradigmatic of optimal human experience, then current efforts to integrate Dewey's aesthetics with his thinking about education are an important endeavor and one that should bear considerable fruit. Then, too, much of the popular literature in art and aesthetic education, which situates art and the aesthetic squarely within the cognitive domain of experience, is significantly at odds with Dewey's radically holistic and vigorously anti-elitist aesthetics.5Accordingly, this article will explore the idea of aesthetic education—conceived in its broadest sense—using a mainly Deweyan lens. Moreover, it will do so by examining everyday classroom practices as they are informed by the general... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of HumeVicki J. SappThe Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume, by Adam Potkay; xii & 253 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $36.95.With the memory still fresh of Jerome Christensen’s Practicing Enlightenment, I experienced no small anxiety on reading Adam Potkay’s first acknowledgment, to Prof. Christensen and his “provocative seminar” on Hume. I finished a third of The Fate (...) of Eloquence in the Age of Hume before the overt nod, when Potkay spotlights the essayist Hume’s appeal to a female readership: “Within this doux commerce, the figures of classical eloquence are entirely too priapic—too ‘swelling... monstrous and gigantic’—to be admitted” (p. 75). However, Hume’s self-castration wound is mercifully left unprobed, and the priapus doesn’t come up again until Potkay’s own prosopopoeia, “ancient eloquence’s priapic energy” (p. 158). Although he follows Christensen’s equation of polite letters with effeminacy, Potkay treats gender more materially than metaphorically. Although attending to his poststructuralist debts with such observations as “Hume, the unmoved mover, observes the spiritual implosion of one whose passions cannot, like his own, be alleviated through voyeurism” (p. 125), Potkay ultimately fulfills his promise to draw his insights from “a history of eighteenth-century reading and reception” (p. 22). In a clear prose he conveys his focused argument, about “the fate of eloquence” in the modern [End Page 244] reconfiguration of society, through a variety of illustrations; as a result, the book has broad appeal to readers interested in literary contexts of rhetoric, gender, and culture.Situating Hume as the center of shared interest and assumption, Potkay defines an “Age of Hume,” a constellation of writers responding to and producing a tension between an ideal of classical eloquence and modern codes of politeness. Boldly establishing this tension “as the characteristic theme of the era,” Potkay makes a compelling case for politeness as the primary means of class stratification for emergent capitalist society. (Paul Fussell has also applied an eighteenth-century literary mind to contemporary sociology in his Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.) In his epilogue, Potkay brings his thesis home, to the ironies of academic publishing elitism and the “peculiarly American commitment to civic equality.”Several ruling assumptions guide Potkay’s treatment of the eloquence/politeness dualism. Reading high-canon writers and moral philosophers, Potkay defines eighteenth-century Britain as an age “that does not want its passions inflamed” and suspects eloquence of aiming to seduce the masses with rhetorical figures and physical gesture. Equated with popular government, eloquence threatens to manipulate “our untutored responses”—passions unmediated by moral and social education—within an exclusively “masculine” political economy. Echoing Christensen, Potkay finds “a characteristic irony” of the new “sentimental commerce” in the “polite restraint of the sexual passions that covertly fuel it” (p. 147). Writers must adapt to the paradigm shift of a new commercial and literary economy which included a sentimental ideal of woman as social sovereign—a model of polite literacy and civility which Hume described in his initial piece, “Of Essay Writing.”Potkay diffuses his gender-based thesis over a broad political and philosophical perspective. Politeness redressed the conflict between masculine populism (Bolingbroke) and effeminate luxury (Walpole) and “served to compensate for virtue lost through commercial progress” (p. 194). Potkay points out the ultimately political association of eloquence with vulgarity: savages, children, and the insane speak a language “thought to abound in figures”—a convenient habit in those whom a ruling class would exclude from “mature, rational discourse” (p. 68). (Here, Potkay elides the more complex “woman” from the above marginalia, for immediate reasons of either obviousness or neatness.)On the philosophical front Hume variously affirmed and problematized a “topos of eloquence as error.” Treatise-lovers may regret that he simmered this passionately figurative text down into the duller and drier Enquiries in order to fulfill a polite—and commercial—demand for the replacement of oral with written culture, of emotional gesticulation with “rationality, abstraction, logic” (p. 63). Potkay’s arguments suggest a ruling irony in this paradigm-shift: the association of eloquence (masculine) with emotionalism and politeness (feminine) with rationality and... (shrink)

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

This paper discusses literacy as a socio-political phenomenon from the perspective of several relatively independent educational discourses. The first is critical education theory and research revealing the hidden mechanisms by which education policies act in the interests of a global market economy. The second is the perspective of critical pedagogy scholars on contemporary educational challenges, who offer responses similar to those discussed in current discourse on informal civic education. The third is the heated discussion of high-stakes literacy testing (...) (related to OECD literacy studies such as PISA, IALS, etc.) the results of which are used as a source of argumentation for diverse attitudes and educational consequences. Based on an analysis of literacy theory, research on active citizenship and civic education, the term “civic literacy” is proposed and argued as a relevant conceptual frame for conceptualizing school as an institution which can be involved in resistance to all forms of power politics or ideological indoctrination and manipulation, while at the same time, respecting the traditional values and aims of general education. (shrink)

Buildings energy consumption is growing gradually and put away around 40% of total energy use. Predicting heating and cooling loads of a building in the initial phase of the design to find out optimal solutions amongst different designs is very important, as ell as in the operating phase after the building has been finished for efficient energy. In this study, an artificial neural network model was designed and developed for predicting heating and cooling loads of a building (...) based on a dataset for building energy performance. The main factors for input variables are: relative compactness, roof area, overall height, surface area, glazing are a, wall area, glazing area distribution of a building, orientation, and the output variables: heating and cooling loads of the building. The dataset used for training are the data published in the literature for various 768 residential buildings. The model was trained and validated, most important factors affecting heating load and cooling load are identified, and the accuracy for the validation was 99.60%. (shrink)

The traditional blackface character Black Pete has been at the center of an intense controversy in the Netherlands, with most black citizens denouncing the tradition as racist and most white citizens endorsing it as harmless fun. I analyze the controversy as an utter failure, on the part of white citizens, of what Alison Jaggar has called multicultural literacy. This article aims to identify both the causes of this failure of multicultural literacy and the conditions required for multicultural (...) class='Hi'>literacy to be possible. I argue that this failure of multicultural literacy is due to hermeneutical injustice and to white ignorance. I close by considering possible avenues for fostering multicultural literacy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that AI literacy should be added to the list of primary goods developed by political philosopher John Rawls. Primary goods are the necessary resources all citizens need to exercise their two moral powers, namely their sense of justice and their sense of the good. These goods are advantageous for citizens since without them citizens will not be able to fully develop their moral powers. I claim the lack of AI literacy impacts citizens’ ability (...) to exercise their sense of justice and their sense of the good. Without citizens having the ability to understand how AI technology works – including being aware of the social and political implications and the limits and possibilities of this technology broadly speaking – this could impact their ability to participate in a free, equal and fair society and their ability to carry out their conception of the good. Thus this paper is a call for AI literacy to be regarded as a basic good in a liberal constitutional democracy in order for citizens to be able to exercise their freedom and equality. (shrink)

Making room for character -- Pluralism and the community of moral judgment -- A cosmopolitan kingdom of ends --Responsibility and moral competence --Can virtue be taught?: the problem of new moral facts -- Training to autonomy: Kant and the question of moral education -- Bootstrapping -- Rethinking Kant's hedonism -- The scope of moral requirement -- The will and its objects -- Obligatory ends -- Moral improvisation -- Contingency in obligation.

Limited health literacy is a pervasive and independent risk factor for poor health outcomes. Despite decades of reports exhibiting that the healthcare system is overly complex, unneeded complexity remains commonplace and endangers the lives of patients, especially those with limited health literacy. In this article, we define health literacy and describe the empirical evidence associating health literacy and poor health outcomes. We recast the issue of poor health literacy from within the ethical perspective of the (...) least well-off and argue that poor health outcomes deriving from limited health literacy ought to be understood as a fundamental injustice of the healthcare system. We offer three proposals that attempt to rectify this injustice, including: universal precautions that presume limited health literacy for all healthcare users; expanded use of technology supported communication; and clinical incentives that account for limited health literacy. (shrink)

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late-fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, (...) such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple, and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory, writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality, and brains: movements of hands, arms, and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition, and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components. (shrink)

We study the conservation of energy, or lack thereof, when measurements are performed in quantum mechanics. The expectation value of the Hamiltonian of a system changes when wave functions collapse in accordance with the standard textbook treatment of quantum measurement, but one might imagine that the change in energy is compensated by the measuring apparatus or environment. We show that this is not true; the change in the energy of a state after measurement can be arbitrarily large, (...) independent of the physical measurement process. In Everettian quantum theory, while the expectation value of the Hamiltonian is conserved for the wave function of the universe, it is not constant within individual worlds. It should therefore be possible to experimentally measure violations of conservation of energy, and we suggest an experimental protocol for doing so. (shrink)

이 글은 리터러시, 특히 디지털 리터러시의 관점에서 벤야민 사유의 현재성을 논의했다. 확장된 의미에서 리터러시란 복잡한 사회적 현상들에 적응하고 대처하는 능력이자 새로운 도구와 방법으로 의사소통하는 역량으로 이해된다. 이에 디지털 리터러시에서 사회문화적 차원의 리터러시 활동 또한 강조되고 있다. 이 글에서는 디지털 시대의 리터러시와 미디어로서 디지털 리터러시라는 디지털 리터러시에 대한 두 가지 접근 방식에 비추어 벤야민의 미디어 사유와 리터러시 사유를 논의했다.BR 우선 모홀리 나기의 언명을 단초로 미래의 리터러시에 대한 벤야민의 사유를「사진의 작은 역사」,「생산자로서의 작가」,「신문」에 등장하는 생활관계들의 문자화 개념을 중심으로 살펴보았다. 생활관계들의 문자화란 연극, 사진과 (...) 음악을 접하는 대중들의 각성을 위한 교육과 학습의 관점에서 제기된 개념이다. 이를 현재의 관점에선 리터러시 능력으로서 비판적 읽기에 대한 관심이라고 할 수 있다. 이때 벤야민이 제시하는 문자화란 기술 미디어 이전에 또는 이를 보완하는 좁은 의미의 문자가 아니라 상호매체적인 의미에서 현재성을 갖는 의미로 독해하고자 했다.BR 기술복제시대란 현재 디지털 시대를 예비한 벤야민의 개념이다. 이에 이 글의 관심은 기술복제시대의 리터러시에 있다고 할 수 있다. ｢기술복제시대의 예술작품｣에서 벤야민은 생활관계들의 문자화를 더 이상 언급하지 않는다. 그러나 벤야민은 기술과 자본이 변화시킨 현대인의 경험 지각에 관한 이론을 부단히 추구하고 있다.「기술복제시대의 예술작품」이 단지 영화 이론만으로 해석될 수 없는 이유도 바로 그 점에 있다. 지각학으로서 미학적 고찰을 바탕으로 벤야민은 당시 고조되던 파시즘 전쟁의 분위기 속에서 “정치의 심미화”에 대하여 “예술의 정치화”를 주장하고 있으며, 이는 파시즘과 자본주의의 비판적 읽기를 위한 벤야민적 사유 방식을 보여준다. (shrink)

Environmental literacy is not encouraged by discipline-based education. Discipline-based education is damaging not only because it breaks the link between experience and theory but also because it encourages learners to believe that complex practical problems can be solved using the resources of just one or two specialist disciplines or frameworks of thought. It is argued that discipline-based education has been extremely successful, and its very success is a factor which explains some of our poor thinking about environmental problems. These (...) problems are highly complex, and it is important for learners to discover the limitations of particular frameworks of thought and disciplinary approaches. This is particularly important in the case of economics. An education which emphasises the limitations of specialist approaches to complex problems can also be used to help overcome the depersonalising effect of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Limited health literacy is a pervasive and independent risk factor for poor health outcomes. Despite decades of reports exhibiting that the healthcare system is overly complex, unneeded complexity remains commonplace and endangers the lives of patients, especially those with limited health literacy. In this article, we define health literacy and describe the empirical evidence associating health literacy and poor health outcomes. We recast the issue of poor health literacy from within the ethical perspective of the (...) least well-off and argue that poor health outcomes deriving from limited health literacy ought to be understood as a fundamental injustice of the healthcare system. We offer three proposals that attempt to rectify this injustice, including: universal precautions that presume limited health literacy for all healthcare users; expanded use of technology supported communication; and clinical incentives that account for limited health literacy. (shrink)

In this article, we put forward a new strategy for teaching the concept of energy. In the first section, we discuss how the concept is currently treated in educational programmes at primary and secondary level (taking the case of France), the learning difficulties that arise as well as the main teaching strategies presented in science education literature. In the second section, we argue that due to the complexity of the concept of energy, rethinking how it is taught should (...) involve teacher training specifically developed for the concept. In our view, Epistemology and the History of Science and Technology (EHST) is the best method for a full understanding of the concept of energy and should thus be included in the teacher training programme. In the third section, we provide a general framework for a teacher training programme on energy, based on the history and epistemology of the concept and structured on the following three questions: ‘What is the origin of the concept of energy?’, ‘What is energy?’ and ‘What purpose does the concept of energy serve?’. (shrink)

"This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse ...

Enhancing the quality of learning opportunities for students with disabilities and the learning level attained is a pending challenge. This challenge is especially relevant in the context of special schools, where the learning possibilities derived from interactions with others is limited. However, providing these students with a sufficient level of instrumental learning, such as literacy, and communicative and reasoning abilities is crucial for their subsequent educational and social opportunities. In this case study we analyse a special school that has (...) implemented Dialogic Literary Gatherings with their students as a means to increase learning interactions within the group around the reading and debate of classical books. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the school principal and with a teacher of the transition to adult life course, and two focus groups were conducted with teachers–one with primary education teachers and one with secondary education teachers–and two focus groups with students–one with primary education students and one secondary education and transition to adult life students–. On the one hand, results show the characteristics of the Dialogic Literary Gatherings that allowed these students to participate and learn. On the other hand, several improvements have been observed. First, regarding instrumental learning, students increased their motivation for reading, and improved their communicative and reasoning abilities and in their reading proficiency. Second, regarding students' behavior, conflict has reduced, solidarity attitudes have increased, and they have acquired dialogic and argumentative habits. Finally, at the emotional level, they gained self-esteem and confidence and feel more empowered to make their voice heard. (shrink)

Proposals for the democratization of technology imply a necessary condition of universal emancipatory technological literacy. However, in the literature on the topic, people’s willingness to assume the cost in time and effort involved in acquiring that knowledge is often taken for granted. In this paper, we apply Anthony Downs’s economic theory of political action in democracy to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of this literacy from the perspective of the individual subject who should acquire it. Our conclusion is that (...) the cost does not rationally justify in an instrumental sense a benefit that, being mainly of an indivisible nature, motivates individuals to avoid their share of the cost to produce it. (shrink)

If one formulates Helmholtz's ideas about perception in terms of modern-day theories one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. Using constructs from statistical physics it can be shown that the problems of inferring what cause our sensory inputs and learning causal regularities in the sensorium can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests on (...) Empirical Bayes and hierarchical models of how sensory information is generated. The use of hierarchical models enables the brain to construct prior expectations in a dynamic and context-sensitive fashion. This scheme provides a principled way to understand many aspects of the brain's organisation and responses. In this paper, we suggest that these perceptual processes are just one emergent property of systems that conform to a free-energy principle. The free-energy considered here represents a bound on the surprise inherent in any exchange with the environment, under expectations encoded by its state or configuration. A system can minimise free-energy by changing its configuration to change the way it samples the environment, or to change its expectations. These changes correspond to action and perception, respectively, and lead to an adaptive exchange with the environment that is characteristic of biological systems. This treatment implies that the system's state and structure encode an implicit and probabilistic model of the environment. We will look at models entailed by the brain and how minimisation of free-energy can explain its dynamics and structure. (shrink)

This paper opens with a presentation of the philosophical underpinning and rationale of the concept of physical literacy. This is followed by an articulation of the concept of physical literacy. Three subsequent sections then consider aspects of the concept in a little more detail. The first investigates the relationship of the physical literacy to the development of a sense of self and to establishing interaction with others. Here the philosophical approach is informed by writings on cognitive development (...) and recent neurological insights. The second considers the universality of the concept and looks briefly at the views of existentialists and of contemporary sociologists. The third section addresses the place of propositional knowledge in being physically literate. The implications of objectifying the body in descriptive language are weighed against the fact that verbally expressed understanding and knowledge are an integral part of Western culture. The debate presented is one of a series that has, over the last five years, mapped the author's work on developing the concept of physical literacy. The aspects chosen to be discussed here are three that have generated considerable interest and debate. In conclusion, there is a short reflection on the implications of the views discussed for education and physical education. (shrink)

Over the last fifteen years, an ambitious explanatory framework has been proposed to unify explanations across biology and cognitive science. Active inference, whose most famous tenet is the free energy principle, has inspired excitement and confusion in equal measure. Here, we lay the ground for proper critical analysis of active inference, in three ways. First, we give simplified versions of its core mathematical models. Second, we outline the historical development of active inference and its relationship to other theoretical approaches. (...) Third, we describe three different kinds of claim -- labelled mathematical, empirical and general -- routinely made by proponents of the framework, and suggest dialectical links between them. Overall, we aim to increase philosophical understanding of active inference so that it may be more readily evaluated. -/- This the final submitted version of the Introduction to the Topical Collection "The Free Energy Principle: From Biology to Cognition", forthcoming in Biology & Philosophy. (shrink)

According to the Home Literacy Model (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002, 2014), young children can be exposed to two distinct types of literacy activities at home. First, meaning-related literacy activities are those where print is present but is not the focus of the parent–child interaction, for example, when parents read storybooks to their children. In contrast, code-related literacy activities focus on the print, for example, activities such as when parents teach their children the names and sounds of (...) letters or to read words. The present study was conducted to expand the Home Literacy Model by examining its relation with children’s engagement in literacy activities at home and at school as Finnish children transitioned from kindergarten to Grades 1 and 2. Two facets of children’s engagement were examined, namely, children’s independent reading at home and their interest in literacy activities. Finnish children (N = 378) were tested and interviewed at the ends of kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. Mothers completed questionnaires on their home literacy activities at each test time, and they reported the frequency with which their children read independently twice when children were in grade school. Tested was a longitudinal model of the hypothesized relations among maternal home literacy activities (shared reading and teaching of reading), children’s reading skills, independent reading, and their interest in literacy activities/tasks as children progressed from kindergarten to Grade 2. Stringent path analyses that included all auto-regressors were conducted. Findings for a revised model that excluded child interest extended previous research in four ways. First, the frequency of shared reading and teaching of reading at home predicted the frequency of children’s independent reading one year later. Second, children with stronger early literacy skills in kindergarten read independently more frequently once they were in Grade 1. Third, parents adapted, from kindergarten to Grade 1, their teaching behaviors to their children’s progress in reading, whereas shared reading decreased over time. Fourth, children’s own reports of interest in literacy activities were mostly not linked to other variables. Taken together, these results add another layer to the Home Literacy Model. (shrink)

In this short reply to Riis’ paper I first deal with his perceptive defence of ICT literacy, to which I fully subscribe, showing how his ideas might gain from highlighting the ‘technical’ dimensions involved in literacy practices. Second, this will allow me to make some comments regarding the curricular and organizational aspects of contemporary education, which forms the largest part of his paper. My main line of criticism towards Riis’ paper is that I defend a ‘technical’ rather than (...) a ‘non-technical’ account of digital literacy. (shrink)

Implementing new school reforms in school practice is extremely challenging mostly because of teacher resistance to change, or uncertainty, fear, or nostalgia for the previous curriculum. Since 2016 a new preschool curriculum including a new early literacy curriculum has been in force in Slovakia. The aim of the study is to assess how well teachers follow the requirement to use a variety of texts in the classroom to promote early literacy development. The analysis is performed on 138 observations (...) out of a total of 215 structured observations, in which teachers used a text as part of an educational activity. The predominant use of narrative texts is linked to more traditional early literacy activities; however, the employment of different text genres relates to the use of different sources of text presentation, engagement with different ways of working with the text and is accompanied by different reading activities. (shrink)

This book examines the progress of literacy in ancient Greece from its origins with the introduction of the alphabet in the eighth century to the fourth century, when the major cultural institutions of Athens became totally dependent on alphabetic literacy. Professor Robb introduces much new evidence and re-evaluates older evidence to demonstrate that early Greek literacy can only be understood in terms of the rich oral culture that immediately preceded it, one that was dominated by the oral (...) performance of epical verse, or "Homer". The eventual dependence of Athenian democratic institutions, notably law and higher education, on the technology of writing contributed to the "miracle" of Greece. (shrink)

"A mesure que végétaux et animaux se différenciaient, la vie se scindait en deux règnes, séparant ainsi l'une de l'autre les deux fonctions primitivement réunies. Ici elle se préoccupait davantage de fabriquer l'explosif, là de le faire détoner. Mais, qu'on l'envisage au début ou au terme de son évolution, toujours la vie dans son ensemble est un double travail d'accumulation graduelle et de dépense brusque : il s'agit pour elle d'obtenir que la matière, par une opération lente et difficile, emmagasine (...) une énergie de puissance qui deviendra tout d'un coup énergie de mouvement. ". (shrink)

The entanglement of ethics and technology makes it necessary for us to understand and reflect upon our own practices and to question technological hypes. The information and communication technology literacy required to navigate the twenty-first century has to do with recognizing our own human limitations, developing critical measures and acknowledging feelings of estrangement, puzzlement as well as sheer wonder of technology. ICT literacy is indeed all about visions of the good life and the art of living in the (...) twenty-first century. The main focus of this paper is to explore and discuss ICT in relation to pupils and teachers and try to understand why and how these technologies are implemented in the school system. This focus not only allows us to better understand how concepts and habits with respect to ICT are shaped in numerous children, but teaches us to acquire an enhanced sensitivity with regard to ICT in the ‘classic’ literacy context of the educational system. (shrink)

Everywhere in the world, and in every period of human history, it has been common for energy decisions to be made in an ethically haphazard manner. With growing population pressure and increasing demand for energy, this approach is no longer viable. We believe that decision makers must include ethical considerations in energy decisions more routinely and systematically. To this end, we propose an applied ethics framework that accommodates principles from three classical ethical theories—virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism, and (...) two Native American ethics (Lakota and Navajo)—all considered from the perspectives of the impacted communities. We illustrate this framework by evaluating five recent energy decisions: the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Navajo Nation’s possible transition from coal to solar, hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania, uranium mining in Virginia, and the construction of the Xiaolangdi Dam in China. An applied ethics framework is preferable to existing ethical analyses because it can serve to sharpen arguments for (un)ethical decisions and action. Rather than treat ethical reasoning as a matter of opinion, we argue that applying ethical principles in a universal and standardized way adds rigor to energy sector decisions by presenting a position available for objective scrutiny. Because our framework identifies which aspects of a targeted action (if any) must adjust to improve ethical merit, it can serve as a practical tool for improving decision-making as we enter a new era of energy transitions. (shrink)

Peace literacy shows why public philosophy and activism for peace and justice are better together while providing a practical framework designed to make the collaboration stronger and more effective. In this chapter, the authors begin with an overview of peace literacy and then show how it operates as an effective lens through which to read the strengths of various approaches to public philosophy and activism for peace and justice, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and into the (...) contemporary period. Then, they turn to the development of peace literacy themes as we find them in the work of philosophers dedicated to publicly engaged activism for peace and justice, especially in American movements for the abolition of chattel slavery, anti‐war and nonviolence, and civil rights. (shrink)

Adopting a Bourdieusian perspective, this paper addresses literacy education as a sociological field and attempts to evaluate and re-inscribe aesthetic, literary, historical, economic, philosophical and other positions within it as a means for framing a new research and pedagogical agenda. Literacy education as a social field is conceptualized as a structure of provisional balances within which various forms of power and capital circulate. Position, distinction, and contest, within sites in fields like literacy education, structure social space and (...) enable reproduction and change. A heuristic that weds Fairclough’s (1989) work on textual production and consumption with Bourdieu’s model of social space as relational, structured, and contested fields is proposed. (shrink)

In this work, we discuss how both contractualism, in the Western tradition, and communitarianism, in the African interpretation based on the idea of Ubuntu, conceptualise intergenerational justice. Even though both philosophical theories, taking into account differences and shortcomings, provide theoretical answers to intergenerational justice dilemmas, the implementation of actual policies in the interest of future individuals does not follow straightforwardly. Accordingly, in the second part of the chapter, we analyse what policy tools have been implemented or conceived to deliver intergenerational (...) justice and we advocate a pragmatic approach pointing towards a mix of different policy tools. (shrink)

The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship between environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status (...) is unclear. Also unclear is how the free-energy principle relates to prominent theoretical approaches to life science phenomena, such as organicism and mechanism. This paper clarifies both issues, and identifies limits and prospects for the free-energy principle as a first principle in the life sciences. (shrink)