Learning approach and perception of learning context in economics education : a causality test

In the study of student learning literature, the traditional view holds that when students are faced with heavy workload, poor teaching, and content that they cannot relate to – important aspects of the learning context, they will more likely utilise the surface approach to learning due to stresses, lack of understanding and lack of perceived relevance of the content (Kreber, 2003; Lizzio, Wilson, & Simons, 2002; Ramdsen, 1989; Ramsden, 1992; Trigwell & Prosser, 1991; Vermunt, 2005). For example, in studies involving health and medical sciences students, courses that utilised student-centred, problem-based approaches to teaching and learning were found to elicit a deeper approach to learning than the teacher-centred, transmissive approach (Patel, Groen, & Norman, 1991; Sadlo & Richardson, 2003). It is generally accepted that the line of causation runs from the learning context (or rather students’ self reported data on the learning context) to students’ learning approaches. That is, it is the learning context as revealed by students’ self-reported data that elicit the associated learning behaviour. However, other research studies also found that the same teaching and learning environment can be perceived differently by different students. In a study of students’ perceptions of assessment requirements, Sambell and McDowell (1998) found that students “are active in the reconstruction of the messages and meanings of assessment” (p. 391), and their interpretations are greatly influenced by their past experiences and motivations. In a qualitative study of Hong Kong tertiary students, Kember (2004) found that students using the surface learning approach reported heavier workload than students using the deep learning approach. According to Kember if students learn by extracting meanings from the content and making connections, they will more likely see the higher order intentions embodied in the content and the high cognitive abilities being assessed. On the other hand, if they rote-learn for the graded task, they fail to see the hierarchical relationship in the content and to connect the information. These rote-learners will tend to see the assessment as requiring memorising and regurgitation of a large amount of unconnected knowledge, which explains why they experience a high workload. Kember (2004) thus postulate that it is the learning approach that influences how students perceive workload. Campbell and her colleagues made a similar observation in their interview study of secondary students’ perceptions of teaching in the same classroom (Campbell et al., 2001). The above discussions suggest that students’ learning approaches can influence their perceptions of assessment demands and other aspects of the learning context such as relevance of content and teaching effectiveness. In other words, perceptions of elements in the teaching and learning context are endogenously determined. This study attempted to investigate the causal relationships at the individual level between learning approaches and perceptions of the learning context in economics education. In this study, students’ learning approaches and their perceptions of the learning context were measured. The elements of the learning context investigated include: teaching effectiveness, workload and content. The authors are aware of existence of other elements of the learning context, such as generic skills, goal clarity and career preparation. These aspects, however, were not within the scope of this present study and were therefore not investigated.

The Impact of Parental Attachment on Adolescent Perception of the School Environment and School Connectedness

The extent to which students feel accepted, valued, respected and included in the school has recently surfaced as one of the most important predictors of adolescent mental health (particularly depressive symptoms). The school environment is an established predictor of school connectedness, but we set out to examine whether parental attachment predicts both adolescents' perception of the school environment and school connectedness. A study of 171 high school students from years 8 to 12 showed that parent attachment strongly predicted both. We also confirmed that the relationship between parent attachment and school connectedness is not a direct one but that parent attachment influences individual differences in the way adolescents perceive the school environment, which in turn influences school connectedness. This finding shows how multiple systems might be interlinked in influencing wellbeing in adolescents, and confirms the importance of intervening at the double level of both the family and the school system.

Principals, Teachers, and Student's Perception of the Information and Communication Technology in Kuwait Secondary Schools (Rhetoric and reality)

ICT integration has been advocated to provide opportunities to improve students’ achievement and engagement through transforming the educational setting. A valuable tool that contributes in enhancing and developing students’ cognitive skills for lifelong learning, ICT integration has introduced a new educational philosophy, shifting the role of students into a more central position in the pedagogical processes. Kuwait, as with many other countries, has recently planned ICT integration to develop its citizen’s capacities. This study sought to capture the principals’, teachers’, and students’ perceptions of ICT integration in pedagogical activities, as well as how ICT is being used for learning and teaching activities in three ICT leading Kuwaiti secondary schools. Interviews with principals, teachers, and students were conducted, along with an open-ended questionnaire for the teachers, researcher observations, and document analysis. The findings revealed that ICT integration in Kuwait needed to be reinforced to accomplish the ICT integration objectives. A call for further support for teachers, and a reconsideration of the ICT integration strategies were also recommended.

Children's advertising literacy for advergames : perception of the game as advertising

This study examined whether children recognized advergames as a type of advertising and the efficacy of an advertising literacy program. Results indicated that without the advertising literacy education, about three-quarters of the children did not recognize advergames as a type of advertising. However, those with advertising literacy education showed a significantly enhanced understanding. Also, a series of mediation tests showed that recognition of advertising was an indirect-only mediator between the advertising literacy and skeptical attitudes toward advertising. Only those who viewed the advergame as a type of advertising demonstrated more skeptical attitudes toward it.

Mothers' perception of the quality of childhood sibling relationships affected by disability

The quality of the sibling relationship has an important role in the development of psychosocial skills throughout childhood. While the literature suggests that the significance of sibling relationships is heightened when one sibling has a disability, empirical findings about the quality of these relationships are few and inconsistent. The present study aimed to address this gap, by investigating mothers’ perspectives about the impact of disability on the quality of the childhood sibling relationship. Forty-one mothers with a child with disability, and 48 with no children with disability completed an online questionnaire that assessed the amount of perceived warmth/closeness and conflict in their children’s sibling relationship. It was found that while there were no differences in reported conflict between the two groups, mothers with a child with disability reported significantly lower warmth/closeness in their children’s sibling relationship than mothers without a child with disability. Demographic variables such as number of children, gender grouping, target gender, target age and age order did not moderate this result. Mothers overall reported significantly more warmth/closeness for younger rather than older children, and more conflict when the sibling was younger than the target child as opposed to older than them. Clinical implications for intervention are discussed.

The subjective experience of negative symptoms : characteristics of emotional withdrawal

According to the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), negative symptoms are those personal characteristics that are thought to be reduced from normal functioning, while positive symptoms are aspects of functioning that exist as an excess or distortion of normal functioning. Negative symptoms are generally considered to be a core feature of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, negative symptoms are not always present in those diagnosed, and a diagnosis can be made with only negative or only positive symptoms, or with a combination of both. Negative symptoms include an observed loss of emotional expression (affective flattening), loss of motivation or self directedness (avolition), loss of speech (alogia), and also a loss of interests and pleasures (anhedonia). Positive symptoms include the perception of things that others do not perceive (hallucinations), and extraordinary explanations for ordinary events (delusions) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Both negative and positive symptoms are derived from watching the patient and thus do not consider the patient’s subjective experience. However, aspects of negative symptoms, such as observed affective flattening are highly contended. Within conventional psychiatry, the absence of emotional expression is assumed to coincide with an absence of emotional experience. Contrasting research findings suggests that patients who were observed to score low on displayed emotional expression, scored high on self ratings of emotional experience. Patients were also observed to be significantly lower on emotional expression when compared with others (Aghevli, Blanchard, & Horan, 2003; Selton, van der Bosch, & Sijben, 1998). It appears that there is little correlation between emotional experience and emotional expression in patients, and that observer ratings cannot help us to understand the subjective experience of the negative symptoms. This chapter will focus on research into the subjective experiences of negative symptoms. A framework for these experiences will be used from the qualitative research findings of the primary author (Le Lievre, 2010). In this study, the primary author found that subjective experiences of the negative symptoms belonged to one of the two phases of the illness experience; “transitioning into emotional shutdown” or “recovering from emotional shutdown”. This chapter will use the six themes from the phase of “transitioning into emotional shutdown”. This phase described the experience of turning the focus of attention away from the world and onto the self and the past, thus losing contact with the world and others (emotional shutdown). Transitioning into emotional shutdown involved; “not being acknowledged”, “relational confusion”, “not being expressive”, “reliving the past”, “detachment”, and “no sense of direction” (Le Lievre, 2010). Detail will be added to this framework of experience from other qualitative research in this area. We will now review the six themes that constitute a “transition into emotional shutdown” and corresponding previous research findings.

Neural bases for individual differences in the subjective experience of short durations (less than 2 seconds)

The current research was designed to establish whether individual differences in timing performance predict neural activation in the areas that subserve the perception of short durations ranging between 400 and 1600 milliseconds. Seventeen participants completed both a temporal bisection task and a control task, in a mixed fMRI design. In keeping with previous research, there was increased activation in a network of regions typically active during time perception including the right supplementary motor area (SMA) and right pre-SMA and basal ganglia (including the putamen and right pallidum). Furthermore, correlations between neural activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus and SMA and timing performance corroborate the results of a recent meta-analysis and are further evidence that the SMA forms part of a neural clock that is responsible for the accumulation of temporal information. Specifically, subjective lengthening of the perceived duration were associated with increased activation in both the right SMA (and right pre-SMA) and right inferior frontal gyrus.

Risk perception and the public acceptance of drones

Unmanned aircraft, or drones, are a rapidly emerging sector of the aviation industry. There has been limited substantive research, however, into the public perception and acceptance of drones. This paper presents the results from two surveys of the Australian public designed to investigate (a) whether the public perceive drones to be riskier than existing manned aviation, (b) whether the terminology used to describe the technology influences public perception, and (c) what the broader concerns are that may influence public acceptance of the technology. We find that the Australian public currently hold a relatively neutral attitude towards drones. Respondents did not consider the technology to be overly unsafe, risky, beneficial, or threatening. Drones are largely viewed as being of comparable risk to that of existing manned aviation. Further, terminology had a minimal effect on the perception of the risks or acceptability of the technology. The neutral response is likely due to a lack of knowledge about the technology, which was also identified as the most prevalent public concern as opposed to the risks associated with its use. Privacy, military use and misuse (e.g., terrorism) were also significant public concerns. The results suggest that society is yet to form an opinion of drones. As public knowledge increases, the current position is likely to change. Industry communication and media coverage will likely influence the ultimate position adopted by the public, which can be difficult to change once established.

Context-sensitive evaluation: Determining the context surrounding the implementation of a government policy

This article explains the essence of the context-sensitive parameters and dimensions in play at the time of an intervention, through the application of Rog’s (2012) model of contextual parameters. Rog’s model offers evaluators a structured approach to examine an intervention. The initial study provided a systematic way to clarify the scope, variables, timing, and appropriate evaluation methodology to evaluate the implementation of a government policy. Given that the government implementation of an educational intervention under study did not follow the experimental research approach, nor the double cycle of action research approach, the application of Rog’s model provided an in-depth understanding of the context-sensitive environment; it is from this clear purpose that the broader evaluation was conducted. Overall, when governments or institutions implement policy to invoke educational change (and this intervention is not guided by an appropriate evaluation approach), then program evaluation is achievable post-implementation. In this situation, Rog’s (2012) model of contextual parameters is a useful way to achieve clarity of purpose to guide the program evaluation.

An investigation of the social learning and symbolic interaction models for the development of self-concepts and self-esteem

Two studies were conducted to investigate empirical support for two models relating to the development of self-concepts and self-esteem in upper-primary school children. The first study investigated the social learning model by examining the relationship between mothers' and fathers' self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem and the self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem of their children. The second study investigated the symbolic interaction model by examining the relationship between children's perception of the frequency of positive and negative statements made by parents and their self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem. The results of these studies suggested that what parents say to their children and how they interact with them is more closely related to their children's self-perceptions than the role of modelling parental attitudes and behaviours. The findings highlight the benefits of parents talking positively to their children.

Workplace design in the knowledge economy : a case of the NetWorkPlace™©

This thesis explores a way to inform the architectural design process for contemporary workplace environments. It reports on both theoretical and practical outcomes through an exclusively Australian case study of a network enterprise comprised of collaborative, yet independent business entities. The internet revolution, substantial economic and cultural shifts, and an increased emphasis on lifestyle considerations have prompted a radical re-ordering of organisational relationships and the associated structures, processes, and places of doing business. The social milieu of the information age and the knowledge economy is characterised by an almost instantaneous flow of information and capital. This has culminated in a phenomenon termed by Manuel Castells as the network society, where physical locations are joined together by continuous communication and virtual connectivity. A new spatial logic encompassing redefined concepts of space and distance, and requiring a comprehensive shift in the approach to designing workplace environments for today’s adaptive, collaborative organisations in a dynamic business world, provides the backdrop for this research. Within the duality of space and an augmentation of the traditional notions of place, organisational and institutional structures pose new challenges for the design professions. The literature revealed that there has always been a mono-organisational focus in relation to workplace design strategies. The phenomenon of inter-organisational collaboration has enabled the identification of a gap in the knowledge relative to workplace design. This new context generated the formulation of a unique research construct, the NetWorkPlace™©, which captures the complexity of contemporary employment structures embracing both physical and virtual work environments and practices, and provided the basis for investigating the factors that are shaping and defining interactions within and across networked organisational settings. The methodological orientation and the methods employed follow a qualitative approach and an abductively driven strategy comprising two distinct components, a cross-sectional study of the whole of the network and a longitudinal study, focusing on a single discrete workplace site. The complexity of the context encountered dictated that a multi-dimensional investigative framework was required to be devised. The adoption of a pluralist ontology and the reconfiguration of approaches from traditional paradigms into a collaborative, trans-disciplinary, multi-method epistemology provided an explicit and replicatable method of investigation. The identification and introduction of the NetWorkPlace™© phenomenon, by necessity, spans a number of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Results confirm that in this context, architectural research, and by extension architectural practice, must engage with what other disciplines have to offer. The research concludes that no single disciplinary approach to either research or practice in this area of design can suffice. Pierre Bourdieau’s philosophy of ‘practice’ provides a framework within which the governance and technology structures, together with the mechanisms enabling the production of social order in this context, can be understood. This is achieved by applying the concepts of position and positioning to the corporate power dynamics, and integrating the conflict found to exist between enterprise standard and ferally conceived technology systems. By extending existing theory and conceptions of ‘place’ and the ‘person-environment relationship’, relevant understandings of the tensions created between Castells’ notions of the space of place and the space of flows are established. The trans-disciplinary approach adopted, and underpinned by a robust academic and practical framework, illustrates the potential for expanding the range and richness of understanding applicable to design in this context. The outcome informs workplace design by extending theoretical horizons, and by the development of a comprehensive investigative process comprising a suite of models and techniques for both architectural and interior design research and practice, collectively entitled the NetWorkPlace™© Application Framework. This work contributes to the body of knowledge within the design disciplines in substantive, theoretical, and methodological terms, whilst potentially also influencing future organisational network theories, management practices, and information and communication technology applications. The NetWorkPlace™© as reported in this thesis, constitutes a multi-dimensional concept having the capacity to deal with the fluidity and ambiguity characteristic of the network context, as both a topic of research and the way of going about it.

Review of the progress in thin bed technology for masonry construction

Thin bed technology for clay/ concrete masonry is gaining popularity in many parts of the developed economy in recent times through active engagement of the industry with the academia. One of the main drivers for the development of thin bed technology is the progressive contraction of the professional brick and block laying workforce as the younger generation is not attracted towards this profession due to the general perception of the society towards manual work as being outdated in the modern digital economy. This situation has led to soaring cost of skilled labour associated with the general delay in completion of construction activities in recent times. In parallel, the advent of manufacturing technologies in producing bricks and blocks with adherence to specified dimensions and shapes and several rapid setting binders are other factors that have contributed to the development of thin bed technology. Although this technology is still emerging, especially for applications to earthquake prone regions, field applications are reported in Germany for over a few decades and in Italy since early 2000. The Australian concrete masonry industry has recently taken keen interest in pursuing research with a view to developing this technology. This paper presents the background information including review of literature and pilot studies that have been carried out to enable planning of the development of thin bed technology. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

International law and the regulation of violence : shifting perceptions of the legitimacy of the jus ad bellum?

International law’s capacity to influence state behaviour by regulating recourse to violence has been a longstanding source of debate among international lawyers and political scientists. On the one hand, sceptics assert that frequent violations of the prohibition on the use of force have rendered article 2(4) of the UN Charter redundant. They contend that national self-interest, rather than international law, is the key determinant of state behaviour regarding the use of force. On the other hand, defenders of article 2(4) argue first, that most states comply with the Charter framework, and second, that state rhetoric continues to acknowledge the existence of the jus ad bellum. In particular, the fact that violators go to considerable lengths to offer legal or factual justifications for their conduct – typically by relying on the right of self-defence – is advanced as evidence that the prohibition on the use of force retains legitimacy in the eyes of states. This paper identifies two potentially significant features of state practice since 2006 which may signal a shift in states’ perceptions of the normative authority of article 2(4). The first aspect is the recent failure by several states to offer explicit legal justifications for their use or force, or to report action taken in self-defence to the Security Council in accordance with Article 51. Four incidents linked to the global “war on terror” are examined here: Israeli airstrikes in Syria in 2007 and in Sudan in 2009, Turkey’s 2006-2008 incursions into northern Iraq, and Ethiopia’s 2006 intervention in Somalia. The second, more troubling feature is the international community’s apparent lack of concern over the legality of these incidents. Each use of force is difficult to reconcile with the strict requirements of the jus ad bellum; yet none attracted genuine legal scrutiny or debate among other states. While it is too early to conclude that these relatively minor incidents presage long term shifts in state practice, viewed together the two developments identified here suggest a possible downgrading of the role of international law in discussions over the use of force, at least in conflicts linked to the “war on terror”. This, in turn, may represent a declining perception of the normative authority of the jus ad bellum, and a concomitant admission of the limits of international law in regulating violence.