Kokonaisvaltainen fysiikanopetus peruskoulussa fysiikan valinnaiskurssilla

Holistic physics education in upper secondary level based on the optional course of physics Keywords: physics education, education, holistic, curriculum, world view, values A physics teacher s task is to put into practice all goals of the curriculum. Holistic physics education means in this research teaching, in which the school s common educational goals and the goals particular to the physics curriculum are taken into account. These involve knowledge, skills and personal value and attitude goals. Research task was to clarify how the educational goals involving student s values and attitudes can be carried out through the subject content of physics. How does the physics teacher communicate the modern world view through the content of the physics class? The goal of this research was to improve teaching, to find new points of view and to widen the perspective on how physics is taught. The teacher, who acted also as a researcher, planned and delivered an optional course where she could study the possibilities of holistic physics education. In 2001-2002 ten girls and two boys of the grade 9th class participated in that elective course. According to principles of action research the teacher-researcher reflected also on her own teaching action. Research method was content analysis that involved both analyzing student feedback, and relevant features of the teacher s knowledge, which are needed for planning and giving the physics lessons. In this research that means taking into account the subject matter knowledge, curriculum, didactic and the pedagogical content knowledge of the teacher. The didactic includes the knowledge of the learning process, students motivation, specific features of the physics didactics and the research of physics education. Among other things, the researcher constructed the contents of the curriculum and abstracted sentences as keywords, from which she drew a concept map. The concept maps, for instance, the map of educational goals and the mapping of the physics essence, were tools for studying contents which are included in the holistic physics education. Moreover, conclusions were reached concerning the contents of physics domains by which these can be achieved. According to this research, the contents employing the holistic physics education is as follows: perception, the essence of science, the development of science, new research topics and interactions in physics. The starting point of teaching should be connected with the student s life experiences and the approach to teaching should be broadly relevant to those experiences. The teacher-researcher observed and analyzed the effects of the experimental physics course, through the lens of a holistic physics education. The students reported that the goals of holistic physics education were achieved in the course. The discourses of the students indicated that in the experimental course they could express their opinions and feelings and make proposals and evaluations. The students had experiences about chances to affect the content of the course, and they considered the philosophical physics course interesting, it awakened questions, increased their self-esteem and helped them to become more aware of their world views. The students analytic skills developed in the interactive learning environment. The physics teacher needs broad knowledge for planning his or her teaching, which is evaluated in this research from contents maps made for the tools of the teaching. In the holistic physics education the teacher needs an open and curious mind and skills for interaction in teaching. This research indicates the importance of teaching physics in developing attitudes and values beside substance of the physics in class environment. The different points of view concerning human beings life make it possible to construct the modern world view of the students and to develop analytic skills and the self-esteem and thus help them in learning. Overall and wide points of view also help to transfer knowledge to practice. Since such contents is not employed by teaching the physics included in the standard curriculum, supplement relevant teaching material that includes such topics are needed.

Many disciplines-common approach: Experiences in the development and delivery of an interprofessional health subject

In 2004, the Faculty of Health Sciences at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, introduced a new, final-year subject ‘Interdisciplinary Professional Practice’. The subject is taught to all students enrolled in the 11 allied health and human service disciplines at La Trobe University across metropolitan and rural campuses. The delivery is online to overcome timetabling barriers and to provide time and geographic flexibility. The subject is presented using an enquiry-based learning model. Students are exposed to the concepts of interdisciplinary teamwork through shared learning across professional boundaries to enable a collaborative workforce. An outline of the background development and design of this subject, and its implementation and content areas is presented. A discussion of relevant literature and an analysis of the subject evaluations and focus groups that have guided subject development to enhance student learning over eight cohorts is included.

Moral Education in the Japanese Primary School Curricular Revision at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century: Aiming at a Rich and Beautiful Kokoro

This study examines values education in Japanese schools at the beginning of the millennium. The topic was approached by asking the following three questions concerning the curricular background, the morality conveyed through textbooks and the characterization of moral education from a comparative viewpoint: 1) What role did moral education play in the curriculum revision which was initiated in 1998 and implemented in 2002? 2) What kinds of moral responsibilities and moral autonomy do the moral texts develop? 3) What does Japanese moral education look like in terms of the comparative framework? The research was based on curriculum research. Its primary empirical data consisted of the national curriculum guidelines for primary school, which were taken into use in 2002, and moral texts, Kokoro no nôto, published by the Ministry of Education in the same context. Since moral education was approached in the education reform context, the secondary research material involved some key documents of the revision process from the mid-1990s to 2003. The research material was collected during three fieldwork periods in Japan (in 2002, 2003 and 2005). The text-analysis was conducted as a theory-dependent qualitative content analysis. Japanese moral education was analyzed as a product of its own cultural tradition and societal answer to the current educational challenges. In order to understand better its character, secular moral education was reflected upon from a comparative viewpoint. The theory chosen for the comparative framework, the value realistic theory of education, represented the European rational education tradition as well as the Christian tradition of values education. Moral education, which was the most important school subject at the beginning of modern school, was eliminated from the curriculum for political reasons in a school reform after the Second World War, but has gradually regained a stronger position since then. It was reinforced particularly at the turn of millennium, when a curriculum revision attempted to respond to educational and learning problems by emphasizing qualitative and value aspects. Although the number of moral lessons and their status as a non-official-subject remained unchanged, the Ministry of Education made efforts to improve moral education by new curricular emphases, new teaching material and additional in-service training possibilities for teachers. The content of the moral texts was summarized in terms of moral responsibility in four moral areas (intrapersonal, interpersonal, natural-supranatural and societal) as follows: 1) continuous self-development, 2) caring for others, 3) awe of life and forces beyond human power, and 4) societal contribution. There was a social-societal and emotional emphasis in what was taught. Moral autonomy, which was studied from the perspectives of rational, affective and individuality development, stressed independence in action through self-discipline and responsibility more than rational self-direction. Japanese moral education can be characterized as the education of kokoro (heart) and the development of character, which arises from virtue ethics. It aims to overcome egoistic individualism by reciprocal and interdependent moral responsibility based on responsible interconnectedness.

Which Narrative? The Case of the Narrative Subject in Fifteenth-Century Altarpieces

The development of the altarpiece towards the end of the late medieval period added a new decorous and conspicuously visual element to the church interior. The altarpiece became the prime location for iconic – i.e. non-narrative – images, but almost from the beginning narrative images were part of the altarpiece in the form of small-scale pictures placed underneath or next to an iconic image in the centre. In the fifteenth century the format of the altarpiece gradually changed, and simultaneously with the development of the unified picture field some new narrative subjects began to appear on the central panel as the main subject of the altarpiece. During the course of the fifteenth century, narrative subjects became increasingly frequent and accepted subjects for altarpieces. In this article I will focus on the problem of the narrative altarpiece, a seeming contradiction of terms. As narrative subjects were transferred from their usual location to the central field of the altarpiece, traditionally reserved for the iconic image, the narrative was included in a new context and expected to assume the function of the altarpiece. How did a narrative image function in this context, and what kind of audience did it serve? Since the questions involved in the issue are complex, I will focus on the biblical narrative of The Visitation as a case study, and use two well-known Florentine altarpieces from the fifteenth century as examples of the interpretative choices open to the viewers of these altarpieces.

Subject Teacher Training and Teaching in English

The purpose of this Master s thesis is on one hand to find out how CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teachers and English teachers perceive English and its use in teaching, and on the other hand, what they consider important in subject teacher education in English that is being planned and piloted in STEP Project at the University of Helsinki Department of Teacher Education. One research question is also what kind of language requirements teachers think CLIL teachers should have. The research results are viewed in light of previous research and literature on CLIL education. Six teachers participate in this study. Two of them are English teachers in the comprehensive school, two are class teachers in bilingual elementary education, and two are subject teachers in bilingual education, one of whom teaches in a lower secondary school and the other in an upper secondary school. One English teacher and one bilingual class teacher have graduated from a pilot class teacher program in English that started at the University of Helsinki in the middle of the 1990 s. The bilingual subject teachers are not trained in English but they have learned English elsewhere, which is a particular focus of interest in this study because it is expected that a great number of CLIL teachers in Finland do not have actual studies in English philology. The research method is interview and this is a qualitative case study. The interviews are recorded and transcribed for the ease of analysis. The English teachers do not always use English in their lessons and they would not feel confident in teaching another subject completely in English. All of the CLIL teachers trust their English skills in teaching, but the bilingual class teachers also use Finnish during lessons either because some teaching material is in Finnish, or they feel that rules and instructions are understood better in mother tongue or students English skills are not strong enough. One of the bilingual subject teachers is the only one who consciously uses only English in teaching and in discussions with students. Although teachers good English skills are generally considered important, only the teachers who have graduated from the class teacher education in English consider it important that CLIL teachers would have studies in English philology. Regarding the subject teacher education program in English, the respondents hope that its teachers will have strong enough English skills and that it will deliver what it promises. Having student teachers of different subjects studying together is considered beneficial. The results of the study show that acquiring teaching material in English continues to be the teachers own responsibility and a huge burden for the teachers, and there has, in fact, not been much progress in the matter since the beginning of CLIL education. The bilingual subject teachers think, however, that using one s own material can give new inspiration to teaching and enable the use of various pedagogical methods. Although it is questionable if the language competence requirements set for CLIL teachers by the Finnish Ministry of Education are not adhered to, it becomes apparent in the study that studies in English philology do not necessarily guarantee strong enough language skills for CLIL teaching, but teachers own personality and self-confidence have significance. Keywords: CLIL, bilingual education, English, subject teacher training, subject teacher education in English, STEP

Freezing of a colloidal liquid subject to shear flow

A nonequilibrium generalization of the density-functional theory of freezing is proposed to investigate the shear-induced first-order phase transition in colloidal suspensions. It is assumed that the main effect of a steady shear is to break the symmetry of the structure factor of the liquid and that for small shear rate, the phenomenon of a shear-induced order-disorder transition may be viewed as an equilibrium phase transition. The theory predicts that the effective density at which freezing takes place increases with shear rate. The solid (which is assumed to be a bcc lattice) formed upon freezing is distorted and specifically there is less order in one plane compared with the order in the other two perpendicular planes. It is shown that there exists a critical shear rate above which the colloidal liquid does not undergo a transition to an ordered (or partially ordered) state no matter how large the density is. Conversely, above the critical shear rate an initially formed bcc solid always melts into an amorphous or liquidlike state. Several of these predictions are in qualitative agreement with the light-scattering experiments of Ackerson and Clark. The limitations as well as possible extensions of the theory are also discussed.

The politics of forest bureaucracy as a subject of comparative studies.

XVIII IUFRO World Congress, Ljubljana 1986.

Näkemyksiä käsityöopetuksen kehitystarpeista yhtenäisessä perusopetuksessa

The objective of this study was to find out what development targets craft teachers could identify in the comprehensive school classes 1 through 9 after the curriculum of the year 2004 had declared craft education uniform in textile and technical craft. Earlier research had shown that after this curricular reform craft education had been carried out in dissimilar ways in different municipalities and schools. This causes differences in the contents of teaching and thus in learning outcomes on national level. The most problematic situations occur on the 7th grade when the classes contain pupils with very heterogeneous skill levels. My intention is to find general themes in craft education that are significant when considering developmental objectives. The problem was explored by four research questions as follows: What kind of problems have craft teachers confronted during the application of the curriculum 2004, what are the most important objectives and contents in craft for the comprehensive school, how craft education should be arranged in the future and what prerequisites should be considered to generate high quality craft education? The study was carried out by a qualitative research approach. The informants consisted of 21 persons, out of which 15 were textile or technical teachers and six were textile or technical teacher students. The research data was collected in the form of short open narratives, based on a partially structured inquiry. Respectively content analysis was applied for analysis of the narratives. Research results revealed that craft teachers were mainly satisfied in uniform craft and hoped that both textile and technical craft could be compulsory school subjects for both genders. Textile and technical craft should be defined as separate independent school subjects, both of which should be developed with broader and high quality contents. Craft subjects should be allocated more teaching time. Teachers asked for a more logically proceeding curriculum, initiating from the beginning to the end of the compulsory school. It was suggested that this could be done by a qualified subject teacher. A uniform curriculum solution must be found for the whole country.

Päiväkodin varhaiskasvatussuunnitelma ja johtajuus : Kolmen kunnan päiväkodinjohtajien käsityksiä päiväkodin varhaiskasvatussuunnitelmasta

The research goal is to describe curriculas and leadership in day-care centers. The day-care centers needed to write their own curriculas, when Centre for Research and Development of Welfare and Health published The National Curriculum Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland (ECEC) in 2003. The study tries to review day-care center managers views of day-care centers plans for early childhood education and care in three municipals. The research data was collected in the begining of 2008. In previous researches it was found out that co-operation and employees knowledge of education in day-care centers will define the reality (Nivala). Furthermore sosial reality will be based on discussions (Berger JA Luckmann). The subject was approached by one-way analysis of variance. Views of the day-care center managers was compared to the written plans for early childhood education, it s effect on day-care center s early childhood education and evaluation. Besides day-care center managers views were compared to early childhood education. Day care center manager s (N=40) answers were collected to a questionnaire, where there were mainly structured and some open end questions. Data was analysed with PASW Statistics 17 program. The research results showed that the day-care center managers views of the prosess of writing the plans for early childhood education in the day-care centers varied from each other. In addition there were differences in views how the plan of day-care center s early childhood education effected daily in their early childhood education. Furthermore the results showed that there were differenties in evaluating day-care center s education. Whereas the views of early childhood education were not different between the day-care managers in the three municipals.

Guessing and compression subject to distortion

The problem of guessing a random string is revisited. The relation-ship between guessing without distortion and compression is extended to the case when source alphabet size is countably in¯nite. Further, similar relationship is established for the case when distortion allowed by establishing a tight relationship between rate distortion codes and guessing strategies.

Optimal maintenance policies for machines subject to deterioration and intermittent breakdowns

Optimal preventive maintenance policies, for a machine subject to deterioration with age and intermittent breakdowns and repairs, are derived using optimal control theory. The optimal policies are shown to be of bang-bang nature. The extension to the case when there are a large number of identical machines and several repairmen in the system is considered next. This model takes into account the waiting line formed at the repair facility and establishes a link between this problem and the classical ``repairmen problem.''

Optimal maintenance policy of a machine subject to failure

Optimal maintenance policies for a machine with degradation in performance with age and subject to failure are derived using optimal control theory. The optimal policies are shown to be, normally, of bang-coast nature, except in the case when probability of machine failure is a function of maintenance. It is also shown, in the deterministic case that a higher depreciation rate tends to reverse this policy to coast-bang. When the probability of failure is a function of maintenance, considerable computational effort is needed to obtain an optimal policy and the resulting policy is not easily implementable. For this case also, an optimal policy in the class of bang-coast policies is derived, using a semi-Markov decision model. A simple procedure for modifying the probability of machine failure with maintenance is employed. The results obtained extend and unify the recent results for this problem along both theoretical and practical lines. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the results obtained.

Structure and deformation correlation of closed-cell aluminium foam subject to uniaxial compression

We report the results of an experimental and numerical study conducted on a closed-cell aluminium foam that was subjected to uniaxial compression with lateral constraint. X-ray computed tomography was utilized to gain access into the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of the foam and some aspects of the deformation mechanisms. A series of advanced 3-D image analyses are conducted on the 3-D images aimed at characterizing the strain localization regions. We identify the morphological/geometrical features that are responsible for the collapse of the cells and the strain localization. A novel mathematical approach based on a Minkowski tensor analysis along with the mean intercept length technique were utilized to search for signatures of anisotropy across the foam sample and its evolution as a function of loading. Our results show that regions with higher degrees of anisotropy in the undeformed foam have a tendency to initiate the onset of cell collapse. Furthermore, we show that strain hardening occurs predominantly in regions with large cells and high anisotropy. We combine the finite element method with the tomographic images to simulate the mechanical response of the foam. We predict further deformation in regions where the foam is already deformed. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc. All rights reserved.

Performance of inherently compensated flat pad aerostatic bearings subject to dynamic perturbation forces

The importance of air bearing design is growing in engineering. As the trend to precision and ultra precision manufacture gains pace and the drive to higher quality and more reliable products continues, the advantages which can be gained from applying aerostatic bearings to machine tools, instrumentation and test rigs is becoming more apparent. The inlet restrictor design is significant for air bearings because it affects the static and dynamic performance of the air bearing. For instance pocketed orifice bearings give higher load capacity as compared to inherently compensated orifice type bearings, however inherently compensated orifices, also known as laminar flow restrictors are known to give highly stable air bearing systems (less prone to pneumatic hammer) as compared to pocketed orifice air bearing systems. However, they are not commonly used because of the difficulties encountered in manufacturing and assembly of the orifice designs. This paper aims to analyse the static and dynamic characteristics of inherently compensated orifice based flat pad air bearing system. Based on Reynolds equation and mass conservation equation for incompressible flow, the steady state characteristics are studied while the dynamic state characteristics are performed in a similar manner however, using the above equations for compressible flow. Steady state experiments were also performed for a single orifice air bearing and the results are compared to that obtained from theoretical studies. A technique to ease the assembly of orifices with the air bearing plate has also been discussed so as to make the manufacturing of the inherently compensated bearings more commercially viable. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Subject independent human action recognition using spatio-depth information and meta-cognitive RBF network

In this paper, we present a machine learning approach for subject independent human action recognition using depth camera, emphasizing the importance of depth in recognition of actions. The proposed approach uses the flow information of all 3 dimensions to classify an action. In our approach, we have obtained the 2-D optical flow and used it along with the depth image to obtain the depth flow (Z motion vectors). The obtained flow captures the dynamics of the actions in space time. Feature vectors are obtained by averaging the 3-D motion over a grid laid over the silhouette in a hierarchical fashion. These hierarchical fine to coarse windows capture the motion dynamics of the object at various scales. The extracted features are used to train a Meta-cognitive Radial Basis Function Network (McRBFN) that uses a Projection Based Learning (PBL) algorithm, referred to as PBL-McRBFN, henceforth. PBL-McRBFN begins with zero hidden neurons and builds the network based on the best human learning strategy, namely, self-regulated learning in a meta-cognitive environment. When a sample is used for learning, PBLMcRBFN uses the sample overlapping conditions, and a projection based learning algorithm to estimate the parameters of the network. The performance of PBL-McRBFN is compared to that of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) classifiers with representation of every person and action in the training and testing datasets. Performance study shows that PBL-McRBFN outperforms these classifiers in recognizing actions in 3-D. Further, a subject-independent study is conducted by leave-one-subject-out strategy and its generalization performance is tested. It is observed from the subject-independent study that McRBFN is capable of generalizing actions accurately. The performance of the proposed approach is benchmarked with Video Analytics Lab (VAL) dataset and Berkeley Multimodal Human Action Database (MHAD). (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.