Student teachers' prior experiences of history, geography and science: initial findings of an all-Ireland survey

Research into student teachers' perceptions, attitudes and prior experiences of learning suggests that these experiences can exert an influence on practice which can be relatively undisturbed by their initial teacher education. This article is based on the initial findings of an all-Ireland survey of all first-year students on B.Ed. courses in colleges in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. The survey is the first stage in a longitudinal study which will follow the same cohort of students for the duration of their initial teacher education, seeking to map and track the development of their ideas about teaching and learning in primary history, geography and science. Based on an analysis of the quantitative data in the entry questionnaire, the initial findings suggest that subject knowledge remains a problematic issue in initial teacher education and that both location and gender interact with knowledge, attitudes and subject area to produce a complex and challenging context for teacher educators in history, geography and science education.

Opening the Frontier: The Gubbio-Perugia Frontier in the Course of History.

The frontier between Gubbio (ancient Umbria) and Perugia (ancient Etruria), in the northeast part of the modern region of Umbria, was founded in the late sixth century BC. The frontier endured in different forms, most notably in the late antique and medieval periods, as well as fleetingly in 1944, and is fossilized today in the local government boundaries. Archaeological, documentary and
philological evidence are brought together to investigate different scales of time that vary from millennia to single days in the representation of a frontier that captured a watershed of geological origins. The foundation of the frontier appears to have been a product of the active agency of the Etruscans, who projected new settlements across the Tiber in the course of the sixth century BC,
protected at the outer limit of their territory by the naturally defended farmstead of Col di Marzo. The immediate environs of the ancient abbey of Montelabate have been studied intensively by targeted, systematic and geophysical survey in conjunction with excavation, work that is still in progress. An overview of the development of the frontier is presented here, employing the data currently available.

Spatially-resolved mapping of history-dependent coupled electrochemical and electronical behaviors of electroresistive NiO

Bias-induced oxygen ion dynamics underpins a broad spectrum of electroresistive and memristive phenomena in oxide materials. Although widely studied by device-level and local voltage-current spectroscopies, the relationship between electroresistive phenomena, local electrochemical behaviors, and microstructures remains elusive. Here, the interplay between history-dependent electronic transport and electrochemical phenomena in a NiO single crystalline thin film with a number of well-defined defect types is explored on the nanometer scale using an atomic force microscopy-based technique. A variety of electrochemically-active regions were observed and spatially resolved relationship between the electronic and electrochemical phenomena was revealed. The regions with pronounced electroresistive activity were further correlated with defects identified by scanning transmission electron microscopy. Using fully coupled mechanical-electrochemical modeling, we illustrate that the spatial distribution of strain plays an important role in electrochemical and electroresistive phenomena. These studies illustrate an approach for simultaneous mapping of the electronic and ionic transport on a single defective structure level such as dislocations or interfaces, and pave the way for creating libraries of defect-specific electrochemical responses.

‘The Violence of History: Rosa Chacel’s Memorias de Leticia Valle’

Leticia Valle, the eleven-year-old narrator and protagonist of Rosa Chacel’s 1945 novel Memorias de Leticia Valle seduces and destroys her history teacher, Daniel. Here, I argue that Daniel represents traditionalist, right-wing interpretations of Spanish history while also recalling the importance of the colonial wars in Morocco in the build up to the Civil War, and the Nationalists’ use of Moroccan conscripts and recruits within the peninsula. Written at a time when history was being used to justify an armed rebellion, a civil war, and the imposition of a brutal dictatorship, Chacel’s novel depends on ellipses and absence to question historiographical principles. Furthermore, it combines continued reference to Spanish history with the use of violent and militant language. The most devastating conflict of all is between Leticia and Daniel: she silences and dehumanizes him, though she is not able to fully explain what happened. Writing from Switzerland, Chacel’s narrator takes possession of Spanish history at a time when dissent within Spain was being silenced by the Francoist regime.

Using VEs to enhance chronological understanding of history in middle school children.

Studies with computer-experienced children in the UK and less experienced in Ukraine explored the potential for VEs in teaching historical chronology to middle-school children aged 10–12 years old. Active fly-through VEs had been previously used successfully with primary school children aged 8–9 years old (given specific training with the environment) when they were subsequently tested for their ability to order events chronologically. All VEs in the present studies included a training element and active challenge, both found previously to enhance learning in other age groups. Ukraine children were trained and tested. UK children here were trained and tested, then retrained and retested to examine savings. Unlike other age groups, no significant benefit was seen for VE training compared with PowerPoint and Text conditions in either study. Possible explanations for the ineffectiveness of VE training for children of middle school age will be discussed. Keywords: timeline, chronographics

Utopia and its Discontents: Dreams of Catastrophe and the End of 'the End of History'

The institutionalization of Utopia Studies in the last decade is premised upon a specifically aesthetic reception of Ernst Bloch’s theory of the “utopian impulse” during the 1980s and 1990s. A postmodern uneasiness to both left and right formulations of the "End of History" during this period imposes a resistance to concepts of historical and political closure or totality, resulting in a "Utopianism without Utopia". For all the attractiveness of this pan-utopianism, its failure to consider the relation between historical representation and fulfillment renders it consummate with liberalism as a merely inverted conservatism. In contrast to this specific recuperation of a Bloch, the continuing importance of Walter Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image and the speculative concept of historical experience which underlies it becomes apparent. The intrusion of the historical Absolute is coded throughout Benjamin’s thought as the eruptive and mortuary figure of catastrophe, which stands as the dialectical counterpart to the utopian wish images of the collective dream. Indeed, the motto under which the Arcades Project was to be constructed derives from Adorno: “Each epoch dreams of itself as annihilated by catastrophe”.