Search results

This chapter is a Marxist Critical Realist inspired discussion of my interest in, and experiences of, being a working-class academic from Indian/African heritage. I begin my autoethnography by problematising the limits of defining social class from a gradational approach, which is the most common way to make sense of social class in academia and beyond. I argue that neoliberal capitalism organises people into workers and owners of production and without this acknowledgement, discussion of social class in the gradational approach is limited. I then go on to critique the de-centering of social class, for which I used Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a case study. My intention is to promote the explanatory power of approaching social class as as an organisational relationship, which assimilates racism, in the service of capitalism. Throughout the chapter, I provide examples of the way that I navigate this intellectual standpoint in the classroom, specifically through utilising the concepts of mystification and feasibility that I developed through my PhD that focussed on social class in Sweden. Without dismissing the value of the gradational approach of understanding social class in toto, and also the importance of personal identities (indeed I have focussed on my ethno-racial identity), my basic argument is that without the centralisation of social class, and crucially its articulation with neoliberal capitalism, social class becomes a descriptive category rather than explanatory, rendering the possibility of radical social change as severely diminished.

The focus of this paper is to provide the profession of volunteer administration (VA) a model outlining theoretical dimensions of the discipline. The dimensions provided include the (a) processes, (b) discipline, (c) foundations, and (d) theoretical base. Volunteer administration is the set of associated processes of operating a volunteer program. Included are a compilation of competencies identified by the Association for Volunteer Administration (2001) and 13 professionals that participated in a study conducted by Boyd (2002). The seven processes are Commitment to the Profession, Organizational Leadership, Systems Leadership, Accountability, Management Skills, Personal Skills, and Organizational Culture. The foundational disciplines are Leadership and Management, Community Development, and Teaching and Learning. Psychology and sociology provide the empirical evidence that supports the foundations and processes of VA. Professionals should look deeper into the theoretical base of VA, in order to develop and encourage focused research initiatives and academic curricula for volunteer administrators.

The central debate on pollution havens concerns whether the level of environmental regulation in developing countries influences foreign investment location decisions. Most empirical studies are based on aggregate data, while micro-level evidence is relatively lacking in the literature. To fill this research gap, this paper tests for the existence of intracountry pollution havens in China by estimating the determinants of foreign investment flows based on a large firm-level panel dataset. Evidence from this study supports the existence of pollution havens within China in certain industries. However, the sensitivity of foreign investment to environmental regulation varies significantly across industries with different pollution characteristics. Furthermore, when the impact of government subsidies on foreign investment is accounted for, the results show that subsidies can compensate for pollution treatment costs in provinces with stricter environmental regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary work on extracting band gap information of materials from academic papers. With increasing demand for renewable energy, band gap information will help material scientists design and implement novel photovoltaic (PV) cells.

The authors collected 1.44 million titles and abstracts of scholarly articles related to materials science, and then filtered the collection to 11,939 articles that potentially contain relevant information about materials and their band gap values. ChemDataExtractor was extended to extract information about PV materials and their band gap information. Evaluation was performed on randomly sampled information records of 415 papers.

The findings of this study show that the current system is able to correctly extract information for 51.32% articles, with partially correct extraction for 36.62% articles and incorrect for 12.04%. The authors have also identified the errors belonging to three main categories pertaining to chemical entity identification, band gap information and interdependency resolution. Future work will focus on addressing these errors to improve the performance of the system.

The authors did not find any literature to date on band gap information extraction from academic text using automated methods. This work is unique and original. Band gap information is of importance to materials scientists in applications such as solar cells, light emitting diodes and laser diodes.

In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum, a site that has come to represent and serve as a form of reparation for the traumatic memory of Japanese American internment during World War II. As a longer term supplement to trials or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions or an alternative in cases where no such structures exist, I illustrate how the museum tour becomes an empowering platform for survivors of the American Internment camps to work through and instrumentalize traumatic memories within the dialogic museum sphere, even as this alternative space forms its own new silences. Thus, by applying the very theories and criticisms through which scholars of memory politics evaluate official platforms of transitional justice, I aim to complicate and evaluate this alternative form of testimony, and in so doing explore areas of growth in the fields of both transitional justice and museum practice. Bridging the gap between testimony, oral history, and museum interpretation, survivor docents represent a sustained dialogic approach to history that perpetuates, preserves, and activates – rather than resolves – discourse around contentious memories.

In a complete (360°) journal bearing, it is difficult to predict the extent of the oil film, particularly when estimating the friction loss. An experimental technique has been developed for photographing the film extent in glass bearings operating under reasonably practical conditions. Photographs are given showing the oil film extent in complete bearings of different forms under various operating conditions, and the results are discussed qualitatively.

This paper shares findings from a constructivist grounded theory study, exploring Trainee Teachers’ perceptions of their teaching and learning experienced during university-based teacher education programmes, specifically the theoretical components. Findings led to the development of a model of program design, pedagogy and teaching strategies that were successful in creating opportunities to build Professional Capital. This paper aims to share this model, highlighting the significance of Professional Capital amidst challenges in English Teacher Education, and to suggest implications for application of the model within broader workforce development.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 trainee teachers from four English universities. To support the development of the theoretical framework, researchers employed inductive and iterative constant comparative methods aligned with constructivist grounded theory to sensitise concepts and codes, which were verified using theoretical sampling.

Informed by the findings of this study, a model is presented which highlights that participants developed human, social and decisional capital during their academic programs helping them to widen their perceptions of what counts as educationally important, beyond narrow performativity measures that are pervasive in a school system. By actively adopting a transformative pedagogy and employing constructivist approaches to curriculum design and delivery, optimal learning environments for learners to build their professional capital can be provided.

These findings may prove valuable to Higher Education academics as a model when designing and delivering professional, student-centred programmes. There are also implications for policymakers seeking to redesign initial teacher education towards schools-led and practice-oriented approaches, who wish to consider the perceptions, values and motivations of trainee teachers.

The findings highlight the significance of teacher trainees’ active engagement with academic literature and theory, in terms of contributing to the development of their professional capital, resilience and professional commitment.