Search results

Connected learning is a framework of learning principles that centers on fostering educational equity through leveraging social technologies and networking practices to connect students with opportunities, people and resources in communities within and beyond their classroom walls (Ito et al., 2013). The framework has been adopted and developed in K-12 education by teachers in professional development networks and introduced to some teacher education programs through these networks. Practitioners of connected learning frequently refer to the need for “courage” to develop and introduce connected learning-based practices in their classrooms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, the authors investigate “courage” through a sociocultural lens in the case studies of six educators in a teacher education course on connected learning. The study examines the social contexts and activities that fostered acts of courage during their 14-week course.

The authors found that personal reflection on freedom and equity, two ethical concepts raised by the connected learning framework, seeded acts of courage. The acts of courage appeared as small acts that built upon themselves toward a larger goal that related to the participants’ ethical ideals. Three types of social activity contexts helped to nurture these acts: seeking models of possibility, mediated reinvention and “wobbling.”

This study helps to uncover some of the questions that connected learning scholars and practitioners have about why courage is so central, and how to cultivate courageous acts of pedagogical change.

The theoretical framework used in this study, courage from a sociocultural perspective, may serve to help scholars and teacher educators to shape their research and program designs.

This study offers insights into patterns of networked teacher-led educational change and the social contexts that support school-level impacts of out-of-school professional networking.

Using a sociocultural conception of courage to investigate connected learning in teacher education, this study demonstrates how equity and freedom, central values in the connected learning framework, serve as key concepts driving teachers’ risk-taking, innovation and change.

A dynamic model of the brake system considering the tangential and radial motion of the pad, and the torsion and wobbling motion of the disk is established in this paper. The influence of radial stiffness on the brake system is investigated under different tribological conditions. This paper aims to prove that sufficient radial stiffness is indispensable in the design of the brake system with good tribological performance.

By using the lumped mass method, a dynamic model of the brake system is established. A Stribeck-type friction model is applied to this model to correlate the frictional velocity, pressure and friction force. The stability of pad vibration is analysed by analysis methods. A new stability evaluation parameter is proposed to study the influence of radial stiffness on stability of pad vibration in a certain friction coefficient brake pressure range.

The findings show that the tangential vibration of the pad transits from periodic motion to quasi-periodic motion under a low tangential stiffness. The influence of radial stiffness on motion stability is stronger under a low nominal brake radius. The stability of the brake system can be ensured when the brake radius and radial stiffness are sufficient.

The influence of tangential stiffness of pad on stability of the brake system has been researched for decades. The insufficiency of stiffness in radial direction may also generate certain levels of instabilities but has not been fully investigated by modelling approach. This paper reveals that this parameter is also strongly correlated to nonlinear vibration of the brake pad.

A collaborative autoethnography (CAE) conducted by six Belizean educators in a US-based PhD program in Language, Literacy, and Culture Education and one of their faculty members is presented in a creative, dialogic format in this chapter. The group of educators embarked on this reflective self-study to explore how their programmatic language and literacy education knowledge was taken up, remixed, rejected, indigenized, or transformed into local Belizean pedagogies and curricula. Using CAE methods of narrative data generation and dialogic analysis and reflection, the educator-researchers examined the degree to which their program met the expectations of Tierney's (2018) global meaning making endeavor. They found that being vulnerable learners and building their own disciplinary confidence and competence enabled them to take up the new ideas they were encountering, and that new learning led to transformative shifts in their pedagogical philosophies that included culturally relevant and proactive pedagogies. They also innovated and remixed pedagogies in their teaching contexts while wobbling with how to create sustainable changes. This work indicates that Western, US-based universities and programs can, with intentional macro- and micro-curriculum design and ongoing critical reflection, facilitate cross-cultural, international language and literacy programs that enact decolonizing and emancipatory curricula and practices.

SPINNING ROOM LUBRICATION. The detrimental effect of using incorrect oil, particularly for the lubrication of spindles and other high‐speed parts, far outweighs any consideration of the price of oil, since every slight inferiority in lubricating value is multiplied many thousand times in the multiplicity of lubricated bearings. Correct lubrication, therefore, is more important in this department than anywhere else in the mill, especially in so far as power consumption is concerned.

Classist perspectives embedded in our meritocratic society permeate early childhood education. Curricula, instructional practices, and classroom interactions have the potential to send messages to children about who and what is valued by society; frequently influenced by the characteristics and abilities of a middle-class child. In order to best serve the needs and abilities of children from any social class, early childhood educators should be well versed in social-class sensitive pedagogy, a pedagogy that helps teachers to be inclusive of social class diversity in their classrooms. This chapter argues that aspects of Montessori theory, such as the four planes of development and the prepared adult, complement social-class sensitive pedagogy in ways that all early childhood educators may apply to their own teaching.

Book carts are the most basic piece of library equipment. With simple repairs and maintenance, these sturdy pieces of equipment can have an even longer service life. The purpose of this paper is to provide advise on the long‐term care and maintenance of book carts in libraries

This paper provides a “how‐to” approach to solving common maintenance issues with book carts.

New book carts can be expensive but simple, cost‐effective repairs can greatly increase their service life.

Repairing book carts is an easy method of reducing library operating costs.

Selecting the right people for police work is not only important for the employer, but is also in the best interest of the public. Failure to screen out individuals who cannot perform the physical duties has a large human and economic cost. The present study investigated whether physical performance and anthropometric measures can predict recruits’ handgun marksmanship. While significant correlations were found between handgun marksmanship and dominant grip strength, combined grip strength, forearm girth and second ray length, significance was only found when the genders were analyzed together. A step‐wise multiple regression could not generate an equation to predict shooting score from the available data.

The aim of this paper is to provide a new wafer prealigning robot for the photo‐etching facility during the manufacturing of IC products.

The shape center is measured by a reflection‐style laser sensor in the wafer's radial direction, and the position is measured by a penetration‐style laser sensor. A dynamic error compensation is applied to eliminate the radial runout and wobble of the rotary stage, which have effects on the measurement of the wafer's shape center.

It is found that the new wafer prealigning robot can satisfy the accuracy requirement.

The robot requires that the shape center can be accurately calculated.

The robot is applicable to wafer prealigning for the photo‐etching facility.

A wafer prealigning robot based on the shape center calculation method has been developed and is described in the paper.

Public trust in institutions in Iceland plunged after the country’s banking sector collapsed. The political system wobbled under outrage and anger when the general public took to the streets. The Parliamentary Special Investigation Commission conducted a ground-breaking crisis-induced investigation, delivering a report that was a milestone in Iceland’s history of politics and public administration. Yet, despite this endeavour and the fact that subsequent investigations have disclosed ample information intended to restore trust in institutions, public trust remains unsteady. This chapter addresses the following questions: How has public trust in institutions progressed after the crash? Why is it taking so long for trust to return? In Chapter 3 in this volume, we examine data on public trust in Icelandic institutions from Gallup surveys over the 15 years from 2002 to 2017 in order to identify and explain patterns of trust in the aftermath of the crisis. Our interpretation of theory in this chapter suggests that elements of mistrust inherent in the principal–agent approach to accountability in public administration, implemented in previous New Public Management reforms, undermined the creation of a climate of trust necessary to ensure effective accountability mechanisms. We argue that in the absence of a climate of trust, accountability mechanisms of culpability that conflict with mechanisms of answerability, combined with a succession of post-crisis scandals, mainly explain the slow return of the public’s trust.