Present teaching stories as re-membering the humanities

he ways in which Humanities scholars talk about teaching tell something about how we interact with the past of our own discipline as well as anticipate our students’ futures. In this we express collective memories as truths of learning and teaching. As cultural artifacts of our present, such stories are worthy of excavation for what they imply about ourselves as well as messages they pass onto our successors. This paper outlines “collective re-membering” as one way to understand these stories, particularly as they present in qualitative interviews commonly being used to research higher education practice in the Humanities. It defines such collective re-membering through an interweaving of Halbwachs, Ricoeur, Wertsch and Bakhtin. It proposes that a dialogic reading between this understanding of collective re-membering and qualitative data-sets enables us to both access our discursive tendencies within the Humanities and understand the impact they might have on student engagement with our disciplines, noting that when discussing learning and teaching, we engage in collectively influenced myth-making and hagiography. The paper finishes by positing that the Humanities need to change their orientation from generating myths and pious teaching sagas towards the complex and ultimately more intellectually satisfying, articulation of learning and teaching parables

The development of a ‘flexible learning’ strategy for design and technology

Traditional approaches towards the teaching and learning of design and technology are becoming more difficult to sustain and the need to consider alternative strategies is becoming more urgent. A number of factors have contributed to the need to consider strategies intended to be more flexible and accommodating : worsening staff / student ratios; the need to provide an increasingly wide range of technological information at the relevant point of design development; a belief that design students and teachers are entitled to relevant technological knowledge in a form which is appropriate to their needs. This paper describes the selection, development and evaluation of trial materials which aim to support individual student learning in design and technology. The initial student groups were identified as first year industrial design and technology undergraduates and A/AS-level design and technology students. This target is continually widening, however, and might also include teachers who wish to develop their own technological capability through INSET

Polymorphism in a π-Stacked 1,3,2-Dithiazolyl Radical: Pyridyl-1,3,2-Dithiazolyl

Pyridyl-1,3,2-dithiazolyl PyDTA (1) has been synthesized and its electronic structure has been probed by cyclic voltammetry, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, and density functional theory calculations. The results demonstrate that the spin distribution and redox properties of the radical are intermediate between those observed for the isoelectronic benzoand pyrazino-1,3,2-dithiazolyl radicals. Crystals of 1 can be grown by vacuum sublimation as two polymorphs. The kinetically favored form 1r grows as purple/black blocks or rods and crystallizes in the noncentric space group P21, while the thermodynamically favored 1 phase forms green/black shards and crystallizes in the centric space group P21/n. The structures of both 1r and 1 comprise layers of head-to-head π*-π* dimers in the ab plane. The two structures differ in the orientation of the π-dimers along the stacks. In 1r dimers are aligned head-to-head, while in 1 the orientation of the dimers alternates in a head-over-tail fashion, so as to produce an approximate doubling of the crystallographic c-axis in relation to 1r. Variable temperature magnetic susceptibility measurements reveal that both phases are essentially diamagnetic at low temperatures. Above 180 K (for 1 ) and above 250 K (for 1r) the free Curie spin count for both polymorphs begins to rise, indicating a weakening of the π*-π* dimers in the solid state

Polymorphism in a π-Stacked 1,3,2-Dithiazolyl Radical: Pyridyl-1,3,2-Dithiazolyl

Pyridyl-1,3,2-dithiazolyl PyDTA (1) has been synthesized and its electronic structure has been probed by cyclic voltammetry, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, and density functional theory calculations. The results demonstrate that the spin distribution and redox properties of the radical are intermediate between those observed for the isoelectronic benzo- and pyrazino-1,3,2-dithiazolyl radicals. Crystals of 1 can be grown by vacuum sublimation as two polymorphs. The kinetically favored form 1α grows as purple/black blocks or rods and crystallizes in the noncentric space group P21, while the thermodynamically favored 1β phase forms green/black shards and crystallizes in the centric space group P21/n. The structures of both 1α and 1β comprise layers of head-to-head π*−π* dimers in the ab plane. The two structures differ in the orientation of the π-dimers along the stacks. In 1α dimers are aligned head-to-head, while in 1β the orientation of the dimers alternates in a head-over-tail fashion, so as to produce an approximate doubling of the crystallographic c-axis in relation to 1α. Variable temperature magnetic susceptibility measurements reveal that both phases are essentially diamagnetic at low temperatures. Above 180 K (for 1β) and above 250 K (for 1α) the free Curie spin count for both polymorphs begins to rise, indicating a weakening of the π*−π* dimers in the solid state