The complex process of scaling the integration of technology enhanced learning in mainstream classrooms

The early optimism for how technology might transform teaching and learning practices in mainstream school classrooms has long faded in many countries around the world. Whilst early research findings suggested that this was due to obvious barriers such as access to the technology itself, more recent attempts to scale student-access have illuminated other factors and provided a more sound theoretical foundation for us to understanding the processes and products of scaling educational technology innovations. This keynote will use findings from key projects and initiatives to highlight what is being learned – and how this might inform future endeavours to realise a more 21st century curriculum

Penal Agnosis and Historical Denial: Problematising ‘Common Sense’ Understandings of Prison Officers and Violence in Prison

The aim of this chapter is to consider if the much-publicised ‘causal relationship’ between prison officer numbers and prisoner violence is a form of ‘penal agnosis’: the cultural production of penal ignorance (Proctor, Agnotology: a missing term to describe the cultural production of ignorance. In R. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: the making and unmaking of ignorance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). My use of penal agnosis draws directly from the writings of Cohen (States of denial. Cambridge: Polity, 2001) and Mathiesen (Silently silenced. Winchester: Waterside Press, 2004). Silencing techniques deployed in everyday life help to keep people quiet and neutralise criticism. Whilst these are varied, of particular concern here is when an event becomes “isolated in the present” (Mathiesen, Silently silenced. Winchester: Waterside Press, 2004: 42), specifically contemporary media and political discussions of prison officers and prison violence. This chapter provides a theoretical context to the invisibility of historical evidence regarding the deeply embedded harms and violence of penal confinement. It focuses on how the narrative of prison staffing levels is not only time-locked but also how the current understandings of the relationship with violence are derived primarily from the perspective of prison officers. Through critique of this approach an alternative space is opened for thinking differently about how to best respond to the current harms and violence of incarceration

Attribution of responsibility for sexual crimes beyond individual actors – construction of responsibility of offenders, victims and society in laypersons’ explanations

This study analyses laypersons’ explanations for sexual violence. It focusses on how the responsibility for sexual crimes is constructed and attributed, and moreover, what kind of effect this has on the attribution of blame. The research data consist of 105 opinion pieces published in the leading Finnish newspaper since the beginning of the 21st century. The theory-driven qualitative analysis utilises attribution theory and focusses on laypersons’ interpretations and explanations for unusual acts and events deviating from social norms. Attribution theory is commonly utilised in relation to micro-level actors, the offender and the victim, whereas in this article, it is broadened to include also society as a macro-level actor. The analysis reveals that the construction of responsibility derives from (I) the chronological presentation and explanation of sexual crimes; especially (II) the causality attached to chronological phases, which emphasises the victim’s actions prior to the crime; and (III) the construction of active female agency against male passivity or absence of the perpetrator. Moreover, blame is based on a combination of active agency, produced in the analysed explanations, and stereotypical features connected to female gender (e.g. rape myths)

Nucleolus: the fascinating nuclear body

Nucleoli are the prominent contrasted structures of the cell nucleus. In the nucleolus, ribosomal RNAs are synthesized, processed and assembled with ribosomal proteins. RNA polymerase I synthesizes the ribosomal RNAs and this activity is cell cycle regulated. The nucleolus reveals the functional organization of the nucleus in which the compartmentation of the different steps of ribosome biogenesis is observed whereas the nucleolar machineries are in permanent exchange with the nucleoplasm and other nuclear bodies. After mitosis, nucleolar assembly is a time and space regulated process controlled by the cell cycle. In addition, by generating a large volume in the nucleus with apparently no RNA polymerase II activity, the nucleolus creates a domain of retention/sequestration of molecules normally active outside the nucleolus. Viruses interact with the nucleolus and recruit nucleolar proteins to facilitate virus replication. The nucleolus is also a sensor of stress due to the redistribution of the ribosomal proteins in the nucleoplasm by nucleolus disruption. The nucleolus plays several crucial functions in the nucleus: in addition to its function as ribosome factory of the cells it is a multifunctional nuclear domain, and nucleolar activity is linked with several pathologies. Perspectives on the evolution of this research area are proposed

The neglected needs of care leavers in the criminal justice system: Practitioners' perspectives and the persistence of problem (corporate) parenting

The link between experiences of care and criminal justice systems is well documented, yet curiously neglected in policy and practice. While the over-representation of care leavers in the justice system is often taken as given, there has been negligible change in policy and practice that appropriately responds to the needs of these individuals. Drawing on interviews with practitioners, this article highlights a series of organizational and institutional barriers to implementing a unique intervention. More broadly, such barriers contribute to the persistence of care(less) practice, facilitating the neglect of care leavers’ needs to a system dominated by risk. It is argued that the continued inertia within this area can only be construed as practice negligence and an affront to justice

Versatile thinking and the learning of statistical concepts

Statistics was for a long time a domain where calculation dominated to the detriment of statistical thinking. In recent years, the latter concept has come much more to the fore, and is now being both researched and promoted in school and tertiary courses. In this study, we consider the application of the concept of flexible or versatile thinking to statistical inference, as a key attribute of statistical thinking. Whilst this versatility comprises process/object, visuo/analytic and representational versatility, we concentrate here on the last aspect, which includes the ability to work within a representation system (or semiotic register) and to transform seamlessly between the systems for given concepts, as well as to engage in procedural and conceptual interactions with specific representations. To exemplify the theoretical ideas, we consider two examples based on the concepts of relative comparison and sampling variability as cases where representational versatility may be crucial to understanding. We outline the qualitative thinking involved in representations of relative density and sample and population distributions, including mathematical models and their precursor, diagrammatic forms