“Pedagogia delle emozioni”, neoliberismo, democrazia. Il caso della Scuola-Città Pestalozzi

Conception, perception and the control of action

ABSTRACTDuring the last decade there has been on-going discussions about students’ declining interest and low achievement in science. One of the reasons suggested for this decline is that teachers and students have different frames of reference, whereby teachers sometimes communicate science in the classroom in a way that is not accessible to the students. There is a lack of research investigating the effects of coteaching with senior students in science in upper secondary schools. To improve teaching and to narrow the gap between teachers’ and students’ different frames of references, this study investigates how an experienced chemistry teacher gains and refines her pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by cooperating with two grade 12 students (age 18) as coteachers. The teacher and the two coteachers coplanned, cotaught and coevaluated lessons in chemical bonding in a grade 10 upper secondary class. Findings indicate that the coteachers contributed with their own learning experiences to help the teacher understand how students perceive difficult concepts. In such way, the coteachers were mediating between the teacher and the students, thus bridging the gap between the teacher and the students’ frames of references. The teachers’ PCK was refined which in turn lead to improved teaching strategies.

The physical properties of space may be universal, but the way people conceptualize space is not. In some groups, people tend to use egocentric space (e.g. left, right) to encode the locations of objects, while in other groups, people encode the same spatial scene using allocentric space (e.g. upriver, downriver). These different spatial Frames of Reference (FoRs) characterize the way people talk about spatial relations and the way they think about them, even when they are not using language. Although spatial language and spatial thinking tend to covary, the root causes of this variation are unclear. Here we propose that this variation in FoR use reflects the spatial discriminability of the relevant spatial continua. In an initial test of this proposal in a group of indigenous Bolivians, we compared FoR use across spatial axes that are known to differ in discriminability. In two non-verbal tests, participants spontaneously used different FoRs on different spatial axes: On the lateral axis, where egocentric (left-right) discrimination is difficult, their behavior was predominantly allocentric; on the sagittal axis, where egocentric (front-back) discrimination is relatively easy, their behavior was predominantly egocentric. These findings support the spatial discriminability hypothesis, which may explain variation in spatial concepts not only across axes, but also across groups, between individuals, and over development.

In this paper, a discussion is undertaken concerning the use of so-called floating frames of reference in the calculation of the kinetic and elastic energies of parts in a multibody system. The use of floating frames may simplify the calculation of the elastic energy, although sometimes at the expense of more elaborate expressions for the kinetic energy. These expressions may involve terms that couple the motion of the floating frame and the relative motion of the part. The choice of a floating frame may be arbitrary but in order to obtain as simple expressions as possible some care must be taken. When a (flexible) part is connected to a rigid part one may use a frame in which the rigid part is at rest. If so then one has, in general, to deal with coupling terms in the kinetic energy for the flexible part. There is one unique frame in which these coupling terms disappear. This frame is called the principal frame of reference. Relative to this frame the kinetic energy of the part is minimal compared to the kinetic energy relative to other frames. Two independent proofs of this property are presented. The principal frame is defined by the associated change of frame mapping. This mapping is given a full characterization. It may however be cumbersome to calculate the kinetic energy relative to the principal frame. A method for doing this is designated. A frame that has been given some attention in the literature is the principal axis frame of reference. In this paper, a full characterization of this frame and its relation to the principal frame is given. Two examples of an Euler–Bernoulli beam in rotational motion are presented and compared in the light of the theoretical findings of this paper. In conventional presentations of mechanics the Euclidean spaces associated with different frames of reference are taken to be identical. In this paper this assumption is abandoned and different frames of reference will correspond to different Euclidean spaces. From a conceptual point of view this is a natural step to take in order to increase clarity and generality. It automatically includes the dependence of the reference placement on the frame of reference. This approach has been analyzed in a previous paper by the present author. References to this paper will appear whenever needed for. Consequences of this approach are investigated in terms of transformation formulas for kinematical and dynamical quantities.

This study evaluated seven different frames of reference used for tibial component rotation in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) to determine which ones showed good reliability between bone specimens.An optoelectronic system based around a computer-assisted surgical navigation system was used to measure and locate 34 individual anatomical landmarks on 40 tibias. Each particular frame of reference was reconstructed from a group of data points taken from the surface of each bone. The transverse axis was used as the baseline to which the other axes were compared, and the differences in angular rotation between the other six reference frames and the transverse axis were calculated.There was high variability in the tibial rotational alignment associated with all frames of reference. Of the references widely used in current TKA procedures, the tibial tuberosity axis and the anterior condylar axis had lower standard deviations (6.1° and 7.3°, respectively) than the transmalleolar axis and the posterior condylar axis (9.3° for both).In conclusion, we found high variability in the frames of reference used for tibial rotation alignment. However, the anterior condylar axis and transverse axis may warrant further tests with the use of navigation. Combining different frames of reference such as the tibial tuberosity axis, anterior condylar axis and transverse axis may reduce the range of errors found in all of these measurements.

Reference frame and emotions may contribute to discrepancies in patient and clinician risk estimates in Long QT syndrome

In search of success in health promotion and alcohol education

Two experiments tested 6- to 11-year-old children's and college students' use of different frames of reference when making judgments about descriptions of social and nonsocial scenes. In Experiment 1, when social and nonsocial scenes were mixed, both children and students (N = 144) showed spontaneous sensitivity to the intrinsic and the relative frame of reference for both social and nonsocial scenes. All groups over 7 years old showed a stronger effect of the intrinsic frame of reference for social stimuli. This is the first evidence of sensitivity to more than 1 frame of reference in individual judgments made by children. Experiment 2 tested a further sample of 6- to 11-year-old children and students (N = 185) with social and nonsocial scenes in separate blocks. In this study, participants were no longer sensitive to the relative frame of reference--an effect we characterize as "losing your self in space," as this frame is generated by one's own position in the world. Children showed this effect only when the stimuli were social, suggesting that spontaneous use of intrinsic frames of spatial reference may develop out of sensitivity to the perspectives of agents.

Augmented reality (AR) systems allow enriching the environment by supportive and useful virtual data. However, the human information processing capacity is limited. Thus, additional information may distract attention from the environment to the virtual data, resulting in a lower perception of relevant real-world information. In this paper we evaluate whether this effect depends on the frame of reference used to overlay the real world with virtual data. In a user study with 20 participants, we measured the reaction time to simple color stimuli presented either in AR or the environment while participants focused their attention either in AR or the environment. Stimuli in AR were presented in two different frames of reference — screen-stabilized or world-fixed. Responses to signals in AR were significantly faster than to signals in the environment, suggesting a dominance of virtual information over real ones. This also resulted in a significantly prolonged reaction time when participants needed to shift their attention from AR to the environment (but not vice versa). This negative effect disappeared when virtual data was presented world-fixed. Obviously, a world-fixed frame of reference allows a better blending of AR and real world information, and thus avoiding a dominant perception of virtual information.

The transformation of the electromagnetic fields in different frames of reference (wether inertial reference frames or non-inertial reference frames) is the problem frequently met during the electromagnetic measurements in space and the relative analysis. For example, to draw the values of the electromagnetic fields in spacecraft comoving reference frame from the electromagnetic fields measured in the spacecraft rotational reference frame with a reasonable accuracy. Another example is the calculation of the charge density based on the four-point electrostatic field observations of MMS; the present analysis is not very satisfactory and there is still no rigid evaluation on the method applied. However, it is not easy to find a plain and rigid evaluation on the transformation formulas used. In this research, a systematic theoretic investigation has been performed, the universal formulas for the transformation are given and further applied to two actual situations successfully. For space plasmas, the relative velocities of the structures are generally very low and always much less than the speed of light in vacuum, so that the Galillia transformations are applicable. In this study, the Galillia transformations of the electromagnetic fields, the electric potential and magnetic vector potential, and the charge density and current density in different reference frames (wether inertial reference frames or non-inertial reference frames) have been presented and the respective errors are given. The results can find wide applications in space physics. At first, the general formula for the rotational potential of the planets are obtained. Secondly, by using the yielded theoretical results, a strict verification on the deduction of the charge density based on MMS electrostatic fields measurements has been made. It is found that, the Poisson equation is valid because the Coulomb gauge can be used for low-speed motions, and it is enough to draw the charge density from the MMS electrostatic fields measurements with a first order relative error. 

Evaluation of mechanical energy in different frames of reference

Low-level proprioceptive judgements involve a single frame of reference, whereas high-level proprioceptive judgements are made across different frames of reference. The present study systematically compared low-level (grasp grasp) and high-level (vision grasp, grasp vision) proprioceptive tasks, and quantified the consistency of grasp vision and possible reciprocal nature of related high-level proprioceptive tasks. Experiment 1 (n = 30) compared performance across vision grasp, a grasp vision and a grasp grasp tasks. Experiment 2 (n = 30) compared performance on the grasp vision task between hands and over time. Participants were accurate (mean absolute error 0.27 cm [0.20 to 0.34]; mean [95% CI]) and precise ( = 0.95 [0.93 to 0.96]) for grasp grasp judgements, with a strong correlation between outcomes (r = -0.85 [-0.93 to -0.70]). Accuracy and precision decreased in the two high-level tasks ( = 0.86 and 0.89; mean absolute error = 1.34 and 1.41 cm), with most participants overestimating perceived width for the vision grasp task and underestimating it for grasp vision task. There was minimal correlation between accuracy and precision for these two tasks. Converging evidence indicated performance was largely reciprocal (inverse) between the vision grasp and grasp vision tasks. Performance on the grasp vision task was consistent between dominant and non-dominant hands, and across repeated sessions a day or week apart. Overall, there are fundamental differences between low- and high-level proprioceptive judgements that reflect fundamental differences in the cortical processes that underpin these perceptions. Moreover, the central transformations that govern high-level proprioceptive judgements of grasp are personalised, stable and reciprocal for reciprocaltasks. KEY POINTS: Low-level proprioceptive judgements involve a single frame of reference (e.g. indicating the width of a grasped object by selecting from a series of objects of different width), whereas high-level proprioceptive judgements are made across different frames of reference (e.g. indicating the width of a grasped object by selecting from a series of visible lines of different length). We highlight fundamental differences in the precision and accuracy of low- and high-level proprioceptive judgements. We provide converging evidence that the neural transformations between frames of reference that govern high-level proprioceptive judgements of grasp are personalised, stable and reciprocal for reciprocal tasks. This stability is likely key to precise judgements and accurate predictions in high-level proprioception.

In this paper, an attempt has been made to examine critically what is known concerning the mechanisms through which drugs modify personality function, in terms of subjective experience, overt performance, and neurophysiology. A study of available data and the techniques by which they have been acquired leads to several important general conclusions: (1) Not only is there a considerable degree of incommensurability between "subjective" and "objective" data, but also between data in either category that are acquired with different techniques. (2) The "organism" can never be separated from its " environment," and the 2 can be described only in terms of mutual interaction. (3) A "stimulus" cannot be defined in terms of its own properties alone, since its capacity to evoke responses is determined in part by antecedent events, and by particular experimental arrangements. These conclusions can be reconciled with a monistic theory of "mind" and "body" (43). However, it may be questioned whether concepts such as "psyche" and "soma," or their equivalents and derivatives, have not outlived their usefulness, and impede progress in psychiatry more than they foster it. An approach more consistent with the facts, which appears to be more useful in research, is one that may be called "instrumental relativity." Its salient features may be stated as follows. In psychiatry, we are concerned with the prediction and alteration of changes in the organism-environment complex at the symbolic level of functional integration. Such changes may be described in terms of various parameters, such as those of language, performance, physics, and chemistry. Each group of parameters constitutes a "frame of reference" for the measurements that are made. The data so acquired may be "explained" in terms of operational constructs ("properties," "functions," "mechanisms," "theories," " laws") that are peculiar to each frame of reference. However, as the data discussed in this paper indicate, any "mechanism" (or other operational construct) in a given frame of reference can be dissociated from all other "mechanisms" in any other frame of reference, and furthermore, the rates of change of operational constructs may vary considerably in different frames of reference. It follows therefore that perfect correlations can never be made between the data acquired with one technique and those with another, although they may be related. This is true even when, because of semantic confusion, we use the same word to describe different operational constructs—e.g., stimulation, depression, inhibition, facilitation, stress, homeostasis, energy, level of integration, etc. Also, cause-and-effect relationships between successive changes in the organism-environment complex can be inferred with confidence only with respect to such changes as are described in a given frame of reference. The use of terms such as psychosomatic in a cause-effect sense is semantically unjustified and is fraught with serious sources of error. Hence there is little justification for the despair of the neurophysiologist who felt that, as far as "mind" was concerned, the head might just as well be stuffed with cotton wool(44). Although complete equivalence of what are currently termed "mental" and "material" mechanisms can never be attained, the goal of psychiatric research must be the elucidation of mechanisms, or combinations of mechanisms, in multiple frames of reference at the symbolic level of functional integration, between which correlations can be demonstrated in increasingly high degrees of probability. We must be prepared to adopt new techniques for acquiring data, and to revise our operational constructs, including dynamic formulations and classifications of psychiatric disorders, if by so doing prediction and treatment are facilitated. Such flexibility in research at nonsymbolic levels has been the foundation for progress in other medical fields, and promises also to have great value for psychiatry.

PurposeThe role of managerial assumptions in the formulation of organizational strategies has been well recognized by previous studies, yet in marketing literature, the effect of such imperative on marketing practice choice tends to be ignored. Therefore, this paper aims to empirically investigate how management assumptions fit with the choice of marketing practices, and how such fit affects performance.Design/methodology/approachA model is developed and tested using survey methodology, and the data are analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) approach.FindingsThe results show that different marketing practices were coupled with different frames of reference, resulting in viable matching profiles.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the novelty of the approach adopted in this study, conclusions about association and not causation are drawn. In addition, the study is restricted to Qatar which may reduce the generalizability of its findings and conclusions.Practical implicationsThe findings will help managers to examine carefully the internal logic of their marketing-related profiling, where coherent variables will enhance performance.Originality/valueTo one’s knowledge, this paper reports a work in an area not previously researched. In addition, this study is one of the rare papers that examines unobserved heterogeneity using the PLS-structural equation modeling (SEM) in the field of marketing.

Inelastic low-energy (0-1 eV) collisions of electrons with HeH+ cations are treated theoretically, with a focus on the rovibrational excitation and dissociative recombination (DR) channels. In an application of ab initio multichannel quantum defect theory, the description of both processes is based on the Born-Oppenheimer quantum defects. The quantum defects were determined using the R-matrix approach in two different frames of reference: the center-of-charge and the center-of-mass frames. The results obtained in the two reference systems, after implementing the Fano-Jungen style rovibrational frame-transformation technique, show differences in the rate of convergence for these two different frames of reference. We find good agreement with the available theoretically predicted rotationally inelastic thermal rate coefficients. Our computed DR rate also agrees well with the available experimental results. Moreover, several computational experiments shed light on the role of rotational and vibrational excitations in the indirect DR mechanism that governs the low energy HeH+ dissociation process. While the rotational excitation is several orders of magnitude more probable process at the studied collision energies, the closed-channel resonances described by the high-n, rotationally excited neutral molecules of HeH contribute very little to the dissociation probability. But the situation is very different for resonances defined by the high-n, vibrationally excited HeH molecules, which are found to dissociate with approximately 90% probability.