Contextual Backgrounds Research Articles

Developing mobile learning practices through teacher education

Purpose This paper explores the context, development and outcomes of a cross-European in-service training programme, developing mobile learning practices in school classrooms – MLEARN – in The Netherlands, England, Greece and Italy. This paper focuses on: contextual backgrounds; a training needs analysis; and initial, mid-term and final outcomes from teachers and learners. Design/methodology/approach Evidence was gathered about: contextual backgrounds through literature reviews and key informant responses; a training needs analysis through online survey responses from teachers and trainers; and outcomes of uses from five surveys, largely completed online by teachers and learners, after some 2, 3, 5, 9 and 13 months of use. Findings Findings from survey periods were compared to identify shifts and gaps. The training programme led to successful outcomes; there was rapid uptake and use of the mobile devices, as well as shifts in emphasis across the period of the pilot, dependent on contextual factors. But long-term integration requires focus on specific learning activities, as well as on integration beyond a one-year period. Social Implications Uses of mobile devices are increasing, across countries and age ranges. How devices can be used to support learning and teaching in contemporary contexts is not temporally independent. Country curricula, legislation, training programme access, and teacher and learner awareness and perceptions, all influence practice. Originality/value Teachers have limited access to training programmes in this field. This study investigated a key pilot in this under-developed research area. Key factors need to be considered when programmes are developed and run.

Application of activity theory to analysis of human-related accidents: Method and case studies

This study proposes a new approach to human-related accident analysis based on activity theory. Most of the existing methods seem to be insufficient for comprehensive analysis of human activity-related contextual aspects of accidents when investigating the causes of human errors. Additionally, they identify causal factors and their interrelationships with a weak theoretical basis. We argue that activity theory offers useful concepts and insights to supplement existing methods. The proposed approach gives holistic contextual backgrounds for understanding and diagnosing human-related accidents. It also helps identify and organise causal factors in a consistent, systematic way. Two case studies in Korean nuclear power plants are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method. Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) was also applied to the case studies. The results of using HFACS were then compared with those of using the proposed method. These case studies showed that the proposed approach could produce a meaningful set of human activity-related contextual factors, which cannot easily be obtained by using existing methods. It can be especially effective when analysts think it is important to diagnose accident situations with human activity-related contextual factors derived from a theoretically sound model and to identify accident-related contextual factors systematically.

Religious Pluralization and Secularization in Continental Europe, with Focus on France and Germany

Change processes are taking place in different European countries, based on different contextual backgrounds, with diverse motives, actors, and aims, but nevertheless in a way that similarly affects both religious pluralization and secularization. In European societies, religious pluralization is not only a fact, but it also poses a challenge for a better or a new understanding of the different religions themselves and for the role they play in society. The following contribution focusses on France and Germany, with special attention to one of the federal German states: Hamburg. The results show: A new interest in religion and interreligious dialogue on the one hand, and an ongoing secularization on the other are not in confrontation but related to each other. Despite an institutional tradition of separation between state and religion especially in France, there is a growing awareness that attention to religion need not counteract this tradition but may be necessary as an instrument including all parts of a religiously and culturally diverse population. This is also the case, in a different and striking manner, in Germany as a whole and in Hamburg in particular. We find a new interest in religion and dialogue in many different academic disciplines as well as by actors from different religious communities, in school, society, and politics.

The Perspectives of Iranian Women on Delayed Childbearing: A Qualitative Study.

Delayed childbearing is a growing trend in Iran. This study explores the perspectives of women on delayed childbearing. A qualitative study using a content analysis approach was conducted on data acquired using private semistructured interviews with 23 women aged ≥30 years who were childless or pregnant for the first time in an urban area of Iran. Three main themes were developed using conventional content analysis: "personal inclination," "perceived beliefs about delayed childbearing," and "social support." Although women in Iran hold favorable attitudes toward childbearing, a wide range of sociocultural and economic factors encourage these women to postpone their first pregnancy. The findings of this study are relevant and important for nursing and midwifery policy making in countries with cultural and contextual backgrounds similar to Iran.

Sources of Response Bias in Older Ethnic Minorities: A Case of Korean American Elderly.

The present study was undertaken to investigate potential sources of response bias in empirical research involving older ethnic minorities and to identify prudent strategies to reduce those biases, using Korean American elderly (KAE) as an example. Data were obtained from three independent studies of KAE (N = 1,297; age ≥60) in three states (Florida, New York, and Maryland) from 2000 to 2008. Two common measures, Pearlin's Mastery Scale and the CES-D scale, were selected for a series of psychometric tests based on classical measurement theory. Survey items were analyzed in depth, using psychometric properties generated from both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis as well as correlational analysis. Two types of potential sources of bias were identified as the most significant contributors to increases in error variances for these psychological instruments. Error variances were most prominent when (1) items were not presented in a manner that was culturally or contextually congruent with respect to the target population and/or (2) the response anchors for items were mixed (e.g., positive vs. negative). The systemic patterns and magnitudes of the biases were also cross-validated for the three studies. The results demonstrate sources and impacts of measurement biases in studies of older ethnic minorities. The identified response biases highlight the need for re-evaluation of current measurement practices, which are based on traditional recommendations that response anchors should be mixed or that the original wording of instruments should be rigidly followed. Specifically, systematic guidelines for accommodating cultural and contextual backgrounds into instrument design are warranted.

INSTRE

Over the last several decades, researches on visual object retrieval and recognition have achieved fast and remarkable success. However, while the category-level tasks prevail in the community, the instance-level tasks (especially recognition) have not yet received adequate focuses. Applications such as content-based search engine and robot vision systems have alerted the awareness to bring instance-level tasks into a more realistic and challenging scenario. Motivated by the limited scope of existing instance-level datasets, in this article we propose a new benchmark for INSTance-level visual object REtrieval and REcognition (INSTRE). Compared with existing datasets, INSTRE has the following major properties: (1) balanced data scale, (2) more diverse intraclass instance variations, (3) cluttered and less contextual backgrounds, (4) object localization annotation for each image, (5) well-manipulated double-labelled images for measuring multiple object (within one image) case. We will quantify and visualize the merits of INSTRE data, and extensively compare them against existing datasets. Then on INSTRE, we comprehensively evaluate several popular algorithms to large-scale object retrieval problem with multiple evaluation metrics. Experimental results show that all the methods suffer a performance drop on INSTRE, proving that this field still remains a challenging problem. Finally we integrate these algorithms into a simple yet efficient scheme for recognition and compare it with classification-based methods. Importantly, we introduce the realistic multiobjects recognition problem. All experiments are conducted in both single object case and multiple objects case.

What is the Nature of the Relationship between Changes in European Higher Education and Social Science Research on Higher Education and (Why) Does It Matter?

The paper examines the relationship between changes in European higher education and social science research on this theme and why it matters. Higher Education (HE) research is a new field significantly assisted by European funding, the Bologna process and the massification of HE. The field is populated by many emerging researchers but few established academics. The paper examines the sub-field’s characteristics including lack of theoretical/methodological consensus, co-production of the knowledge base and the differing micro and contextual backgrounds of emerging European HE researchers (drawing on a recent study). It considers three recent major European-funded HE research projects as examples of co-production, specifically looking at the kinds of knowledge produced and the strategies adopted to ensure that research outcomes permeate the policy process. It is suggested that the sub-field needs to develop a better infrastructure to support emerging researchers, but care needs to be taken not to impair their independence from European bureaucrats.

SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture by Nathan Hesselink (review)

SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture. By Nathan Hesselink. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology.) Chicago: Uni ver - sity of Chicago Press, 2012. [xiv, 201 p. ISBN 9780226330969 (hardcover), $75; ISBN 9780226330976 (paperback), $25.50.] CD, music examples, illustrations, figures, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, index-glossary.Since its first performance in 1978 at the Space Theater (Konggan Sarang), the percussion quartet SamulNori has created a sensation among both professional and amateur traditional music performers in Korea and abroad. As SamulNori became overwhelmingly popular and famous, the genre samulnori emerged into the wider Korean culture. Named after the number of musical instruments employed, the SamulNori quartet plays four percussion instruments, the changgo (two-sided hourglass drum), kkwaenggwari (small gong), ching (large gong), and puk (barrel drum). The members of SamulNori knew exactly what Korean society of its time wanted: a strong sense of Korean identity. They and their music offered a way to aesthetically reconfigure and manipulate this identity in an urbanized context, in a way that was innovative yet still drew from tradition.In his book, SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture, Nathan Hesselink explores the ways in which SamulNori maintains connections with the old while creating something new, popko ch'angshin. Hesselink offers a groundbreaking historiography of SamulNori, as well as an analysis of the music that shows how SamulNori makes its own innovative sonic features. Given that this book is the first sociological and musical-theoretical examination of SamulNori/samulnori (p. 10), it complements cultural studies of Korean music and ethnomusicological studies of the turbulent Korean society from which SamulNori emerged and accumulated tremendous attention.Chapters 1 and 2 sketch the historical and sociocultural contextual backgrounds in which SamulNori was formed in the midst of a rapidly changing and economically developing Korean society. Looking into the history, organization, and activities of namsadang, which is an itinerant performance group, Hesselink traces the roots of SamulNori. He suggests that the professionalism and presentation-style music making of SamulNori can be credited to namsadang. As this itinerant troupe traveled as far as Manchuria as well as to all the provinces of the Korean peninsula, the group embodied pan-regional performance styles. He demonstrates that p'ungmul, a Korean genre of percussion music and dance, was performed as part of the opening of the group's performance. Namsa - dang has been revived, especially thanks to the scholarly attention of a Korean folklorist, Shim Usong, and of cultural institutions since the 1960s. Despite the wealth of historical accounts of namsadang, more detailed description of how SamulNori and samulnori connects with namsadang historically and aesthetically would be helpful to understanding and placing SamulNori and/or samulnori within the larger contexts of namsadang.Chapter 2 is one of the most compelling chapters, in that Hesselink examines the ways in which sociocultural activism, higher learning institutions, concert halls, different contributions from scholars in folklore, musicology, and architecture, and folk music associations in the 1970s brought forth something new musically within the framework of the traditional. This chapter investigates the influences of urbanization and modernization during the time of SamulNori's formation and the appreciation it found among the new and younger generations. While the Space Theater performance has been widely mentioned in the history of the SamulNori, other concert halls, including the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, its predecessor the Seoul Civic Center, the National Theater, and the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, have not often appeared in historiographies of SamulNori and/or other folk performing arts groups. …

Uncertainty Analysis – 5 Challenges with Today's Practice

As pointed out by Venkataraman and Pinto (2010), the importance of estimating project costs arises as the estimates become the benchmarks of which future costs are compared and evaluated. Although estimates become more accurate as decisions are made and uncertainties resolved, they are also chief means for assessing project feasibility, as a comparison of cost estimates with estimates of revenues and other benefits that are crucial in determining whether the project is worthwhile to carry out or not. In this paper we will discuss whether or not the uncertainty analysis is a reliable tool for supporting the cost estimation process. We present 5 challenges in connection with the way uncertainty analyses of cost estimates are done today and present findings that indicate a need to rethink the uncertainty analyses of the projects that have a high degree of uncertainty. This paper is a product of collective reflection, experience and the knowledge of the authors. It is of a qualitative nature as we do not present any quantitative or statistical evidence or methods in our approach. It is understood, due to the diverse contextual backgrounds of the projects involved, that the explanations for differences may be equally diverse. The paper is divided into five parts; The introduction – explaining the importance of the topic; part two provides a short introduction to the applied research methods; part three explain what we mean by cost estimation under uncertainty; part four presents the five identified challenges in cost estimat*ion under uncertainty; part five presents a conclusion and proposes potential areas of further research.

Wakefulness (Not Sleep) Promotes Generalization of Word Learning in 2.5‐Year‐Old Children

Sleep enhances generalization in adults, but this has not been examined in toddlers. This study examined the impact of napping versus wakefulness on the generalization of word learning in toddlers when the contextual background changes during learning. Thirty 2.5-year-old children (M = 32.94, SE = 0.46) learned labels for novel categories of objects, presented on different contextual backgrounds, and were tested on their ability to generalize the labels to new exemplars after a 4-hr delay with or without a nap. The results demonstrated that only children who did not nap were able to generalize learning. These findings have critical implications for the functions of sleep versus wakefulness in generalization, implicating a role for forgetting during wakefulness in generalization.

Applying Activity System Model to Human-Related Accident Analysis

This study proposes a new approach for human-related accident analysis based on activity system model. Most of the existing analysis methods seem to be insufficient for comprehensive analysis of human and organizational aspects related to accidents. Particularly, organizational factors influencing accidents are increasingly important for accident analysis. However, the existing methods do not give a full consideration to organizational practice when analyzing the causes of a human error in relation to performance shaping factors. Additionally, they derive performance shaping factors and identify their interrelationships with a weak theoretical basis. We argue that activity system model offers useful concepts and insights for supplementing the existing methods. The proposed approach gives holistic contextual backgrounds for understanding and diagnosing human-related accidents, emphasizing organizational practice. It also helps identify and organize performance shaping factors in a more consistent, systematic way. Its use is explained in a case study of re-analyzing a human-related unplanned reactor trip event occurred in Korean nuclear industry. From the case study, we confirmed that the proposed approach could produce a set of information that cannot easily be obtained by the use of existing analysis methods.

Influence of the amount of context learned for improving object classification when simultaneously learning object and contextual cues

Humans use visual context to improve object recognition. Yet, many machine vision algorithms still focus on local object features, discarding surrounding features as unwanted clutter. Here we study the impact of learning contextual cues while training an object classifier. In a new image database with 10 object categories and 28,800 images, objects were presented in contextual or uniform backgrounds. Both the fraction of contextual backgrounds during training and the spatial extent of context were analysed. Local object features and broader context features were extracted by two biologically inspired algorithms, previously used for object and scene classification, respectively: HMAX, applied to a tight window around every object, and a “Gist” algorithm, applied to a larger yet still localized window. The descriptors from both algorithms were combined and processed by a Support Vector Machine. The recognition rate increased from 29%, without contextual cues, to 43% for objects presented in their context.

Social Origins of Nuclear Policy: A Niebuhrian Dilemma of the U.S. Policies toward North Korea

IntroductionInternational efforts to stop North Korea's nuclear program are still looking for a way out. Nearly two decades have passed since the North first alarmed the world with its nuclear reprocessing facilities in 1992, but the multiple international negoDepartment tiations ever since have yet to find an effective deterrent. More perplexing than the unfruitful negotiations per se is the indeterminacy that the international community has shown throughout the process. An obvious example is the drifting policies of the U.S., the leader of the world anti-proliferation community. Throughout the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the U.S. policies wildly swung between containment and engagement. The ambiguity continues even today as we see the Obama government switching policy positions off and on.1Why isn't there a consistent solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis? Why are the international (the U.S. in particular) responses to the North's nuclear challenge drifting?Keeping in mind a normative origin of the policy inconsistency, this research delves into the contextual backgrounds of the uneven nuclear non-proliferation policies. Due to the controversial nature of the issues involving the nuclear crisis like sovereignty and national security, the nonproliferation efforts are supposed to call for a choice of only relatively better policy each time without any absolute solution. Borrowing Reinhold Niebuhr's insights, the North Korean nuclear crisis is a typical case of where a definitive behavioral principle is hard to utilize.2 Consequently an objective analysis of policy conditions is rarely available, which in turn makes a rational or institutional choice by political elites out of the question. Instead, the public perception of the issues at the bottom of the society takes its place as the matter of consequence.Ironically a social normative cause of the U.S. policy inconsistency looms large from the solid international norm for nuclear nonproliferation. Despite the solid consensus on the principle of blocking the spread of nuclear weapons at all costs, a few technical differences that rose in the middle of negotiating how to implement the norm have directed the course of negotiation. It is an irony that the methods employed to apply a principle ruled over the principle. As a response, this research asserts that some of the suggested policy means, even if they are efficient in practice, raise several fundamental social concerns that are not compatible with the norm of nuclear nonproliferation. The North Korean crisis involves two or more ideas that stand at odds with each other. The normative conflicts generate the policy indeterminacy.This research reflects on Reinhold Niebuhr's thoughts about international politics-relative justice, in essence-as the reference of normative ambiguity arising from the process of negotiation with North Korea. His ideas are helpful to identify the social context where a durable policy is hard to obtain. The North Korean nuclear challenge, seen from Niebuhr's perspective, is a typical case of lacking an absolute justice to apply. The North's nuclear adventure, though not as acceptable as the U.S. behavior to discourage it, is still excusable from its claim of national defense. To buy how much of the North's defensive concerns, this research suggests, is the determinant of the direction and level of the U.S. reaction to the nuclear challenge, while a consensus has yet to be made in American society. In addition, the U.S. policies are supposed to fluctuate given the fact that several conflicts exist within the U.S. government that involve ideational debates deep in the American society.In this paper, Niebuhr's relative justice is employed to critically review the U.S. nuclear policies toward North Korea angles in the following order. First, the literature review introduces relevant studies and points out that a normative consideration is still necessary. …

Tutors and Learners Without Borders: In a Relationship but it's Complicated

Global tutoring and learning communities are composed of different people who share a common interest or a common goal. Learners aim to acquire knowledge and skills; while tutors aim to provide content support, coaching and motivation to learners. The interaction is done through the use of technology, specifically the Internet. Management of these communities can be a challenge because members are not only separated by space and time but they come from different cultures, contextual backgrounds and institutions. If managed well, global tutoring and learning communities can transcend barriers and be very effective, efficient and also inexpensive. The paper looks into how online tutors and learners are effectively and efficiently managed and sustained. Specifically, it aims to: a) define global tutoring and learning communities and their rationale; b) describe the strategies and good practices employed in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; c)determine the effective communication tools used to manage and sustain global teams; and d) identify the challenges and lessons to maintain and sustain global tutoring and learning communities. The paper is based on studies as well as actual experiences and written reports on managing global learning and tutoring communities. It will look into how teams are managed from planning, implementation to monitoring and evaluation. Specifically, it will provide a glimpse on how learners and tutors from different countries and nationalities are managed in the elearning Development and Implementation (eLDI) program and e-skills program. These courses are jointly offered by the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) and InWEnt, Capacity Building International, Germany and have learners and tutors from various countries not only from Asia, but from Africa and the Middle East. The paper also draws lessons on how to maintain tutors and learners without borders.

Reversing housing and health pathways? Evidence from Victorian caravan parks

The aim of this article is to highlight a link between housing and health that may have been underestimated: the pathway from poor health towards marginal housing in caravan parks. Almost all research on links between housing and health is derived from large-scale surveys and correlational analyses which suggest a causation path from poor housing to poor health. The big picture of such studies may in fact disguise a reality for a smaller group where poor health leads to class ‘slide’ and reduced housing options. Qualitative data and life histories from interviews probe such ‘reverse’ links and also flesh out contextual backgrounds. It is argued in this article that evidence from interviews with 10 caravan park managers and 50 residents from 16 parks in outer Melbourne and rural Victoria supports general arguments that poor health appears to be a pathway leading to marginal housing.

Effectiveness of ICT for Construction Information Exchange among Multidisciplinary Project Teams

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has been commonplace in the construction industry, with the increased functionalities of intranets and extranets in a web-based environment. Yet, human and organizational hindrances bring about consequences which affect the effectiveness of these online collaboration tools. Through a cross-sectional study of six construction-related organizations via interviews with ICT developers and users, these hindrances and consequences are highlighted against contextual backgrounds which depict a wide spectrum of ICT use in the construction industry. The results underpin a questionnaire survey which identified the most frequently encountered hindrances, such as self-discipline, technical support, and system capacity, both for internal and external information exchanges. These hindrances, together with undesirable behaviors such as the tendency to forward information to irrelevant parties and ignore information, would result in double handling and missing of time targets. Results also show that public organizations seem to be less prone to the discipline problems. While ICT advances, it is imperative that users make the best use of it by understanding and avoiding the pitfalls.

Context recognition for hierarchical text classification

AbstractInformation is often organized as a text hierarchy. A hierarchical text‐classification system is thus essential for the management, sharing, and dissemination of information. It aims to automatically classify each incoming document into zero, one, or several categories in the text hierarchy. In this paper, we present a technique called CRHTC (context recognition for hierarchical text classification) that performs hierarchical text classification by recognizing the context of discussion (COD) of each category. A category's COD is governed by its ancestor categories, whose contents indicate contextual backgrounds of the category. A document may be classified into a category only if its content matches the category's COD. CRHTC does not require any trials to manually set parameters, and hence is more portable and easier to implement than other methods. It is empirically evaluated under various conditions. The results show that CRHTC achieves both better and more stable performance than several hierarchical and nonhierarchical text‐classification methodologies.

Students' Lived Experiences as Text in Teaching the Sociological Imagination

Although we may claim our students are developing a sociological imagination, it is quite another to realize this in our teaching and our students' performances. Through a professional move from teaching in Chicago to Maine, I was led to rethink how I teach the sociological imagination. I argue that if we are to teach the sociological imagination, we must consider our students' contextual backgrounds more carefully and use student's lived experiences as “text” from which they exercise and develop their sociological imaginations. I illustrate this approach with an assignment designed to use students' experiences from rural and small towns in Maine. The assignment challenges them to use their sociological perspective to look at the relationship between “private troubles” and “public issues,” and to demonstrate using a sociological imagination to reflect on their biographies.

Saying no to negativity: The effects of context and motivation to control prejudice on automatic evaluative responses

The current research explored the interaction of context and motivation to control prejudice reactions (MCPR) on automatic evaluative responses toward individuals of different races. Three studies incorporated contextual backgrounds into an evaluative priming procedure. Across all three studies, White participants low in MCPR demonstrated automatic ingroup biases when threatening contexts were presented. However, in contexts where targets could be construed as threatening, Whites high in MCPR showed automatic outgroup biases in favor of Blacks over Whites. Importantly, this outgroup bias was driven by an automatic inhibition of negative responses toward Blacks. The results indicate that even at the automatic level, people high in motivation to control prejudice can inhibit negative responses toward Blacks in contexts that have cues associated with prejudice.

Cell-context signalling.

In plants, cells differentiate according to their position with relation to their cell neighbours. Monoclonal antibody (MAb) probes to polysaccharide epitopes, present at the surfaces of all plant cells, have defined a family of proteoglycan antigens which signify cellular position. These MAbs have been used to sort the single cells present in carrot somatic cell cultures on the basis of the presence or absence of specific polysaccharide epitopes. This sorting allows embryo initial cells to be cultured among different cell collectives (based on their polysaccharide epitope expression) and thus in altered contextual backgrounds. These experiments have shown that specific populations of embryo initial precursor cells induce and sustain the early development of the embryo initials, revealing that the populations of different cell collectives which are defined by different polysaccharide epitopes (cell-context) serves important regulatory function in early plant development. Somatic embryo initials deprived of the influence of the cell collective-defined by the presence of the polysaccharide epitope recognised by the MAb JIM8-establish unorganised first divisions and develop as callus. However, in the presence of the JIM8-reactive cell collective, or medium conditioned by the collective, the initials develop into somatic embryos. This demonstrates that the cells defined by the JIM8 polysaccharide epitope are necessary to sustain the meristematic activity which drives the renewed development. Transfer of a cell-wall signal from the JIM8-reactive cells to cellular situations in carrot seedlings in which they would not normally occur (out-of-context signals) stimulates lateral root production, thus demonstrating that the inductive signal operative in suspension cultures can be reinterpreted by specific cells later in development and reinitiate meristematic activity. The communication between the precursor cells defined by JIM8 and embryo initials defines an early cell-cell interaction in developing carrot plants. Labelling of flower sections suggests that the same interaction exists between embryo apical and basal cells early in normal development.