Perceptions Of Connection Research Articles

Teachers' Perceptions of Connections and Disconnects Between Their Alternative Preparation and Teaching in Urban Classrooms

This study is part of a larger ongoing research study on the impact of alternatively prepared teachers in urban mathematics classrooms. This report focuses on examining alternatively prepared high school mathematics teachers' perceptions of the connections and disconnects of their program experiences and the realities of the urban classrooms. Using phenomenology as the framework, a storytelling approach is employed to capture the perceptions of the teachers' experiences. This approach allows the teachers to convey their understanding of the relationship between their alternative preparation and teaching in urban classrooms. Five common themes are evident in their stories.

Comparative Study Of Private And Public Schools Student Engagement And School Effectiveness Indicators

The expectation of government and tax payers increasingly expect the school system to report on a range of predetermined indicators designed to measure aspects of student engagement and school effectiveness. Despite this the utility and validity of indicators that make up the public accountability of schools is seldom questioned. Student perceptions of school engagement (i.e., sense of connection to school, teachers and peers), motivation to learn, self-esteem, and student safety are part of a range of public accountability indicators. This study examined differences between two groups of Senior Secondary three (SS III) students from public school (n1 = 90) and private school (n2 = 90) on a number of these accountability indicators. No significant differences were found between public and private schools on student connectedness to peers and school. However the differences in public and private school students\' perception of connectedness to teachers, measures of motivation to learn, self-esteem and student safety is significant. The finding from this study proves the suitability of these indicators as measures of student engagement and school effectiveness in Nigeria, but there is the need for further study that would involve more schools from more states. IFE PsychologIA Vol. 16 (2) 2008: pp. 36-46

The influence of communication technologies and approaches to study on transactional distance in blended learning

This paper explores the role played by communication technologies and study orientations in the amplification and reduction of transactional distance in blended learning. Factor analysis and structural equation modelling of different communication modes (face to face, email and telephone) revealed that students experience at least some transactional distance when separated from their tutors. Email was found to facilitate the highest levels of immediacy of dialogue for most students. The conclusion is that strategic students are best placed to benefit from blended learning, and that the effects of transactional distance could be analysed more deeply if two subvariables of dialogue were recognised. These are social presence (the perception of connectedness between students and their tutors) and immediacy (the temporal effects of dialogue).DOI: 10.1080/09687760701470924

Integral Spirituality, Deep Science, and Ecological Awareness

AbstractThere is a growing understanding that addressing the global crisis facing humanity will require new methods for knowing, understanding, and valuing the world. Narrow, disciplinary, and reductionist perceptions of reality are proving inadequate for addressing the complex, interconnected problems of the current age. The pervasive Cartesian worldview, which is based on the metaphor of the universe as a machine, promotes fragmentation in our thinking and our perception of the cosmos. This divisive, compartmentalized thinking fosters alienation and self‐focused behavior. I aim to show in this essay that healing the fragmentation that is at the root of the current world crises requires an integrated epistemology that embraces both the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism and the inner knowledge of spiritual experience. This “deep science” transcends the illusion of separateness to discern the unity, the unbroken wholeness, that underlies the diverse forms of the universe. Our perception of connectedness, of our integral place in the web of life, emerges as an attribute of our connection with the eternal, beatific source of all existence. This awakened spiritual vision “widens our circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature” (Einstein, quoted in Goldstein [1976] 1987). Our behavior, as it emerges naturally out of our perception of the sacredness of the natural world, will naturally embody love and respect for all life forms. This vision promotes the healing of our long‐standing alienation from the natural world and offers hope for renewal in the midst of widespread cultural deterioration and environmental destruction.

Connectivity perception of partly occluded gratings in 4-month-old infants.

Four groups of eight 4-month-old infants were each habituated to one of four displays consisting of a grating of either low (0.4 cycle deg(-1) or high (1.2 cycles deg(-1) spatial frequency, whose central portion was covered up with a horizontal occluder which was either narrow (1.33 deg) or broad (4.17 deg). Posthabituation displays consisted of a complete grating of the same frequency as the habituated grating, along with a separate grating whose central portion was replaced with a black gap of the same height as the occluder in the habituation displays. All the infants, except those who were habituated to the high frequency with the broad occluder, looked longer at the separate grating than the complete grating display during posthabituation trials. Previously, we found that infants under 1 month of age perceive the grating continuation only when the occluder height is less than about 0.5 cycle of the grating; our present results show that this figure increases to about 1.6 cycles of the grating frequency in the case of 4-month-old infants. These findings indicate that those developmental changes depend on both the sufficiency of visual information available and the efficiency of the perceptual ability of infants for grasping spatial relationships.