Summer Course Research Articles

Making testers out of teachers: the work of a Swedish State Research Institute 1946–1956

ABSTRACTBetween 1946 and 1956, the Swedish Psychological and Pedagogical Institute (SPPI) organised several summer courses for the purpose of training teachers in intelligence testing. The aim of the courses was to make these teachers the first gatekeepers who would meet and direct the youngest pupils into ordinary classes or into special classes. This paper investigates the course leaders and the participants in these courses, as well as the content taught. It is argued that these testing courses are examples of a shift in assessment in education from trusting teachers’ ‘judgements’ of pupils’ skills and abilities to externally standardising the ‘measure’ of these merits. It is also argued that researchers and teachers were part of a larger change in the politics of IQ. SPPI’s role within this process was that of a new and modern institution serving society: making IQ testing a public familiarity and the stratification of children that often followed from it.

Influence of solar activity changes on European rainfall

European hydroclimate shows a high degree of variability on every time scale. The variability is controlled by natural processes such as Atlantic ocean cycles, changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions and anthropogenic factors. This contribution concentrates on the solar influence on European precipitation, a relationship which has been documented by a large body of published case studies. Here we are concentrating on the period 1901–2015 for which we compare sunspot data with monthly precipitation series of 39 European countries by calculating Pearson correlation coefficients for a multi-year cross-correlation window. The coefficients have been mapped out across Europe with the aim to identify areas in which solar activity may have influenced precipitation. Results show that February precipitation in Central and Western Europe yields the strongest solar response with coefficients reaching up to +0.61. Rainfall in June–July is equally co-driven by solar activity changes, whereby the solar-influenced zone of rainfall shifts from the British Isles towards Eastern Europe during the course of summer. Other months with noteworthy solar responses are April, May and December. On a decadal scale, the correlation between precipitation and solar activity in central Europe appears to be mostly positive, both statistically and by visual curve comparison. Yet, best positive correlations coefficients of February, June, July and December are typically reached when the solar signal lags rainfall by 1.5–2 years. Taking into account cause and effect, it is suspected that increases in Central European rainfall are actually triggered by the solar minimum some 3–4 years before the rainfall month, rather than the lagging solar maximum. Similar lags of a few years occur between solar activity and the solar-synchronized North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) due to memory effects in the Atlantic. The literature review demonstrates that most multidecadal studies from Central Europe encountered a negative correlation between solar activity and rainfall, probably because short time lags of a few years are negligible on timescales beyond the 11 year solar Schwabe cycle. Flood frequency typically increases during times of low solar activity associated with NAO- conditions and more frequent blocking.

A Student-Centred Experience at a Brazilian Summer Course for Student Teachers

Background: This paper refers to an empirical study held at an undergraduate summer course for student teachers at a public Brazilian University, aiming to promote teaching and learning processes based on a student-centred approach. Methods: The study was set up as a Pedagogical Action Research. The classes were initially planned based on interviews with teachers and students from the regular previous term and on open-answers questionnaires filled in by students enrolled at the summer course. At the end of the summer course, a new open-answer questionnaire was filled in by the students. Results: It was possible to perceive a positive change on students’ postures, engagement and learning, and will become teachers. Conclusions: The findings indicate that student-centred practices are an interesting pedagogical approach for Teacher Education. Besides going further with the Pedagogical Action Research it is perceived the need to make similar studies at different Brazilian Higher Education settings.

The Presuppositions of Being and Time

It is often remarked that Heidegger’s Being and Time was originally proposed as a book on Aristotle, and that formative work for this initial expression of Heidegger’s existential ontology was developed through the early 1920s in a series of lecture courses and seminars on Aristotle’s practical philosophy. This paper examines select details from Heidegger’s 1924 summer course in order to question the presuppositions of Heidegger’s decision to found the project of fundamental ontology on a purely philological reading of Aristotle. At stake is the method of investigation which permitted Heidegger to think politics through ontology in his most controversial writings from the 1930s—and ultimately the meaning of philosophy itself.

El movimiento de Pensionistas, fenómeno singular de largo alcance

La defensa del sistema público de pensiones aporta aspectos tan novedosos que constituye un fenómeno singular. Destacan en par-ticular el plano organizativo, los escenarios donde se desarrolla y la prolongada duración del conflicto. Para encontrar experiencias con alguna similitud habría que remontarse al movimiento obrero du-rante el periodo franquista y la Transición. No es casual que quie-nes dinamizan esa lucha estuviesen entonces en plena juventud y se comprometiesen en diversas causas. Las movilizaciones de pensio-nistas constituyen un acontecimiento social digno de estudio. Su problemática ya ha sido tratada en cursos de verano universitarios. Este artículo analiza sus orígenes y trayectoria con un enfoque so-ciológico, sin pretender abarcar aspectos que atañen a la política, al derecho y la economía.

Crisis de refugio olvidadas. Una mirada desde República Centroafricana

El presente texto es la comunicación de Teodora Corral en el curso de verano ¿Crisis de refugiados o crisis de la política migratoria europea?, organizado en junio de 2017 por la Cátedra Refugiados y Migrantes Forzosos del Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones (IUEM) de la Universidad Pontificia Comillas, el Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes (SJM) y la Fundación Entreculturas, en la Universidad Menéndez Pelayo. Se trata de un texto de relevancia para este número de Comillas Journal of International Relations en tanto que ofrece una reflexión crítica, fundamentada en un conocimiento en primera persona, del conflicto que atraviesa la República Centroafricana desde 2013 y sobre su dimensión histórica e internacional.

The Migration of Data and Other Life Forms: A Sound Installation for the 70th Anniversary of the Darmstadt Summer Courses

The article discusses a sound installation premiered during the 70th anniversary of the New Music Summer Courses in Darmstadt. The project proposes a dialogue between the archive of the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD), which preserves the voices of contemporary music composers who lectured at the summer courses, and Archivo PAIS, the author’s personal archive of anonymous voices of street vendors, informal preachers, institutional announcers and street artists. Speech analysis software, transducers, modified stethoscopes and a 15-meter-long by 4-meter-high fence were used to reflect on issues of survival, access and displacement though sound.

“The center of the manual training movement in Germany”: die Deutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt für Knabenhandarbeit in Leipzig, 1887–1914

ABSTRACTIn the decades around 1900, reformers in virtually all industrialising countries debated boys’ manual training as a new subject for primary education. This contribution discusses the German debates on and institutions of manual training from a transnational perspective. The focus is on the German Association for Manual Training founded by Emil von Schenckendorff in 1886 and its Training College for Teachers established one year later in Leipzig, which notably organised summer courses where teachers received supplementary training in manual skills. The Training College soon developed into a centre for manual training instruction of European and global significance. This article discusses the Training College in Leipzig as a portal for educational globalisation. Its two directors Woldemar Götze and Alwin Pabst, on the one hand, transferred Scandinavian, French and American ideas and practices to the German context. On the other hand, foreign experts visited and referred to the Training College in order to enhance reforms in their respective countries. Especially after his trip to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, Pabst enthusiastically embraced American education and – albeit with limited success – planned to transform the Training College into a model school and new education research centre. Moreover, Pabst theoretically reflected on processes of cultural development and cultural transfers, largely following the ideas of historian Karl Lamprecht. Manual training, in this respect, appeared as a panacea for constructing a genuinely modern and cosmopolitan society.

Jaime FERRI DURÁ y Manuel BARROSO SEVILLANO (coords.). Ciudadanía y servicios públicos locales: Un estudio en las comunidades autónomas de Madrid y Castilla y León

El presente monográfico es el resultado de la coordinación por parte de Jaime Ferri Durá y Manuel Barroso de una investigación sobre la prestación de servicios públicos locales, en la que participan Juan C. Cuevas Lanchares, Eduardo Gutiérrez Díaz, Eliseo López Sánchez, Francisco J. Loscos, Luis Pérez Rodríguez y en la que también colaboran Tomás Villasante, Manuel Tamayo y Ernesto Carrillo tras haber colaborado en un Curso de verano de la UCM impartido en San Lorenzo de El Escorial en julio de 2016.

First Summer Course in Animal Law in Scandinavia hosted by Aarhus University

Last July the first summer course in Animal Law took place at Aarhus University, Scandinavia, one of Europe’s most renowned universities. The course was created and lectured by Sacha Lucassen (MA Animal Law and Society, UAB - 5th Edition) and welcomed students not only from all over Europe, but even from Vietnam, Kenya, China and Australia. It revolved around the main question “How and to what extend are – or should - animals be protected by the law?” Experts in different domains within the scope of Animal Law delivered valuable contributions to the course during several guest lecturers. The course put Animal Law on the academic program in Denmark and will take place again next summer.

Challenges of Globalization and Successful Adaptation Strategies in Implementing a “Scientific Writing and Authoring” Course in China

This paper describes the adaptation of an upper-division undergraduate seminar course taught at the University of Missouri in Columbia (MU) to the Summer School Program of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (UCAS). The course “Scientific Writing in Chemistry” addresses an essential need for science students across the globe to receive experiential education in scientific writing. An assignment-based curriculum was developed to instruct students on best practices in writing a scientific paper and to educate students about the scientific publication process and peer review. The semester-long MU course that included three meetings per week and had low enrollment was adapted to 20 h UCAS block courses with much higher enrollments. The drastic differences in scale and mode of delivery posed numerous nontrivial challenges and required modifications of the teaching goals. Because of the short duration of the summer courses, the MU curriculum with its focus on “working on assignments and wor...

From second language to third language learning

AbstractThis mixed-methods study explores English and Japanese learning motivations in a group of Japanese summer course participants at a university in Hong Kong. Sixty-one Cantonese-speaking students completed two questionnaire surveys on co-existing motivations for learning L2 English and L3 Japanese. Depending on the questionnaire results, eight participants were selected to take part in the two subsequent interviews. The findings revealed that the participants perceived L2 English learning as a school subject and a practical tool for academics and career. It was instrumentality, rather than integrativeness, that motivated the students to learn English. Contrary results were found for L3 Japanese language learning, as the learners had more cultural interest, positive learning experience, self-confidence, and positive attitudes. This study, therefore, argues that L2 and L3 motivations merit distinct status. There appears to exist a dual-motivation system amongst these multilingual learners. The study also provides insights into how geographical and psychological distances could impact language learning under the phenomena of globalisation.

Reconnecting the music-making experience through musician efforts in instrument craft

Musical settings that require consumers to construct their own musical instruments serve as potential sites of reconnection between musicians, the musical instruments they make, the natural resources that comprise those instruments, and the labor required to produce them. When musicians reconnect in these ways, they are able to understand and appreciate their musical instruments in new and meaningful ways. This can allow for heightened efforts in instrument care and maintenance; it can also allow for a greater sensitivity to environmental and ethical issues surrounding musical instruments. Data are drawn from a collegiate-level academic percussion musical setting where the musicians composed for and performed on the instruments they made themselves from mostly recycled materials. Group and individual semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted over the course of summer and fall 2014 reveal the ways these reconnections are possible. This paper is in response to Matsunobu’s (2013) call to further establish instrument craft as an area within music education curricula.

Connections Between Instructor Messages and Undergraduate Students' Changing Personal Theories About Education

ABSTRACTStudents' personal theories about education change as students gather new evidence about intelligence, learning, and knowledge. The present study investigated whether college instructors' play a role in changing students' personal theories with the messages professors send in the classroom. Students (N = 162) and instructors (N = 15) of undergraduate-level math and science summer courses completed surveys assessing personal theories about education and the frequency of messages related to educational beliefs. Multilevel models found that both between-class and within-class differences in reported messages corresponded with students' personal beliefs at the end of the course. Instructors' personal theories were generally not predictive of students' personal theories, and students' initial personal theories predicted the messages they remembered hearing.

Intensive summer course in robotics – Robotcraft

This paper describes a two-month summer intensive course designed to introduce participants with a hands-on technical craft on robotics and to acquire experience in the low-level details of embedded systems. Attendants started this course with a brief introduction to robotics; learned to draw, design and create a personalized 3D structure for their mobile robotic platform and developed skills in embedded systems. They were familiarize with the practices used in robotics, learning to connect all sensors and actuator, developing a typical application on differential kinematic using Arduino, exploring ROS features under Raspberry Pi environment and Arduino – Raspberry Pi communication. Different paradigms and some real applications and programming were addressed on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. Throughout the course, participants were introduced to programming languages (including Python and C++), advanced programming concepts such as ROS, basic API development, system concepts such as I2C and UART serial interfaces, PWM motor control and sensor fusion to improve robotic navigation and localization. This paper describes not just the concept, layout and methodology used on RobotCraft 2017 but also presents the participants knowledge background and their overall opinions, leading to focus on lessons learned and suggestions for future editions.

Argumentative Knowledge Construction in an Online Graduate Mathematics Course

The authors report on three students' argumentative knowledge construction in an asynchronous online graduate level geometry course designed for in-service secondary mathematics (ISM) teachers. Using Weinberger and Fischer's framework, they analyzed the ISM teachers' a) geometry autobiography and b) discussion board posts (both comments and attached work including solutions to assigned problems and Geometric Sketchpad explorations) throughout an 8-week summer course. The goal was to better understand the key similarities and differences in the nature of their interaction with each other and the course content that may have contributed to the differences in their knowledge construction. Findings led researchers to re-conceptualize a rubric to (1) assist instructors in facilitating productive interaction among students, (2) prepare students to better utilize the discussion board with a critical eye, and (3) provide specific guidelines for a more productive engagement among students, using the framework as a guide.

How Students Choose E‐learning Resources ‐ The Importance of Convenience and Familiarity

Electronic learning technologies are popular with today's generation of students. However, how they choose their favored resources from the plethora of available e‐learning tools has not been investigated in much detail and therefore is not sufficiently understood. A popular electronic self‐assessment resource was offered in three different formats to students participating in two histology courses at the University of Michigan (an introductory histology summer course for first year dental students and a full‐term histology course for graduate and undergraduate students). The SecondLook™ Histology review tool was available to them in the form of PowerPoint files, as an interactive website, and as a mobile smartphone and computer tablet app. Identical in content, each format had its specific advantages and disadvantages, specifically the types of compatible devices and access limitations. After the conclusion of both courses, students were surveyed about their format choices and reasons for selecting their favorite format, as well as usage patterns. The overall survey participation rate for both courses was 91.8%. Only one out of 156 participating students reported not having used the SecondLook™ resource. The majority of students (over 54%) tried only one resource format, with PowerPoint being the most popular final choice (58%). Although the interactive website and mobile app offered several user‐friendly features not available with the PowerPoint files, they each only garnered around 20% final popularity. Ease of access and familiarity with the PowerPoint software were given most often as reasons for students' choice of resource format. The availability of and preference for specific devices (laptops, smartphones and computer tablets) and the flexibility of time and place to use the resource were also named as factors in the final format selection. The availability of mobile learning resources encouraged some students to use the tool in environments with many distractions which may interfere with learning (commuting, gym etc.). It also encouraged some students to forgo other learning opportunities, specifically textbooks, the course website, and other supplementary learning resources. In conclusion, my results suggest that today's students are less motivated to actively seek out novel learning resources and formats than commonly believed and instead often select familiar and convenient approaches and study tools.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Collaborating to Meet the Needs of Alternative Certification Teachers Using Formative Design

A nation-wide teacher shortage in the 1980s popularized the alternative route to teacher certification. However, this solution is limited by the costly high attrition rates of these teachers. Using a formative research process to determine the needs of alternative certification teachers, we surveyed teachers in one school district to assess their coursework needs, preferences for course delivery methods, and requirements for state certification assessments to determine the feasibility of establishing a collaborative partnership between a college of education and a school district. Using descriptive statistics to analyze the results, respondents indicated the highest needs for credits in classroom management and educational assessment. Virtual courses were the preferred delivery method, and the majority of respondents indicated a preference for short summer courses. Finally, the majority of respondents indicated a need to pass the certification exam for professional education. Based on the results, the college of education and school district have needed information to establish a collaborative partnership to meet the needs of the teachers with alternative certification, ultimately impacting student learning.

Joint IEEE IAS/PELS Central and South Italy Chapter Cosponsor Power Electronics and Applications Summer Course [Society News

Joint IEEE IAS/PELS Central and South Italy Chapter Cosponsor Power Electronics and Applications Summer Course [Society News

Identify the Benefits of Student and Teacher That Lead to the Summer Courses Effective at JUC

Identify the Benefits of Student and Teacher That Lead to the Summer Courses Effective at JUC