Rebuilding Babel: A Constitutive Approach to Tongues‐in‐use

In this paper, we suggest that the Montreal School (TMS) tradition of organizational communication offers a fruitful analytical framework that allows us to better take into account the way people practically deal with plurilingual situations as they go on with their daily activities and contribute to shaping their organizations. We identify six core features of TMS and show their analytical power in studying plurilingual interactions. TMS, we argue, is conceptually well equipped to reveal the ways in which multiple tongues are dealt with in everyday organizational settings and to uncover the constitutive nature of tongue‐in‐use.     

Attitudes and parenting dimensions in parents' regulation of Internet use by primary and secondary school children

In keeping with the growing expansion of Internet use by children at home, this study examines the impact of parental attitudes and parenting dimensions on the parental regulation of this use. Parental attitudes include ideas about who decides what the child is to see on the Internet and motivations for Internet use. Parenting dimensions involve control and warmth. Parental regulation involves assessment of time, concerns about content, and guidance about its developmental adequacy. Participants were 711 Spanish parents of children in primary and secondary school. Results showed that the parental attitudes and child-rearing dimensions mostly differ according to the parent's age, education and place of residence, mirroring the variables that modulate the parents' digital divide. The child's schooling level and gender also modulate parental attitudes and parenting dimensions. When controlling for parent's age, child's schooling level and amount of time spent on line, the child's decision on Internet use positively predicted the assessment of time (AdjR² = .31), whereas the parental decision on Internet use, more learning and less social motivation, and more control and warmth positively predicted both concerns (AdjR² = .25) and guidance (AdjR² = .40) about content. These results may help to design parent education programs to help them discover not only the risks but also the opportunities for learning and leisure that the Internet opens up to the family.     

School principals at their lonely work: Recording workday practices through ESM logs

This study used portable technology based on Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM log) to register workday practices of school principals and heads from Chilean schools who were implementing school improvement plans aimed at developing a culture of organizational learning. For a week, Smartphone devices which beeped seven times a day were given to School Principals and Heads of Technical-Pedagogical Units, who then answered closed questions about their current agenda. Six municipal schools in a district of the V Region of Chile participated in the study. The main results support the notion that, at the time of data collection, most school Principals and Heads of Technical-Pedagogical Units were working alone, and if they were interacting with other people, they were always in command. Following underlying assumed roles, most school principals reported performing administrative tasks, while Heads of Technical-Pedagogical Units mainly addressed instructional issues, fostering a rigid framework for the assignment of tasks. Follow-up semi-structured interviews confirmed that participants were not working as a team but rather alone on important issues and urgent matters. Participants regarded the use of the device as a very practical and useful tool to analyze their daily practices. Results are discussed focusing on the use of portable technology to address methodological issues faced when approaching research on educational leadership from a distributed leadership perspective.     

The acceptance of Tablet-PCs in classroom instruction: The teachers’ perspectives

Limited research has been conducted on the integration of Tablet-PCs in classroom instruction. This paper reports a qualitative study which investigates the acceptance of Tablet-PCs, seen as technological innovation, amongst teachers. The research approach intends to complement research on the acceptance of technology through a more detailed qualitative examination. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 teachers during a pilot project introducing Tablet-PCs to classroom instruction at three different schools. The findings indicate diversity in the attitude of teachers towards the technology, but also with regards to the performance expectancy and the facilitating conditions.     

EARLY WORK ON COMPUTERS AT BLETCHLEY

The head of the American contingent at Britain's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&;CS) at Bletchley during World War II tells how he got into cryptology and about his social and administrative experiences as commanding officer of the 6813 ^th Detachment.     

From data to knowledge: The interaction between data management systems in educational institutions and the delivery of quality education

No school is an island; it is a part of a continuum or a pipeline of institutions which together form an educational pipeline through which groups of students pass. To turn a body of data into useful information for knowledge-based decision-making at any level, data must be collected, organised, analysed and reflected upon. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how schools and other educational institutions can not only collect better data but learn how to transform that data so that the information held within can be effectively shared among all stakeholders. This process will help to ensure that the school and the entire education system provide a more seamless and effective educational pipeline for students, and ultimately improve the quality of education delivered in the country as a whole.     

关于职校生职业生涯设计教育的实践与研究

职业生涯是一个人一生的职业经历和发展道路。职业生涯设计是根据经济社会发展和个人发展需要,结合外部环境和本人实际,制定未来职业生涯的发展规划。本文探讨了如何对职校生进行职业生涯设计教育,给出了方法和结论。     

Pilot study of high‐performance air filtration for classroom applications

A study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of three air purification systems in reducing the exposure of children to air contaminants inside nine classrooms of three Southern California schools. Continuous and integrated measurements were conducted to monitor the indoor and outdoor concentrations of ultrafine particles (UFPs), fine and coarse particulate matter (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀, respectively), black carbon (BC), and volatile organic compounds. An heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC)‐based high‐performance panel filter (HP‐PF), a register‐based air purifier (RS), and a stand‐alone air cleaning system (SA) were tested alone and in different combinations for their ability to remove the monitored pollutants. The combination of a RS and a HP‐PF was the most effective solution for lowering the indoor concentrations of BC, UFPs, and PM_2.5, with study average reductions between 87% and 96%. When using the HP‐PF alone, reductions close to 90% were also achieved. In all cases, air quality conditions were improved substantially with respect to the corresponding baseline (preexisting) conditions. Data on the performance of the gas‐absorbing media included in the RS and SA unit were inconclusive, and their effectiveness, lifetime, costs, and benefits must be further assessed before conclusions and recommendations can be made.     

Filtration effectiveness of HVAC systems at near‐roadway schools

Concern for the exposure of children attending schools located near busy roadways to toxic, traffic‐related air pollutants has raised questions regarding the environmental benefits of advanced heating, ventilation, and air‐conditioning (HVAC) filtration systems for near‐road pollution. Levels of black carbon and gaseous pollutants were measured at three indoor classroom sites and at seven outdoor monitoring sites at Las Vegas schools. Initial HVAC filtration systems effected a 31–66% reduction in black carbon particle concentrations inside three schools compared with ambient air concentrations. After improved filtration systems were installed, black carbon particle concentrations were reduced by 74–97% inside three classrooms relative to ambient air concentrations. Average black carbon particle concentrations inside the schools with improved filtration systems were lower than typical ambient Las Vegas concentrations by 49–96%. Gaseous pollutants were higher indoors than outdoors. The higher indoor concentrations most likely originated at least partially from indoor sources, which were not targeted as part of this intervention.     

Ventilation strategies and indoor particulate matter in a classroom

Particle mass and number concentrations were measured in a mechanically ventilated classroom as part of a study of ventilation strategies for energy conservation. The ventilation system was operated either continuously, intermittently, or shut down during nights while it was on during workdays. It appears that the nighttime ventilation scheme is not important for indoor particle concentrations the following day if fans are operated to give five air exchanges in advance of the workday. The highest concentrations of PM₁₀ were found during and after workdays and were due to human activity in the classroom. The average workday PM₁₀ concentration was 14 μg/m³, well below the WHO guideline values. The number concentration of particles with diameter <0.750 μm was typically between 0.5 × 10³ and 3.5 × 10³ particle/cm³. These concentrations were largely independent of the occupants. Transient formation of small particles was observed when ventilation was shut down. Then remaining ozone reacted with terpenes emitted by indoor sources and gave up to 8 × 10³ particle/cm³ before formation stopped due to lack of ozone. The intermittent ventilation regime was found least favorable for the indoor air quality in the classroom.