Motivating children to learn: the role of technology education

Design and technology education provides children with opportunities to create solutions to specific needs in innovative ways. This paper reports on research that focused on the language that the children used when they were involved in a design and technology activity. In accessing the results of the language study, the findings suggest that the children’s motivation was high and played a significant role in children’s task engagement and persistence. Analysis revealed that there were several key ideas that the children focused on, namely: the fun experienced by participating in the activity, the difficulty of doing the task, the satisfaction of completing the task, the importance of social interaction and the frustrations surrounding aspects of the task. These affective factors that are related directly to motivation will be demonstrated through the children’s language responses to their participation in design and technology education.     

Experience matters in principal preparation

An act of leadership is always an act of practical theory. We lead because we hold visions of the world as it ought to be, because of the not yet, because of the potential that we see in ideas and people. Yet, there still exists a perceived binary between leadership theory (in the strong sense) and leadership practice, a binary that divides organizations, classrooms, and the differing bodies of leadership literature. In this Symposium, Duncan Waite and his colleagues discuss the barriers they have faced in bringing theory to the educational leadership classroom, as well as the promise they feel theory holds for more productive, equitable, and humane schooling organizations.     

Smith and Living Wages: Arguments in Support of a Mandated Living Wage

Adam Smith was a proponent of living wages for labor for reasons of growth and for reasons of equity. There is ample evidence in the body of Smith's work to support the thesis that Smith would support public policies that might ensure the achievement of a living wage. The argument rests, in part, on the conclusion that Smith had reservations concerning the ability of the economy to experience sufficient growth and the ability of growth, if achieved, to secure living wages. This article argues that, given Smith's views about justice and given Smith's ideas, as part of the Scottish Enlightenment, of how the rules of justice evolve, a living wage law could be one of the general rules of which Smith could approve.     

Epidemiology of yoga-related injuries in Canada from 1991 to 2010: a case series study

The aim is to describe the epidemiology of yoga injuries presenting to select Canadian emergency departments (EDs). Those who presented with a yoga injury to a Canadian ED participating in the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program and had completed a data collection form between 1991 and 2010 were included. Demographic and injury characteristics were tabulated and injury profiles of children were compared to adults. Sixty-six individuals (48 female, 18 male) who sustained 67 injuries were included. The median age was 19 (intraquartile range: 13, 32) and 73% of individuals were injured after 2005 (p = 0.0003). Sprain was the most common injury (23/67, 34%) and the most common body region injured was the lower extremity (27/67, 42%). Significantly more children were injured while being instructed than adults (p = 0.003) but more adults required treatment (p = 0.023). Although yoga-related injuries presenting to an ED are not common, the number of injuries are increasing.     

Trade and the Recognition of Commercial Lingua Francas: Russian Language Laws in Post‐Soviet Countries

Trade has the potential to influence a wide range of political and social outcomes. Using the post‐Soviet context, we examine how language policies – vital components for how minorities are treated with far‐reaching economic consequences – are influenced by trade. We argue that while ethnic politics and colonial legacies are both important in shaping language laws, it is important to recognize that the Russian language remains a significant commercial lingua franca in the region. When economic exchanges between Russia and other post‐Soviet republics are frequent, governments are more likely to adopt pro‐Russian language laws as a practicality and to maintain favor with the Russian government and Russian‐speaking businesses. Using an original dataset covering all Russian language‐related laws in the former Soviet states from 1992 to 2009, we find a significant and positive relationship between trade and pro‐Russian language laws. These results are robust even when we (1) instrument for Russian import levels and (2) consider the Baltic effect, spillovers from cultural affinity, and the uniqueness of fuel exports.     

Distributional effects of multilateral and preferential trade liberalisation: The case of Paraguay

The aim of this work is to dissect the distributional impact of preferential and multilateral trade liberalisation on household well-being using individual level data for Paraguay never exploited so far. For this purpose, the intrazone and applied most favored nation (MFN) tariff pass-through rate on the prices of traded goods is estimated, and the impacts of trade induced price changes on households as consumers and as income earners are calculated. The results indicate that trade liberalisation has benefited households along the entire income distribution and, most importantly, show that these benefits differ according to the type of liberalisation policies implemented.     

Visual rhetoric and the case of intellectual capital

Visual images abound in accounting-related media and are powerful tools for communicating messages regarding all aspects of organisations. This is particularly important in the case of intellectual capital, where a deficient accounting framework for intangibles leads stakeholders to seek enlightenment beyond the financial statements. The central contribution of the work presented here is the development of theory to guide the interpretation of visual rhetoric in pictures and photographs. Within an over-arching framework of Barthesian visual semiotics, a model of visual rhetoric and repetition is developed by reference to the work of Durand and others. Four types of visual repetition are identified: identity, similarity, accumulation and series. In the light of this model, illustrative examples of visual images from annual reports are analysed to indicate how visual rhetoric contributes to the communication of intellectual capital.