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In an article in the preceding issue we discussed the design and construction of fermenters in which antibiotics are cultured. For industrial purposes these fermenters can range in size up to 500 m[cube]. They have to be sterilized, filled with sterile culture medium and the culture itself and supplied with oxygen continuously. In some cases they must be given additional feeds during the fermentation run. This article looks at some of the problems of supplying the culture medium and maintaining it at the optimum operating conditions.

The term "community" has a long and contested lineage in social analysis and debate. This lineage, however, is not generally recognized in policy and public debates on community and bushfire in Australia. "Community" is thought to be central to bushfire preparedness in Australia, especially in rural areas, but what "community" actually means in this context is vague at best. There is an ever-present tension between the use of "community" as a reference to locality, a "sense of community" as experienced by residents, and the use of "community" as a rhetorical tool by governments and state agencies. We argue that a rigorous analysis of the concept of "community" is critical to an understanding of the processes involved in preparing for the challenges associated with disaster, in this case bushfires. These broader issues are supported by research (a series of surveys, interviews, and focus groups) carried out with residents living in (predominantly rural) bushfire-prone areas in the state of Victoria, Australia. Ultimately, we assert that social participation and social networks are likely to be the crucial aspects of community that play a central role in effective bushfire preparedness. (Contains 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

This paper offers a critical review of the international literature on gender, disaster and rural masculinities. Empirical reference is made to bushfires in Australia, offering new evidence from the State of Victoria. Bushfires loom large in the Australian imagination and there is an increasing amount of research now being conducted in relation to bushfire events. A significant gap remains, however, with regard to the issue of gender. Despite increasing evidence that gender plays a significant role with reference to disaster risk assessment, preparation and response, a gendered analysis of bushfire preparation and response has not been a sustained research priority. Building on the writing of others, a critical assessment is provided of the concept of a specifically Australian, rural hegemonic masculinity as a possible way of better understanding the social dimensions of gender, and bushfire preparation and response in the Australian context. This conceptual consideration is extended to draw attention to the process whereby alternative conceptions of masculinities may emerge. This recognition provides a basis for further research on gender and disaster internationally. (Contains 1 figure.)

Creating space for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) to work as active members of the department and take ownership of certain learning and teaching activities has many potential benefits. Allowing GTAs the autonomy to pursue personal projects and share their enthusiasm for their subjects could help GTAs to develop a sense of professional identity and offer a firm grounding for a future academic post. Reconceptualising the role as an academic traineeship in this way also has positive repercussions for students who will benefit from both curricula and pedagogy that develop research-mindedness rather than simply coverage of course material. If GTAs use their PhDs to inspire their teaching, students will have access to up to date and active research and an awareness of how knowledge is created. Indeed the real value to be added to students' learning by being taught by GTAs is the latter's ability to exploit the research-teaching nexus to the maximum. GTAs are in an optimum position to engage in and promote an ethos of research-informed teaching. However, it must be acknowledged that in maximising the potential of the role, GTAs risk exploitation both in the present (teaching workloads may not reflect payment and may detract from core research work) and the future (the continued prestige of research output in terms of papers over teaching experience may hamper progression in academia). The author hopes this article will prove useful in highlighting the tensions inherent in the GTA role, and will offer a rationale for how it might be reconceptualised.

Self-control over factors involving task-related information (e.g., feedback) can enhance motor learning. It is unknown if these benefits extend to manipulations that do not directly affect such information. The purpose of this study was to determine if self-control over the amount of practice would also facilitate learning. Participants learned to throw a dart using their nonpreferred hand. The self-control (SC) group decided when to stop practice. The yoked group completed the same number of trials as their SC counterparts. Results revealed the SC group was more accurate during transfer and in recalling the number of trials completed. These findings indicate that self-control benefits extend to factors that do not directly alter task-related information. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table, and 4 notes.)

The goal of this article is to examine how the provincial education media in China play a role of forging consensus among local actors responsible for the implementation of new centrally-promulgated youth socialization policy. In doing so, it also explores the tension among three of the Chinese state's claims to legitimacy: economic development, moral education, and the decentralization of policy implementation. The article concludes that while economic development and decentralization create problems for the implementation of socialization policy at the local level, the central state still gains legitimacy for its role in promoting morality among the rising generation.

This article uses results from a cross-national analysis of the impact of varying approaches to civic education curriculum delivery on three learning outcomes, to draw conclusions about the value of a government-mandated compulsory, independent subject of civic education in the school curriculum. It starts from the context of Hong Kong, where there have been repeated calls for the government to reform civic education, and compares this context with that of England, where citizenship education was made a statutory subject in 2002. The article then examines from the cases of 25 societies whether a compulsory approach to and/or independent subject of civic education is associated with better learning of civic knowledge, knowledge of democracy, and patriotism. Finding that the impact of curricular approaches is somewhat negligible taking other factors into consideration, the article concludes that civic education reformers should consider the costs of limiting school autonomy in curriculum delivery. (Contains 9 tables.)

In this study, we examined the effects of interference and repeated retention tests by comparing groups that performed (a) one or two tests, or (b) two tests separated by interpolated tasks. The task involved pressing five keys in 925 ms. Constant error increased after Block 1 of the second test for the group completing the interpolated tasks. Variable error decreased across retention tests and was smaller for the two-test groups compared to the one-test control. Results differed from previous reports of degraded timing accuracy (Magnuson, Shea, & Fairbrother, 2004), suggesting the present results may have been related to highly accurate performance during the first retention test that reflected successful initial encoding of task information. (Contains 3 notes, 3 figures and 1 table.)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between trade unions and learning in the workplace, particularly in relation to the enhancement of worker employability profiles. With the restructuring and modernising of the European steel industry as its context, this paper argues that the organisational and structural features of a sector have a profound influence on the way workplace learning is organised. Equally, trade union organisation and approaches also shape the learning agenda. In the steel industry, trade unions have failed to address the significance of workplace learning, partly because of the ways that they approach this topic. In the context of traditional sectors, with relatively vulnerable workforces, the weakened state of union bargaining positions means that they have limited capacity to address workforce employability or workplace participation. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal. (Contains 1 note.)

The focus of this article is on Hong Kong and mainland Chinese university student reactions, in two time periods, to national themes in education as part of state attempts to establish and maintain legitimacy. The author argues that among these reactions is one of resistance to the process of state hegemony. To make this point, the article builds on several arguments derived from the literature on citizenship education in mainland China and in colonial and postcolonial Hong Kong. According to these arguments, national themes were neglected in civic education in colonial Hong Kong but gained prominence within educational policy discourse with the return of the territory to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. The analysis presented in this article brings the concept of hegemony into the discussion of state claims to legitimacy in order to emphasize that numerous such claims form a constantly shifting complex in the state's attempt to maintain popular consent in a society in which oppositional politics are always present. In turn, the concept of hegemony and its need for continuous adaptation in the face of opposition brings the analysis to its focus on resistance, entailing perceptions of hegemony, reactions of critique, and potential effects on citizens' attitudes and behaviors that are contrary to the state's intentions. With critical-thinking dispositions operationalizing resistance, the remainder of the analysis focuses on Hong Kong and mainland Chinese university students as the targets of state hegemony and on the interrelationships among their attitudes toward the nation, perceptions of political socialization, and critical thinking. The article attempts to capture the possibility of change at a critical moment by examining differences between two cohorts of students attending universities in 2000 and 2005. (Contains 8 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Although fatigue is a common experience for pregnant women and new mothers, few measures of fatigue have been validated for use with this population. To address this gap, the authors assessed psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Assessment of Fatigue (MAF) scale, which was used in 2 independent samples of pregnant women. Results indicated that the psychometric properties of the scale were very similar across samples and time points. The scale possesses a high level of internal consistency, has good convergent validity with measures of sleep quality and depression, and discriminates well from a measure of social support. Contrary to previous evaluations of the MAF, data strongly suggest that the scale represents a unidimensional construct best represented by a single factor. Results indicate that the MAF is a useful measure of fatigue among pregnant and postpartum women. (Contains 4 tables.)

To understand how task switching affects human performance, there is a need to investigate how it influences the performance of tasks other than those involving bivalent stimulus categorization. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate the effects of task switching on anticipation timing performance, which typically requires participants to track the apparent motion of a light along a series of lamps and press a button when the target lamp is illuminated. Participants were 36 university students who gave informed consent and participated voluntarily. Participants had no prior experience with the task and were naive to the purposes of the study. The switching effects observed in both constant error (CE) and absolute constant error (ACE) confirmed the prediction that switching between tasks resulted in degraded performance compared to conditions that repeated a single task. These findings verified that switching effects occur outside the stimulus categorization tasks used in most previous studies. Although switching effects have been previously attributed to inadequate preparation, either from a lack of time or response uncertainty, it was unlikely these contributed to the present results because of the relatively long intertrial intervals and a predictable schedule used in the alternating condition. Thus, the effects observed in the present study were consistent with the perspective that persisting activation causes interference when switching to a different task. (Contains 3 figures.)

This is a qualitative study in a school district in a large city in the Southwest in response to the research question, "What are staff and student expectations for, and assessment of, three "at-risk" programs in this large school district?" Four thematic findings from observations and interviews in four classes in two high school alternative programs and one alternative high school over one semester are reported, concerning (a) commitment to the programs, (b) labeling of students, (c) student satisfaction, and (d) academic expectations. The impact on students of color, especially Latinos/as, is a focus of this study. Results show that students appreciated the caring and support of the smaller communities. However, academic expectations were low, the school work was remedial, and although they gained extra credits toward graduation, students were not being prepared for more challenging academic work. Such programs do not narrow the achievement gap for students of color. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to open up discussion about the relationship between trade unions and workplace learning. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on an analysis of a series of case-studies of restructuring in the European steel industry, incorporating interviews, observation and documentary analysis. Findings: The paper argues that trade unions often fail to address the significance of workplace learning for members, because they address workplace learning as a service. This approach fails to exploit opportunities and possibilities to extend workplace-learning provisions, and thereby meet the wider learning and employability enhancing needs of members. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal, and contributes to the perpetuation of traditional sector practices and regressive learning provisions. Research limitations/implications: The paper focuses on a discussion of trade union involvement in workplace learning in the European steel industry. The implications for workplace learning practices more generally, are limited to industries where trade unions (and companies/industry) organise in relation to training and learning agendas in similar ways--and in relation to industries undergoing similar process of restructuring and "modernisation." Practical implications: The paper provides a critique of trade union service approaches to learning agendas and highlights for policy-makers gaps in current learning provisions within industry. Originality/value: This paper makes an original contribution to debates concerned with trade union involvement and participation in workplace learning. It focuses on workplace inequities in training provision, and the implications for the future of unions and the employability prospects of workforces within the European steel industry. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

Three experiments examined repeated retention testing effects in a contextual interference (CI) protocol. Retention was assessed at 10 min and 24 hr following acquisition or at just 24-hr for the one-test conditions. Experiments 1 and 2 used speeded-response key-pressing tasks. Dependent measures were total time and errors. Experiment 3 used sequential-timing tasks. Dependent measures were absolute error and absolute constant error. Results revealed CI effects in each experiment. Repeated retention testing effects were not found in Experiments 1 and 3. Experiment 2 revealed superior performance by the two-test condition compared to the one-test condition. This result was qualified by possible practice effects during the 10-min test. It was concluded that repeated retention testing does not present problems for most studies of CI. (Contains 6 figures.)

The focus in recent studies of workplace learning has been on "communities of practice" and the ways that learning is shaped by such communities. In the process, there has been a downplaying of the importance of broader institutional arrangements, including the impact of organisational structures and management practice, as well as national systems of Vocational Education and Training. This paper draws attention to the importance of these organisational processes in structuring workplace learning. We argue that the institutional arrangements that define organisations are decisive in defining the parameters of workplace learning. In relation to traditional industries, such as steel, the opportunities for time-served workers employed in production areas to learn their work and enhance their expertise is characterised by a set of embedded and regressive practices. These practices hinder the adoption of new forms of working practices and leave many steelworkers vulnerable to the broader effects of industry restructuring. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article discusses citizenship education, education policy and discourse to explore their relations with the exercise of power in society. Taking the case of 1990 and 1997 legislative debates on citizenship education policy in Hong Kong, it briefly surveys the substantive arguments favouring or opposing the retention of government controls over politics in schools. It then examines in more detail the discourses used by legislators which constitute students, teachers and the government. This discussion shows that not only does citizenship education represent a power relation between the state and citizens, with policy representative of the power of the state over educational workers, but also that the targets of policy are empowered and disempowered through the strategic use of discourse.

Two experiments investigated the effects of a single reminder trial on immediate and delayed retention. Experiment 1 determined if beneficial effects of a reminder mat were a function of task order. Immediate retention performance benefited only when the reminder trial was practiced in the first block of trials. Experiment 2 added a 24-hr delayed retention test to examine the long-term benefits of a reminder trial Retention performance was enhanced over both delay intervals. The long-term effect extended previous research (Shea & Titzer, 1993) that documented effects after 10 min. The use of a single reminder trial established that intertask comparisons between multiple reminder trials were not a precondition for the reminder trial effect as postulated by Shea and Titzer.

This article attends to comparative education scholars' calls for more dialogue on the contribution of theory to comparative education research. It first presents the results of a review of a small sample of articles from comparative education related journals that elicited the purposes of their comparative research strategies in terms of exploration, explanation, argument, prediction, recommendation, and theory development. The article then discusses perspectives on the potential for the use of theory to contribute to richer explanations of educational phenomena. Finally, it demonstrates how a comparative study of political socialization in Hong Kong and Mainland China led to the development of explanatory concepts of critical thinking and the application and reconceptualization of the theory of resistance to explain the formation of students' attitudes towards the nation.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possibility that administering an initial retention test would influence any subsequent retention tests administered to the same participants. Participants performed 40 practice trials of a four-segment key-pressing task with a movement time goal of 925 ms. Participants were then administered either two retention tests (Day 1--Day 1 group, 10 min and 20 min after practice; Day 1--Day 2 group, 10 min and 24 hr after practice; Day 2--Day 2 group, 23 hr 50 min and 24 hr after practice) or one retention test (Day 1--Control group, 20 min after practice; Day 2--Control group, 24 hr after practice). The first test had a deleterious effect on performing the second test for the Day 2--Day 2 group, which would be expected if the task representation was updated and re-encoded at the time of recall using diminished information. This finding suggests that researchers should be cautious about using repeated retention tests that are administered 1 day after practice. In addition, teachers and coaches should consider administering a test under game-like conditions following practice of a new technique. Otherwise, performance of the new technique may be degraded or perturbed at the time of later performances.

This article examines the reflection of national goals and ideologies in the civic education curricula of Mainland China and Taiwan. A comparison of junior secondary school textbooks from the 1950s and the 1990s shows how the curriculum embodies the states' changing national priorities and justificatory ideologies. Specifically, in the early period, the focus of the curriculum was on goals and values which distinguished each state from the other. By the 1990s, despite continuing ideological differences, there was a common focus on the importance of economic and social development. (Contains 4 tables.)

The author of this article was a teacher, who had taught high school English for seven years. Then she was a researcher, observing and interviewing, recording and reflecting. One incident, stretching over four class periods, took her back across that divide between teacher and researcher, and touched her personally. She was trying to understand the schooling experiences of 10th grade Hispanic students in lower-track English classes. From January to May she observed 29 times in Mr. Garcia's 10th grade class, at City High School, in a large school district in a city in the Southwest. She kept field notes of interactions between students and teacher, gathered materials, and conducted two interviews each with the teacher and with 13 students. She became accustomed to being in that classroom: sitting, watching, and chatting informally with the students. After the semester ended she returned to teaching for three years while writing up her research. The shift back from researcher to teacher was traumatic, as she tried to bridge theory and practice, the situated reality of the classroom and the ideal precepts of her studies. Looking back, this one incident was a foreshadowing of the trauma to come. As a researcher, it was easy to insist on the ideals of classroom practice. However she underestimated, she had forgotten, the urgent reality of the classroom. She would soon look at the teachers around her (and at herself?) and doubt their sincerity, wondering whether they were saving souls or deadening them, even as they bemoaned the constraints on their pedagogical possibilities. In this article, the author narrates and reflects on this incident wherein she felt the tension between her dual identity: researcher and teacher.

The study reported here used the OECD scenarios on the future of schooling to probe the views of a sample of educators identified as having the potential to influence education policy formation in Hong Kong. The results indicated that among this sample, there were multiple perspectives on the future of schooling and these were related to the very public education reform agenda that was currently being implemented in Hong Kong schools. The future of schooling was seen to be dependent on the role of the political process in articulating a clear vision, school leadership and teacher capacity. Lack of any one of these was seen as an impediment to achieving change in Hong Kong schools. [For Chapter 5, see EJ737601.]

Bitter ideological battles exist over hegemonic control of classroom exchange in high school language arts classes. Discusses the debate over the selection of literature that students will read, noting the influence of the dominant culture, the resistance to inclusion of multicultural literature in these classrooms, and the importance of promoting a multicultural emphasis. (SM)