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One method of addressing the shortage of science and mathematics teachers is to train scientists and other science-related professionals to become teachers. Advocates argue that as discipline experts these career changers can relate the subject matter knowledge to various contexts and applications in teaching. In this paper, through interviews and classroom observations with a former scientist and her students, we examine how one career changer used her expertise in microbiology to teach microscopy. These data provided the basis for a description of the teacher's instruction which was then analysed for components of domain knowledge for teaching. Consistent with the literature, the findings revealed that this career changer needed to develop her pedagogical knowledge. However, an interesting finding was that the teacher's subject matter as a science teacher differed substantively from her knowledge as a scientist. This finding challenges the assumption that subject matter is readily transferable across professions and provides insight into how to better prepare and support career changers to transition from scientist to science teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools in New York City have made attempts to embrace and support the strand of ‘making connections’, which is laid out in the New York City Department of Dance blueprint for teaching and learning in dance for grades PreK-12. Accordingly, some schools have integrated Ugandan traditional dances into the dance curriculum, and dance teachers have employed emerging technologies as part of instructional methodologies in teaching these dances. Anchored in the theoretical framework of constructivism and the idea of concept and realisation in constructing dance knowledge, this article reveals how the author employed emerging technologies and online platforms such as ipads, smartboards, ipods, iphones, audio recorders, YouTube and wikispace in teaching Ugandan traditional dances to: reconcile contextual and content knowledge in the classroom; engage students in reflective and interpretive analyses and deconstruction of dance songs and movements; give feedback to and receive reflections from students; and explore issues relating to learning to dance, learning through dance, and learning about dance. The author further divulges how dilemmas that relate to re/presentation and appropriation of ephemerally, culturally and contextually celebrated, embodied and defined dances imposed limitations on execution of technologically mediated class activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional thinking skills are extremely useful for geoscientists, and at the undergraduate level, these skills are often emphasized in structural geology courses. Google Earth is a powerful tool for visualizing the three-dimensional nature of data collected on the surface of Earth. The results of a 5 y pre- and posttest study of the three-dimensional visualization abilities of undergraduate students (N = 75) enrolled in a structural geology class at a small, liberal arts college are presented. The data suggest students achieved statistically significant gains in three-dimensional visualization skills over the course of the semester. Mean pretest scores for female students tended to be lower than those of male students. This gender gap, however, was no longer statistically significant in the posttest scores, with female students showing higher average gains in spatial skills compared to their male counterparts. These data show a correlation between the introduction of Google Earth map interpretation exercises, available on the Science Education Resource Center's Web site and developed by Tewksbury, and improved student visual penetrative thinking ability. Results support the hypothesis that individuals with greater contextual knowledge are able to more successfully circumvent lower three-dimensional spatial visualization ability. The exercise appears to be most effective in improving penetrative visualization ability for those students who have sufficient background knowledge. Those with less geological knowledge appear to benefit less from the Google Earth-based intervention studied here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we demonstrate how the cultural conceptions of a team of five researchers from different cultural and national backgrounds can be used as a source of knowledge during a collective, self-reflexive analytical process. While collectively analysing texts describing daily life produced by first-grade children and their parents in China, Norway, South Africa and the United States, the research team engaged in a collectively negotiated analytical process, which we refer to as an 'analytic negotiating method'. The strength of this process rests on the ability to examine critically the boundaries between the researcher's contextual conceptions and conceptions derived from the texts. Engaging in this kind of negotiated analytical process contributes to scholarship by working towards a level of self-reflexivity that makes the link between empirical data and researcher interpretation more transparent and produces a sensitivity to context that allows insights into the conceptions of childhood that operate cross-culturally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As our general view of global history and societal development has shifted towards a more integrated approach, we face the challenge of finding the best ways to achieve integration across geographical and cultural distances. In dealing with the rising challenges associated with the global trend of demographic aging, it is argued that obtaining and accumulating contextual knowledge of local practice can be critical and productive especially in the planning phase of an eldercare intervention project. Three basic types of contextual knowledge--i.e., the context of experience, context of praxis, and context of theory--which are crucial for understanding eldercare practice situations, are discussed, along with its possible impacts on not only the understanding of the eldercare situation in a specific location, but also the choice and implementation of effective intervention solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing sociological debate regarding which work activities can be considered ‘skilled’. In recent years, this debate has become increasingly controversial due to the growing prominence of so-called ‘soft skills’, especially when used in interactive service work. This article seeks to strengthen the conceptualization of soft skills, through case study investigation, to determine whether or not they are worthy of the ‘skilled’ label. An expanded notion of skill is supported, recognizing that in service contexts displaying employer-facilitated worker discretion and requirements for contextual knowledge in the use of soft skills, the term can indeed have real meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the effect of knowledge management practices on task knowledge of individuals' work processes. It presents the measures which evaluate the success of organizational knowledge management practices. It explores the individual practices of knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge sharing, and knowledge application and how the practices are associated to the task knowledge.

Media today is more omnipresent covering all aspects of society, ranging from historical to topical to social and political, thereby forming an integral part of people's lives. In the South African context, the introduction of democracy, coupled with numerous global technological developments, has dramatically altered the media landscape rendering it more liberal with an increased exponential content. In most democratic countries media literacy education is considered the preferred alternative to censoring and boycotting. This is to empower both media professionals and consumers thereby allowing them to analyse critically, monitor and moderate media messages in order to reduce any negative impacts of the media and ensure enhanced enjoyment and discourse. The need has been motivated for a media literacy module to be included in the journalism or media studies curricula at undergraduate level. This article highlights the importance of media literacy education - especially in terms of fostering a democracy - and outlines the typical media literacy curricula suitable for journalism students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of worldwide economic and environmental crisis it is increasingly important that nanotechnology, genomics, media engineering and other fields of 'technoscience' with immense societal relevance are taught in ways that promote social responsibility and that educational activities are organized so that science and engineering students will be able to integrate the 'contextual knowledge' they learn into their professional, technical-scientific identities and forms of competence. Since the 1970s, teaching programmes in science, technology and society for science and engineering have faded away at many universities and have been replaced by courses in economic and commercial aspects, or entrepreneurship and/or ethical and philosophical issues. By recounting our recent efforts in contextualizing nanotechnology education at Aalborg University in Denmark, we consider a socio-cultural approach to contextual learning, one that is meant to contribute to a greater sense of social responsibility on the part of scientists and engineers. It is our contention that the social, political and environmental challenges facing science and engineering in the world today require the fostering of what we have come to call a 'hybrid imagination', mixing scientific-technical skills with a sense of social responsibility or global citizenship, if science and engineering are to help solve social problems rather than create new ones. Three exemplary cases of student project work are discussed: one on raspberry solar cells, which connected nanotechnology to the global warming debate, and two in which surveys on the public understanding of nanotechnology were combined with a scientific-technical project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of near-world scenarios by university teachers to deliver relevant and authentic adult learning opportunities is becoming increasingly popular as the pressure to bridge perceived gaps between subject theory and professional practice comes to the fore. This paper proffers the idea that near-world scenarios, explored via role-play, mental projection, discussion and/or debate, can provide an excellent experiential vehicle for tertiary students to align subject/disciplinary knowledge with professional practice. Such scenarios can also provide a base for critical thinking, decisionmaking, and the testing out of ideas. The author points out a range of factors that likely determine the success, or otherwise of near-world scenarios in intended educational outcomes: In particular, he focuses on the social construction of scenarios, the ways that tutor-facilitator language adjusts by design or default the depth of engagement; the need for a 'willing suspension of disbelief' by learners and tutors; learner perceptions of relevance; and, the (professional) authenticity of assessment and learning. The author uses several in-depth near-world scenario examples to demonstrate how these factors may work singularly or in combination to engage or alienate student involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the difficulties which Spanish student teachers have in solving the PISA 2003 released items. It studies the role played by the type and organisation of mathematical knowledge in the activation of competencies identified by PISA with particular attention to the function of contextual knowledge. The results of the research lead us to conclude that the assessment of the participant’s mathematical competencies must include an assessment of the extent to which they have school mathematical knowledge (contextual, conceptual and procedural) that can be productively applied to problem situations. In this way, the school knowledge variable becomes a variable associated with the PISA competence variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In behavioral control, contextual information is used alongside incoming sensory inputs to reduce uncertainties about the unfolding situation. However, our understanding of this weighting process is limited; particularly regarding the applied question of whether individuals should be provided with information or whether they should rather generate it by themselves. We thus compared the provision of more or less valid (i.e., "true") contextual information with a self-generation condition by examining the performance of elite and near-elite youth handball players (N = 30 + 27) in a virtual-reality defensive task. We measured response correctness, positioning as a function of the teammates' defensive behaviors and the degree to which the experimentally induced patterns in the teammates' strengths were detected. The results show that providing individuals with uncertain information neither enhances nor harms performance decisively. However, valid information enhances performance in congruent situations while degrading performance in incongruent situations, more pronouncedly in elite than in near-elite players. Consequently, individuals should be provided with explicit contextual information only if (i) their expertise level is not adequate enough to rely on self-generation, (ii) the situation-specific knowledge base cannot be sufficiently self-generated, and (iii) the instructor is sufficiently certain that the explicit information actually meets the upcoming situation. • Uncertain contextual information neither enhances nor harms players' performance. • Providing false information particularly affects elites' behavior negatively. • For elite players, self-generated contextual information is a superior source. • Providing contextual information requires a sufficient degree of certainty. • The merit of explicit information can be estimated by an information-gain function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Except in very poor mathematical contexts, mathematical arguments do not stand in isolation of other mathematical arguments. Rather, they form trains of formal and informal arguments, adding up to interconnected theorems, theories and eventually entire fields. This paper critically comments on some common views on the relation between formal and informal mathematical arguments, most particularly applications of Toulmin’s argumentation model, and launches a number of alternative ideas of presentation inviting the contextualization of pieces of mathematical reasoning within encompassing bodies of explicit and implicit, formal and informal background knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was conducted within the Research project no. 406/06/0035 • "Life Quality of Children and Adolescents" managed by Prof. PhDr. Jiří Mareš, CSc. from the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Hradec Králové. Th e article (2006) provides theoretical assumptions for the solution and proposed methodology for research from the teacher students' point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of a framework for measuring knowledge management success at the individual level. The production of organizations increases with individual knowledge innovation and performance. A model of the interrelationships among individual level knowledge management success measures including conceptual, contextual and operational knowledge, innovation, and performance is developed. A sample of 252 individuals engaged in managerial and professional knowledge work were used to test the developed model and the results suggested that conceptual knowledge enhances operational and contextual knowledge. The results also depicted that contextual knowledge improves operational knowledge.

Classifying a patient based on disease type, treatment prognosis, survivability, or other such criteria has become a major focus of genomics and proteomics. From the perspective of the general population of a particular kind of cell, one would like a classifier that applies to the whole population; however, it is often the case that the population is sufficiently structurally diverse that a satisfactory classifier cannot be designed from available sample data. In such a circumstance, it can be useful to identify cellular contexts within which a disease can be reliably diagnosed, which in effect means that one would like to find classifiers that apply to different sub-populations within the overall population. Using a model-based approach, this paper quantifies the effect of contexts on classification performance as a function of the classifier used and the sample size. The advantage of a model-based approach is that we can vary the contextual confusion as a function of the model parameters, thereby allowing us to compare the classification performance in terms of the degree of discriminatory confusion caused by the contexts. We consider five popular classifiers: linear discriminant analysis, three nearest neighbor, linear support vector machine, polynomial support vector machine, and Boosting. We contrast the case where classification is done with a single classifier without discriminating between the contexts to the case where there are context markers that facilitate context separation before classifier design. We observe that little can be done if there is high contextual confusion, but when the contextual confusion is low, context separation can be beneficial, the benefit depending on the classifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses to shed light on the "black box" of fashion production by inquiring into the role of the customer image within the work practices of high street womenswear retailers in Great Britain. It mentions that customer image serves as a guiding principle that aids fashion workers to trim down the wealth of clashing ideas and generally maneuvers their decision making processes. Moreover, the creation of color platelets and the selection and modification of sample garments will be employed as examples of how the ordering principle is applied by buyers, designers, and merchandisers throughout the production process.

This article critically examines team and collaborative research as an 'academic mode of production'. Our main argument is that while theoretically qualitative social science research is rooted within a postfoundational epistemological paradigm, normative team-based research practices embody foundational principles. Team research relies on a division of labour that creates divisions and hierarchies of knowledge, particularly between researchers who gather embodied and contextual knowledge 'in the field' and those who produce textual knowledge 'in the office'. We argue that a theoretical commitment to a postfoundational epistemology demands that we translate this into concrete research practices that rely on concerted team-based relations rather than divisions of labour, and a reflexive research practice that strives to involve all team members in all aspects of knowledge construction processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For the first time, a genetic framework using contextual knowledge is proposed for segmentation and recognition of unconstrained handwritten numeral strings. New algorithms have been developed to locate feature points on the string image, and to generate possible segmentation hypotheses. A genetic representation scheme is utilized to show the space of all segmentation hypotheses (chromosomes). For the evaluation of segmentation hypotheses, a novel evaluation scheme is introduced, in order to improve the outlier resistance of the system. Our genetic algorithm tries to search and evolve the population of segmentation hypotheses, and to find the one with the highest segmentation/recognition confidence. The NIST NSTRING SD19 and CENPARMI databases were used to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Our experiments showed that proper use of contextual knowledge in segmentation, evaluation and search greatly improves the overall performance of the system. On average, our system was able to obtain correct recognition rates of 95.28% and 96.42% on handwritten numeral strings using neural network and support vector classifiers, respectively. These results compare favorably with the ones reported in the literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The importance of knowledge management (KM) in developing business strategies for corporate sector has been widely written about in the literature. However; the concepts, technologies and processes of KM are equally valid for development projects. which aim at making an impact on socio-economic conditions of the identified target groups. Specifically. for development projects to be successful, it is essential to elicit in-depth tacit knowledge of all relevant stakeholders and utilize this knowledge in defining the project strategy. If the project strategy is predominantly based on transplantation of external knowledge without having the benefit of local tacit knowledge, the project strategy may not be sustainable. The effectiveness of development projects also significantly depends upon incremental evolution of required project activities facilitated through action learning, identification of best practices for carrying out the defined project activities, and the scalability of these best practices through documentation and dissemination. To ensure replication of successful development projects, it is also important to identify and harness both "kernel" and "ephemeral" knowledge. This paper critically examines a development project called Human & Institutional Development in Ecological Refrigeration (HIDECOR) in India. This author had been mandated to carry' out action learning during the pilot phase of this project from the year 1998 to 2000, and later as a consultant for certain specified project activities during the main phase of the project (2001 to 2004). Many of the typical concepts and processes of KM were put into practice in project formulation and implementation of this project, without being called KM. The paper also illustrates how the issue scalability and replication of project activities were addressed, and how the systems developed for the project were useful in designing and implementing a follow-up project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European policies and instruments such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and many instruments for nature and landscape conservation in Europe have for some decades been dominated by centralisation and standardisation. This paper shows that this has led to the neglect of contextual and place-related approaches and an unnecessarily high degree of over-simplification. Recently, as a reaction to this over- simplification, diversity and specific character has been particularly stressed in many European and national strategies for rural landscapes and conservation, but the processes of simplification still continue. Using examples from mixed agriculture and forestry landscapes in Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden, this paper aims to contribute to understanding the gap between centrally defined strategies for rural landscapes and awareness and management practices at local level. The three countries are situated at the outer fringes of Europe, and are complementary with their different degrees of urbanisation, forest distribution and tree-richness in the agricultural landscapes. Furthermore, the aim is to show how local landscape management is driven and to identify factors contributing to a better use of public policies through a participatory process with visions for the future. Systems of landscape classifications such as landscape character assessment often recognise the specific character of these landscapes, but have so far achieved very little for the preservation of their locally specific values, nor have they contributed to the development and the creation of new visions for future management. Such systems could contribute much more if they could be opened to adaptation on a more local scale in communication-led management planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Businesses need to continuously focus on change and innovation in order to survive in dynamic environments. The ability of an organization to deploy appropriate business processes requires that the fit between business processes and systems that support the management of these processes is continuously maintained and evolved. Acquisition and use of the knowledge about the context in which business processes are defined, modified, and implemented can help maintain this fit. We identify requirements for a business process management system (BPMS) capable of managing contextual knowledge. Based on these requirements, we have enhanced KOPeR, a knowledge-based system for business process improvement, with an explanation facility that can acquire and maintain knowledge about the context behind process definitions and design choices. A case study that illustrates the functionalities of this system which is designed to improve the fit between business processes and BPMS is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This research had three aims: first, to examine the relationship between two components of emergent literacy: contextual (environmental print, print functions, identifying literacy activities) and non-contextual knowledge (e.g., letters’ names, phonemic awareness, concept of print, etc.); second, to explore the relationship between children''s knowledge of each of the two components and their socio-economic status (SES) level in the community; and third, to study if and how these two components predict children''s word recognition and emergent writing. The sample included 70 kindergarteners from two communities: 34 from a low SES community and 36 from a middle SES community. Results confirmed the existence of the two proposed distinct components of emergent literacy knowledge—the contextual and non-contextual. Compared with their higher SES peers, low SES children had poorer contextual and non-contextual knowledge. Finally, word recognition and emergent writing were predicted by non-contextual components: phonemic awareness, letters’ names, and concept of print knowledge, and not by contextual knowledge, age, or SES group. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Given the number and variety of methods used for handwriting recognition, it has been shown that there is no single method that can be called the "best". In recent years, the combination of different classifiers and the use of contextual information have become major areas of interest in improving recognition results. This paper addresses a case study on the combination of multiple classifiers and the integration of syntactic level information for the recognition of handwritten Arabic literal amounts. To the best of out knowledge, this is the first time either of these methods has been applied to Arabic word recognition. Using three individual classifiers with high level global features, we performed word recognition experiments. A parallel combination method was tested for all possible configuration cases of the three chosen classifiers. A syntactic analyzer makes a final decision on the candidate words generated by the best configuration scheme. The effectiveness of contextual knowledge integration in out application is confirmed by the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnostic support systems that help solving problems in open and weak theory domains need to be context-sensitive in order to reveal flexible and efficient behaviour. This paper presents a task-oriented methodology for analysing and modeling contextual knowledge at the knowledge level. We present a context-sensitive diagnosis approach (ConSID) which clarifies the connection between content and process knowledge. The former embodies the domain model, while the latter embodies the task and method models. We present a prototypical system, the ConSID-Creek, that applies the ConSID approach to the medical diagnostic domain. We illustrate how the system integrates case-based and explanation-based reasoning paradigms when realizing the abductive subtask of the overall diagnostic task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]