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I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any research being conducted to determine the ideal GPP-to-sports-specific training ratio for youth. Looking to bolster the evidence base for our position on the value of GPP for kids in light of increasing sports injuries, increasing early specialization, decreasing physical literacy, and sports participation as a proxy for fitness.

I am making an assignment for introductory, 101-level Child and Adolescent Development class. Assignment requires reading a literature review on a topic related to child and adolescent development - really any general concept (range can be from effects of breastfeeding to early literacy interventions to effects of corporal punishment), has to be very recent and easy-read (not complex metaanalysis that might be too confusing for freshman level). Did any of you recently read (or wrote and had published) one?

It is 100% certain that human learning can not match the speed of machines and artificial intelligence. Could training a new generation of kids to be inattentive a sure way to ensure their inevitable redundancy?

Should we not be asking how can we out-sit (as opposed to out-run) the coming exponential growth of IT calculations and memory?

Does over emphasis on early literacy and numeracy destroy Children's imagination and capacity to develop their own ontologies?

In stillness, one could learnt to look and not just see. Listen and not just hearing. Tasting and not just eating. Digesting and not just consuming. Breathing and not just inhaling/ exhaling. Feeling and not just touching.

These are the lifelong skills, that kids could learn as guides in the land of the blind, where the one eyed is king... because it's in the looking and not seeing. For cultivating capability of insight, one needs the 3rd eye. This is where the machines may not so readily compete. So far, their eyes are only for surveillance.

To see through the muddy tides and chaotic flux, one needs to understand the meta-rationalities driving the ebbs and flows of the tides. Even madness has its rationalities. They may be just concealed, and there are rationales for that too...

Is there a risk these days that kids have ontologies dictated to them through very early literacy and numeracy programmes?

If so, what happens when ontological flexibility and freedom is perhaps what gives children resilience against turbo flux?

One of the characteristics of the ditital existence is blurring the boundaries of all the kinds. As a result of it, the culture of digital existence turns to be dominant all over the world. Thus, another cultures will weaken and even disappear or change their content and / or will loose the influence.

As we see now digital natives have the same features and educational demands and expectations aproximately all over the world.

During coping with covid 19 pandemic, the universal skills of the 21srt century appear and educational systems start to base their curriculums due to the development of these skills. We are speaking about ditital literacy as a school subject by itself from the first grade and a lot of more.

As a result, in my opinion ,

" universal smart on line pedagogy" is going to be born. Might be that my thoughts are wrong and it is very early or even mustn't to think in this direction.

Invite you to discuss this issue.

Thank you very much .

Students are commonly rated after assessment as A, B, C, D or E or 1 through 7 etc. Usually there is some rating that is considered 'adequate' or 'pass'. My research and observations of younger students over 30 years is that this is a dysfunctional approach, often resulting in disengagement. At a higher education level this may not be a major problem but for primary or secondary school students, the result is a poorly educated individual, sometimes with few marketable skills, low literacy and numeracy. To make matters worse, evidence in Australia suggests that the most likely students to disengage from school from an early age are those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, exacerbating their disadvantages and preventing social mobility. I believe that it is possible to report on assessment in such a way that students regard themselves as 'on a path to success', rather than 'always a failure'. My question is specifically about systemic reporting ie what comes out on the report card or statement of results, not the feedback given by a teacher to a student after a single piece of work. What do you think? Is there any research into the psychosocial impact of school assessment that is positive.

From the Editor

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ali Rahimi

Message from Editor

Dear Readers,

It is a great honor for us to publish August 2016 - Vol 6, No 3 of Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (GJFLT).

Please follow the link below:

Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching welcomes original empirical investigations and comprehensive literature review articles focusing on foreign language teaching and topics related to linguistics. GJFLT is an international journal published quarterly and it is a platform for presenting and discussing the emerging developments in foreign language teaching in an international arena.

The scope of the journal includes, but is not limited to the following major topics: Cultural studies, Curriculum Development and Syllabus Design, Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), General Linguistics, Globalization Studies and world English’s, Independent/Autonomous Learning, Information and Computer Technology in TEFL, Innovation in language, Teaching and learning, Intercultural Education, Language acquisition and learning, Language curriculum development, Language education, Language program evaluation, Language Testing and Assessment, Literacy and language learning, Literature, Mobile Language Learning, Pragmatics, Second Language, Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Acquisition Theory, Digital Literacy Skills, Second Language Learners, Second Language Learning, Second language Pedagogy, Second Language Proficiency, Second Language Speech, Second Language Teaching, Second Language Training, Second Language Tutor, Second language Vocabulary Learning, Teaching English as a Foreign/ Second Language, Teaching Language Skills, Translation Studies, Applied linguistics, Cognitive linguistics.

Keyword and Full Video Captioning in Listening Comprehension, Infants’ Acquisition of Words Before Concepts, Pragmatics, Task Complexity , Language Use of Patients With Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, Headings in Theses and Research Articles in Applied Linguistics, and Developing Intercultural Competence have been included in this issue.

The topics of the next issue will be different. We are trying to serve you with our journal with a rich knowledge through which different kinds of topics will be discussed in 2017 issues.

We present many thanks to all the contributors who helped us to publish this issue.

Best regards,

Associate Professor Dr. Ali Rahimi,

Editor – in Chief, Bangkok University

Read more at http://sproc.org/ojs/index.php/GJFLT/article/view/1664#hWXwmzAkhKwxrVAd.99

a) Developmental phases of the representation of the human face pattern, (dubbed "neolithic face" pattern or NF). This development may be in association with the late evolving and early regression of the parieto-occipital brain region (from newborns to pathology such as prosop-agnosia; chronic alcoholism). Might NF also serve as a possible triage-like marker for early dementia or early HIV infection?

b) Methods used: "Draw-A-Person-With-face-in Front- (DAPF), a one-min test, determined with a ruler; [3, Fig 1]. (Optionally, the Kohs Block Design test (culture-fair modified) may be added,).

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c) Amygdalar short cut processing (a second visual path?), bypassing refined parieto-occipital evaluation, underlying NF [5].

Description of ":neolithic face" pattern (e.g. [3, Fig 1]

NF appears under a broad variety of conditions related to intra-pattern visual-spatial relational representation. (This differs from inter-object map-like representations). NF prevalence ranges from neocortical immaturity to individual or eco-cultural under-use and lack of practice to regressive pathological dysfunctioning.

The specific subtly incorrect intra-pattern visuo-spatial representation of the face pattern was dubbed “neolithic face” (NF) because it prevailed very significantly during the period of “neolithic art ” worldwide", a period designated as illiterate by definition.

NF is characterized by an omission of the subtle intra-spatial relations around the root (bridge) of the nose areas. Thereby the forehead is continuous with the nose without any indication of discontinuity, indentation or narrowing) [3. Fig 1] (or AA Pontius,”Dyslexia – Dysgraphia" in R. Dubeco (Ed) Encyclopedia of Human Biology 1997; Vol 3, 513-527, Fig. 1) .

"Neolithic face"' NF) pattern in a great variety of inter-related instances:

1) Drawings and spontaneous art objects in contemporary near stone-age people and hunter-gatherers in remote areas on four continents collected over two decades, beginning 1971. The proportion of NF prevalence in pre-literates showed a significant positive correlation with the results from UNESCO's direct reading and writing tests as well as with the tested countries' official illliteracy rates printed in their Yearbooks) . - Before-and after studies showed a significant increase in accurate face drawings correlated positively with the availability of literacy instruction.

Thus, "eco-cultural ' deprivation" and lack of practice, had apparently been an essential factor of such peoples' lack of literacy, dubbed "ecological dyslexia" [3]

2) In Western newborns (up to 4 months old] the wide mouth reflex-like automatic "smiling response" was significantly faster released ( p < 0.001) by 2 "neolithic" face masks than by 4 control face masks, including the natural human face [6].

3) "Western" pre-schoolers (c. 25%) still drew NF;

4) 62% of Western 4th graders of Heidelberg, "blindly" rated as dyslexics" drew NF.

5) 19% of Colonial North American stone masons (their illiteracy rate officially reported at c. 20%), who had been the untrained "artists" of 1500 evaluated gravestones with human (angel) faces (up to 1830) produced NF [7]

6) Prosop-agnosic patients no longer recognize the familiar human face, because it appears to them as "flattened out", "without relief" (the essentials of NF), and their few face drawings shown in the literature prefer NF.

7) Skid row alcoholics who had been literates,produced 22% NF as against 12% of their controls.

Persistence of complete NF even in one-sided "neglect" due to right parieto-occipital tumor

Supporting the assumed innateness of the "neolithic face" pattern as a schema , is an unwittingly published drawing by AR Luria "Higher Cortical Functions in Man", New York: Basic Books 1980, p 137, Fig. 37 . This shows "copies" by a patient with a tumor of he right parieto-occipital region, who had a loss of the left half of the field of vision. Accordingly he omitted the left side of all patterns he had to copy, but his "copies" of human faces depicted both sides of NF.

Constant fear for life as another factor to draw "neolithic face" patterns,

Amygdalar shortcut processing had been hypothesized to be linked with NF's coarse but faster (thereby potentially life-saving) production under persistent conditions of fear for life, [5 full text on RG] hypothesized by A. Pontius 1997 (Harvard Research Day poster). This 1997 hypothesis had been based on the prevalence of NF drawings by warring as against peaceful tribes in SW Ethiopia, The hypothesis, turned out to be consistent with that proposed by neuroscientists' research on amygdalar visual proessing (fMRI, ERPS) , producing a "blurred face".(S. L. Helmut. Fear and trembling in the amygdala. Science 2003;300:568-569., Fig. 1).

(References (so far listed in RG Profile)

1. JAMWA 1974;29:435-444

2. Experientia 1976;32:1432-1435

3. Percept Mot Skills 1982;55:1191-1200 (Fig.1)

4 Brain & Cognition 1989:10:54-75

5. Aggression & Violent Behavior. 2005;10:363-373 (full tcxt)

6 Experientia 1975;31;126-129

7. Experientia 1982,38:577-580.

I would like to ask how best practice models affect education in general and aesthetic-artistic subjects in particular. 

How far should good practice examples go, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? Is it not also necessary to provide worst practice examples (and to do so in a VALUING way, but in an appreciative dialogue)? In my mind, this would be a DISCUSSED AND MODERATED PRACTICE, so to speak, with kind of reviews and comments, where a (meta-)discussion can take place, which is often missing and necessary, especially in the present time.

More often than not, especially after the Pisa debate, the mapping of competences in all subjects is demanded. In order to maintain an entitlement in the subject canon, this naturally also forces aesthetic-artistic subjects to present their fields of competence. That competences analogous to those in language subjects for learning to write and read in artistic subjects in the form of visual literacy. (cf. Mollenhauer, 1989, 1990). But a mere working off of visual literacy tasks would destroy the aesthetic subject concept. The personal factor of being human would be undermined and a capacity for enjoyment or even a practical artistic ability to create and express would never be created. 

Quality arts education can produce positive learning outcomes, such as creating positive attitudes to learning, developing a greater sense of personal and cultural identity, and fostering more creative and imaginative ways of thinking in young children (Bamford, 2006; Eisner, 2002; Robinson, 2001).

The special quality of art education learning processes is that bodily-sensual learning processes in their references to perception, imagination and representation in reception and practice not only become more accurately describable, but also visible in the literal sense of the word (Krautz, 2015)

Through practical action, the experience of values is trained, thoughts and feelings are expressed and "personal wills are realised" (ibid.), as well as one's own point of view is taken. A confrontation with the ideas of others takes place. This experience leads to a development towards openness and tolerance (Piecha). 

Art lessons have to be diverse, heterogeneous and unusual, they have to leave well-trodden paths and go individual ways in order to be able to take new, not yet known sustainable paths in the future (in addition, the importance of the Sustainable Development goals that go hand in hand with value education).

Aesthetic competence gained from sensory experience represents another form of knowledge. In the competence grid, free space must be created for individual, experimental and non 'functional' spaces of experience. Art education prepares for future requirements that do not exist today or are even unknown. These competences are thus competences on a meta-level and thus indispensable. (Weinlich, 2020)

Although the question of aesthetic competences cannot be answered here, I would like to ask how best practice models affect education in general and aesthetic-artistic subjects in particular. 

Best practice models are also copied in the economy with and without success. 

Forming models of quality arts education in the early years of primary school can also be a highly problematic task. (The Challenges of Implementing Primary Arts Education: What Our Teachers Say, Frances Anne Alter, Terrence Neville Hays, Rebecca O’Hara)

The question is, how can possibilities be created in this sensitive field, not to provide templates, but models as inspiration. How far should good practice examples go, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? Is it not also necessary to provide worst practice examples (and to do so in a VALUING way, but in an appreciative dialogue)? In my mind, this would be a DISCUSSED AND MODERATED PRACTICE, so to speak, with kind of reviews and comments, where a (meta-)discussion can take place, which is often missing and necessary, especially in the present time.

Professor Stephen Dobson

Dean of the Faculty of Education

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Since arrival in the Faculty of Education at Victoria University in mid-2018 I have had many remarkable experiences. Not all however are the source of a strong catharsis, an ‘a ha’ experience as was the following: I was lucky enough to attend the 50th anniversary of the cohort of pre-service teachers who attended Wellington Teacher`s College in 1968. In the course of the pleasurable evening a common experience remembered was staff philosophy at the College, “that they should try to develop the person and then the teacher would emerge from that.”[1] In cultural activities, such as art, reading, music, talking, dialogue and so on during their training. Sam Hunt the poet and New Zealand treasure was a student to whom they made constant and well-deserved reference. Sam never graduated – apparently the Dean told him to concentrate on his poetry skills.

We have come a long way from such a perspective, or so we are apt to think – our teachers are arguably more professional, the national curriculum is detailed and teachers meet clearly defined standards on graduation. Yet, when I talk with my Islamic educational colleagues I learn that the point of education in their culture for over a millennium has been to develop the character of the child. We must remember one of the oldest universities[2] in the world is Islamic; it is over 1200 years old and found in Tunisia [3] (Ez-Zitouna University جامعة الزيتونة‎); not in Europe in the Middle Ages as we commonly think. In Chinese inspired education a version of this is the importance of developing a good moral character, inspired by the views of Confucius and a deep respect for others. We find a strong other-directed morality rather than an ego-oriented morality in China. In Scandinavian educational culture this is called bildung or dannelse and means the formation of a shared centred-ness and a shared cultural identity. In my limited, but growing understanding of Māori and Pasifika culture I have noted many of these same points.

Current global speak around the world and in many Anglo-Saxon countries profess a different view on these matters, if we exclude for a moment the point on curriculum knowledge. It is the desire to grow students who are resilient and possess ample funds of ‘grit’ to master set-backs. They are cognitively knowledgeable of their own thought processes. All possess so-called 21st century skills of team work and sociability.

Sometimes, I wonder if the pendulum of education has swung too far and we have lost ourselves in the science of education and in particular that international pastime of measuring literacy and numeracy scores. We want to perform well and to manage ourselves; to be the cleverest in the local, national and international class. This is very much to the exclusion of the other side of the pendulum where character, morality, bildung and other-directedness rest. A phrase I often quote from the Swedish child activist in early 1900 rings in my ears, `the formation of one`s identity is based upon what remains after we have forgotten everything we have learnt` (my translation). As with life we need a pendulum that swings both ways – or do we?

[1] Georgia Morgan (2007). A Short History of the Victoria University College of Education Art Collection. Unpublished manuscript.

[2] Established in the year 859, the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, was the first degree-granting educational institute in the world (as recognised by UNESCO and Guinness World Records).

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Ez-Zitouna#History

As mentioned in my previous posting, I don't subscribe to a dialectical approach to addressing contradictions between human and artificial intelligence.

To begin with it, it has become virtually impossible, much less desirable to overturn what essentially boils down to a very human notion: pricing and valuing. So it is never, at the core, an issue of human beings versus machines. It is about our desires and appetites, therefore conversely, fears and wastes/ excesses (as either scarcity or abundance). The key here is balance, rather than dialectics, specifically how to balance price (costs - to whom?) and valuing (for and by whom?).

As Noam Chomsky has reminded us, intellectual property is the monopoly of pricing. The notion of intelligence as a monetary expression, subjected to and situated within the supplies and demands of brain power markets, has utilitarian and developmental values.

From here, I am going to superimpose the prevailing discourses in Education and Engineering. It may not even be up to date, but one has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is 2012, in the Game Studio of UTS' (University of Technology, Sydney), Faculty of Engineering and IT.

Among Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineers' choice of readings and citations are the works of Ian Bogost. Wikipedia describes him as a Philosopher and video game Designer. This sounds like a reasonable description, though worth also highlighting is his background in the Comparative Literature. Bogost's seminal work is Procedural Rhetoric.

For the engineers, this reading of games and their meanings, especially in relation to the player and game mechanics was compelling. Bogost also covers lots of ground in terms of the games' aesthetics, epistemologies and therefore rhetorics. His interpretations of video games are dense, and with NOT a statistic in sight. Instead it would help immensely if one had solid Humanities training to follow Bogost, especially Derrida. And yet his following are composed of arguably mostly gamers and game engineers. Where I personally had left Bogost was the debate he was having with Sicart.

Curiously, that engineers are concerned with player autonomy and expression is something missing in Education's discussion of game-based learning. Sure there's always James Gee, everyone's favourite baby boomer, who could tell us: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy?

For now, I will skip Gee because I have already written a paper about him and David Williamson Shaffer. What I would like to talk abit about is the notion of epistemic games and their assessment engines. This is necessarily sketchy and my purpose is raise my concern as agenda.

There's no doubt that epistemic games, still in their early days I would say in Education, have much to contribute to learning. Their applications could also be as deep as the ocean.

But what keeps glaring in my gaze is: why haven't we acknowledge also the Foucault "episteme" and "techne" in their oppressive light?

Even Shaffer alludes to Foucault, but the oppressive nature of the "episteme" is totally lost on him, to quote him (Shaffer, 2006: p.232):

What this interpretation of Foucault reveals is that Shaffer has not just misunderstood the coercive and dangerous nature of the "episteme", especially when embodied through the "techne" (his equivalent, I would say, of the epistemic frame), it means the epistemic games or learning is also based on questionable understanding of the "episteme".

Foucault had been concerned with how knowing and knowledge, far from being enlightening, work to limit and constrain its subjects of possibilities, at its worst, would lead to epistemic incarceration. In short, there's nothing inevitably liberating about one's epistemology. The "episteme" is a site/ knowledge matrix, when enacted in the "techne", becomes extensive sources of incarceration, discipline and punishment. Hence whilst one's head is imprisoned by the "episteme", one's body is being violated by the epistemic processes embedded in an institution's "techne".

There's lots to come from this reading of Foucault. One key aspect is that Education people are losing their capacity to read Philosophy and the Humanities. In fact, they risk losing many other literacies, not least the visual ones.

This is a curious deficiency given if it's one Faculty, literally in that sense, that should be about cultivating deep and broad literacies. Even the ways in which educational products and services are assessed and evaluated (a good example of Foucault's Episteme at work) have fallen sort in their capacities to read issues relating to Ethics, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Aesthetics.

Where the engineers have shown much curiousity towards the relative autonomy and even emotional interiors (Bogost's simulation fever) of the player, educators are looking at epistemic games like accountants (Learning as accounting and calculating is also an Episteme-Techne at work about work).

Modding has become quite a huge area for hardcore gamers. But they will not find any avenue for modding in universities. Along with many ironies from the so-called deregulations in universities, they are more regulated than ever.