Search Results (9)

Integrating technology-enhanced gamification into teacher education can significantly foster motivation and reshape perceptions toward science learning. This mixed-methods case study explores how a 14-week course for preservice early childhood teachers, supported by the digital gamification platform FantasyClass and enriched with a cohesive narrative structure, impacted students’ motivation and attitudes towards science. The course featured structural gamification elements—such as experience points, digital collectibles, and team-based challenges—combined with immersive storytelling that contextualized scientific tasks within a fantasy adventure. Quantitative data from pre- and post-intervention surveys revealed statistically significant improvements in attitudes toward science and perceived teaching competence. Thematic analysis of qualitative feedback highlighted enhanced engagement, enjoyment, and relevance of science learning. These findings suggest that intelligent integration of gamified technologies and narrative design in science teacher initial training can address motivational barriers and foster positive emotional engagement. While context-specific, this study offers insights into how digital gamified learning environments can support the development of positive attitudes towards science among future early childhood educators. Full article

This study examines the intrinsic motivation of preservice primary teachers in a science education course designed with player-type personalization in gamification strategies. Using a mixed-methods approach, a one-group post-test-only design was combined with qualitative analysis. Game elements were personalized based on the HEXAD user typologies, aligning with Self-Determination Theory to support autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Quantitative data from the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory revealed high median scores across these psychological needs, suggesting that customization fostered deeper engagement. Key elements included cooperative challenges, branching narratives, and flexible participation pathways. Qualitative findings reinforced these results, highlighting students’ increased sense of agency, social connection, and investment in learning. The structured integration of narrative played a crucial role in contextualizing academic tasks, transforming the learning process into an immersive experience. Overall, the findings indicate that well-designed, personalized gamification strategies effectively bolster preservice teachers’ intrinsic motivation in this science education course. By demonstrating how player-type personalization optimizes motivation in gamified teacher education, this study contributes to the growing body of research on tailored gamification. Full article

This study investigates the impact of structural gamification, using the digital platform FantasyClass, on the attitudes and motivation of preservice primary education teachers towards physics and chemistry. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research combined quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis involving 65 second-year university students over a 14-week course. The quantitative component was framed within a quasi-experimental pre-post design, allowing for the comparison of students’ attitudes and motivations before and after the gamified intervention. The qualitative component was designed to complement the quantitative findings. Quantitative analysis revealed significant improvements in students’ perceptions and motivation, with notable increases in positive attitudes towards these sciences. Qualitative data further highlighted enhanced interest and enjoyment, with students reporting greater engagement and a shift in their perception of physics and chemistry as accessible and enjoyable. The study also noted an increase in self-confidence among future teachers and improved teaching self-efficacy. The findings suggest that integrating gamification in initial primary science teacher education can effectively foster more favorable attitudes, enhance motivation towards science, and improve teaching confidence. Future research should explore long-term impacts, as well as personalized gamification approaches to cater to different types of learners and maximize educational effectiveness. Full article

This article proposes a new approach to the nature of a core set within fantasy fiction that regards it as a speculative literature of the exploration of subjectivity, one which at its limit conjectures fresh possibilities for the subjective world. To motivate acceptance of this proposed approach, I begin by surveying the existing state of debate in the critical field. I notice the emergence of widening agreement on the idea that fantasy is a literature of the impossible. I then develop the logical implications of this widening agreement in the critical field, arguing that it entails a representational definition of fantasy literature, which implies a modal approach to the core set that defines this literary order. I suggest that the marvellous mode, the kind of writing which represents the impossible, is a broad class that includes other speculative literatures, and that what differentiates these is the referential world within which the impossible happens. The aim here is to break up monolithic conceptions of the impossible, while pointing to a motivation for developing an understanding of the specificity of a core set of fantasy texts that proceeds by way of contrasts. After explaining why I am extremely skeptical about the definition of science fiction as a “literature of the possible”, I probe descriptions of the difference between fantasy and sci-fi. I propose that whereas some science fiction is a literature of conjectural objectivity, guided by the “cognitive novum”, a significant group of fantasy texts is a literature of speculative subjectivity, guided by an “affective novum”. Full article

The hypothesis of this article is that, for its adherents, QAnon is truthful, rather than true; that is, it captures their perception of the way things typically happen, rather than picturing what really has happened—and it does this in a way that seems more vivid and complete than actual experience. Why that is the case can be explained in terms of the peculiar nature of fictional representations, combined with the capacity of imaginary worlds, to symbolize real-world concerns in ways that resonate with prejudices and preconceptions but escape direct censure. After reviewing the literature on the conspiracy movement, we argue for QAnon as a conspiracy story, rather than a conspiracy theory, and interpret that story as “structured like a fantasy”, giving imaginative expression to a set of social feelings and normative grievances that would otherwise not dare speak their own names. We conclude that QAnon is an authoritarian fiction centered on anti-Semitic conspiracy beliefs that disturbingly reprise key themes of fascism, but that it presents this within the symbolic disguise of a fantasy scenario that is calculated to attract alienated white, middle-class and working-class, individuals. This argument helps explicate adherents’ resistance to the falsification of Q claims and predictions. Full article

Marvel’s 2021 film Eternals presents a new mythology for a new century, for an audience grappling with the complexity of postcolonialism and concerned about resurging white nationalism. Its mythology, while rooted in Western narratives, presents a utopia in the form of a multicultural pantheon, presented by a carefully selected, diverse class. While Marvel undoubtedly has commercial concerns, its careful construction of this new mythology and the considered adaptation process show a moral vision for the future. Importantly, this vision presents a direct contrast to the resurgence of the appropriation of classical mythology as justification for white supremacy. Marvel’s Eternals therefore can be seen as utopian: it offers the perfection of moral predictability, of good triumphing over evil. However, it simultaneously undercuts its story by couching it in the genre of a comic book superhero fantasy adventure–the reality Eternals offers, even fictionally, is beyond ordinary, mortal humans. Full article

In this article—based on the fieldwork I conducted in Lisbon (Portugal) between 2018 and 2021, employing in-depth ethnography and self-ethnography—I describe the experience of the medicalization and moralization of beauty in Portuguese women aged 45–65 years. I examine the ways in which practitioners inscribe their expert knowledge on their patients’ bodies, stigmatizing the marks of time and proposing medical treatments and surgeries to “repair” and “correct” them. Beauty and youth are symbolically constructed in medical discourse as visual markers of health, an adequate lifestyle, a strong character and good personal choices (such as not smoking, and a healthy diet and exercise habits). What beauty means within the discourse of anti-aging and therapeutic rejuvenation is increasingly connected to an ideal gender performance of normative, white, middle-class, heterosexual femininity that dismisses structural determinants. The fantasy of eternal youth, linked to a neoliberal ideology of limitless enhancement and individual responsibility, is firmly entrenched in moralizing definitions of aesthetics and gender norms. Finally, my article highlights the ways in which the women I interviewed do not always passively accept the discourse of the devaluation of the ageing body, defining femininity and ageing in their own terms by creating personal variants of the hegemonic normative discourses on beauty and successful ageing. Full article

Vitamin E, a natural antioxidant, is of interest to scientists, health care pundits and faddists; its nutritional and biomedical attributes may be validated, anecdotal or fantasy. Vitamin E is a mixture of tocopherols (TPs) and tocotrienols (T-3s), each class having four substitutional isomers (α-, β-, γ-, δ-). Vitamin E analogues attain only low concentrations in most tissues, necessitating exacting invasive techniques for analytical research. Quantitative positron emission tomography (PET) with an F-18-labeled molecular probe would expedite access to Vitamin E’s biodistributions and pharmacokinetics via non-invasive temporal imaging. (R)-6-(3-[¹⁸F]Fluoropropoxy)-2,7,8-trimethyl-2-(4,8,12-trimethyltrideca-3,7,11-trien-1-yl)-chromane ([¹⁸F]F-γ-T-3) was prepared for this purpose. [¹⁸F]F-γ-T-3 was synthesized from γ-T-3 in two steps: (i) 1,3-di-O-tosylpropane was introduced at C6-O to form TsO-γ-T-3, and (ii) reaction of this tosylate with [¹⁸F]fluoride in DMF/K₂₂₂. Non-radioactive F-γ-T-3 was synthesized by reaction of γ-T-3 with 3-fluoropropyl methanesulfonate. [¹⁸F]F-γ-T-3 biodistribution in a murine tumor model was imaged using a small-animal PET scanner. F-γ-T-3 was prepared in 61% chemical yield. [¹⁸F]F-γ-T-3 was synthesized in acceptable radiochemical yield (RCY 12%) with high radiochemical purity (>99% RCP) in 45 min. Preliminary F-18 PET images in mice showed upper abdominal accumulation with evidence of renal clearance, only low concentrations in the thorax (lung/heart) and head, and rapid clearance from blood. [¹⁸F]F-γ-T-3 shows promise as an F-18 PET tracer for detailed in vivo studies of Vitamin E. The labeling procedure provides acceptable RCY, high RCP and pertinence to all eight Vitamin E analogues. Full article

This article offers an ecocritical analysis of Ali Smith’s Hotel World (2001) and Ewan Morrison’s Tales from the Mall (2012). Through a combination of the world-ecology paradigm, feminist approaches, and queer theory, I argue that these texts connect normative desires to capitalism’s “organization of nature.” The opening section of the article links Nancy Fraser’s work on social reproduction to Jason Moore’s argument that nature, in world-ecological terms, provides the “free gifts” (of work, energy, and even care) necessary for capitalist productivity. Morrison’s and Smith’s texts register this dynamic, positioning hierarchy, sexism, and the uneven experience of neoliberal violence in relation to enclosure, attacks on women, and environmental destruction. I detail how Hotel World binds suburban ecology to normative regulation, while Tales from the Mall connects land clearance to the geographical organization of class inequality. I then contend that the psychological and physical exhaustion of women in both works can be understood in relation to capitalism’s reduction of nature to an appropriable resource that provides comfort and pleasure for wealthy consumers. The article ends with an examination of how the texts reject liberal fantasies of benevolent capitalist globalization in the context of Scotland specifically, indicating the need for new narratives that challenge capitalism’s ecological regime. Full article