Expert systems: An introduction

Expert systems encode human expertise in limited domains by representing it usingif-then rules. This article explains the development and applications of expert systems.     

Complex systems: An introduction

The characteristic feature of complex systems is the emergence of unexpected properties or behaviour. Complexity, beyond a certain threshold, may even lead to the emergence of new principles. It is a one-way traffic: The new principles and features may be sometimes deducible from, but are not reducible to, those operating at the lower levels of complexity. Reductionism stands discounted. Complexity is rampant in the animate world. It arises in inanimate systems also, some examples being multiferroic materials and certain nanocomposites, as also a variety of soft-matter systems. Our ecosphere is also a giant, highly complex, open system, which we do not understand much at present. Mastering complexity is the next big challenge for science. Conceptual breakthroughs are needed. In the first part of this article, we introduce the basic of information theory, chaos theory, and computational complexity. In the second part, we shall describe complex materials as well as some terrestrial and cosmic aspects of complexity.     

Education and culture: An introduction

Staff member of the School of Education at Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, for the past twenty-five years. His teaching and research interests are in the fields of international, comparative, indigenous and cross-cultural education. He has worked extensively in the South Pacific region.     

Hermeneutics and science education: An introduction

This paper is a programmatic sketch of a line of theoretical investigation in the philosophy of science education. The basic idea is that philosophical hermeneutics is an appropriate framework for science education in most of its aspects. A brief discussion is given of hermeneutics in general, of the version of it developed by H. G. Gadamer, and of the reasons for its relevance to science and to the problem of meaning in science education. A key element in this approach is the suggestion that each science be biewed as a language. Arguments against the appropriateness of hermeneutics to natural science are also discussed. One application of the theory to ongoing educational research — misconceptions — is specifically treated.     

Autobiography and science education: An introduction

Autobiography has already had a history as a research strategy and tool kit in other domains, but has yet to be explored as such in science education. I provide an argument where the use of autobiography, paired with radical doubt, is legitimated as a strategy to arrive at inter-subjectivity thereby avoiding false claims to objectivity and failure-prone inner (hyper) subjectivity. This argument is used to contextualise the contributions to this thematic issue on autobiography and science education.     

Education Governance in Transition: An introduction

The purpose of this article is to present concepts and research problems dealing with education governance and social inclusion and exclusion. Education restructuring, as a recent international movement, is regarded as a combination of transitions in governing and new managerialism. Social inclusion and exclusion is conceived of as a duplet concept, mutually defining each other. The relation between new governance - deregulation, decentralisation, privatisation and steering by goals and results - and social inclusion/exclusion is conceptualised as an equity problematic and a knowledge problematic. It is argued that there is a need to understand the system of reason in order to capture the implications of education governing in transition.