A convenient dichotomy: critical eyes on the limits to biological knowledge

In The Secret Identity of a Biology Textbook: straight and naturally sexed, Jesse Bazzul and Heather Sykes conduct a case study of a biology textbook as an oppressive instructional material. Using queer theory they explore how the text of the biology textbook produces “truths” about sex, gender, and sexuality. Their analysis is complemented by the Forum papers by Jay Lemke and Francis Broadway who broaden the analysis examining the way that what counts as knowledge in science is a political decision while also encouraging authors, including Bazzul and Sykes, to also look critically at their own theoretical lenses. In this paper I pull together their ideas while exploring cultural contexts for a more nuanced representation of biological knowledge and the politics of what it means to know science.     

Reviews

Clark , M. M. (1976). Young Fluent Readers. Pumfrey , P. D. (1976). Reading: Tests and Assessment Techniques. Moyle , D. and Sykes , E. (1976). Talk-a-Rounders.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Gillham, Bruce (Ed.) Reading Through the Curriculum Betty, Charles Discovering Together (Series). Titles: Christmas Chapman, L. John. Reading Development and Cohesion. Gregson, D. and Thcwlis, S. Comprehension and Research Skills: an index of classroom resources. Miles, T. R. Dyslexia, The Pattern of Difficulties. Miles, T. R. & Miles, E. Helpfor Dyslexic Children. Moore, Leonard. My Favourite Nature Encyclopedia. Haas, W. (Ed.) Standard Languages, Spoken and Written. Moyle, Donald and Sykes, Eileen. Games for Language and Reading Development.     

Cognitive skills in the reading process: a review

Some current problems in reading, as viewed by cognitive psychology, are discussed around a summary of a symposium on Reading and Lexical Access held ac, part of the International Conference on Practical Aspects of Memory (Gruneberg, Morris arid Sykes, 1978). The analysis of component processes in reading, and the analysis of reading dynamics provide apparently opposing approaches to the study of reading, but they often lead to similar conclusions about reading behaviour and are seen here to be complementary approaches. Prompted by the discussion of phonological mediation in a number of the papers we are led to the conclusion that whereas phonological reading can be observed to be used on some occasions, it is not necessaryfor word recognition and reading. Three hypotheses of its use by skilled readers are suggested—for sequential attention control, for the generation of a working memory code, and for the resolution of ambiguity by prosodics. The beginning reader may have a further use in gaining a spoken representation, and therefore recognition, of new words.     

为太平天国之正义而辩护--塞克斯与《中国太平叛乱的起源、进展和现状》的研究

太平天国运动爆发后，塞克斯认为太平天国有着神圣的使命，是中国的新生力量，而英国政府干涉中国内战，帮助清政府镇压太平天国运动是非正义的军事侵略。为此，他在英国的舆论界及国会下议院竭力为太平天国辩护，反对英国政府的干涉行径，揭露其侵略政策。塞克斯的辩护言行展示出一个资产阶级有识之士真正的民主主义立场和精神。     

Helping parents to become partners in the education of their handicapped child

Conclusions Educators are beginning to seek methods of improving parent-child relationships and school and parent relationships, as the evidence accrues and is assimilated, which shows how much more important is the child's family experience. The handicapped child brings the desirability of successful home and school links into clear focus, as the six-hour school day is clearly inadequate for the needs of many severely handicapped children, who require a consistent programme of developmental experiences from waking to sleeping. The only way in which the trust and confidence imposed by close relationships in the home may be continued in the school is by a mutual effort directed at common goals: the development of the child's capacity to learn and care for himself. Perhaps it is the similarity of the tasks undertaken in home and in school, with the severely and profoundly handicapped child, the severely and profoundly handicapped child, which has shown just how powerful the home-and-school combination can be when working in harmony. There are clearly lessons here for the education system at large. Perhaps the longstanding schism between parents and schools can be bridged in the next decades.The importance of social abilities, self-help skills and the confidence which all emanate from a successful family life, are emphasized by Smith and Sykes (1981) and others, who show that social competency is perhaps the key factor in determining vocational and post-school success for handicapped students. These competencies and confidence cannot come from school alone. The initiatives alluded to in this article, and described in full in the literature cited, show that schools have come a long way from believing that they alone can cope.Has written a number of studies on the development of education for the visually handicapped.     

Projectively flat exponential Finsler metric

INTRODUCTION One century ago, Hilbert announced his famous 23 problems. The Hilbert’s Fourth Problem is to characterize the (not-necessarily-reversible) distance functions on an open subset in ún such that straight lines are shortest paths. Distance functions induced by a Finsler metric are regarded as smooth ones. Thus Hilbert’s Fourth Problem in the smooth case is to characterize Finsler metric on an open subset in ún whose geodesics are straight lines. Finsler metric on an ope…     

The Praxis of Art's Deschooled Practice

Art's relationship with education is often characterised by paradox. Yet art is often reified within an education system that refuses to see the pedagogical strengths of paradox. This article approaches art education from three positions. The first is that art is a construct that is neither natural nor necessary. The second is that there are no aesthetic or pedagogical imperatives, but that art education is the recognition of groundlessness where paradox facilitates learning. The third approach is to reposition art with regards to its relationship with learning, education and schooling. Here it is argued that art's only choice is to deschool learning. The latter is moved by an underlying dilemma as to whether art, considered as an autonomous human act, could ever engage with systems of learning without being turned into a tool or a thing. Unless art education is deschooled, the teaching and learning of art remains trapped between the assumptions of process and product. So the idea of art and education as shared practices within schooling remains somewhat dubious unless art's practices are recognised in parts perceived as wholes and where conclusions are marked by open‐endedness. No possibilities for art or learning could ever emerge unless a radically different set of conditions give way to a state of affairs where knowledge is a matter to be discovered but never determined, and where a fixed ground is transformed into a wide horizon.     

Ubuntu,ukama, environment and moral education

This article outlines a moral education guided by African traditional values such as ubuntu and ukama. It argues that ubuntu is not by definition speciesist, as some have claimed, but that it has strong ecocentric leanings, that is, if ubuntu is understood as a concrete expression of ukama. In fact, ubuntu deconstructs the anthropocentric–ecocentric distinction which has characterised and continues to characterise debates in environmental theory/philosophy. To become more fully human does not mean caring only for the self and other human beings but also for the entire biophysical world. Some implications that this discussion has for moral education are explored, as well as some opportunities that post-apartheid curriculum frameworks offer for implementing a moral education guided by ubuntu.     

Policy prolepsis in education: Encounters,becomings, and phantasms

We argue that the concept of a policy prolepsis is a category of becoming-policy that actualizes educational practices within spaces of desired policy initiatives and implementations. Policy prolepses represent a range of emergent policy ontologies produced through the interface of educational actors’ senses of policy and their estimations of possible outcomes. We use Deleuze's (1990) logic of sense to argue that becoming-policy occurs in a pre-conscious space, and that this space is produced politically and used strategically for desired, yet ostensibly unformed, policy outcomes. Educational policy, then, is an ontological activity representing a myriad of policy outcomes through the management of semiotic desires and actors’ inferences about these persuasive signs. The paper illustrates the practical idea of policy prolepsis by demonstrating how policy apparitions use fear in becoming-policy. Policy apparitions, then, are just one species of policy prolepses that utilize the affect of fear to manipulate educational actors’ interpretations.     

The Missing Element to Achieving a Citizenship-as-Practice: Balancing Freedom and Responsibility in Schools Today

The new Social Studies curriculum recently introduced in Alberta proposes to encourage students to affirm their place as citizens in a democratic society. Grounded in Biesta’s (2007) argument that regardless of a Program of Studies’ best stated goals and intentions, if a school is not structured democratically the chances of the program being successful are limited. In this article, I question what makes a school democratic as opposed to undemocratic by proposing that the new curriculum is grounded in a representational view of knowledge which leads to a document that is overly conceptualized and presents a view of citizenship as one that can be achieved rather than one that is practiced (Biesta & Lawy, 2006). I argue that it is the representational curriculum and the public school’s organizational structure with its emphasis on duties and responsibilities and the virtual absence of freedom and rights that make these schools fundamentally undemocratic places. In order to pursue this line of inquiry, I juxtapose schools in the public system with a private school which claims to be a participative democracy. This juxtaposition revealed that a school that gives students freedom first and trusts that they will act responsibly with it, is more likely to lead to a citizenship that is practiced rather than one that is simply achieved. While it is not the intention of this paper, to recommend that all schools adopt the model of the private school in this study, it does help us understand why Biesta (2007) is not overly optimistic regarding schools being able to achieve a citizenship that is practiced as opposed to one that is achieved.     

Radical Constructivism, and the Sin of Relativism

The epistemology of relativism that is featured by the theory of radical constructivism is addressed. In particular, I examine several objections, all based on this epistemic position of relativism, that are often raised by critics of the theory: the charge of reality denial (which, it is often claimed, must lead ultimately to the epistemically problematic position of solipsism), the assertion of self-referential contradiction (a theory that rejects the notion of truth cannot itself claim to be true), and the accusation that the theory must lead to a position of ethical indifference. It is demonstrated that these objections do not hold: they arise, to a large extent, from the failure to distinguish properly between different knowledge domains – specifically, between the notions of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge. Some concrete examples, specifically pertaining to the conflict between natural science and creationism, are addressed; and their relevance for science education is discussed.     

THE TANGIBLES OF JEWISH EDUCATION

As a Rule, when discussing Jewish existence, we use the term survival. Actually, continuity is more accurate. Certainly it is more dynamic. Continuity indicates the state or quality of being continuous. It denotes the fact that Jewish life is an uninterrupted succession of Jewish people and events. Continuity is an absolute condition. Survival, however, indicates an act of surviving or merely lasting longer than others. Survival is something that continues to exist after the cessation of something else. As such, survival is a relative phenomenon. Moreover, continuity implies creative growth; survival connotes bare existence, even decline.     

两个加工时间恶化的半线性平行机排序问题的启发式MBLS 算法

The combination of online or semi-online with deterioration jobs has never been researched in scheduling problems. In this paper, two semi-online parallel machine scheduling problems with linear deterioration processing time are considered. In the first problem, it is assumed that the deterioration rates of jobs are known in an interval, that is, bj ∈[0, α], where 0 〈α≤ 1 and bj denotes the linear deterioration rate. In the second problem, it is assumed that the largest deterioration rate of jobs is known in advance, that is, b = max1≤j≤n {bj }. For each of the two problems, a heuristic MBLS algorithm is worked out and its worst-case ratio is analyzed. At the same time, the worst-case ratio of the list （LS） algorithm is investigated and it is proved that all the ratios are tight.     

Global dimension of weak smash product

INTRODUCTION In (Auslander, 1995), the author established the relationship of homological dimension between skew group algebra ΛG and Λ. Recall from Corollary 4.7 and Corollary 4.10 in (Auslander, 1995) that gl.dim(ΛG)=gl.dim(Λ) where ΛG is a skew group algebra with the order of G invertible in Λ. Recently, more and more mathematicians have studied homological dimension for Hopf algebra. Yang (2002) gave the relationship of homological dimension between smash product algebra A#H…     

Deaf children's use of cognitive strategies in simple arithmetic problems

Research shows that deaf children have inferior achievement in simple arithmetic compared to their hearing agemates. The reported study investigates whether the reasons for deaf children's poor achievement can be sought in their strategy development. As this is a central issue, the strategies used by deaf children when solving symbolic addition and subtraction problems are identified, classified and compared to findings from earlier research, involving both deaf and hearing children. The effect of Sign Language in strategy invention and use is the main concern in this study. One result from the present study is that structural aspects of Sign Language counting may influence deaf children's thinking in a way that does not lead to a developed conceptual knowledge base, but instead to refined procedural competence. This is a development in simple arithmetic that is compatible with that of less able hearing children. The counting procedures used by the deaf children involve both oral counting and Sign Language counting. Due to the small sample size, and the shortcomings of the research design, the results are more suggestive than conclusive. Thus, further studies are needed in this area.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An Assessment of Statistical Process Control-Based Approaches for Charting Student Evaluation Scores

We compare three control charts for monitoring data from student evaluations of teaching (SET) with the goal of improving student satisfaction with teaching performance. The two charts that we propose are a modified p chart and a z‐score chart. We show that these charts overcome some of the shortcomings of the more traditional charts for analyzing SET data. A comparison of three charts (an individuals chart, the modified p chart, and the z‐score chart) reveals that the modified p chart is the best approach for analyzing SET data because it utilizes distributions that are appropriate for categorical data, and its interpretation is more straightforward. We conclude that administrators and faculty alike can benefit by using the modified p chart to monitor and improve teaching performance as measured by student evaluations.     

Ren-li,reciprocity, judgment,and the question of openness to the Other in the Confucian Lunyu

Here the author takes ren-humanity to be, as Confucius says, an underlying, ineffable, potentially universal human quality, and draws a distinction between three different types of moral capacity in the Lunyu: the man of ren’s capacity for li-proper interactions, his capacity for total reciprocity with another, and his capacity to make moral discriminations. The nature of these moral judgments is then discussed in relation to the praxis of entering into shu-reciprocity with another and that of recognizing others’ actions as being li-proper. A key question is that of whether even an intuitive feeling of commonality, if not identity, with another man-of-ren involves a subjective judgment. Confucius’ view that foreigners can respect ren even if they may not possess it is also discussed. The author suggests that any viable ethical model would need to maintain a universal standard of humaneness while also including a maximum degree of openness to the other.     

Projectively flat arctangent Finsler metric

INTRODUCTION In recent years, significant progress has been made in the study of Finsler metris which have straight lines in local coordinates (Hamel, 1903). Finsler metrics with this property are called locally projectively flat metrics. An important fact about these metrics is that locally projectively flat Finsler metrics have scalar flag curvature, a natural extension of the sectional curvature in Riemannian geometry. In general, it also depends on the direction (flag pole) in the se…     

B Is For Burqa,C Is For Censorship: The Miseducative Effects of Censoring Muslim Girls and Women's Sartorial Discourse

In this article, I add a discursive analysis to the discussion about Muslim girls and women's dress in non-Muslim educational contexts. I argue that a law or policy that prohibits the wearing of khimar, burqa, chador, niqab, hijab, or jilbab in the context of public schools is a form of censorship in educational contexts. This sartorial censorship is miseducative in the sense that it impedes the achievement of important educational goals, especially in public education. I consider the public nature of public education and discuss three sets of miseducative effects: First, the examination of discursive processes, including the production of social norms, is limited. Second, the critical uptake of the banned discourse by female Muslim students themselves is foreclosed, and their agency hindered. Third, a metadiscourse arises that translates individual sartorial discursive acts into generalized terms (such as “veils” and “headscarves”) without noticing what is lost in translation.