An embedding approach to the stability of some nonlinear discrete systems

An embedding approach is proposed to investigate the stability of some nonlinear sampled data systems. It is shown that the stability criterion so obtained may conclude for stability when other criteria do not apply. The approach could be extended in a more general way.     

“We want to see you sex it up and be slutty:” post-feminism and sports media’s appearance double standard

The notion that women in the United States’ electronic sports media face greater standards of appearance is not new (Sheffer, M. L., & Schultz, B. (2007) Double standard: Why women have trouble getting jobs in local television sports. Journal of Sports Media, 2(1), 77–101). What has not been explored, however, is the persistence of this double standard through a Foucauldian lens. Using Michel Foucault’s (Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: Vol. 1, an introduction. New York: Vintage Books) power/knowledge paradigm, this Foucauldian discourse analysis uses one-on-one interviews with women sportscasters and textual analysis to grapple with this previously unexplored aspect of one of electronic sports media’s longest standing gendered double standards.

Using these data, this article argues that post-feminist discourses (Gill, R. (2007) Gender and the media. Cambridge: Polity Press; McRobbie, A. (2004) Post-feminism and popular culture. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), 255–264) have a mutually informing relationship with three manifestations of the electronic sports media’s gendered double standard of appearance: sportscaster hiring and retention, inequitable media consumer evaluations of on-screen appearance, and expectations for sportscaster dress, the latter of which have required many women to wear increasingly revealing clothing, a trend this article refers to as nightclubification. While post-feminist analysis explicates the nuances of the appearance double standard and the electronic sports media’s contributions to our culture’s constructions of gender relations, Foucauldian discourse analysis demonstrates how the appearance double standard has been taken for granted and how it might inform other obstacles women in the industry must navigate.     

The ‘datafication’ of early years pedagogy: ‘if the teaching is good,the data should be good and if there’s bad teaching,there is bad data’

Following the election of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat UK coalition Government in 2010, there has been an urgent intensification and focus upon early years numeracy and literacy and promoting systematic synthetic phonics. This paper argues that the current narrowing of early years assessment, along with increased inspection and surveillance, operates as a policy technology leading to an intensification of ‘school readiness’ pressures upon the earliest stage of education. The paper suggests that this governance has encouraged a functional ‘datafication’ of early years pedagogy so that early years teacher’s work is increasingly constrained by performativity demands to produce ‘appropriate’ data. The article argues that early years high-stakes national assessments act as a ‘meta-policy’, ‘steering’ early years pedagogy ‘from a distance’ and have the power to challenge, disrupt and constrain early years teacher’s deeply held child-centred pedagogical values.     

Communication between Participants and Non-participants in Analytical Capacity Building Projects: Management Advice to Family Farms in Benin

Purpose: Approaches to build farmers' analytical capacities are said to trigger wide-ranging changes. This article reports on the communication process between participants and non-participants in one such approach, related to the technical and management skills learned by participants and the changes these participants subsequently made, and the outcomes in terms of non-participants' learning.

Design/Methodology/Approach: In this study, we analysed the following: (1) participants' learning and changes in social practices; (2) communication between participants and non-participants regarding technical and management skills and changes in social practices; (3) non-participants' learning and changes in social practices. The case study was a management advice to family farm project in three villages in Benin.

Findings: Most participants learned management skills, which led them to reassess their objectives and to reduce traditional social practices they now considered unproductive. Even in the case of frequent communication, non-participants found it difficult to learn management skills, which hindered their experiential learning. Non-participants consequently had difficulty understanding why participants changed their social practices such as reduction of their traditional gift giving, leading to limited well-argued discussion about these changes in practices between participants and non-participants.

Practical Implications: This study shows that, due to the limited learning process of non-participants communicating with participants, there is a need to design and test approaches to achieve capacity-building while including more participants at a similar cost, and to stimulate explicit discussion at village level about the changes in values and social practices that these approaches may trigger.

Originality/Value: The article analyses both participants and non-participants' experiential learning, and looks at the two sides of the interaction between the communication processes and non-participants' learning.     

Evaluation and Reward Systems: The Key Shapers of Organization Culture

Evaluation and reward processes, more so than communication, access to information, problem solving, work design, and training shape an organization's culture and employee's attitudes. The three most popular evaluation systems—MBO, BARS, and the 360 degree—encourage competition and even conflict by emphasizing individual performance. This emphasis is made stronger when the bell‐shaped density curve is used to categorize employees so that the weakest can be terminated. The evaluation and reward process should, instead, encourage cooperation.     

Using video analysis to support prospective K-8 teachers’ noticing of students’ multiple mathematical knowledge bases

As part of a larger research project aimed at transforming preK-8 mathematics teacher preparation, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which prospective teachers notice children’s competencies related to children’s mathematical thinking, and children’s community, cultural, and linguistic funds of knowledge or what we refer to as children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases. Teachers’ noticing supports students’ learning in deep and meaningful ways. Researchers designed and enacted a video analysis activity with prospective teachers in their mathematics methods course. The activity served as a decomposition of practice in order to support prospective teachers in engaging in an approximation of the practice of noticing. Our findings showed that prospective teachers evidenced noticing of mathematics teaching and learning as early as the mathematics methods course. We also found that the prompts and structure of the activity supported prospective teachers by increasing their depth of noticing and their foci in noticing, moving from attending primarily to teacher moves (and merely describing what they saw) to becoming aware of significant interactions (and interpreting effects of these interactions on learning). Implications for teacher educators interested in designing and enacting activities to support noticing are discussed.