Policy Intensions and the Folds of the Self

In this essay, P. Taylor Webb and Kalervo N. Gulson argue that educational policy is a spatial process and that implementation processes in particular produce crucial emergent geographies for policy research. Webb and Gulson describe how emergent geographies are produced when policy folds actors through senses and enactments of policy. The idea that policy is sensed and enacted is developed into the concept of a policy intension that extends approaches to spatial and, in particular, micropolitical analyses in policy research. Webb and Gulson conclude by discussing cartographical methods that better map the geographies of subjectivity produced through policy intensions.     

A White Veneer: Education policy,space and “race” in the inner city

This paper explores how neo-liberal education policy change and urban renewal in inner Sydney and London has interacted with “raced” and classed educational identities. I draw on two examples of policy change, the Building the Future policy development in the inner city area of Sydney and the “Excellence in Cities” partnership programme in East London. The paper outlines, and applies, a spatial education policy sociology framework to explore the interplay of space, place, “race” and education policy. This paper suggests that in inner Sydney and London “whiteness” as a racial construct is present but noticeably absent and that this absent presence creates a “white veneer” around educational policy change and urban renewal.     

Validating simulated interaction for retrieval evaluation

A searcher’s interaction with a retrieval system consists of actions such as query formulation, search result list interaction and document interaction. The simulation of searcher interaction has recently gained momentum in the analysis and evaluation of interactive information retrieval (IIR). However, a key issue that has not yet been adequately addressed is the validity of such IIR simulations and whether they reliably predict the performance obtained by a searcher across the session. The aim of this paper is to determine the validity of the common interaction model (CIM) typically used for simulating multi-query sessions. We focus on search result interactions, i.e., inspecting snippets, examining documents and deciding when to stop examining the results of a single query, or when to stop the whole session. To this end, we run a series of simulations grounded by real world behavioral data to show how accurate and responsive the model is to various experimental conditions under which the data were produced. We then validate on a second real world data set derived under similar experimental conditions. We seek to predict cumulated gain across the session. We find that the interaction model with a query-level stopping strategy based on consecutive non-relevant snippets leads to the highest prediction accuracy, and lowest deviation from ground truth, around 9 to 15% depending on the experimental conditions. To our knowledge, the present study is the first validation effort of the CIM that shows that the model’s acceptance and use is justified within IIR evaluations. We also identify and discuss ways to further improve the CIM and its behavioral parameters for more accurate simulations.     

ExpansionTool: Concept-Based Query Expansion and Construction

We develop a deductive data model for concept-based query expansion. It is based on three abstraction levels: the conceptual, linguistic and string levels. Concepts and relationships among them are represented at the conceptual level. The linguistic level gives natural language expressions for concepts. Each expression has one or more matching patterns at the string level. The models specify the matching of the expression in database indices built in varying ways. The data model supports a declarative concept-based query expansion and formulation tool, the ExpansionTool, for heterogeneous IR system environments. Conceptual expansion is implemented by a novel intelligent operator for traversing transitive relationships among cyclic concept networks. The number of expansion links followed, their types, and weights can be used to control expansion. A sample empirical experiment illustrating the use of the ExpansionTool in IR experiments is presented.     

Cardinality estimation in numeric on-line databases

Numeric on-line databases (NDBs) have become essential in information retrieval (IR). NDBs differ from traditional bibliographic databases (BDBs) with respect to their content, structural complexity, data manipulation capabilities and the complexity of the user interfaces and user charging schemes. Recent trends in user charging for all on-line IR are toward charging for the information actually retrieved from the database rather than for the connect-time. However, the viability of such charging schemes depends on the user's possibilities of estimating the charges in advance, during the query negotiating phase. The problem of advance charge estimation in NDBs is addressed in this paper. In order to solve this problem, a method for estimating the numbers of data items satisfying the query expressions, i.e. the query cardinalities, is required. In this paper, an approach for advance estimation of query charges is developed and, based on it, a systematic and general method for query cardinality estimation is defined. The approach and the method are based on the well-known relational data model (RDM). The method is adapted to the new application area, user charge estimation in NDBs, and provides several improvements with respect to earlier cardinality estimation methods. Based on the method, several types of user charges can be estimated in advance. Tools based on the method are necessary components of query interfaces to NDBs if non-connect-timebased charging is used. The approach and the method are directly applicable to RDM-based NDBs.     

School choice in the stratilingual city of Vancouver

This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle‐class parents choose a predominantly white school – whose students are non‐ESL and have a second language choice of French – in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle‐class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle‐class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a stratilingual society in Canada.     

The neo-liberal education policies of epimeleia heautou: caring for the self in school markets

The paper argues that neo-liberal education policy has capitalized on a historical concern to care for the self, or the Greek epimeleia heautou. We discuss epimeleia heautou in relation to education policies that emphasize greater choice in curriculum offerings, and in relation to school choice policies more generally. Thus, a premise of our argument is that school choice policies accommodate a much greater range of selves to be cared for. The analysis examines the neo-liberal subject, homo ?conomicus, in relation to education policy that produces choices of the self and choices for its care. We conclude by discussing conceptions of the self in relation to two aporias of neo-liberal educational equality produced through ethnic-specific schools.