Conflict Resolution & Recognition of Diversity via an Art Experience

Most school districts in our world expect teachers and students to behave in a manner that promotes tolerance and peaceful conflict resolution. This is not always easily accomplished, mostly because few have had any formal training in issues of diversity and conflict resolution beyond conventional life situations, and issues and circumstances reach crisis levels before they are addressed. Students and teachers and the communities in which they function need to have an ongoing dialogue that progressively helps all to understand and deal with issues of diversity and conflict. An established means to understanding who we are and why we do what we do is to generate an aesthetic distance to observe for understanding those and that which we call ‘other.’ This workshop was an encounter with ‘others’ (flora, fauna, cultures, social constructs%) whom we created (and whom we implicitly re-presented as metaphors for ourselves and ‘others’ in our world) through the making of a three-dimensional mural of four separate geophysical regions with four distinct cultures that have never encountered one another. How they eventually encounter one another and what occurs because of this encounter is the mirror each group holds up to itself. Subsequent discussion encompasses not only the hypothetical cultures and how their members dealt with the challenges of change, disaster, and forced integration but also how or if the people within the workshop groups co-operated or resolved conflict to create the murals and their cultural representations.     

The boundary-spanning role of a cooperative support organization: managing the paradox of stability and change in non-traditional organizations

This project provides an interpretation of how one cooperative support organization, the Nebraska Cooperative Council, discursively functions to help its constituent cooperatives consolidate resources in order to better intersect with organizations in a larger bureaucratic system. In analyzing qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, surveys, and organizational documents, we found the paradox of stability and change a revealing prism through which to make sense of participants' experiences. We work toward locating and describing how the Council, through its boundary-spanning activities, helps cooperatives manage the paradox of stability and change while protecting their core participatory ideologies. By providing networks of learning, promoting the legitimacy of cooperative forms of organizing, and protecting cooperatives' interests, the Council is an entity helping cooperatives to reconcile their internal requirements for democracy with the external demands of the marketplace.     

The Contribution of Schooling to Literacy in Guatemala

The authors of this paper examine the relationship between level of schooling and literacy attainment in four rural communities in Guatemala. They first identify the grade at which most children become literate. Secondly, they estimate the net contribution of schooling to literacy. Finally, they ask whether literacy skills acquired under poor or restricted school conditions are likely to be lost over time after the pupil has left school.     

Browse and navigate: An advance in database access methods

This paper discusses the database design developed by the authors' company for its new range of database systems as an example of a design of database which allows a wider range of capabilities than does the conventional IR database. The paper discusses the range of searching options which are now possible. It describes how searches may be prestructured to pinpoint the desired target items, which are then selected from a browsable display. It describes the navigation capability which allows the user to move from record to record within the database, thus facilitating the extraction of “related” information. The design is discussed from the user viewpoint, and emphasis is placed on the facilities and how they complement existing Boolean/key access facilities.     

Technical Communication and Physical Location: Topoi and Architecture in Computer Classrooms

This essay presents analyses of two of the ten site visits of computer classrooms (CCRs) conducted between 1998 and 2003. The two sites are located institutionally within departments of English of two U.S. university campuses. The two CCRs examined here were: (1) observed on site by the author in 2000 and 2001; (2) analyzed according to a set of criteria established before the on-site analyses; and (3) photographed. In addition, a digital writing-rhetoric and/or technical writing faculty member was interviewed in person during each site visit. The analysis, part of a book-length project, provides partial data for determining some kinds of physical and architectural/design issues that existed in selected CCRs in the early 2000s and in a number of similar digital environments today