How does the World Trade Organization know? The mobilization and staging of scientific expertise in the GMO trade dispute

The World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement procedure is a key arena for establishing global legal norms for what counts as relevant knowledge. As a high-profile case, the WTO trade dispute on GMOs mobilized scientific expertise in somewhat novel ways. Early on, the Panel put the dispute under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement through a new legal ontology; it classified transgenes as potential pests and limited all environmental issues to the 'plant and animal health' category. The selection of scientific experts sought a multi-party consensus through a fast adversarial process, reflecting a specific legal epistemology. For the SPS framing, focusing on the defendant's regulatory procedures, the Panel staged scientific expertise in specific ways that set up how experts were questioned, the answers they would give, their specific role in the legal arena, and the way their statements would complement the Panel's findings. In these ways, the dispute settlement procedure co-produced legal and scientific expertise within the Panel's SPS framework. Moreover, the Panel operated a procedural turn in WTO jurisprudence by representing its findings as a purely legal-administrative judgement on whether the EC's regulatory procedures violated the SPS Agreement, while keeping implicit its own judgements on substantive risk issues. As this case illustrates, the WTO settlement procedure mobilizes scientific expertise for sophisticated, multiple aims: it recruits a source of credibility from the scientific arena, thus reinforcing the standard narrative of 'science-based trade discipline', while also constructing new scientific expertise for the main task--namely, challenging trade restrictions for being unduly cautious.     

Talking and thinking together at Key Stage 1

In this paper, we describe an innovative approach to promoting effective classroom‐based groupwork and the development of children's speaking and listening at Key Stage 1. This approach, known as Thinking Together, was initially developed for use with Key Stage 2 children. The work reported here explains how this approach has now been applied to the teaching of speaking and listening at Key Stage 1. The approach is founded on contemporary sociocultural theory and research. At the heart of the Thinking Together approach is a concern to help children build and develop their knowledge and understanding together, through enabling them to practise and develop ways of reasoning with language.     

Drawing on the Artist Outside: Towards 1999

This paper gives a summary of a presentation made by Glen Coutts and an exhibition organised by Mark Dawes at the InSEA conference held in Glasgow during July 1997. It concerns recent developments and initiatives using artists, designers and students in Scottish schools. The presentation at InSEA was supported by slides of the students’ work and an outline of the processes used in each of the workshop sessions. During the presentation the conference had the opportunity to view the results of collaboration between artists, students and school children aged between 10 and 14 years. These projects took place over a period of five to six months, and have resulted in an ambitious project which will be completed during 1999, Glasgow’s year as UK City of Architecture and Design. The projects used visual artists to expand and enhance the art activities normally taking place in the schools. This paper reports on the following areas: developments in Art & Design Education in Scotland – the context for artists in schools, Artists and Education – two case studies and future developments – towards 1999.     

Impulsive cognitive tempo in severe and mild learning disabled children

The purpose of the study was to compare the performance of severe and mild learning disabled children to normal children on a problem-solving task. The three types of children were assessed on the Matching Familiar Figures task, which provides a measure of impulsivity during problem-solving tasks. Results indicated that on the MFF, LD children, as a group, were more impulsive than normal children, and severe LD were more impulsive than mild LD children. Impulsivity scores were correlated with reading achievement, indicating a relationship between problem-solving strategy and academic performance. Educational implications are discussed regarding the usefulness of the reflection-impulsivity dimension in the area of learning disabilities and the applicability of the MFF as a diagnostic and evaluative measure.     

Impact of family abuse on running away, deviance, and street victimization among homeless rural and urban youth

PROBLEM: Various demographic and familial risk factors have been linked to runaway behavior. To date, there has not been a systematic investigation of the impact of size of community on runaway behavior. This study will compare runaways from smaller cities and rural areas to their urban counterparts. METHODS: A convenience sample of 602 adolescents was interviewed between 1995 and August of 1996 in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, USA. Multiple regression was used to examine the association between gender, neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, geographic and family structure change, and community size of first runaway to predict age at first runaway, deviant subsistence strategies, and street victimization. RESULTS: Findings indicate that adolescents exposed to neglect (beta=-.20) and sexual abuse (beta=-.16) ran away sooner and were more likely to be victimized on the street. Rural adolescents who experienced higher levels of physical abuse relied more heavily on deviant subsistence strategies (beta=.15) and remained in abusive homes longer (beta=.15) than their similarly situated urban counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Rural youth who have been subjected to elevated levels of familial abuse are at greater risk of deviant subsistence strategies, which increase the likelihood of street victimization.     

Stewardship and usefulness: Policy principles for information-based transparency

This paper is a conceptual and empirical exploration of the tensions inherent in the drive to increase openness and transparency in government by means of information access and dissemination. The idea that democratic governments should be open, accessible, and transparent to the governed is receiving renewed emphasis through the combination of government reform efforts and the emergence of advanced technology tools for information access. Although these initiatives are young, they already exhibit daunting complexity, with significant management, technology, and policy challenges. A variety of traditional and emerging information policy frameworks offer guidance, while diverse research perspectives highlight both challenges to and opportunities for promoting information-based transparency. Early experience with Data.gov, a central component of the U.S. Open Government Initiative, suggests that two fundamental information policy principles, stewardship and usefulness, can help guide and evaluate efforts to achieve information-based transparency.