Early years teachers and the influence of Piaget: evidence from oral history

In studying the historical development of early years provision, a clear factor in raising its profile was the growth in scientific study of children, especially the reception and interpretation of Piaget's research. For an understanding of how the mediation of new thinking and new discoveries influenced students and teachers, textbooks provide an important documentary source, but evidence is also available through oral history in the living memories of practitioners themselves. This paper draws on the testimony of early years teachers who began their careers between 1927 and 1955 and continued teaching into the 1960s and 1970s. The account below begins with reflections on psychology and education in the early decades of the twentieth century drawn from a 1936 conference organised by the Nursery School Association of Great Britain, and from a widely used textbook that represents the gradual trend towards ‘fragmentation’ of educational theory into a multiplicity of disciplines. Reference is then made to two popular textbooks by prominent Froebelians, Brearley and Hitchfield, and by Ruth Beard illustrating the growing influence of Piaget as a post facto rationale for a pedagogy that was proceeding by instinct. Walkerdine, Lister and Hall are researchers who have investigated from various angles the impact of Piagetian psychology on primary practice, but the process whereby this translation from the laboratory to the classroom takes place is one that demands further investigation. Vital evidence lies in the living memories of early years teachers whose careers spanned the 1930s to the 1970s and a rich quality and personal texture of the data is apparent as retired early years teachers recounted their professional careers. It offers a more complex account than the grand narratives that historians have traditionally compiled from purely documentary evidence centring on great thinkers, key texts and policy initiatives. The role of in‐service education was clearly important in the experiences recalled in this paper. Above all we find evidence of a distinctive shift in teacher–child relationships over that historical period and of the contribution made to this by psychological theory, epitomised in the figure of Piaget and in his focus on the individual learner.     

Cindy Sherman: A Play of Selves. A collaborative approach to conservation

In 2013, The Better Image (TBI) was contacted to examine A Play of Selves, a unique work created by artist Cindy Sherman during her graduate studies in 1975. The work is composed of 244 paper doll-like photographs of Sherman that are presented within 72 frames. During initial condition checks, it was noted that a number of individual elements had begun to show signs of chemical staining. Over the course of 2013/2014, a collaborative response was developed with the help of the artist, the artist's printer, the representing gallery, TBI staff and the owner. The main goal was to address the physical and chemical issues present and preserve this work for future exhibition and study. Determining an effective decision- making model based on a hierarchy of values was crucial before undertaking any conservation treatment, as there were several invested parties, each with a different perspective. The focus of this paper is the interplay of our responsibilities as conservators with the concerns of the artist, her gallery, her printer, and the owner to balance aesthetic vs. physical integrity of the artwork, reversibility of treatments, importance of record keeping while developing a balanced response within a world of rapidly disappearing traditional photographic papers.     

Breaking up is hard to do: the resilience of the rock group as an organizational form for creating music

Though there is a long tradition of band members quitting the group or taking a hiatus, the rock group as an organization to produce music continues to be both popular and economically viable. The research question addressed in this paper is whether or not it is a good idea to quit or take a hiatus from the group. We begin with a discussion of the framework for understanding why groups are formed and why they may be difficult to keep together. We then discuss differences between groups in the decade of the 1960s versus today. We argue that there is something unique about the output of the group even with the changes in the structure of contracts, compensation, and consumer focus on the artist that explain the resilience of the rock band as an organizational form within which to create music. We compare the charting success of bands that have members leave the group with the charting success of the members who left the group. We identified the groups in five representative years: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. We then analyzed the entire Billboard Hot 100 charting careers of those groups and the artists who quit those groups. Our main finding is that when charting success is divided equally among members, going solo pays off—there is a clear economic rationale because solo acts have greater average charting success than the original bands they started in. The other ensuing side projects: duos, collaborations, and other groups are not as lucrative as the original bands. These findings are valid for members of charting groups from each of the 5 years examined. Despite the difficulties in keeping a rock band together, there are fewer band breakups today and remaining with the group generally results in a longer and more productive charting career. Thus, the rock group remains an important organization for producing contemporary music. However, there remains a compelling incentive to go solo. Superstars may benefit from solo projects, but for the average, non-superstar group member, in many circumstances it is better for the band to stay together if the income is divided equally.     

Strategic Capacity and Organisational Capabilities: A Challenge for Universities

Are universities able to operate as strategic actors? An organisational sociology based approach supported by a comparative field research project identifies three types of social, cultural and cognitive processes that play a decisive role in building and implementing local capabilities required to mobilise a strategic capacity. The paper identifies how much these processes are present in the four ideal-types of universities defined by crossing their reputation and their metrics-based performance. Such a meso deterministic perspective suggests that universities may position themselves as proactive actors or principals, and not just as agents of national reforms and political demands. Nevertheless, their ability to do it varies according to their type. The paper also explores the implications of such findings for institutional leadership and steering policymakers.     

Unsustainable Growth,Hyper-Competition,and Worth in Life Science Research: Narrowing Evaluative Repertoires in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scientists’ Work and Lives

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and “hyper-competition.” Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of “regimes of valuation” we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields.     

A learning-based method to detect and segment text from scene images

This paper proposes a learning-based method for text detection and text segmentation in natural scene images. First, the input image is decomposed into multiple connected-components (CCs) by Niblack clustering algorithm. Then all the CCs including text CCs and non-text CCs are verified on their text features by a 2-stage classification module, where most non-text CCs are discarded by an attentional cascade classifier and remaining CCs are further verified by an SVM. All the accepted CCs are output to result in text only binary image. Experiments with many images in different scenes showed satisfactory performance of our proposed method.