Comfort,Class and Climate Change: The Rise of Glass in Late Medieval and Early Modern Domestic Architecture

ABSTRACT

In the modern world, glass windows are considered an indispensable element of the built environment. Throughout premodern times, however, glass was not universally used in European architecture. This article argues that the rise of glass in Western architecture was neither an inevitable nor a linear process, but rather a response to certain social, cultural and environmental factors that gained increasing relevance from the late medieval period onwards. In other words, glass windows are a cultural convention, reflecting some of the wide-ranging and transformative challenges that Europeans faced in the late medieval and early modern period.     

You’ll never watch alone: media and community in the sports bar

This paper positions itself within the ongoing debate about the impact of media on community generated by Robert Putnam’s research. Accordingly, the increasing availability of sophisticated means of communication has led the progressive substitution of indirect interactions for direct interactions in shared space, thereby eroding an essential basis of community. In contrast, other theoretical perspectives have presented communication technologies as either enhancing community by altering the field of possible social interactions or incapable of replacing direct interactions. This debate is addressed through an ethnography of fans who gathered at a sports bar to watch the World Cup. Observations revealed that while televised broadcasts served as a primary motivation for attendance and a centrepiece of subsequent interactions, patrons did not watch alone; they watched with each other.     

K–12 and University Educators Working Together Toward Change: Initiating a Conversation About Practice

This case study of a joint school/university professional development opportunity explored how 12 practitioners came together to examine change in light of discrepancies between current practice in local schools and promising practices recommended in the literature for students identified as having significant disabilities. The group met monthly over the course of one school year to study action research and to examine aspects of individual practice and their emerging identity as a community of learners. Participants explored perceptions about promising practice relative to actual practice engaged in by K–12 teachers, the impact of ongoing structured conversation on individual practice, and the impact of group membership for both individual participants and school/university partnerships. After one academic year, participants reported that the impact of this structured conversation was highly meaningful with respect to positive change in individual practice, the creation of a new support network for participants, and the development of new understandings between university and K–12 practitioners. Findings are discussed in light of implications for researchers, teacher educators, and K–12 practitioners in their various roles as agents of social change.