Building Relationships through Communities of Practice: Museums and Indigenous People

Abstract This paper explores the theory of “communities of practice” and how the ideas contained in it could be applied to museums, by demonstrating how a key stakeholder group, Indigenous people, have been involved with and engaged in the work of the Australian Museum, Sydney, over the past 30 years. It is suggested that the processes museums have developed in building relationships with Indigenous people, particularly at the practitioner level, could form a template for how museums make themselves relevant to broader communities through active engagement with multiple communities of practice.     

Expectancies as mediators in the differential-reward conditional discrimination performance of pigeons

In a series of within-subject experiments employing a two-choice delayed conditional discrimination task, pigeons chose correctly more often when kind of correct choice and kind of reinforcer were perfectly correlated than when uncorrelated. Correct choice behavior fell to chance levels when the correlation was reversed or when it was removed by using only one kind of reinforcer. Implications for mediation theories are discussed, with the conclusion being that, although the possibility that instrumental mediators are present in this situation cannot be dismissed, the overall pattern of results indicates that classical mediators are of principal importance in this type of task.     

Endogenous technical advance and the stochastic trend in output: A neoclassical approach

In the recent endogenous growth literature, the trend in output is stochastic, while investment in scientific knowledge is treated as analogous to a capital stock. This paper models both research and development (R&D) and disembodied technical advance using neo-classical equations, which specify the equilibrium stocks as a function of prices and output. The elasticity of R&D in the production function, estimated using factor shares, is time-varying and increasing. Returns to scale are increasing in all factors. The most important aspect of the model is that the equilibrium rate of technical advance is not cyclically invariant, but co-moves with output at business cycle frequencies. This allows the production function to behave as a stochastic trend. Growth accounting demonstrates that long-term variations in the rate of productivity growth have been associated mainly with low-frequency fluctuations in the rate of disembodied technical advance, with secondary effects from the stocks of R&D and physical capital. During the high productivity period 1948–1972, technical advance contributed 1.48 percentage points per year to output, with 0.98 accounted for by R&D. The productivity slowdown of the mid-1970s was accounted by a gradual decline in the effect of R&D, and a more abrupt collapse in disembodied technology. The subsequent productivity revival was associated with two accelerations in disembodied technical advance, the first beginning in the early 1980s, and the second in the mid-1990s. The production function is simulated in a small econometric model. Model simulations find that exogenous shocks to the inflation rate generate significant variations in growth by inducing fluctuations in disembodied technology.     

Tipping Trouble

给小费？这在中国似乎不必。对于小费,各国有各国的讲究。在日本,如果给小费的话,会被认为是非常不礼貌的;而在美国,如果不给小费。服务员也许会追到街上问你要。     

Beyond an “Either–Or” approach to home- and center-based child care: Comparing children and families who combine care types with those who use just one

Most research focuses on preschoolers’ primary non-parental child care arrangement despite evidence that multiple arrangements are relatively common. Using the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we compare characteristics and outcomes of families whose 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care with those who attend either home- or center-based care exclusively or receive no non-parental care at all. We find that about one fifth of 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care. Mothers’ priorities for care (getting their child ready for school, matching their families’ cultural background) and perceptions of good local care options predict their combining home- and center-based care. Preschoolers score higher on reading and math assessments, on average, when they attend centers, alone or in combination with home-based child care, than when they are cared for only in homes, either by their parents or by others. Preschoolers’ average socioemotional outcomes generally do not differ between families who do and who do not combine care types. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

On the Dangers of Antiquarian Investigations: Nietzsche,the Excesses of History,and the Power of Forgetting

Drawing on Nietzsche’s insights as well as those of his critics, this article explores the dangers and limitations of the antiquarian type of historical investigations. The author begins his analysis by closely examining Nietzsche’s conception of antiquarian history and explaining why he finds this mode of historical investigation so troubling. Next he shows that the problem that Nietzsche associates with the antiquarian type of historicizing can be seen in a contemporary genealogical investigation: Daniel Mendelsohn’s book The Lost. Returning to Nietzsche, he then analyzes the meaning and value of his notion of the ‘power of forgetting’ and argues that it can serve as an antidote to some of the dangers of antiquarian history. In the final part of this article the author examines how the power of forgetting might be educationally valuable.     

Ratings by Counselors Without Teaching Experience And Their Principals Regarding Performance of Guidance Functions

This study compared principal and self ratings of performance of guidance functions for practicing counselors who did not have teaching experience. The sample consisted of 43 counselors and their principals from throughout the United States. The ratings indicate better-than-average initial counselor acceptance by administrators, teachers, students, and parents with the degree of acceptance being greater after they had counseled for a while. Principal and self ratings differed significantly on initial acceptance by students and present acceptance by other counselors. Ratings of acceptance by both school psychologists and social workers were below average. There was no significant difference in counselor and principal ratings of counselor understanding of various school procedures and policies or of their ability to perform basic guidance activities. A majority of the principals who had worked with the counselors with non-teaching backgrounds indicated they would recommend the hiring of such a person to their school board.