An Overview of Canada’s Contemporary Book Trade in Light of (Nearly) Four Decades of Policy Interventions

Canada’s book trade is fascinating not only because it really consists of two book trades—the Anglophone and the Francophone—but also because it is a site of intense and sustained policy interventions designed to foster greater domestic control. Examining the country’s book policies, Statistics Canada data, trade association membership rosters and trade directories, this paper reveals that Canada’s contemporary book trade is characterized by three features: circa 40 years of government interventions in response to foreign dominance; the central role of foreign firms despite these interventions; and the dominance of Toronto and Montreal as domestic sites of book production.     

Connecting a Museum with Its Community

Abstract The exhibition, Changing Places: From Black and White to Technicolor, at the Levine Museum of the New South, in Charlotte, North Carolina, is more than a story about a changing community—it’s a platform for an experience that engages its local audience.     

Virtual worlds and moral evaluation

Consider the multi-user virtual worlds of online games such as EVE and World of Warcraft, or the multi-user virtual world of Second Life. Suppose a player performs an action in one of these worlds, via his or her virtual character, which would be wrong, if the virtual world were real. What is the moral status of this virtual action? In this paper I consider arguments for and against the Asymmetry Thesis: the thesis that such virtual actions are never wrong. I also explain how the truth of the Asymmetry Thesis is closely aligned with the possibility of what Edward Castronova has called closed synthetic worlds. With some qualifications, the ultimate conclusion is that the Asymmetry Thesis is false and that these closed worlds are impossible.     

Examining online consumers’ behavior: A service-oriented view

Retailers’ websites are an important interface between retailers and their customers. The various features and elements that retailers include on their websites play a critical role in attracting customers and ensuring their satisfaction with the online shopping process. By conducting a three-phased study, we identify how the elements of a website shape customers’ salient beliefs. These salient beliefs, in turn, determine the level of customers’ satisfaction with the website. This study provides both theoretical insights into the beliefs of online shoppers and practical insights for retail website operators. Specifically, we argue that when retail websites are constructed to include several specific elements that appeal to the key salient beliefs of information quality, service quality, and system quality, retailers will increase customers’ satisfaction with the online shopping process.     

Promoting positive attitudes towards science and religion among sixth‐form pupils: dealing with scientism and creationism

A sample of 187 female students, attending a sixth‐form study day on religious studies, completed a questionnaire containing four scales concerned with assessing: attitude towards theistic religion, attitude towards science, scientism and creationism. The data demonstrated a negative correlation between attitude towards religion and attitude towards science. However, this negative correlation was transformed into a positive correlation after taking into account individual differences in the students’ views about scientism and creationism. The implications of this finding are discussed in the context of the increasing support within society for the teaching of alternatives to evolution within the science curriculum. The authors argue both that it is important to challenge scientism by developing a better understanding of the role and limits of scientific methods, and that religious belief about creation should be recognised as essentially a claim about the ontological dependence of nature rather than about the details of its origins and development.     

Training and performance improvement professionals' perspectives on ethical challenges during evaluation

Ethical concerns are rising in the business world. With this in mind, training and performance improvement practitioners, especially during evaluation projects, should be aware of principles and codes of ethics, and their behaviors and decisions should reflect the standards recognized by members of the professional society. A study was conducted with 108 training and performance improvement practitioners to reveal the reasoning behind their judgments of ethically challenging evaluation situations and to understand their rationales through the lens of existing guiding principles. Participants read three scenarios and judged the ethicality of the evaluator's actions in each scenario. Results revealed that participants who were aware of both the International Society for Performance Improvement's Code of Ethics and American Evaluation Association's Guiding Principles for Evaluators were stricter in their judgments about the ethicality of one scenario than those who were not. This article discusses implications of the results and higher education's role in reinforcing an ethical culture and ethical practice by employees.     

Teachers' perceptions of students' excuses for academic difficulties

Ninety-seven teachers described situations in which their students experienced academic difficulties and gave reasons (excuses) to explain their difficulties. Teachers indicated whether or not they believed the reasons students gave, what they thought the “real” reasons for the students' difficulties were, and how they reacted and behaved toward the students. Analysis of teachers' reports indicated that students were most likely to attribute their academic difficulties to external, uncontrollable factors, whereas teachers tended to believe that the “real” reasons for students' difficulties were internal and controllable. Teachers reported that they would react in a positive manner toward the students whether or not they believed the reasons the students gave to explain their difficulties. Implications of these findings for student motivation are discussed.     

Of Mice and Manga: Comics and Graphic Novels in Art Education

A justification for the inclusion of graphic comic art in post-14 art education following the development of graphic novels in Europe, Japan and the USA. in recent years. The case is based on the visual dynamics of the medium and the potential for a critical realism which can be exploited in students’ studio practice and research. Particular attention is given to the Holocaust novel Maus and selected Japanese ‘Manga’ comics which have made an impact in the west, such as Barefoot Gen and Adolf. The article analyses the various innovative visual forms that these graphic novels utilise and considers their effectiveness as a vehicle for practice and research in the institutional art curriculum.