Culture without “world”: Australian cultural policy in the age of stupid

In March 2013, after six years of consultation, an Australian Labor government launched the national cultural policy document, Creative Australia. In July 2013, a Coalition government was elected, Senator George Brandis became Minister for the Arts, and the policy was dumped. With it went cross-party consensus about funding rationales and measurement strategies, with disastrous consequences for the cultural sector. This cautionary tale of gaffes, pay-back and abrupt changes of direction, highlights the fragility of policy memory that condemns artists and arts managers to a never-ending reinvention of the evidentiary wheel. Our paper examines the problem of collective understanding (“world”) in cultural policy-making in Australia, exacerbated not only by the short-term electoral cycles which undermine long-term cultural outcome timescales, but by a fixation on what Hannah Arendt calls “the peculiar and ingenious replacement of common sense with strict logicality”. Evidence of value is only meaningful when it occurs in a policy memory that can fully avow it and respond in appropriate ways. Measurement methods are over-determined by epistemology and by experience. We argue that the balance between these determinants of effective cultural policy-making has been lost. An emphasis on numerical data – especially economic data – has forced arguments for culture into a decontextualised register of quantitative proof. Recent events in Australia suggest that different, more direct ways of engaging with cultural policy-making are required for the problem of collective understanding to be successfully assayed.     

Could Slackline Training Complement the FIFA 11+ Programme Regarding Training of Neuromuscular Control?

The current study compared changes in neuromuscular control between slackline training and the stabilization training elements of the FIFA 11+ programme. Twenty-five students in 2 groups performed a 12-unit training programme. The slackline training group (n?=?13) exclusively trained with a slackline. The stabilization training group (n?=?12) practised exercises as described in the second part of the FIFA 11+ programme. Improvements in balance were assessed using three tests for dynamic, quasi-static, and perturbed postural control: the star excursion balance test (SEBT), the closed-eye single-leg stance, and the MFT S3-Check. Both groups significantly improved the stability and sensorimotor index of the MFT S3-Check (p?<?.001), their range on the SEBT (p?<?.001), and the duration of closed-eye single-leg stance (p?<?.001). The group?×?training interaction was significant for the MFT S3-Check (stability index: p?=?.042; sensorimotor index: p?=?.004) and the SEBT (dominant leg: p?=?.003; averaged both legs: p?=?.016), with the slackline training group showing a larger training effect than the stabilization training group. The results of the present study suggest that slackline training offers similar – or better – improvements in neuromuscular control as the FIFA 11+ warm-up programme. If compliance with the FIFA 11+ programme is declining, then slacklining might offer an alternative approach to reach the training goals of improved sensorimotor control.     

Communication Research and General Media

William B. Fairley and Frederick Mosteller, eds. Statistics and Public Policy (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1977— price not given)

Julian L. Simon's Basic. Research Methods in Social Sciences: The Art of Empirical Investigation (New York: Random House, 1978—$14.95)

Delbert C. Miller's Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement (New York: McKay, 1978—$14.95, with a paperback edition available)

James Monaco, ed. Media Culture and Celebrity: The Media as Image Makers (New York: Delta Books (Dell), 1978—$4.95 each, paper)     

混合式数学学习中的微课设计研究

随着无线网络与智能移动终端的普及和视频传输技术的成熟,网络学习的范围进一步扩大,移动学习在许多正式与非正式的场合迅速开展。适应碎片时间学习的“微课（Microlecture）”成为当前教育研究领域的一大热点。本文通过分析网络学习（e-Learning）、混合式学习（Blending Learning）、微课（Microlecture）之间的关系,比较几个著名微课网站中的数学微课,指出基于混合式数学学习的微课的设计与制作特色,供研究者与设计者参考。     

Community Level Factors and Child Maltreatment Rates

Using census and administrative agency data for 177 urban census tracts, variation in rates of officially reported child maltreatment is found to be related to structural determinants of community social organization: economic and family resources, residential instability, household and age structure, and geographic proximity of neighborhoods to concentrated poverty. Furthermore, child maltreatment rates are found to be intercorrelated with other indicators of the breakdown of community social control and organization. These other indicators are similarly affected by the structural dimensions of neighborhood context. Children who live in neighborhoods that are characterized by poverty, excessive numbers of children per adult resident, population turnover, and the concentration of female-headed families are at highest risk of maltreatment. This analysis suggests that child maltreatment is but one manifestation of community social organization and that its occurrence is related to some of the same underlying macro-social conditions that foster other urban problems.     

Using Simulations to Teach Leadership Roles

This paper investigates the nature of informal learning through a study of children's (age 9-13) use of chatrooms and in a computer games class in an out-of-school-centre. The paper discusses contemporary policy interest in the concept but argues that it loses value for educationalists except as "critical lens" to explore formal learning. Key elements of informal learning are dissected and close analysis of children's talk in informal learning situations is analysed in terms of its pedagogic structure.