Teaching managing diversity via feminist theory

This paper explores a project to design and mount a unit on ‘managing diversity’. For its conceptual framework the unit draws on feminist theories of struggles for equity and social justice and the various policy approaches that workplace equality agents have correspondingly developed. Despite the emphasis on feminist theory, the paper makes no attempt to compare gender equity initiatives with strategies for managing diversity. Rather, some of the tensions are identified between the culturalist aims of the Managing Diversity movement and the redistributive goals that generated affirmative action and equal employment opportunities strategies; and it is suggested how an analysis of those tensions may promote increased student understanding of the topic. Secondly, it is assessed how a unit may juxtapose industrial relations and human resource management concepts to the benefit of curricula in both.In planning a new unit, moreover, it is not only the content which needs to be considered, but also the students' prior learning experience and the politics of persuading one's colleagues of the proposal's worth. Thus an account of these more pragmatic issues is integrated into the discussion.     

Selected schedules of reinforcement in the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus)

Wild black-tailed prairie dogs were run on FR, FI, VR, and VI schedules for Noyes pellet reinforcement. Cumulative barpress responses, postreinforcement pause lengths, and responses per second were recorded. The highest response rates occurred in the VR schedules, with the lowest response rates coming in the FI schedules. Fixed-ratio schedules had the longest postreinforcement pauses, VI schedules had the shortest. At the upper levels of the fixed-ratio schedules (FR 90–100), the animals ceased to respond consistently. Generally, data from prairie dogs were consistent with data reported in studies from other mammalian species.     

Culturally reimagining education: Publicity,aesthetics and socially engaged art practice

Abstract

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not.     

Assisting secondary support teachers to work in the recommended service delivery model: introducing the concept of a subculture of learning support

The original concept of a subculture of learning support in secondary schools developed from a study of ‘Support Teachers, Learning Difficulties’ in New South Wales, Australia. The study examined the influence of school culture on the service delivery model used by these support teachers in three case studies, one of which is reported in this article. Both research and policy recommend consultation and co‐teaching with a minimum of withdrawal of students with learning difficulties for intensive instruction. To employ the recommended service delivery model it was found that support teachers need to be immersed in a subculture of learning support within the school, which involves interacting with others who share similar values and beliefs about the education of students with learning difficulties. If such a subculture does not exist the support teacher must play a major role in its development. The use of the recommended service delivery model will enhance the education provided for students with learning difficulties.     

Instrumental responding by rats on free-operant schedules with components that schedule response-dependent reinforcer omission: Implications for optimization theories

In two experiments, we assessed whether rats optimize the number of reinforcers per response. In Experiment 1, one group of rats was trained to leverpress for food reinforcement on a simple variable-interval (VI) 60-sec schedule. For another group, a negative fixed-ratio component was imposed on the VI schedule to produce a conjoint contingency in which reinforcement became available on the VI schedule but was omitted when the ratio criterion was satisfied. In Experiment 2, one group of rats responded on a VI schedule and also received response-independent food. For another group, responding above a certain rate canceled the response-independent food. Despite the negative contingency experienced by the groups in Experiments 1 and 2, responding was maintained at a level at which the number of obtained reinforcers was reduced substantially below the maximum number possible. In addition, in both experiments, the groups that experienced the negative contingency responded at a lower rate than did a yoked control group that experienced the same frequency of reinforcement but lacked the negative component. These results demonstrate that although rats do not optimize their behavior with respect to reinforcement, they are nevertheless sensitive to some aspect of the instrumental contingency in operation.