Annual Arts Gala Highlights Asian Arts

The magnificent closing evening show entitled ＂Blessing for Asia＂, held in Thousand Lantern Lake Park in November 17, 2005, brought a successful conclusion to the seventh Asia Arts Festival and the inaugural Asia Cultural Ministers＇ Forum [ACMF] which took place in Foshan, Guangdong Province, China.     

“My Eyes Were Opened to the Lack of Diversity in Our Best Schools”: Re-Conceptualizing Competitive School Choice Policy as a Racial Formation

This article documents minority youth sense-making around the concept of diversity and the founding of a youth activist group that seeks spaces for policy thinking and protesting against racial inequalities in selective enrollment schools. Utilizing the sociological theory of racial formation and the concept of racial projects (Omi and Winant in Racial formation in the United States, 3rd edn, Routledge, New York, 2014), this article draws on data from a critical ethnography. The author argues that youth activists offer a critical perspective for researchers and policy-makers in the face of neoliberal school choice policy. Findings reveal that youth activists understand a lack of diversity as racial imbalance in high status schools, and that they expose structural inequalities that are embedded in policy structures and processes such as selective enrollment high schools. Implications are discussed to show how re-conceptualizing policy as a racial formation can bring structural and institutional racist practices into view in hopes of transforming district policies to offer access to high quality schools for all students.     

Impact of a statewide home visiting program to prevent child abuse

OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of a voluntary, paraprofessional home visiting program in preventing child maltreatment and reducing the multiple, malleable psychosocial risks for maltreatment for which families had been targeted. METHODS: This collaborative, experimental study focused on 6 Healthy Families Alaska (HFAK) programs; 325 families were enrolled in 2000-2001, randomized to intervention and control groups, and interviewed to measure baseline attributes. Follow-up data were collected when children were 2 years old (85% follow-up rate). Outcomes included maltreatment reports, measures of potential maltreatment and parental risks, for example, poor mental health, substance use, and partner violence. HFAK records were reviewed to measure home visiting services. Home visitors were surveyed to measure perceived effectiveness and training adequacy. RESULTS: Parental risks were common at baseline, and one-sixth of families had a substantiated child protective services report in the child's first 2 years of life. There was no overall program effect on maltreatment reports, and most measures of potential maltreatment. Home visited mothers reported using mild forms of physical discipline less often than control mothers. The groups were similar in their use of more severe forms of physical discipline. There was no program impact on parental risks. There was no impact on outcomes for families with a 'high dose' of home visiting. Home visitors often failed to address parental risks and seldom linked families with community resources. Contradictions in the model compromised effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The program did not prevent child maltreatment, nor reduce the parental risks that had made families eligible for service. Research is needed to develop and test strategies to improve the effectiveness of home visiting.     

Expanding and enacting transformative meanings of equity,diversity and social justice in science education

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In this paper, we provide a conceptual critique of the various constructs often used to justify policies and/or research to promote equity, diversity and...     

“‘I Was Gonna Go Off,but My Best Friend is White.”: Hispanic Students’ Co-Cultural Reasoning in a Hispanic Serving Institution

The researchers engaged in a qualitative analysis (using journaling and focus group methodology) of the communicative behaviors of Hispanic students with White institutional members at a medium-sized, Southwest HSI. Utilizing Co-Cultural Theory and Elaborative Coding analysis, the authors mapped how Hispanic students narrated their co-cultural communication and reasoning (i.e., why they engage in one strategy rather than another). The findings show that, although Hispanic students used almost all co-cultural strategies, their responses were clustered primarily around assimilationist strategies – indicating that they engage in a high degree of self-monitoring and self-censorship when interacting with White institutional members in an HSI. These results suggest that even when Hispanic students constitute a large or majority part of the institution’s population, they still feel the need to engage in behaviors that navigate White norms. The study concludes by examining the findings for co-cultural theorizing as well as providing insights for instructors who wish to engage in inclusive teaching practices.     

Challenges and opportunities facing game theory and control: an interview with Tamer Başar

The Control community has recently witnessed an almost exponentially growing interest in the application of game-theoretic concepts and tools in research on control, multi-agent systems, and networks. In an interview with NSR, Professor Tamer Başar, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Swanlund Endowed Chair and CAS Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA, former president of both the IEEE Control Systems Society and the American Automatic Control Council, and the founding president of the International Society of Dynamic Games, talked about the recently emerging role of game theory in control and networking research, how it broadens the territorial boundaries of control into disciplines outside engineering, and opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.     

联接中外 沟通世界——从共享平台建设看温州人的海外文化传播

温州市新闻文化信息共享平台是以城市文化为载体,打造国际影响力的创新探索。经过7个月的运作,该平台已与30多家海外华文媒体建立了互动协作关系。在联接中外、沟通世界的进程中,这张温州的"文化名片",正逐步扎根全球。共享平台的新生与成长,让世界惊艳。