Freire re-viewed

The work of Paulo Freire is associated with themes of oppression and liberation, and his critical pedagogy is visionary in its attempts to bring about social transformation. Freire has created a theory of education that embeds these issues within social relations that center around both ideological and material domination. In this review essay, Sue Jackson explores three books: Freire’s final work Pedagogy of Indignation; Cesar Augusto Rossatto’s Engaging Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Possibility, which attempts to engage Freire’s pedagogy of possibility; and C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin’s edited collection Re-thinking Freire, which asks readers to reconsider Freire’s work in light of globalization and environmental crises. Jackson questions the extent to which Freire’s pedagogical approaches are useful to educators as well as to “the oppressed,” and whether challenges to re-think Freire can lead to new kinds of critical pedagogies

Critically Assessing Forms of Resistance in Music Education

In their classrooms, music educators draw upon critical pedagogy (as described by Freire, Giroux, and hooks) for the express purpose of cultivating a climate for conscientização. Conscientização, according to Paulo Freire (2006), “refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (p. 35). This consciousness raising is a journey teachers pursue with students, together interrogating injustices in communities and the world in order to transform the conditions that inform them. Learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions often leads to multiple forms of resistance in and out of music classrooms. This chapter explores the following question: What do critical forms of assessment look like in music classrooms that use critical pedagogy and embrace resistance to foster conscientization

The Ontological Import of Adding Proper Classes

In this article, we analyse the ontological import of adding classes to set theories. We assume that this increment is well represented by going from ZF system to NBG. We thus consider the standard techniques of reducing one system to the other. Novak proved that from a model of ZF we can build a model of NBG (and vice versa), while Shoenfield have shown that from a proof in NBG of a set-sentence we can generate a proof in ZF of the same formula. We argue that the first makes use of a too strong metatheory. Although meaningful, this symmetrical reduction does not equate the ontological content of the theories. The strong metatheory levels the two theories. Moreover, we will modernize Shoenfields proof, emphasizing its relation to Herbrands theorem and that it can only be seen as a partial type of reduction. In contrast with symmetrical reductions, we believe that asymmetrical relations are powerful tools for comparing ontological content. In virtue of this, we prove that there is no interpretation of NBG in ZF, while NBG trivially interprets ZF. This challenges the standard view that the two systems have the same ontological content

Self-adjoint sub-classes of third and fourth-order evolution equations

In this work a class of self-adjoint quasilinear third-order evolution equations is determined. Some conservation laws of them are established and a generalization on a self-adjoint class of fourth-order evolution equations is presented

Radio pulsar binaries in globular clusters: their orbital eccentricities and stellar interactions

High sensitivity searches of globular clusters (GC) for radio pulsars by improved pulsar search algorithms and sustained pulsar timing observations have so far yielded some 140 pulsars in more than two dozen GCs. The observed distribution of orbital eccentricity and period of binary radio pulsars in GCs have imprints of the past interaction between single pulsars and binary systems or of binary pulsars and single passing non-compact stars. It is seen that GCs have different groups of pulsars. These may have arisen out of exchange or merger of a component of the binary with the incoming star or a "fly-by" in which the original binary remains intact but undergoes a change of eccentricity and orbital period. We consider the genesis of the distribution of pulsars using analytical and computational tools such as STARLAB, which performs numerical scattering experiments with direct N-body integration. Cluster pulsars with intermediate eccentricities can mostly be accounted for by fly-bys whereas those with high eccentricities are likely to be the result of exchanges and/or mergers of single stars with the binary companion of the pulsar, although there are a few objects which do not easily fit into this description. The corresponding distribution for galactic field pulsars shows notable differences from the GC pulsar orbital period and eccentricity distribution. The long orbital period pulsars in the galactic field with frozen out low eccentricities are largely missing from the globular clusters, and we show that ionization of these systems in GCs cannot alone account for the peculiarities.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

New classes of nonlinearly self-adjoint evolution equations of third- and fifth-order

In a recent communication Nail Ibragimov introduced the concept of nonlinearly self-adjoint differential equation [N. H. Ibragimov, Nonlinear self-adjointness and conservation laws, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor., vol. 44, 432002, 8 pp., (2011)]. In the present communication a nonlinear self-adjoint classification of a general class of fifth-order evolution equation with time dependent coefficients is presented. As a result five subclasses of nonlinearly self-adjoint equations of fifth-order and four subclasses of nonlinearly self-adjoint equations of third-order are obtained. From the Ibragimov's theorem on conservation laws [N. H. Ibragimov, A new conservation theorem, J. Math. Anal. Appl., vol. 333, 311--328, (2007)] conservation laws for some of these equations are established

Developing generative themes for community action

This chapter explores a range of participative methods for working with groups to achieve social change in community settings. It draws on the work of Paulo Freire and examines how workers can facilitate processes of dialogue and critical reflection which enable local people to develop solutions to the issues they are dealing with