The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis

What counts as critical policy analysis in education? Over the past 30 years, a tightening of national educational policies can be seen in the USA and across the globe. Over this same period of time, a growing number of educational policy scholars, dissatisfied with traditional frameworks, have used critical frameworks in their analyses. Their critical educational policy work has contributed to a unique intellectual landscape within education: critical policy analysis. This article presents a qualitative exploration of the critical policy analysis approach to educational policy studies. Participants included scholars known to utilize critical theoretical frameworks and methods in their research. Through a historical approach that makes use of oral history interviews with educational policy, we developed an understanding of the critical approach to policy studies, its appeal among critical education policy scholars, and the rationales driving its use

Ecomusicologies

What is ecomusicology? The question deserves a succinct answer, such as: Environmental studies plus music/sound studies equal ecomusicology. Our conceit, however, is that one plus one equal more than two: There is no one ecomusicology but many ecomusicologies constituting a dynamic field. One may wander this field leisurely to explore its interesting and relevant areas, or one might prefer to head in a particular direction. Twenty-two authors provide nineteen brief essays, some of which continue with further resources in an online supplement (http://www.ecomusicology.info/cde). As your “field guides,” the editors of Current Directions in Ecomusicology (CDE) provide a volume introduction, which continues throughout the book in four directions (fieldwork, ecological, critical, and textual), plus a glossary, all of which provide a map of the territory as we find it circa 2015. However, the observer effect is surely valid here: Our collective commentaries of the field will change the lay of the land

The evolution of social entrepreneurship: What have we learned?

Purpose – If there is one thing that truly characterizes entrepreneurship and especially social entrepreneurship, it is the “engaged scholarship” at their very heart. That is, teaching, outreach/service and research are connected, often tightly. The purpose of this paper therefore is to discuss the evolution of social entrepreneurship and the lessons learned. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reports on the results of a multi-country survey dealing with social entrepreneurship. Findings – It is found that a lot of maturing needs to be done in the area of social entrepreneurship work. Originality/value – This paper provides real value to the literature by showing what is actually done in the teaching of social entrepreneurship

Landscape of solutions in constraint satisfaction problems

We present a theoretical framework for characterizing the geometrical properties of the space of solutions in constraint satisfaction problems, together with practical algorithms for studying this structure on particular instances. We apply our method to the coloring problem, for which we obtain the total number of solutions and analyze in detail the distribution of distances between solutions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Replaced with published versio

Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature . . . and Change in Environmental Studies?

The five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing. We rely on them daily, professionally, and personally — each can inform our understanding of the world and evoke memories of places and times, both distant and dear. Public policy and science, however, are guided primarily by the visual: maps, not the smell of rich soil or the feel of damp air, are used to understand local and national borders; photographs, not the feel of sticky blood or the cold metal of a weapon, provide evidence for use in court; and data such as lists of ingredients, not individual natural and artificial components to be tasted, are provided in text to be read. Scholarly research, after all, is presented in visual form in the text of a journal: maybe in braille but not as light shows, perfumes, or food, and, while those words in a journal may be read aloud, they are certainly not meant to be performed or sung

Collaboration through Communities of Practice in the Digital Age

This paper aims to describe and explain the role of Communities of Practice (CoPs) as an informal communication mechanism in initiating, improving, and fostering collaboration in the digital age. CoPs play a critical role in the management of shared knowledge and create value for both their members and organizations. The advent of the Internet and specifically the World Wide Web (WWW) has forever changed the means of accessing and sharing data and information. With the inception of Web 2.0 technologies and social-networking sites in recent years, connections and relationships are now not only nurtured and sustained in an online environment, but also established through creating virtual communities. The authors also assert that the inception of Web 2.0 technologies and social-networking sites is a great advancement in providing a rich learning, communication, and collaborative environment, especially through the transfer of tacit knowledge that we take for granted in our face-to-face interactions. These reflections are based on personal communications with members of virtual CoPs and literature on the impact of CoPs on decision-making and knowledge management

The Complexity Of The NP-Class

This paper presents a novel and straight formulation, and gives a complete insight towards the understanding of the complexity of the problems of the so called NP-Class. In particular, this paper focuses in the Searching of the Optimal Geometrical Structures and the Travelling Salesman Problems. The main results are the polynomial reduction procedure and the solution to the Noted Conjecture of the NP-Class

Ecomusicology between Poetic and Practical

Ecomusicology, or ‘ecocritical musicology,’ is a field that considers the complex relationships between culture, nature, and music/sound. This chapter provides an overview of ecomusicology in four parts. First, I elaborate on that definition and provide a brief intellectual history of the field, particularly in relation to ecocriticism. Second, I develop an approach to the field that considers a range of approaches from poetic to practical – that is, from reflective, aesthetic concerns to political, activist concerns. Third, in order to illustrate those poles and an in-between, I present three examples from my own research: a poetic approach to pastoral symphonies, a practical approach to sustainability and materials for musical instruments, and a middle ground regarding a singer-songwriter. Finally, I provide a brief overview of some implicitly and explicitly ecomusicological works on this continuum from poetic to practical

Reworking the garden: revisions of the pastoral tradition in twentieth-century Southern poetry

This dissertation illuminates how twentieth-century southern poetry revises the pastoral tradition. I argue that in its particular capacity to imagine a perfected world, the pastoral may delineate and advocate for our highest ideals—including genuine community, reverence for the land, and gender, racial, and socioeconomic equality. But the pastoral’s idyllic world may also reinscribe the South’s worst problems—including social injustice and exploitation of the natural world—by ignoring them altogether or by weaving them into a fabric of fictive nostalgia. These two possibilities create the central conflict that animates the pastoral, a conflict that the dissertation explores in the work of four twentieth-century southern poets—Anne Spencer, Jean Toomer, James Dickey, and Eleanor Ross Taylor. Each writer responds to specific historical iterations of the pastoral—including the potent southern myths of the plantation romance, the cult of the Lost Cause, and the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer—and each differentially transforms and revitalizes the pastoral tradition itself. Essentially, these poets create new pastoral works which fully countenance the South’s often divisive and problematic history while simultaneously seeking out restoration and redemption for and within the South. Thus, I assert that the pastoral tradition in the South is neither outdated nor mired in “moonlight and magnolias” nostalgia; rather, it enables twentieth-century southern writers to explore both a fraught history in a racially and socioeconomically divided region and a complex relationship to the natural world. “Reworking the Garden: Revisions of the Pastoral Tradition in Twentieth-Century Southern Poetry” contributes to the fields of southern and American literature, ecocriticism, rhetoric, and poetics in three ways. First, building on the foundational work of William Empson and Frank Kermode, as well as more recent scholarship by Leo Marx, Annette Kolodny, Elizabeth Jane Harrison, Lucinda MacKethan, and Lawrence Buell, this project develops a clearer definition of the pastoral in twentieth-century American and southern literature. However, I depart from these scholars in my claim that the twentieth-century southern pastoral represents not a set of conventions but rather a set of beliefs about the South and what it was, what it is, and what it could or should be. This project’s focus on southern poetry after 1900 constitutes my second contribution. Despite the long history of pastoral poetry, studies of the pastoral in the twentieth century—in southern literature and more generally—focus nearly exclusively on prose. However, I argue that the pastoral’s long association with poetry demands that we examine recent poets’ renovations and critiques of the pastoral tradition; in so doing, this project not only expands our understanding of pastoral but it also paints a more comprehensive picture of southern literature. Finally, attending closely to two important southern voices, Anne Spencer and Eleanor Ross Taylor—heretofore mostly neglected in literary scholarship—makes a third contribution. Studying these writers broadens our understanding of southern literature and the South, as each offers viewpoints that have often been elided—particularly those of black and white rural women. Additionally, placing Spencer and Taylor alongside better-known male counterparts allows us to reconsider the bases on which canons are formed, to unveil biases and omissions, and to recognize diverse perspectives in southern poetry, the pastoral, and American literature more generally. Overall, my project follows a chronological trajectory; the introduction provides a foundation for the later chapters by first tracing the history of the pastoral tradition, focusing especially on how American pastorals diverge from the European tradition, how slavery impacts southern pastoral, and how the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer becomes a rejuvenated symbol for the South in the Agrarians’ 1930 manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand. Chapter one demonstrates how Anne Spencer uses pastoral idealism to imagine a more harmonious and just future for the South, while she simultaneously condemns the racial and gendered injustices of the present. Viewing Spencer’s work as pastoral provides a throughline for her diverse oeuvre and also illuminates her poetry’s political edge. The second chapter focuses on Jean Toomer’s reimagined pastoral in Cane. I contend that Toomer’s overall structure, especially the interplay between poems and sketches, challenges traditional southern pastoral mythology, especially its willful blindness concerning industrialization and racism. However, Toomer also incorporates figures of connection throughout the book to reclaim pastoral values of community, communion with the land, and spiritual redemption. Chapter three begins by establishing James Dickey’s early work as the foundation of his pastoral vision, wherein the southern wilderness provides a haven apart from war, loss, and grief. Subsequently I argue that while Dickey’s later work revises his idealized vision, recognizing the violence and suffering that underwrite the region’s history, he continues to build a new southern pastoral mythology of reconciliation. In the final chapter, I explore Eleanor Ross Taylor’s significant contributions to the pastoral tradition, as she incorporates a thoughtful reconsideration of history, a caustic wit, and sharply drawn portrayals of her ancestors’ lives—all of which challenge idyllic imaginings about the rural South. However, Taylor’s pastoral also offers redemptive moments in images that foster empathetic community and genuine emotion. Throughout this project, then, I argue that the pastoral provides a vital key to understanding southern literature, both past and present, and a new way of examining both familiar poets and lesser-known but equally essential voices

Greening the Curriculum: Beyond a Short Music History in Ecomusicology

Most of the ecomusicology literature deals either with music of and, especially, after the nineteenth century or with music/sound of non-Western cultures. What about the historical music of the Western tradition before the nineteenth century? This essay provides a few tentative possibilities. After providing a conspectus of ecomusicology and a brief conspectus of work in this field, I emphasize the problem of this "short music history" in ecomusicology. After presenting a syllabus and overview of my own music and environment class, which represents that problem, I critique that class and propose ideas for revising it and for incorporating ecomusicology topics into a typical Western music history survey course. I conclude by reflecting on the place of ecomusicology in the general greening of the liberal arts curriculum