What is Education for? Situating History, Cultural Understandings and Studies of Society and Environment against Neo-Conservative Critiques of Curriculum Reform

This paper explores some of debates about the nature and purpose of education in the social sciences in the Australian curriculum. It examines recent attempts in studies of society and environment and history curriculum to prepare students for global citizenship and responds to neo-conservative critiques that our "politically correct" curricula does not impart the "truth" about our "European" heritage. This paper argues that while the neo-conservative discourse makes claim to traditional views of knowledge and rationality, its discursive field does not address the broader questions of what sort of education our students require for the twenty-first century

A Model-Based Approach To System-Of-Systems Engineering Via The Systems Modeling Language

In the field of Systems Engineering, a movement is underway to capture the aspects of a system in a centralized model format instead of various documents. This is the basis of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). In order to better formalize this change, the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) was developed to characterize an ontology for MBSE. Despite the growth of both MBSE practices and SysML tools, they have yet to be rigorously analyzed as to their applicability to the field of System-of-Systems (SoS). This thesis applies SysML to a methodology for System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE) known as the Wave Model, which focuses on an iterative approach to SoS development. Each applicable step in the Wave Model is performed within SysML. Three different SoS types - directed, acknowledged, and collaborative - are studied within the domain of a distrubuted sensor management problem. As each SoS is established, evaluated, and updated, the applicability of SysML to each step is discussed. It is found that SysML is capable of defining, analyzing, and evolving a SoS via the processes described in the Wave Model. SysML excels at strictly defining and organizing the elements and features of a SoS while requiring more development in the analysis portions of the SoSE process

Balancing the equation: New times and new literacies = New LOTE teaching knowledge base demands

I was invited to the MLTAQ Conference, not as a LOTE specialist, nor even as a (competent) LOTE speaker, but to offer some perspectives and participate in conversations about the teaching of LOTE, in particular, the complexities that arise from ‘New Times’ (Hall, 1996a; Anstey, 2002) and ‘New Literacies’ (The New London Group, 2000; Anstey, 2002; Kalantzis & Cope, 2005). My presentation was founded on empirical research undertaken as part of my doctoral thesis (Exley, 2005) where I examined the knowledge bases of three Queensland teachers (two LOTE teachers and one Studies of the Society and Environment – SOES - teacher) providing EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instruction to secondary students in a village area of Indonesia. This research found that in current times, teachers drew on four interrelated professional knowledge bases: content knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, and knowledge of their own and their students’ pedagogic identities. The currency of the study’s findings for present debates in and about LOTE teaching in Queensland were explicated through an analysis of (i) Education Queensland’s frameworks for literacy, ‘Literate Futures: Reading’ (Anstey, 2002), (ii) pedagogic knowledge, ‘Productive Pedagogies’ (Education Queensland, 2002), (iii) my experiences as the Japanese Internship coordinator, and (iv) data from the three language teachers that focused on their own and their students’ pedagogic identities. The plenary was presented as an auditing framework for LOTE teachers’ professional knowledge bases. Teachers were invited to consider both their strengths and possible gaps and from this identify topics for future school- or association-based professional development

Consistency in eyewitness reports of aquatic "monsters"

Little work has been undertaken on the consistency/repeatabilityof reports of natural historical anomalies. Such information is usefulin understanding the reporting process associated with such accountsand distinguishing any underlying biological signal. Here we used intraclasscorrelation as a measure of consistency in descriptions of a variety of quantitative features from a large collection of firsthand accounts of apparentlyunknown aquatic animals (hereafter “monsters”) in each of two differentcases. In the first case, same observer, same encounter (sose), the correlationwas estimated from two different accounts of the same event from thesame witness. In the second case, the correlation was between two differentobservers of the same event (dose). Overall, levels of consistency weresurprisingly high, with length of monster, distance of monster to the witness,and duration of encounter varying between 0.63 and 1. Interestingly,there was no evidence that sose accounts generally had higher consistencythan dose accounts.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A Governance Perspective for System-of-Systems

The operating landscape of 21st century systems is characteristically ambiguous, emergent, and uncertain. These characteristics affect the capacity and performance of engineered systems/enterprises. In response, there are increasing calls for multidisciplinary approaches capable of confronting increasingly ambiguous, emergent, and uncertain systems. System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) is an example of such an approach. A key aspect of SoSE is the coordination and the integration of systems to enable ‘system-of-systems’ capabilities greater than the sum of the capabilities of the constituent systems. However, there is a lack of qualitative studies exploring how coordination and integration are achieved. The objective of this research is to revisit SoSE utility as a potential multidisciplinary approach and to suggest ‘governance’ as the basis for enabling ‘system-of-systems’ coordination and integration. In this case, ‘governance’ is concerned with direction, oversight, and accountability of ‘system-of-systems.’ ‘Complex System Governance’ is a new and novel basis for improving ‘system-of-system’ performance through purposeful design, execution, and evolution of essential metasystem functions.

Service-Oriented Reference Architecture for Smart Cities

The trend towards turning existing cities into smart cities is growing. Facilitated by advances in computing such as Cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities propose to bring integrated, autonomous systems together to improve quality of life for their inhabitants. Systems such as autonomous vehicles, smart grids and intelligent traffic management are in the initial stages of development. However, as of yet there, is no holistic architecture on which to integrate these systems into a smart city. Additionally, the existing systems and infrastructure of cities is extensive and critical to their operation. We cannot simply replace these systems with smarter versions, instead the system intelligence must augment the existing systems. In this paper we propose a service oriented reference architecture for smart cities which can tackle these problems and identify some related open research questions. The abstract architecture encapsulates the way in which different aspects of the service oriented approach span through the layers of existing city infrastructure. Additionally, the extensible provision of services by individual systems allows for the organic growth of the smart city as required

Introduction

International audienceCet ouvrage expose les motivations et les principes d’une nouvelle forme de société : la « Société à Objet Social Étendu ». Il présente les premières expérimentations pratiques de ce statut en France et propose qu’il soit introduit dans le droit. Une telle proposition vise à réduire le divorce qui s’est installé entre entreprises et société. La gouvernance des entreprises a en effet conduit depuis plusieurs décennies à restreindre l’horizon du management et à focaliser les critères de gestion sur la valeur pour l’actionnaire. Cette dérive a discrédité, voire en partie dissuadé, les engagements de long terme ainsi que les ambitions sociales et environnementales des entreprises. Elle a aussi fortement entamé, sauf exceptions remarquables, leurs capacités à innover et à penser les mondes de demain. Pour réconcilier entreprise et société, il faut refonder en droit la mission de l’entreprise. Le droit des sociétés doit donc évoluer pour permettre à toute société d’inscrire dans ses statuts des objectifs (intérêt territorial, progrès scientifique et technologique, objectifs humanitaires et environnementaux) qui ne soient pas réductibles à l’intérêt des associés. Ces travaux ont été menés dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche avec le collège des Bernardins. L’ouvrage reprend les actes d’une journée d’études qui a eu lieu à MINES ParisTech en 2013, sous l’égide du Conseil Général de l’Économie (CGE) et avec le soutien de la Fondation Sophia Antipolis.- See more at: http://www.pressesdesmines.com/economie-et-gestion/la-societe-a-objet-social-etendu.html#sthash.YFOX1utN.dpu