Opening Governance

Open government and open data are new areas of research, advocacy and activism that have entered the governance field alongside the more established areas of transparency and accountability. In this IDS Bulletin, articles review recent scholarship to pinpoint contributions to more open, transparent, accountable and responsive governance via improved practice, projects and programmes in the context of the ideas, relationships, processes, behaviours, policy frameworks and aid funding practices of the last five years. They also discuss questions and weaknesses that limit the effectiveness and impact of this work, offer a series of definitions to help overcome conceptual ambiguities, and identify hype and euphemism. The contributions – by researchers and practitioners – approach contemporary challenges of achieving transparency, accountability and openness from a wide range of subject positions and professional and disciplinary angles. Together these articles give a sense of what has changed in this fast-moving field, and what has not – this IDS Bulletin is an invitation to all stakeholders to take stock and reflect. The ambiguity around the ‘open’ in governance today might be helpful in that its very breadth brings in actors who would otherwise be unlikely adherents. But if the fuzzier idea of ‘open government’ or the allure of ‘open data’ displace the task of clear transparency, hard accountability and fairer distribution of power as what this is all about, then what started as an inspired movement of governance visionaries may end up merely putting a more open face on an unjust and unaccountable status quo

Mustang Daily, April 17, 2009

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/7908/thumbnail.jp

By hand and by computer – a video-ethnographic study of engineering students’ representational practices in a design project

In engineering education there has been a growing interest that the curriculum should include collaborative design projects. However, students’ collaborative learning processes in design projects have, with a few exceptions, not been studied in earlier research. Most previous studies have been performed in artificial settings with individual students using verbal protocol analysis or through interviews.  The context of this study is a design project in the fifth semester of the PBL-based Architecture and Design programme at Aalborg University. The students had the task to design a real office building in collaborative groups of 5–6 students. The preparation for an upcoming status seminar was video recorded in situ. Video ethnography, conversation analysis and embodied interaction analysis were used to explore what interactional work the student teams did and what kind of resources they used to collaborate and complete the design task. Complete six hours sessions of five groups were recorded using multiple video cameras (2 – 5 cameras per group). The different collaborative groups did not only produce and reach an agreement on a design proposal during the session – in their design practice they used, and produced, a wealth of tools and bodily-material resources for representational and modelling purposes. As an integral and seamless part of students’ interactional and representational work and the group’s collaborative thinking bodily resources such as “gestured drawings” and gestures, concrete materials such as 3D-foam and papers models, “low-tech” representations such as sketches and drawings by hand on paper and “high-tech” representations as CAD-drawings were used. These findings highlight the cognitive importance of tools and the use of bodily and material resources in students’ collaborative interactional work in a design setting. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that a focus primarily on digital technologies, as is often the case in the recent drive towards “digital learning”, would be highly problematic

Social change and educational problems in three modern Asian societies:: Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong a comparative study.

The main theme of the thesis is a discussion of education and social change in the three East Asian societies over the post-war period. The thesis is divided into four sections. The first is a background study. In this section, the social and educational backgrounds of the respective societies are discussed. Special attention is paid to the stress on modernization as a common orientation in social developments. Major concepts and definitions of modernization are discussed and an attempt is made to study the modern development of these societies in the light of modernization theories. The second section is a discussion of education in technological societies. The concepts of industrial, post- industrial and technological societies are discussed in the light of the works of the major social theorists and futurologists. The development of technology and its relationships with education are outlined. Further, the social implications and problems of technological and scientific education are analysed. The third section is a discussion of education in rapidly changing societies. The acceleration of social change in modern societies is traced. Rapid changes in the educational scene of the respective societies are also outlined. The social implications and problems of the rapidity of change and the role and functions of education in face of rapid change are discussed. The fourth section is a discussion of the emergence of credentialism in modern societies and its manifestation in education. Negative aspects of diplomaism, excessive competition and examination systems are discussed. In conclusion, an overall review of the relationships between education and social development is made. There is an analysis of the fundamental educational problems of modem societies, and finally, in this context, a suggestion that the objectives of education should be reconsidered

Community and Educational Opportunity in the US: The Relative Utility of Technology and Digital Literacy in a Transcultural Community

This ethnobiographic study explores the ways in which five low income transmigrants living in an urban Mid-Atlantic transcultural community made use of technology and digital literacy. Specifically, the study focuses on the ways in which participants defined the purpose, importance, and utility of technology and digital literacy in their lives. The stories reveal complex and often heroic efforts to become digitally literate and apply technological learning to their obligations as parents, breadwinners, and community participants in widely dispersed social networks that cross family, community, and national boundaries. Their stories reveal: 1) the desire for digital literacy to participate in our modern society; 2) limitations in concepts of access and equity as currently conceived in scholarly literature; 3) trust as a key component of successful programs; and 4) the importance of technology in sustaining transcultural networks. The voices of the participants reveal that immigrants recognize the need for technology training, not only for jobs, but also to aid and enhance their everyday life. They shared the need for training to include: basic classroom skills instruction for children; learning opportunities for adults; programs that include authentic tasks and design features that consider cost, time and day of the week, location, language options, and word of mouth confirmation regarding the quality of content and trust in instructors and training location. Their search for safety extends to protecting their personal information and children by acquiring cyber safety and security knowledge. This study adds to transcultural scholarly work, and also expands both digital divide and digital inequity literature that only rarely focuses on the relationship between participants and transcultural community constructs. Increasingly, computer based forms of communication are taking the place of letters, telephone and travel to maintain and expand ties to family and friends dispersed throughout the globe. Technology becomes a way to support their transmigrant identities and strengthen the networks of friends and family used to identify places to live and work. Rather than creating a homogeneous global society, technology may actually serve to strengthen national identities across borders

The future of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the energy transition: options and implications for the LNG industry in a decarbonising world

A global energy transition is currently taking place, driven primarily by the need to combat climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the current trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions is not consistent with limiting global warming to below 1.5 or 2 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels, a threshold that could lead to severe economic damage and instability for the coming decades. Fossil fuel combustion, industry, transport, and electricity production contribute to approximately 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Energy systems must therefore decarbonise at dramatic rates to move towards a more sustainable environmental development path, but also to cater for population and economic growth in many parts of the world. Natural gas, a fuel with superior environmental credentials than other fossil fuels, has been touted as a “transition fuel” to support the low-carbon transition by promoting fuel-switching and supporting hard-to-abate sectors until largescale electrification with renewable resources and other solutions such as largescale batteries and hydrogen are developed and deployed. Utilising a bespoke meta-framework grounded in institutional theory, combining elements of techno-economic and socio-technical approaches, this study examines how institutional, political, and resource characteristics affect the use of liquified natural gas (LNG), the fastest growing sector within natural gas. Methodology includes the analysis of three country cases (UK, Japan, China). In addition, an in-depth analysis of the LNG industry is conducted, with a focus on the decarbonisation options and implications for the industry, including the impact of development of the hydrogen economy on LNG. The synthesis presents conclusions and findings on LNG’s role in future potential pathways in energy systems in various stages of the energy transition