Examining Disequilibrium in an Immersion Experience

This study examines the disequilibrium raised by a cultural immersion experience, using the structure of White racial identity development, in an effort to better scaffold the immersion experience in the future. Thirty-two students participated in an immersion experience in Quito, Ecuador. The study follows their experience as they strive to make sense of their experience and begin to understand and unpack their own sense of privilege. The six stages of racial identity development are used as a grid through which to view and consider the experiences of teacher candidates in a cultural immersion experience. Two predominant themes included schools/classroom management, and language/culture/race

Discovering Educational Leadership in Connections: Dr. Elizabeth Murray of Tatamagouche

In recounting the educational leadership of Elizabeth Murray, with particular focus on her years as an adult educator at mid-century, I trace connections between her early years as a teacher and adult educator and her current community projects. These links are temporal, between past and present; social, between child and adult; and individual, between excellence as personal and shared experience. In writing about this woman’s early life, I discuss first the limitations of traditional historical sources to divulge significant strands of leadership action, and second, the importance of Murray’s former students and colleagues in providing essential evidence. En faisant état du leadership d’Elizabeth Murray en éducation, surtout durant les années qu’elle a consacrées à l’éducation des adultes au milieu du siècle, l’auteure établit des liens entre les premières années d’enseignante d’Elizabeth Murray auprès des enfants et des adultes et ses projets communautaires actuels: liens temporels, entre le passé et le présent; liens sociaux, entre l’enfant et l’adulte; liens personnels, entre des gens qui partagent l’expérience de l’excellence. Tout en présentant les débuts de la vie profes- sionnelle de cette femme, l’auteure discute d’abord des limites des sources historiques traditionnelles lorsqu’on cherche à dévoiler des axes significatifs de leadership en action, puis de l’importance des anciens élèves et collègues d’Elizabeth Murray, qui ont fourni des données essentielles.

Errors in South African secondary school mathematics textbooks

Bibliography: leaves 97-101.Since 1960 various new topics were introduced into the South African mathematics syllabus for high schools. This was generally described as "New Maths". These topics were characterised by an emphasis on mathematical structure (set theory, groups, rings and fields, the construction of the real number system, relations and functions, vectors and mathematical induction). Textbooks that were published in South Africa during this time have been found to contain numerous significant mathematical errors, especially in connection with these new topics. This project has entailed the collection, classification and commentary on these problems. It has involved a study of a range of texts from Standards 6 to 10. The methodology utilised entailed reading as many maths textbooks as we could find in libraries such as Education libraries. Other sources of textbooks were from the library of the Mathematics Education Project (MEP)(of the University of Cape Town), private collections and second hand bookshops. Some misconceptions arise across a range of texts indicating that either a general misunderstanding has occurred or that authors have used one another's work in their research. We conducted a search for mathematical errors and not minor misprints, arithmetical slips, algebraic errors, mistakes in answers at the back of the book, spelling or grammatical mistakes

PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION AS EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH: WORKING IN UNSETTLING TIMES

In the context of information and communication technologies in five Newfoundland coastal communities, this article deals with participatory research and outreach. Outreach in these communities, reeling from the near‐collapse of the fishery and struggling to survive in a climate of neo‐liberal restructuring, is considered to be a holistic educational enterprise involving new technologies and the popular media, schools, and their district officers, clinics and regional health care providers, and children and adults as lifelong learners. Based on five approaches that emerged in the final year of one project ‐‐ the work of an on‐site liaison, a residential workshop, community workshops, reports through popular media, and contacts with outside organizations – the author argues that outreach should be recognized as integral to all stages of participatory research. Key words: educational outreach, participatory research, ICT, coastal communities Tenant compte des technologies de l’information et des communications dans cinq localités côtières de Terre‐Neuve, cet article porte sur les recherches concertées et l’action communautaire. La prestation de services à ces communautés, durement touchées par la quasi‐disparition de la pêche et luttant pour survivre dans un climat de restructuration néolibéraliste, est considérée comme une entreprise pédagogique holistique faisant appel aux nouvelles technologies et aux médias grand public, aux écoles et aux membres des commissions scolaires, aux cliniques et aux fournisseurs de soins de santé régionaux ainsi qu’aux enfants et aux adultes apprenant à tout âge. À la lumière des cinq approches qui ont émergé lors de la dernière année de l’un des projets, à savoir le travail d’un agent de liaison sur place, un atelier résidentiel, des ateliers communautaires, des comptes rendus par le biais de médias grand public et des contacts avec d’autres organisations, l’auteure soutient que l’action communautaire devrait être reconnue comme un élément faisant partie intégrante de tous les stades d’une recherche concertée. Mots clés : action communautaire dans le domaine de l’éducation, recherche concertée, TIC, localités côtières.

The Ungovernable Governess:The Figure of the Governess in the Victorian Sensation Novel of the 1860s.

This dissertation will examine the figure of the governess in the Victorian Sensation Novels of the 1860s in order to determine if sensation fiction in this period was inevitably concerned with portraying the ungovernable side of femininity. The primary focus will be on the female protagonist in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Wilkie Collins Armadale, Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Behind a Mask,’ and Ellen Wood’s East Lynne.1 The effects of the moral and social climate of the nineteenth century and the influence the historical governess had on these works will be examined. The hypothesis that Braddon, Collins, Alcott, and Wood use the governess to depict various forms of female non-conformity in order to comment on the limitations and injustices of the woman’s position in a male dominated society will be considered, particularly in relation to the depiction of Victorian matrimony and the sexual double standard. Under discussion will be the liminal position of the governess and the way in which these villainous and deviant women use masquerade and their position in ways that tend towards deception. The motivation behind the actions of these transgressive females will also be discussed, particularly the significance of poverty and social position on their ungovernable behaviour, and the extent to which these texts and the governess figure can be seen as feminist will be explored.

The Nazi Church : Nazism as Ersatzreligion

German Christianity is a distortion. You are either a German or you are Christian. ~ Adolph Hitler In the last decade, scores of religious scholars have dissected the concept of the Third Reich as a religion. Their theories depict a vast range of extremes from National Socialism portrayed as a secular or political religion to painting the Nazis as anti-Christian pagans. The Nazi Church was neither a political religion nor was it simply paganism; instead, National Socialism became its own religion which replaced traditional German Christianity at a time when a nation, ripe for questioning God, was suffering from the aftermath of a disastrous war. Hitler\u27s Third Reich was as much a religion to the citizens of war-torn Germany as is extremist Islam to lost young men in North Africa. Just as fundamentalist religious leaders bait their chosen followers with a chance for the afterlife, Hitler convinced an entire nation that he would lead the Master Race into the thousand year millennium. It was exactly what his countrymen needed to hear, but to rule the world, Hitler thought it was necessary to annihilate another culture

Schools that Don’t Close: Possible Places and Spaces for Progressive Teaching, Learning, and Research

Small schools and their communities contribute to an important, though threatened, knowledge base. The threat adheres in underlying technologies (conceptual and material) that propel the capitalistic world towards the rationalization of all aspects of human activity. In education, this appears in the consolidation of small schools and ever larger units of organization. From three studies of Newfoundland coastal communities, I describe schools that were deemed to be “necessarily existing.” Because of their isolated location, students from the schools could not be transported to larger centres. While reporting both positive and negative features of actual small, rural schools, I argue against hasty school closures and point, instead, to rural school and community opportunities for “place, voice, and space-based” teaching, learning, and research. Small, rural schools can be pivotal in leading Canadian education from its deeply rooted, market-based ideology to progressive and socially relevant practices that embrace lifelong learning, community involvement, and ecological awareness and action. Les petites écoles et leurs communautés nous fournissent l’occasion d’augmenter notre base de connaissances, mais leur contribution est menacée. La menace provient de technologies sous-jacentes qui propulsent le monde capitaliste vers la rationalisation de tous les aspects de l’activité humaine. Dans le domaine de l’éducation, ce phénomène se manifeste par la consolidation des petites écoles et des unités administratives toujours plus grandes. À partir de trois études portant sur les communautés côtières à Terre-Neuve, je décris trois écoles désignées comme « obligatoirement existantes ». Compte tenu de leur isolement, les élèves des écoles ne pouvaient être transportés vers de plus grands centres. Je présente les aspects positifs et négatifs des petites écoles rurales actuelles, tout en militant contre les fermetures hâtives et en soulignant que les écoles et les communautés rurales sont des lieux qui représentent des occasions d’enseignement, d’apprentissage et de recherche qui reflètent « le lieu, la voix et l’emplacement ». Les petites écoles rurales peuvent jouer un rôle clé pour éloigner le système éducatif canadien de son idéologie de marché bien ancrée et le diriger vers des pratiques progressives et pertinentes sur le plan social qui endossent l’éducation permanente, l’implication communautaire, et une conscience et une action écologiques.

Economics of Alternative Crop Production in Arid Regions

As water resources in arid regions decline, agricultural producers are encouraged to adopt water conserving strategies. The implementation of alternative low-water use crops is one option, but is it economically feasible? Data on current and alternative crops for this study include enterprise budgets, producer interviews, and field trials in Northwestern Nevada, USA. We use WinEPIC, a Windows-based version of the EPIC model, which synthesizes both agronomics and economics, to model yields and returns of alternative crop production under differing irrigation levels. Risk analysis or the distribution of net returns to alternative crop production is also examined. This study determined that there are alternative crops that could be feasibly substituted for alfalfa and reduce water use by at least one-half while providing net returns that meet or exceed returns from alfalfa and keep producers profitable in agriculturealternative crops, arid regions, economic feasibility, irrigation, WinEPIC,