74 research outputs found

    Large Group Work: Identity Development and Its Significance for Achieving Race Equality

    Get PDF
    This article examines and analyses the effectiveness of experiential large group work (between 24–35 students) in delivering community and youth work training at Goldsmiths1. It specifically focuses on students’ development and experience in their understanding of racism and identity. The training has refined a model of learning and teaching that combines large group work and experiential learning. It is in this arena that students explore and critically reflect on their life and work experiences. They learn to process and articulate their feelings and understandings across a wide range of issues that come from learning how to inwardly reflect and to develop an awareness of themselves and change. The article explores the experience of group work training and the significance of students’ development of their racial identity in effectively addressing racism. It draws on both the work of Paulo Freire (1972; 1995) on education and Pat de Maré (1975; 1991) on large groups. The article begins by examining some of the literature on both race and large groups followed by an exploration of racial identity and its development in the group work process in terms of distinct phases. It then discusses the importance of the large group and its relevance to development of racial identities. It concludes by highlighting the significance of the issue of racial identity in addressing racism

    A Robustness Approach to Reliability

    No full text
    Reliability of products is here regarded with respect to failure avoidance rather than probability of failure. To avoid failures, we emphasize variation and suggest some powerful tools for handling failures due to variation. Thus, instead of technical calculation of probabilities from data that usually are too weak for correct results, we emphasize the statistical thinking that puts the designers focus on the critical product functions. Making the design insensitive to unavoidable variation is called robust design and is handled by (i) identification and classification of variation, (ii) design of experiments to find robust solutions, and (iii) statistically based estimations of proper safety margins. Extensions of the classical failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) are presented. The first extension consists of identifying failure modes caused by variation in the traditional bottom–up FMEA analysis. The second variation mode and effect analysis (VMEA) is a top–down analysis, taking the product characteristics as a starting point and analyzing how sensitive these characteristics are to variation. In cases when there is sufficient detailed information of potential failure causes, the VMEA can be applied in its most advanced mode, the probabilistic VMEA. Variation is then measured as statistical standard deviations, and sensitivities are measured as partial derivatives. This method gives the opportunity to dimension tolerances and safety margins to avoid failures caused by both unavoidable variation and lack of knowledge regarding failure processe

    Constraining the chronology of the mashishing dykes from the eastern kaapvaal craton in South Africa

    No full text
    The present study focuses on NNE-trending dykes (sites LDA to LDJ) that occur near Mashishing in the eastern Kaapvaal craton. The Mashishing dykes were previously considered to be coeval and regarded as the extension of the 1.875–1.835Â Ga Black Hills dyke swarm into the sedimentary rocks of the Pretoria Group. Thin sections exhibit well-preserved igneous textures, with primary minerals (e.g., hornblende, clinopyroxene, plagioclase) extensively altered to secondary minerals in most cases. Our dykes can be petrographically grouped as pyroxenite (LDB and LDC), dolerite (LDH) and diorite (remainder of samples). REE and multi-element profiles of pyroxenites and two of the diorites (LDI and LDJ) suggest a common origin of the four dykes, but show no similarity with known mafic units of the Kaapvaal craton. An age estimate between 2208 and 2276Â Ma for dyke LDB, obtained from two overlapping amphibole 40Ar/39Ar plateau results, indicates that these four dykes predates the ~2.05Â Ga Bushveld event. The six remaining dykes have similar chemistry to either the ~2.06Â Ga Dullstroom Lavas (LDG), the 1.875–1.835Â Ga Black Hills dyke swarm (LDH) or the ~1.11Â Ga Umkondo dolerites (LDA, LDD, LDE and LDF). An U–Pb baddeleyite date of 1867 ± 10Â Ma for dyke LDH confirms it as a member of the Black Hills dyke swarm. Demagnetization of eighty-three specimens reveals five stable magnetizations carried by titanomagnetite. Two of these are regarded as magnetic overprints while three magnetizations are likely representative of primary remanences. The corresponding virtual geomagnetic poles (Lat.−26.84°N, Long. 31.66°E; Lat. 26.07°N, Long. 11.01°E, and Lat. 55.84°N, Long. 65.02°E) resemble those from the ~2.23Â Ga Hekpoort Formation, the ~1.88–1.83Â Ga post-Waterberg intrusions, and the ~1.11Â Ga Umkondo dolerites respectively. The above results suggest that the Mashishing dykes, despite similar trends, constitute swarms of different generations
    • …
    corecore