Becoming eco-responsible, active citizens through participation in the Eco Ambassadors project - a reflective analysis

This article offers a reflective analysis of the Eco Ambassadors Project as an example of the some of the ways in which learning about environmental issues and active citizenship can be encouraged and enabled through collaboration and negotiated participation. Some policy background to the project is given, followed by a critical consideration of the theoretical framework of situated learning and participation in a community of practice in relation to the project alongside theories of citizenship. Three activities undertaken during the project are highlighted and these are critically examined in relation to the theories under consideration. The paper argues that the theoretical framework of learning by participation can usefully augment and help better explain how learners develop their identities as citizens, and that through participation people can become active members of communities that are environmentally and politically aware

Open access: beyond the numbers

Much of the discussion about the merits of Open Access (OA) publishing has centred on the numbers; on whether, when all costs have been taken into account, it is cheaper to publish on an OA basis than in commercially run, subscription journals

Innovation Africa

It is now ten years since the Economist newspaper declared Africa to be “the hopeless continent”. Today, the same magazine offers a different prognosis, building on the World Bank’s prediction of growth rates for sub-Saharan African economies that will be twice those of Europe. This is in the context of a severe and prolonged recession in North America and Europe and a growing realization that the epicentres of development are shifting eastwards, and southwards. Today, I will reflect on what this may mean for some aspects of a small part of innovation. The qualifiers are deliberate; predicting the future in our complex, interconnected world in hubris

Openness: The essential quality of knowledge

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Inequality and higher education: marketplace or social justice?

Professor Hall’s paper addresses the key social issues of poverty and inequality of educational opportunity, comparing the UK’s policy history and experience with that of South Africa and identifying the important roles that higher education leaders at institutional and system levels can play. Professor Hall’s paper is accompanied by a short commentary from six higher education leaders who all have a strong track-record of addressing the issues that Professor Hall’s paper raises

New knowledge and the university

What forms of knowledge have legitimacy in the contemporary university? By using Actor-Network Theory to unravel the strands in a recent dispute about access to skeletons from a burial ground in Cape Town. This paper shows how circulating systems of references connect institutions, historical trajectories and differing sets of interests to form competing knowledge systems. Rather than falling back on a defence of established disciplines and academic authority, it is argued that there are considerable benefits in recognising the importance and validity of knowledge generated 'in community', and in the course of political discourse. Rather than undermining truth, such an approach will result in both better science and more in formed community action

A more general treatment of the philosophy of physics and the existence of universes

Natural philosophy necessarily combines the process of scientific observation with an abstract (and usually symbolic) framework, which provides a logical structure to the development of a scientific theory. The metaphysical underpinning of science includes statements about the process of science itself, and the nature of both the philosophical and material objects involved in a scientific investigation. By developing a formalism for an abstract mathematical description of inherently non-mathematical, physical objects, an attempt is made to clarify the mechanisms and implications of the philosophical tool of Ansatz. Outcomes of the analysis include a possible explanation for the philosophical issue of the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics as raised by Wigner, and an investigation into formal definitions of the terms: principles, evidence, existence and universes that are consistent with the conventions used in physics. It is found that the formalism places restrictions on the mathematical properties of objects that represent the tools and terms mentioned above. This allows one to make testable predictions regarding physics itself (where the nature of the tools of investigation is now entirely abstract) just as scientific theories make predictions about the universe at hand. That is, the mathematical structure of objects defined within the new formalism has philosophical consequences (via logical arguments) that lead to profound insights into the nature of the universe, which may serve to guide the course of future investigations in science and philosophy, and precipitate inspiring new avenues of research

Revalorized Black Embodiment: Dancing with Fanon

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance for Black persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience

Slanted Truths: The Gay Science as Nietzsche's Ars Poetica

This essay derives its focus on poetry from the subtitle of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft: “la gaya scienza.” Nietzsche appropriated this phrase from the phrase “gai saber” used by the Provençal knight-poets (or troubadours) of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries — the first lyric poets of the European languages — to designate their Ars Poetica or “art of poetry.” I will begin with an exploration of Nietzsche’s treatment of poets and poetry as a subject matter, closely analyzing his six aphorisms which deal explicitly with poets and poetry. Having considered The Gay Science as a text about poetry, I will then briefly explore three further ways in which The Gay Science can be thought of as itself a kind of poetry. The result of these analyses is an understanding of Nietzsche’s own understanding of philosophy (and of the best way to live) as also a form of poetry