1,414 research outputs found

    Evolution of the Second-Story City: The Minneapolis Skyway System

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    This paper describes and explains the growth of the Minneapolis Skyway network. Accessibility is used as a major factor in understanding that growth (i.e. does the network connect to the location(s) with the highest accessibility, followed by the second highest, and so on). First, employment opportunities are used as the measure of activity and are based off of the square footage of buildings and/or ITE trip generation rates. Using information about the buildings located downtown for each year since the first skyway was built, the accessibilities of each of the connected and adjacent unconnected blocks were calculated for every time period the skyway system expanded. The purpose is to determine how often the expansion connected the block with the highest accessibility. The results show that though important, accessibility was rarely maximized, except in the early stages of development. A connect-choice logit model relating the probability of joining the network (in a given year) to accessibility and network size was employed. The results show accessibility does remain an important factor in predicting which links are connected. Physical difficulties in making connections may have played a role, as well as the potential for adverse economic impacts.Network growth, Transport economics, Incremental connection, Skyways, Minneapolis

    Operating Costs for Trucks

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    This study estimates the operating costs for commercial vehicle operators in Minnesota. A survey of firms that undertake commercial truck road movements was performed. The average operating cost per kilometer for commercial vehicle operators was calculated from the survey responses. Results show that the translog and Cobb-Douglas models have approximately equal explanatory power in estimating the total cost from the data. The models also revealed the presence of nearly constant returns to scale, a finding consistent with earlier studies; an increase in output (total truckloads) of 1% increases total costs by 1.04%.

    Educational Resistance in a Runaway World: Poetic meditations on power and surveillance

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    It is becoming clear that standard, linear solutions to the problems of resistant children are problematic because they imagine a world of schooling in which place and power do not matter. Poetry can challenge the typically linear, prescriptive, and modernist assumptions that are central to much educational theory and practice. In this article, drawing on original poetry composed in and around schools, I analyze a series of reflective disruptions in the interplay of strategy and tactics in my own teaching career. The broad argument of this paper is that educators ought to recognize, promote and embrace the messiness and complexity of our work rather than retreat into simplifications and technical fixes.Il semble de plus en plus évident que les solutions standard et linéaires aux problèmes des enfants résistants sont problématiques puisqu’elles supposent un environnement éducatif dans lequel la place et le pouvoir n’ont pas d’importance. La poésie peut remettre en question les hypothèses linéaires, normatives et modernistes typiques qui sont au centre de la plupart des théories et pratiques pédagogiques. Dans cet article, j’analyse une série de perturbations liées à la réflexion dans l’influence réciproque de la stratégie et des tactiques de ma propre carrière en enseignement, en puisant dans une poésie originale composée dans le cadre d’activités scolaires et parascolaires. Dans l’ensemble, cet article soutient que les éducateurs devraient reconnaître, promouvoir et accepter le désordre et la complexité de notre travail, plutôt que de se complaire dans des simplifications et des correctifs techniques

    Answering My Sister\u27s Question: The Critical Importance of Education for Diversity in Those Spaces Shere We Think We Are All the Same

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    This essay is a response to a question about school desegregation in Nova Scotia, Canada posed by my sister in 2008. I argue that the question itself illustrates the extent to which critical analysis of the politics of race in Canadian schools, particularly in rural areas, is seldom taken up. This feeds into a persistent mythology of a racially integrated, benevolent Nova Scotia where nasty problems of race were taken care of in the historic past. The reality in many rural regions of Canada is, I argue, quite the opposite and it may be precisely the friendly, homespun imagery which support the persistence of exclusive educational and social practices, as well as ongoing regional economic disadvantage. It is in these apparently non-diverse places that diversity education is perhaps most desperately needed

    Mathematical moments: Autoethnographic excursions with a mathematical outsider sociologist

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    In this essay I offer some reflections on the field of mathematics education, and particularly the sociopolitical analysis of mathematics education that has emerged in contemporary scholarship. Here I attempt to do two things. First of all I respond to a recent book on “disorder” in mathematics education, identifying some themes and problematics that I find intriguing and generative from my perspective outside the field. Here I reflect on the way that mathematics is positioned in educational discourse generally as a proxy for human capital and general intelligence. Next I relate stories from my life and practice as a primary school teacher in which mathematics, as I understood it, bumped productively against problems in everyday life. Finally, I conclude with a reflection on the productive tension between naïve place-based mathematical understandings and abstract context-bridging mathematical knowledge forms

    TRAVELS IN SPACE AND PLACE: IDENTITY AND RURAL SCHOOLING

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    This analysis draws on interview data from a three‐year study of educational decision making of youth living in a coastal community in Atlantic Canada. Students whose educational and mobility aspirations extend outside the known spaces of the community develop the ability to negotiate multiple social spaces in and out of school. The school‐successful ʺfloaterʺ identity position is assumed by youth comfortable in a variety of social groups and situations ranging from peer cliques to interactions with teachers and other institutional authority figures. This contrasts with more localized identity positions, marked by strong and exclusive identification with local networks. Key words: rural education, mobility, education trajectories, high school, school cliques, Nova Scotia education Dans cet article, l’auteur analyse les données tirées d’entrevues effectuées dans le cadre d’une étude de trois ans portant sur les décisions de jeunes d’une localité côtière du Canada atlantique quant à leurs études. Les élèves dont les aspirations en matière d’éducation et de mobilité dépassent les espaces connus de la communauté développent l’aptitude à négocier de multiples espaces sociaux à l’école et en dehors de l’école. Les jeunes qui sont à l’aise dans plusieurs groupes sociaux et situations, allant des cliques de camarades aux interactions avec les enseignants et autres figures d’autorité, adoptent la position du « migrant » qui réussit à l’école. D’autres, au contraire, s’identifient fortement et de manière exclusive à des cercles ou réseaux locaux. Mots clés : éducation rurale, mobilité, parcours scolaires, école secondaire, cliques d’élèves, enseignement en Nouvelle‐Écosse

    Toward a Geography of Rural Education in Canada

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    The field of rural education has not been significantly developed in Canada and the marginal status of the rural itself has contributed to this peripheral status. The emergence of geography and spatial thinking generally in social theory and in educational thought represents an opportunity to re-evaluate the importance of space and place in educationaltheory and policy discourse. Rather than a space formal education leaves behind, or as the location of impoverishment, isolation, and deficit, I argue that rural communities occupy an important place on the Canadian educational landscape. Given the economic, political, and cultural challenges they face, I suggest rural schools may produce higher qualityeducational outcomes than are generally attributed to them

    Rural Education and Out-Migration: The Case of a Coastal Community

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    In this article, I report on findings from a case study examining the relationship between formal education and out-migration in a Canadian coastal community from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. Although high rates of village-level out-migration were chronic, most migration trajectories were short-range. Contrary to large-scale quantitative analyses of rural depopulation, I found a geographically stable population and persistently low high-school graduation rates among those who stayed in the proximal area. In the analysis of educational attainment and migration, schools served their traditional role of sorting and selecting youth for out-migration. Keywords: rural education, educational attainment, geographic mobility, school to work transition, coastal communities Dans cet article, lauteur présente les conclusions dune étude de cas portant sur la relation entre léducation formelle et lexode au sein dune communauté côtière canadienne du début des années 60 à la fin des années 70. Si les taux élevés de migration hors des villages ont été chroniquement élevés, la plupart des migrants ne sont pas allé très loin. Contrairement aux résultats des analyses quantitatives de lexode rural sur une grande échelle, lauteur a constaté ici que la population était demeurée relativement stable et que les taux dobtention du diplôme de secondaire étaient dordinaire peu élevés chez les personnes qui sont restées dans la région. Dans son analyse du rendement scolaire et de lexode, lauteur a noté que les écoles ont assuré leur fonction traditionnelle de sélection scolaire ainsi que de filtrage de celles et ceux qui iraient étudier à lextérieur. Mots clés: éducation rurale, rendement scolaire, mobilité géographique, transition de lécole au travail, communautés côtières
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