Cultural Knowledge: The Unrecognized Responsibility of Art Education

Art educators are a subgroup within the larger culture whose role it is to communicate information and skills in the visual arts for guiding individuals to find greater personal satisfaction in the visual arts, to gain knowledge of the visual arts as areas of specialized interest, and to become aware of the contribution the visual arts make to their cultural heritage. This paper proposes that the kinds of information that future art teachers gain while training in their specialized area fails to prepare them adequately for their role. A parallelism discovered in the work of cultural geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) and the recent work of cognitive psychologist, David Feldman (1980, 1984) suggests that different forces or domains of knowledge interact in ways that guide and direct the formation of ideas. In the following paper, the work of Tuan and Feldman are used as a basis for a greater understanding of the contradictory elements in the education and role expectancy of the art educator

Optimization of adsorptive removal of α-toluic acid by CaO2 nanoparticles using response surface methodology

The present work addresses the optimization of process parameters for adsorptive removal of α-toluic acid by calcium peroxide (CaO2) nanoparticles using response surface methodology (RSM). CaO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by chemical precipitation method and confirmed by Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) analysis which shows the CaO2 nanoparticles size range of 5–15 nm. A series of batch adsorption experiments were performed using CaO2 nanoparticles to remove α-toluic acid from the aqueous solution. Further, an experimental based central composite design (CCD) was developed to study the interactive effect of CaO2 adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of α-toluic acid, and contact time on α-toluic acid removal efficiency (response) and optimization of the process. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to determine the significance of the individual and the interactive effects of variables on the response. The model predicted response showed a good agreement with the experimental response, and the coefficient of determination, (R2) was 0.92. Among the variables, the interactive effect of adsorbent dosage and the initial α-toluic acid concentration was found to have more influence on the response than the contact time. Numerical optimization of process by RSM showed the optimal adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of α-toluic acid, and contact time as 0.03 g, 7.06 g/L, and 34 min respectively. The predicted removal efficiency was 99.50%. The experiments performed under these conditions showed α-toluic acid removal efficiency up to 98.05%, which confirmed the adequacy of the model prediction