Arts curriculum implementation: Adopt and adapt as policy translation

This paper examines macro, meso and micro understandings of policy enactment within Western Australian primary school arts education where a new national arts curriculum is being revised and implemented through a process colloquially known as ‘adopt and adapt’. This paper focuses on how a government led implementation policy has influenced arts teaching and learning in unintended ways. It Includes a theoretical reflection and a consideration of the effects of such policies. Using policy enactment theory as the enquiry lens, four contextual variables are highlighted for their impact on teachers and schools. The variables include situated contexts, material contexts, professional cultures and external factors. Effects are discussed through the perspectives of eleven arts curriculum leaders drawn from in-depth semi-structured interviews. Marginalisation of the arts, the disconnection of schools and teachers to the arts and professional learning impacts are discussed as results of this policy translation

Information, VARs and DSGE Models

How informative is a time series representation of a given vector of observables about the structural shocks and impulse response functions in a DSGE model? In this paper we refer to this econometrician’s problem as “E-invertibility” and consider the corresponding information problem of the agents in the assumed DGP, the DSGE model, which we refer to as “A-invertibility” We consider how the general nature of the agents’ signal extraction problem under imperfect information impacts on the econometrician’s problem of attempting to infer the nature of structural shocks and associated impulse responses from the data. We also examine a weaker condition of recoverability. A general conclusion is that validating a DSGE model by comparing its impulse response functions with those of a data VAR is more problematic when we drop the common assumption in the literature that agents have perfect information as an endowment. We develop measures of approximate fundamentalness for both perfect and imperfect information cases and illustrate our results using analytical and numerical examples

Structural, vibrational and thermal properties of densified silicates : insights from Molecular Dynamics

Structural, vibrational and thermal properties of densified sodium silicate (NS2) are investigated with classical molecular dynamics simulations of the glass and the liquid state. A systematic investigation of the glass structure with respect to density was performed. We observe a repolymerization of the network manifested by a transition from a tetrahedral to an octahedral silicon environment, the decrease of the amount of non-bridging oxygen atoms and the appearance of three-fold coordinated oxygen atoms (triclusters). Anomalous changes in the medium range order are observed, the first sharp diffraction peak showing a minimum of its full-width at half maximum according to density. The previously reported vibrational trends in densified glasses are observed, such as the shift of the Boson peak intensity to higher frequencies and the decrease of its intensity. Finally, we show that the thermal behavior of the liquid can be reproduced by the Birch-Murnaghan equation of states, thus allowing us to compute the isothermal compressibility

A comparison of the excess mass around CFHTLenS galaxy-pairs to predictions from a semi-analytic model using galaxy-galaxy-galaxy lensing

The matter environment of galaxies is connected to the physics of galaxy formation and evolution. Utilising galaxy-galaxy-galaxy lensing as a direct probe, we map out the distribution of correlated surface mass-density around galaxy pairs for different lens separations in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). We compare, for the first time, these so-called excess mass maps to predictions provided by a recent semi-analytic model, which is implanted within the dark-matter Millennium Simulation. We analyse galaxies with stellar masses between $10^9-10^{11}\,{\rm M}_\odot$ in two photometric redshift bins, for lens redshifts $z\lesssim0.6$, focusing on pairs inside groups and clusters. To allow us a better interpretation of the maps, we discuss the impact of chance pairs, i.e., galaxy pairs that appear close to each other in projection only. Our tests with synthetic data demonstrate that the patterns observed in the maps are essentially produced by correlated pairs that are close in redshift ($\Delta z\lesssim5\times10^{-3}$). We also verify the excellent accuracy of the map estimators. In an application to the galaxy samples in the CFHTLenS, we obtain a $3\sigma-6\sigma$ significant detection of the excess mass and an overall good agreement with the galaxy model predictions. There are, however, a few localised spots in the maps where the observational data disagrees with the model predictions on a $\approx3.5\sigma$ confidence level. Although we have no strong indications for systematic errors in the maps, this disagreement may be related to the residual B-mode pattern observed in the average of all maps. Alternatively, misaligned galaxy pairs inside dark matter halos or lensing by a misaligned distribution of the intra-cluster gas might also cause the unanticipated bulge in the distribution of the excess mass between lens pairs.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures; abridged abstract; revised version for A&A after addressing all comments by the refere

Private languages and private theorists

Simon Blackburn objects that Wittgenstein's private language argument overlooks the possibility that a private linguist can equip himself with a criterion of correctness by confirming generalizations about the patterns in which his private sensations occur. Crispin Wright responds that appropriate generalizations would be too few to be interesting. But I show that Wright's calculations are upset by his failure to appreciate both the richness of the data and the range of theories that would be available to the private linguist