The Cost of Conformity: Education Reform, Information, and Ethical Leadership

Like Janus, conformity has two faces. On one face, conformity allows social cohesion to accomplish mission-specific activities. On the other face, conformity in educational leadership can entail a three-part cost against human development. First, education leaders may lose the capacity to ground ethics in objectively valuable sources. This is an effect of formal and informal institutional incentive structures and pressures leaders of virtue to become managers of demand. Second, conformity signals to institutional actors that authentic reform might be too costly to one’s professional career. Third, conformity signals that bureaucracies are not merely locations of special interests, but they are also locations of information dissipation in decision-making. All of these combine to show that the institution of education suffers a significant loss of creativity and innovation, making leadership a difficult occupation. A discussion of reliable remedies for practice follows

Short term effect of omega-3 products on biomarkers of oxidative stress in healthy volunteers: a randomized controlled trial

Postponed access: the file will be accessible after 2022-05-18Masteroppgave for klinisk ernæringNUCLI395MAMD-NUCL

Evolved embodied phase coordination enables robust quadruped robot locomotion

Overcoming robotics challenges in the real world requires resilient control systems capable of handling a multitude of environments and unforeseen events. Evolutionary optimization using simulations is a promising way to automatically design such control systems, however, if the disparity between simulation and the real world becomes too large, the optimization process may result in dysfunctional real-world behaviors. In this paper, we address this challenge by considering embodied phase coordination in the evolutionary optimization of a quadruped robot controller based on central pattern generators. With this method, leg phases, and indirectly also inter-leg coordination, are influenced by sensor feedback.By comparing two very similar control systems we gain insight into how the sensory feedback approach affects the evolved parameters of the control system, and how the performances differs in simulation, in transferal to the real world, and to different real-world environments. We show that evolution enables the design of a control system with embodied phase coordination which is more complex than previously seen approaches, and that this system is capable of controlling a real-world multi-jointed quadruped robot.The approach reduces the performance discrepancy between simulation and the real world, and displays robustness towards new environments.Comment: 9 page

Genre and Genring in Music Education

© Live Weider EllefsenIn this article, I explore the theoretical and analytical potential of the concept of genring, which here refers to productive acts of temporary interpretation and signification, wherein existing classification systems and genre categories in the social are operationalized and (re)negotiated. Foucault and Butler’s theories of discursive subjection serve as a theoretical framework to consider how genring works as a performative mode of action: a discursive, reiterative, and citational practice that establishes ontological effects of truth, reality, and naturalness. This performative mode of action is not a “discursive practice” in itself; rather, it might be understood as one of the ways discourse practices itself. To probe the analytical value of the concept genring, I take as my case the field of music education, where genring seems to be a common strategy for associating music with music, music with people, and people with people for educational purposes.publishedVersio

Politiens politikk og politikkens politi. Norske politireformer i perioden 1682-1866

What is ‘police’? Or rather, what was ‘police’ before it became the institution and body of uniformed officers patrolling public places and investigating crime, that we perceive it as today? How and why did ‘police’ become that way? Norwegian police history has mainly been researched from a legal or institutional point of view. This thesis explores the formation of ‘police’ as a socio-political concept by analysing Norwegian police reforms in the time period 1682-1866. During this stretch of time the Norwegian state was transformed from an absolutist monarchy ruled by the sovereign in Copenhagen, into a constitutional monarchy based on liberal and democratic principles and the Rule of Law. This study aims to understand what role ‘police’ played in this governmental transformation, and by this contribute to our knowledge about the history of police and politics. Building on the theoretical framework of Reinhard Koselleck, Quentin Skinner and Michel Foucault, police is studied as a historical concept, as a political intention, and as an expression of governmentality. The source material consists of laws and regulations, governmental documents, reports, propositions, newspapers, pamphlets and letters, and it has been analysed with the intention of finding the answers to three research questions: What was police, who wanted police, and why? The result is a history of how and why the politics of police (politien) was transformed into the police of politics (politiet), and how this transformation was interlinked with the establishment of a modern liberal-democratic state based on the principle of Rule of Law. During the absolutist era (1660-1814) police was established as a way of governing and promoting the general welfare of the state, through administrative regulations, officials and courts. Police was a result of the absolute rulers’ intention of enhancing their control over the economic, social and moral life of the cities, legitimized in what Foucault denotes as raison d’Ètat. But, as this study shows, it was also a result of the initiative of the bourgeoisie who saw police as an instrument for the protection of their commercial priveleges. In the late 1600s and early 1700s police was formed in a negotiation between the sovereign and the bourgeoisie, but when the sovereign issued police ordinances for the Norwegian cities (1710-1745) the bourrgoisie’s influence was impaired. As a consequence of the Kiel treaty granting Norway to Sweden after the loss of the Napoleonic war in 1814, a revolutionary assembly argued that the contract between sovereign and people had ceased to exist, and a Norwegian constitution was drafted and declared. During the period of 1814-1866 Norwegian police was transformed into a, partly state and partly municipal, bureaucratic institution, consisting of a hierarchy of uniformed officers who were patrolling the streets and investigating crime. What, during the absolutist era, was police as a way of governing to promote the order and welfare of the state, was transformed into police as an instrument for the prevention and repression of disorder and crime. Previous research refers to the establishment of London Metropolitan police in 1829, and the import of this police model in Stockholm (1850), Christiania (1859) and Copenhagen (1863), as the turning point in the transformation from the “old” to the “new” police. By studying how police was discussed in parliament and newspapers in the four decades preceding the establishment of a patrolling constabulary in Christiania in 1859, this study shows that the the transformation from the “old” to the “new” police was a result of a political process that started long before 1859. By illuminating how political concepts like freedom, sovereignty, power, protection and welfare were comprehended and discussed in debates about police, the thesis provides new insight into the history of politics. It shows that ‘police’ was a key concept in the political formation of a modern state based on liberal and democratic principles and the Rule of Law. And, it explains how and why we ended up with a police legitimized in an amalgamation of absolutist, bureaucratic, democratic, republican and liberalist ideals

SETTLEMENT IN THE OLD NORTHWEST FRONTIER AND THE MERGING OF CULTURE, 1750 -1790

SETTLEMENT IN THE OLD NORTHWEST FRONTIER AND THE MERGING OF CULTURE, 1750 -1790 An Abstract of the Thesis by Sandra Ellefsen During the late 1700s, the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountain Chain became the main corridor that precipitated settlement into Kentucky. Along this frontier line, settlers had to contend with various Native American tribes, and settlement on the frontier from the beginning of colonization irrevocably altered the Native American way of life. Warfare, encroachment, and disease caused the Native American population to decline drastically in the process of contact; often as a result, Native tribes chose to adopt many settler captives to replace the lost tribal members. They treated assimilated captives as equals and members of the tribe, although the captives and the European American population often viewed Native American methods of assimilation as brutal. Settlers remained less tolerant of the Native Americans, even though to persevere in the wilderness, pioneers adopted many survival skills they had learned from their Native American counterparts. Regardless of this animosity, the result of the clash between these two cultures was a single, uniquely American culture, with neither original culture - Native American or European American - completely absorbing the other

Content Analysis of Archetypal Portrayal of Females in Picture Books Read in Preschool Classrooms

Literature that depicts females in restrictive roles may limit girls\u27 aspirations and success. Previous studies of award-winning books for young children have found gender-stereotypical role portrayal to be common. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to identify the archetypal roles assigned to female characters in picture books read aloud by teachers in the preschool classroom. The conceptual framework for this study was derived from feminist theory and Jungian archetypes. Data were collected in the form of teachers\u27 logs of books they read aloud over a 2-week period. Data were analyzed by employing the 3-read method developed by Madsen, which was revised to assign Jungian archetypes to each female character in a sample of 20 books. According to study results, female characters were portrayed as passive and often silent. Most of the female characters in these books were assigned archetypes typified by low personal agency, passivity, and service to others (orphan, innocent, and caretaker) and none were assigned archetypes associated with innovation (magician, jester, and creator). Of the 106 female characters portrayed in this sample, only 26% were verbal, and of those who spoke, 46% were limited to the one or two words needed to ask for assistance or to offer to serve. Female characters who did advance the plot through dialogue were often in animal form. Gender stereotypes still exist in children\u27s picture books, as evidenced by objectification of females, female servitude, and lack of positive agentic female roles. This study has potential to elicit positive social change, benefiting both boys and girls, through increased awareness of archetypal role portrayal of female characters in picture books and teachers\u27 increased care in selecting read-aloud books with regard to the gender-based messages they send

The Community-oriented Computer Security, Advisory and Warning Team

Critical information infrastructure protection is vital for any nation. Many of a country’s critical systems are interconnected via an information infrastructure, such as the Internet. Should the information infrastructure be targeted by remote attacks, it would have a devastating effect on functioning of a country. Developing nations are no exception. As broadband penetration rates increase, and as Internet access speeds increase, developing nations have to implement safeguards to ensure that their information infrastructure is not target or abused by cyber attackers. Many nations implement CSIRT structures to aid in the protection of their information infrastructure. However these structures are expensive to set up and maintain. In this paper we introduce a Community-oriented Advisory, Security and Warning (C-SAW) Team, which aims to be a cost effective alternative to a CSIRT. C-SAW Teams aims to combine cost-effectiveness with the ability to mutate into a full-scale CSIRT structure over time