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Collaboration Paints a Bright Future for Arts Education

In July 2010, working with a nonprofit organization called Big Thought, officials at the Dallas IndependentSchool District embarked on an approach to summer school they hoped would change the image from one of punishment and failure and engage kids. The idea was to support teachers, artists, and others to replace worksheet-style instruction with teaching animated by music, visual arts, dance, and theater.The new arts-rich summer school program that resulted is just another sign of Dallas' initiative, spearheaded by BigThought (www.bigthought.org), to bring together schools, cultural organizations, and others to restore high-quality arts instruction to the many classrooms from which it has long been missing. "What's the goal of education: to assess kids or prepare them for life?" asks Craig Welle, executive director of enrichment curriculum and instruction for the Dallas Independent School District. "If you've taken the arts out of the education system, you are no longer preparing kids for life."This report talks about the history of arts education funding and the success of the Dallas initiative

Responses and Influences: A Model of Online Information Use for Learning

Introduction. This paper explores the complexity of online information use for learning in the culturally diverse ICT-intensive higher education context. It presents a Model of responses and influences in online information use for learning that aims to increase awareness of the complexity of online information use and support information literacy development. Background. Despite increasing integration of information literacy into university curricula there are evident limitations in students’ use of information associated with an information literacy imbalance between well developed IT skills & uncritical approaches, compounded by differences in cultural and linguistic experience. Influences. This model draw insight from models of: information behaviour/seeking (Wilson, Foster, Kuhlthau), information literacy (Bruce), cross-cultural adaptation (Anderson), reflective online use (Hughes, Bruce & Edwards). The model. Incorporates behavioural, cognitive & affective responses with cultural & linguistic influences in an action research framework that represents online information use - envisaged as the experience of engaging with online information for learning - as holistic, dynamic and continuous. Conclusion. The model represents the synergy between information use and learning. It supports the development of inclusive reflective approaches to information literacy that address identified learning challenges related to information literacy imbalance and cultural & linguistic diversity

Children with social and emotional difficulties need support from a range of professionals : preparing professions for integrated working

Inclusive education for all children means that teachers are increasingly faced with challenges in managing children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) whose complex needs span a number of professional disciplines, some of which sit outside of education. However, whilst it is recognised that children with SEBD require management and support across a range of professions that include education, health, social and youth services, there is little done to prepare teaching staff for working across professional and organisational boundaries. The evidence of poor communication and team working amongst professions has led to policy changes and guidelines calling for greater coordination in the delivery of services for children and young people. This paper considers how education and training needs to prepare students with the knowledge and skills for collaborative working through interprofessional education (IPE), and draws on adult learning theory and activity theory to frame its direction. In doing so, it demonstrates a model for IPE that can be used to engage students from different disciplines to gain insight into the understanding of the wider issues of SEBD and the roles and responsibilities of the other professions involved. The model is one that enables students to consider the impact the role of others has on their own role, and to reflect on how their role impacts on the role of others.peer-reviewe

A minimal classical sequent calculus free of structural rules

Gentzen's classical sequent calculus LK has explicit structural rules for contraction and weakening. They can be absorbed (in a right-sided formulation) by replacing the axiom P,(not P) by Gamma,P,(not P) for any context Gamma, and replacing the original disjunction rule with Gamma,A,B implies Gamma,(A or B). This paper presents a classical sequent calculus which is also free of contraction and weakening, but more symmetrically: both contraction and weakening are absorbed into conjunction, leaving the axiom rule intact. It uses a blended conjunction rule, combining the standard context-sharing and context-splitting rules: Gamma,Delta,A and Gamma,Sigma,B implies Gamma,Delta,Sigma,(A and B). We refer to this system M as minimal sequent calculus. We prove a minimality theorem for the propositional fragment Mp: any propositional sequent calculus S (within a standard class of right-sided calculi) is complete if and only if S contains Mp (that is, each rule of Mp is derivable in S). Thus one can view M as a minimal complete core of Gentzen's LK.Comment: To appear in Annals of Pure and Applied Logic. 15 page

Logistics and the Chaco War Bolivia versus Paraguay, 1932-1935

This article provides an assessment of how Paraguay, the weaker power, managed to defeat Bolivia in the 1932-35 Chaco War, fought over the disputed and remote Gran Chaco region that separated the two countries. The article argues that Paraguay’s logistical superiority was a decisive factor leading to victory in 1935. It uses a broad definition of logistics to include the acquisition of matériel before the war as well as the establishment of national and international supply lines during the war. Comparing and contrasting Bolivia and Paraguay in the period from the early 1920s to 1935, this article suggests that the preparation and development of an effective logistical infrastructure by Paraguay in the late 1920s and early 1930s were vital for the operational success that it had achieved on the battlefields of the Chaco by late 1933