The Deconstructed (or Distributed) Journal - an emerging model?

Reviews the development of the Deconstructed Journal academic publishing model. The model was first proposed in something like its present form in 1997 and further developed in 1999. Although not actively promoted elements of the model appear to be emerging spontaneously from the general developments in online academic publishing

'Picturesque and dramatic' or 'dull recitals of threadbare fare': good practice in history teaching in elementary schools in England, 1872-1905

This article draws on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century teaching manuals, reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors, history textbooks ('readers'), other administrators' and teachers' accounts, policy documents and pupils' reminiscences to refute common and generalised assessments of the period (often by those who have not looked closely at these specific sources) that the teaching of history was a negative and boring experience, limited mainly and simply to reading comprehension of lengthy pages devoid of timelines and visual materials. The article concentrates on the experience of English elementary schools and draws comparisons between past and present teaching approaches. The findings show that there is extant evidence that there did exist in the late Victorian period clear conceptions of how to make history accessible to children, many of which reflect current best practice in the subject. They also show that many leading educationalists, and probably the teachers who read them, were aware of the need to make the subject accessible to children. The pupils themselves have left very little evidence of their experience, but some pupils were enabled to develop picturesque understandings of the past of benefit to their lives beyond the classroom. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Reputation, social identity, and social conflict

We interpret the social identity literature and examine its economic implications. We model a population of agents from two exogenous and well defined social groups. Agents are randomly matched to play a reduced form bargaining game. We show that this struggle for resources drives a conflict through the rational destruction of surplus. We assume that the population contains both unbiased and biased players. Biased players aggressively discriminate against members of the other social group. The existence and specification of the biased player is motivated by the social identity literature. For unbiased players, group membership has no payoff relevant consequences. We show that the unbiased players can contribute to the conflict by aggressively discriminating and that this behavior is consistent with existing empirical evidence.social identity theory; social fragmentation

Ethnic fragmentation and police spending

Using a Two-Stage Least Squares procedure, we estimate the relationship between ethnic fragmentation and police spending using a cross-section of United States counties. Our results show that, when controlling for community characteristics and accounting for simultaneity bias, ethnic fragmentation is positively related to police spending. Our paper contributes to the understanding of the stylized fact that public spending on police increased over a period in which the incidence of crime decreased

The endogenous nature of social preferences

This paper presents evidence which challenges the view that techniques which are designed to measure the social preferences of subjects can always be accomplished in a nonintrusive manner. We find evidence that such measurements can influence the preferences which they are designed to measure. Researchers often measure social preferences by posing a series of dictator game allocation decisions; we use a particular technique, Social Value Orientation (SVO). In our experiment we vary the order of the SVO measurement and a lager stakes dictator game. We find that subjects with prosocial preferences act even more prosocially when the SVO measurement is administered first, whereas those with selfish preferences are unaffected by the order of the measurement. Additionally, we find evidence that this difference is driven by the presence of choices involving the size of surplus.Other-Regarding Preferences; Social Value Orientation; Dictator Game

Refinement and verification of concurrent systems specified in Object-Z and CSP

The formal development of large or complex systems can often be facilitated by the use of more than one formal specification language. Such a combination of languages is particularly suited to the specification of concurrent or distributed systems, where both the modelling of processes and state is necessary. This paper presents an approach to refinement and verification of specifications written using a combination of Object-Z and CSP. A common semantic basis for the two languages enables a unified method of refinement to be used, based upon CSP refinement. To enable state-based techniques to be used for the Object-Z components of a specification we develop state-based refinement relations which are sound and complete with respect to CSP refinement. In addition, a verification method for static and dynamic properties is presented. The method allows us to verify properties of the CSP system specification in terms of its component Object-Z classes by using the laws of the CSP operators together with the logic for Object-Z

Defining the nature of blended learning through its depiction in current research

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupBlended learning has been a feature of higher education practice and research for almost two decades. This article takes stock of current blended learning research, contributing to the growing number of meta-analyses of higher education and blended learning research more generally, through a review of ninety-seven articles relating to blended learning in higher education published in fifteen journals between 2012 and mid-2017. The review focused on where and when the articles were published; their provenance, scale, scope; methodological approach; the broad research themes; and definition of blended learning used. The review shows that despite its ubiquity, blended learning’s definition is all-encompassing; its spread is global but research is dominated by key players; it is of technical interest; and its research is small-scale, individually focused, seeking to evidence the benefits of blended learning. The article concludes with recommendations of how higher education research could provide institutions with evidence to ensure their ‘best of blends’.Peer reviewe