Review of 'Education in Parapsychology: Student and Instructor Perspectives' by Harvey Irwin

Book review of Education in Parapsychology: Student and Instructor Perspectives by Harvey Irwin. Foreword by Nancy Zingrone. Gladesville, NSW, Australia: AIPR Mongraphs, 2013. Pp xv + 106. (paperback). ISBN 9780987077219

Empirical modelling principles to support learning in a cultural context

Much research on pedagogy stresses the need for a broad perspective on learning. Such a perspective might take account (for instance) of the experience that informs knowledge and understanding [Tur91], the situation in which the learning activity takes place [Lav88], and the influence of multiple intelligences [Gar83]. Educational technology appears to hold great promise in this connection. Computer-related technologies such as new media, the internet, virtual reality and brain-mediated communication afford access to a range of learning resources that grows ever wider in its scope and supports ever more sophisticated interactions. Whether educational technology is fulfilling its potential in broadening the horizons for learning activity is more controversial. Though some see the successful development of radically new educational resources as merely a matter of time, investment and engineering, there are also many critics of the trends in computer-based learning who see little evidence of the greater degree of human engagement to which new technologies aspire [Tal95]. This paper reviews the potential application to educational technology of principles and tools for computer-based modelling that have been developed under the auspices of the Empirical Modelling (EM) project at Warwick [EMweb]. This theme was first addressed at length in a previous paper [Bey97], and is here revisited in the light of new practical developments in EM both in respect of tools and of model-building that has been targetted at education at various levels. Our central thesis is that the problems of educational technology stem from the limitations of current conceptual frameworks and tool support for the essential cognitive model building activity, and that tackling these problems requires a radical shift in philosophical perspective on the nature and role of empirical knowledge that has significant practical implications. The paper is in two main sections. The first discusses the limitations of the classical computer science perspective where educational technology to support situated learning is concerned, and relates the learning activities that are most closely associated with a cultural context to the empiricist perspective on learning introduced in [Bey97]. The second outlines the principles of EM and describes and illustrates features of its practical application that are particularly well-suited to learning in a cultural setting

Community Management of Natural Resources in Africa: Impacts, Experiences and Future Directions

More than twenty years have passed since community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) rose to prominence in different parts of Africa as a strategy for rural development, local empowerment, and conservation. Led by new ideas about the merits of decentralized, collective resource governance regimes, and creative field experiments such as Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE, these community-based approaches evolved in a wide range of ecological, political, and social contexts across Africa. This review provides an unprecedented pan-African synthesis of CBNRM, drawing on multiple authors and a wide range of documented experiences from Southern, Eastern, Western and Central Africa. The review discusses the degree to which CBNRM has met poverty alleviation, economic development and nature conservation objectives. In its concluding chapter, the report suggests a way forward for strengthening CBNRM and addressing key challenges in the years ahead

GOVERNMENT MARKET INTERVENTION: AN ECONOMETRIC STUDY OF TANZANIAN FOOD GRAIN MARKETS

The paper is organized into six major sections. Background and trends in agricultural production and trade are presented in Section II. The extent of government intervention in food grain production and trade is described in Section III. This provides a foundation for Section IV where the behavioral equations for defining government intervention in food grain markets are specified. These equations, along with the retail demand and farm level supply equations, yield six equations in six endogenous variables for each of the food grain crops, maize, wheat and rice. It is shown in Section V that the model provides a good fit to the data. In the concluding sections, simulations are performed to obtain insights into the effect on and motivation for government intervention in food grain markets.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Remembering the future:Facilitating the recall of future events

The field of parapsychology is concerned with ‘impossible things’ - reported events or abilities that conflict with what the philosopher C.D. Broad (1949, p. 291) called the ‘Basic Limiting Principles’ of science, tenets that have been “so overwhelmingly supported by all the empirical facts … that it hardly enters our heads to question them”. Broad’s four principles can be summarised as follows:– Effects cannot come before causes.– A person’s mind cannot produce any direct change in the material world except those caused via the brain / senorimotor system.– Any mental event is an event in the brain of a living body, and cannot occur in the absence of a functioning brain.– All knowledge of the world comes to us through our conventional senses or by inference from known facts.However, there is widespread belief in and reported personal experience of phenomena that prima facie are exceptions to these principles, which seems to be independent of culture, creed or historical period (e.g., Castro, Burrows & Wooffitt, 2014; Dagnall, Drinkwater, Parker & Clough, 2016). Examples of such phenomena include: – Premonitions such as dreams that refer to (or are ‘caused by’) a future event.– Psychokinetic events such as the movement or distortion of objects, or the production of wellbeing changes in another organism as a result of mental intention alone.– Out of body experiences, where the centre of experience seems to be located away from the body; or near-death experiences, in which mental events seem to occur when the brain is apparently incapable of sustaining conscious activity.– Telepathic and clairvoyant experiences, in which people seem to be able to acquire information from the mind of another person or directly from the environment without the mediation of the known sensory systems.Parapsychology represents our best attempt to account for these phenomena, either in terms of existing constructs (such as misperception, errors of recall, and deception) or by invoking new constructs that can accommodate them. Given the theme of this symposium, I shall focus on the first of these, apparent violations of the cause-effect temporal relationship. With only limited space, I shall restrict myself to just one line of research that has been loosely (and rather inaccurately) labelled ‘feeling the future’

Remembering the future:Facilitating the recall of future events

The field of parapsychology is concerned with ‘impossible things’ - reported events or abilities that conflict with what the philosopher C.D. Broad (1949, p. 291) called the ‘Basic Limiting Principles’ of science, tenets that have been “so overwhelmingly supported by all the empirical facts … that it hardly enters our heads to question them”. Broad’s four principles can be summarised as follows:– Effects cannot come before causes.– A person’s mind cannot produce any direct change in the material world except those caused via the brain / senorimotor system.– Any mental event is an event in the brain of a living body, and cannot occur in the absence of a functioning brain.– All knowledge of the world comes to us through our conventional senses or by inference from known facts.However, there is widespread belief in and reported personal experience of phenomena that prima facie are exceptions to these principles, which seems to be independent of culture, creed or historical period (e.g., Castro, Burrows & Wooffitt, 2014; Dagnall, Drinkwater, Parker & Clough, 2016). Examples of such phenomena include: – Premonitions such as dreams that refer to (or are ‘caused by’) a future event.– Psychokinetic events such as the movement or distortion of objects, or the production of wellbeing changes in another organism as a result of mental intention alone.– Out of body experiences, where the centre of experience seems to be located away from the body; or near-death experiences, in which mental events seem to occur when the brain is apparently incapable of sustaining conscious activity.– Telepathic and clairvoyant experiences, in which people seem to be able to acquire information from the mind of another person or directly from the environment without the mediation of the known sensory systems.Parapsychology represents our best attempt to account for these phenomena, either in terms of existing constructs (such as misperception, errors of recall, and deception) or by invoking new constructs that can accommodate them. Given the theme of this symposium, I shall focus on the first of these, apparent violations of the cause-effect temporal relationship. With only limited space, I shall restrict myself to just one line of research that has been loosely (and rather inaccurately) labelled ‘feeling the future’

Computers for learning : an empirical modelling perspective

In this thesis, we explore the extent to which computers can provide support for domain learning. Computer support for domain learning is prominent in two main areas: in education, through model building and the use of educational software; and in the workplace, where models such as spreadsheets and prototypes are constructed. We shall argue that computerbased learning has only realised a fraction of its full potential due to the limited scope for combining domain learning with conventional computer programming. In this thesis, we identify some of the limitations in the current support that computers offer for learning, and propose Empirical Modelling (EM) as a way of overcoming them. We shall argue that, if computers are to be successfully used for learning, they must support the widest possible range of learning activities. We introduce an Experiential Framework for Learning (EFL) within which to characterise learning activities that range from the private to the public, from the empirical to the theoretical, and from the concrete to the abstract. The term ‘experiential’ reflects a view of knowledge as rooted in personal experience. We discuss the merits of computer-based modelling methods with reference to a broad constructionist perspective on learning that encompasses bricolage and situated learning. We conclude that traditional programming practice is not well-suited to supporting bricolage and situated learning since the principles of program development inhibit the essential cognitive model building activity that informs domain learning. In contrast, the EM approach to model construction directly targets the semantic relation between the computer model and its domain referent and exploits principles that are closely related to the modeller’s emerging understanding or construal. In this way, EM serves as a uniform modelling approach to support and integrate learning activities across the entire spectrum of the EFL. This quality makes EM a particularly suitable approach for computer-based model construction to support domain learning. In the concluding chapters of the thesis, we demonstrate the qualities of EM for educational technology with reference to practical case studies. These include: a range of EM models that have advantages over conventional educational software due to their particularly open-ended and adaptable nature and that serve to illustrate a variety of ways in which learning activities across the EFL can be supported and scaffolded

Is healing an option to aid sustainable healthcare futures?

It is becoming ever more apparent that the current model of healthcare delivery within developed countries is not sustainable. There are at least two major problems: the continuing development of expensive, high-technology approaches to diagnosis and treatment, which are putting an unsustainable economic burden on healthcare organisations (1); and the rapidly increasing carbon footprint of modern healthcare delivery systems, resulting in an unsustainable burden on the planet (2). Many possible answers to these problems are being considered by medical bodies including the British Medical Association (3). In addition, politicians are turning their attention to prevention, and are trying to move the responsibility for maintaining good health away from healthcare workers, and back to individuals and communities. For example, Public Health England is developing work on ‘salutogenesis’ (the generation of health) in addition to working on the prevention of disease (4,5). Over the last few years there has also been a burgeoning interest in what might be called ‘low-tech/high talk’ interventions such as the ‘walk and talk for mental health’ movement (6) and arts for healthcare (7). This has been accompanied by an increasing appetite amongst the public for complementary and alternative approaches to medicine (CAM)