Women and honour: Notes on lying

Review: ‘Women and Honour: Notes on Lying’ had four creative collaborators including choreographer Clare Luiten. Charlotte Rose produced an atmospheric music score, which enhanced the work admirably, likewise for the pools of light designed by Sean Curran

Sustaining dance education in New Zealand: Some issues facing pre-service, primary teacher educators

In the area of Dance Education particularly in a primary education context there are several publications on how to teach dance from a variety of philosophical standpoints (Stinson, 1997; Gough, 1999; Autard-Smith, 2002; Cone and Cone, 2005; McCutchen, 2006). Recent research into dance pedagogy analysed the concepts and approaches to creativity by three specialist dance teachers within a primary context in the United Kingdom (Chappell, 2007). Several dance researchers in New Zealand (Bolwell, 1998; Hong, 2000; Renner, 2006; Buck, 2007) have focused on Dance Education within a primary school context from the following angles: developing dance literacy, primary teachers’ voices in relation to teaching dance, approaches to curriculum dance, analysis of children’s reflections to live dance performance, and dance and interdisciplinary arts. However the issue of sustainable dance education for pre-service primary educators has not been examined. This paper explores some of the challenges facing dance educators working with pre-service primary teachers in the New Zealand context and reports on a particular cohort of student viewpoints

A bundle of sticks in my garden

The English law of property is often described as a ‘bundle of sticks’ in which each ‘stick’ represents a particular right. Gardens challenge these rights and wreak havoc on the ‘bundle of sticks’. This paper looks at the twenty-first century manifestations of community engagement with ground and explores how ‘gardening’ is undermining concepts of ownership, possession and management of land and how the fence between what is private and what is public is being encroached and challenged by community and individual initiatives to cultivate. The garden in this paper is therefore a place of questioning and redefining traditional legal concepts, but it also reflects contemporary concerns which go beyond the confines of the garden and the boundaries of the law. At the same time however, the garden represents a continuum between past struggles and ideals and future hopes, and so the cultivators of today are located in a continuing evolution of law, land and people. By considering the various ways in which people are engaging with land outside of the usual private land/person context and their motives for doing so, this paper places present gardening in its historic context and analyses the challenges that various forms of gardening pose for established legal principles. In particular this paper asks if present gardening demands a re-examination of property law and a re-evaluation of what is understood as ‘property’ if the ‘bundle of sticks’ is unpacked

Four Myths About Why Women Aren't Getting the Top Jobs in Universities

Don't blame lack of ambition, or malign the headhunters. Universities themselves are keeping a lid on female promotio

The rise and rise of executive pay

Sue Shepherd reflects on what lies behind the increase in the salaries of vice chancellors and other executive team members over recent years and what this tells us about trends in management of universities today

'That plant is my ancestor'. The significance of intellectual property on food security in developing countries

The global significance of intellectual property laws is familiar to most of those interested in this area of law. What might be less familiar is the impact of intellectual property on the issue of food security in developing countries. This paper considers the consequences of factors such as TRIPS plus compliance imposed on recent entrants to the World Trade Organisation, the role of UPOV and impact of protecting plant breeders' rights on food security in developing countries. In particular the paper focusses on examples drawn from the Pacific where island countries are not only considering WTO membership or have recently signed up to this and incurred consequent IP obligations, but where food security is increasingly under pressure due to climate change, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity shifts in agricultural practice and knowledge transfer, changing socio-economic patterns and the consequences of the global economic crisis. This is also a region where Western models of IP, although prevalent as introduced and imposed concepts, fit uneasily with forms and practices of indigenous traditional knowledge and practice which may be better suited to ensuring sustainability of food crops than the present thrust of IP laws

Invisible publics: higher education and digital exclusion

Teaching in public involves reducing barriers to access and nowhere is this more appropriate than with the subject of electronic resources and the delivery of virtual learning opportunities. The future of the university, in a time of resurgence of neo-liberal values, the primacy of market forces and an increasing emphasis on private rather than public provision, has become the subject of much debate. Insufficient attention, however, is being paid to the possibility of exclusion, which is the inevitable result of increasing digital pedagogies and practices. This chapter focuses on the role of the university in ensuring equitable access to digital technology. Over the last decade, the possibilities of virtual learning have included pportunities for widening participation, increasing student numbers and opening up world trades in professional and academic expertise, thereby sustaining the globalization of education. This chapter addresses the limitations to these opportunities, in particular the failure to prioritize issues of digital inclusion and the divisive consequences of digital discrimination. The chapter is in two parts: the first examines the adoption of virtual learning within higher education, in particular, the ability of the technology to both enable and deny access. The second looks at the wider implications of this duality when set against the background of an increasingly digital society, and how inclusive practices are failing to have inclusive results

Presenting a united front : assessed reflective writing on group experience

Assessed reflective writing is increasingly common in UK higher education. Students writing in this mode are typically required to narrate their experiences, evaluate their performance, investigate associated emotions, and comment on what has been learned. In this paper I focus on assessed reflective writing by students on an MA TESOL course who are required to write individual reflections on a process of working in a group to produce teaching materials. This task places particular demands on the writer. Like other students writing reflectively, they need to manage complex self presentation: to appear honest about relative successes and failures, to show evidence of appropriate reflection, and to indicate desirable learning. Because they are reflecting on a group experience, they also need to differentiate themselves from their work group in their account, and to reflect critically on others as well as on themselves. My focus in this paper is on the ways they manage these additional demands. I first examine the relative frequency with which writers refer to themselves and their work group, and then examine the content of self-referential and group-referential statements. Finally, I examine semantic patterns in the data and draw conclusions regarding possible reasons behind student writers’ choices about how to represent themselves and others