Mixing colours: An ICT tool based on a semiotic framework for mathematical meaning-makng about ratio and fractions

This paper reports on the research and development of an ICT tool to facilitate the learning of ratio and fractions by adult prisoners. The design of the ICT tool was informed by a semiotic framework for mathematical meaning-making. The ICT tool thus employed multiple semiotic resources including topological, typological, and social-actional resources. The results showed that individual semiotic resource could only represent part of the mathematical concept, while at the same time it might signify something else to create a misconception. When multiple semiotic resources were utilised the mathematical ideas could be better learnt.

Inducing shades of meaning by matrix methods : a first step towards thematic analysis of opinion

This article explores two matrix methods to induce the ``shades of meaning" (SoM) of a word. A matrix representation of a word is computed from a corpus of traces based on the given word. Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) compute a set of vectors corresponding to a potential shade of meaning. The two methods were evaluated based on loss of conditional entropy with respect to two sets of manually tagged data. One set reflects concepts generally appearing in text, and the second set comprises words used for investigations into word sense disambiguation. Results show that for NMF consistently outperforms SVD for inducing both SoM of general concepts as well as word senses. The problem of inducing the shades of meaning of a word is more subtle than that of word sense induction and hence relevant to thematic analysis of opinion where nuances of opinion can arise.

How current pedagogy methods in games teaching in the UK, Australia and the US have been shaped by historical, socio cultural, environmental and political constraints

Crucial to enhancing the status and quality of games teaching in schools is a developed understanding of the teaching strategies adopted by practitioners. In this paper, we will demonstrate that contemporary games‟ teaching is a product of individual, task and environmental constraints (Newell, 1986). More specifically, we will show that current pedagogy in the U.K., Australia and the United States is strongly influenced by historical, socio-cultural environmental and political constraints. In summary, we will aim to answer the question „why do teachers teach games the way they do.‟ In answering this question, we conclude that teacher educators, who are trying to influence pedagogical practice, must understand these potential constraints and provide appropriate pre-service experiences to give future physical education teachers the knowledge, confidence and ability to adopt a range of teaching styles when they become fully fledged teachers. Essential to this process is the need to enable future practitioners to base their pedagogical practice on a sound understanding of contemporary learning theories of skill acquisition.

Introduction : the global flow of creative ideas

In the era of late modernism, various pressures play a decisive role in shaping the texture and meaning of the world around us. Population, work, transportation, new technologies of information and communication, lifestyle cultures and other forces are increasingly mobile, and this in turn helps make for a new set of public and personal surroundings. Social life everywhere now appears to share more and more in an international (if not a global) order, even if inequality and stratification remain common inside territories and across territories. Still, the perception is that a particular cultural life is increasingly universal. More and more consumers come to share in its practices and products, with those products becoming more and more homogeneous. This standardization argument finds much support in the apparent internationalization of many elements of media, entertainment, leisure and lifestyle cultures, with cultural conglomerates determined to maximize their global market reach. Once upon a time, in order to understand the economic, political and cultural forces affecting citizens and society, it was mostly deemed sufficient to look within the boundaries of the nation-state. Over the past two decades, these same pressures of globalization have impacted on critical research, highlighting the methodological need to adopt an optic that is more cross-border and transcultural as a means of gaining greater understanding of cultural life.

Dromoeconomics: Towards a Political Economy of Speed

In this article we present an alternative theoretical perspective on contemporary cultural, political and economic practices in advanced countries. Like other articles in this issue of parallax, our focus is on conceptualising the economies of excess. However, our ideas do not draw on the writings of Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share, but principally on Virilio’s Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology and Marx’s Capital and the Grundrisse.4 Using a modest synthesis of tools provided by these theorists, we put forward a tentative conceptualisation of ‘dromoeconomics’, or, a political economy of speed.

Mixing colours : an ICT tool based on a semiotic framework for mathematical meaning-making about ratio and fractions

This paper reports on the research and development of an ICT tool to facilitate the learning of ratio and fractions by adult prisoners. The design of the ICT tool was informed by a semiotic framework for mathematical meaning-making. The ICT tool thus employed multiple semiotic resources including topological, typological, and social-actional resources. The results showed that individual semiotic resource could only represent part of the mathematical concept, while at the same time it might signify something else to create a misconception. When multiple semiotic resources were utilised the mathematical ideas could be better learnt.

Queer

The word “queer” is a slippery one; its etymology is uncertain, and academic and popular usage attributes conflicting meanings to the word. By the mid-nineteenth century, “queer” was used as a pejorative term for a (male) homosexual. This negative connotation continues when it becomes a term for homophobic abuse. In recent years, “queer” has taken on additional uses: as an all encompassing term for culturally marginalised sexualities – gay, lesbian, trans, bi, and intersex (“GLBTI”) – and as a theoretical strategy which deconstructs binary oppositions that govern identity formation. Tracing its history, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the earliest references to “queer” may have appeared in the sixteenth century. These early examples of queer carried negative connotations such as “vulgar,” “bad,” “worthless,” “strange,” or “odd” and such associations continued until the mid-twentieth century. The early nineteenth century, and perhaps earlier, employed “queer” as a verb, meaning to “to put out of order,” “to spoil”, “to interfere with”. The adjectival form also began to emerge during this time to refer to a person’s condition as being “not normal,” “out of sorts” or to cause a person “to feel queer” meaning “to disconcert, perturb, unsettle.” According to Eve Sedgwick (1993), “the word ‘queer’ itself means across – it comes from the Indo-European root – twerkw, which also yields the German quer (traverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart . . . it is relational and strange.” Despite the gaps in the lineage and changes in usage, meaning and grammatical form, “queer” as a political and theoretical strategy has benefited from its diverse origins. It refuses to settle comfortably into a single classification, preferring instead to traverse several categories that would otherwise attempt to stabilise notions of chromosomal sex, gender and sexuality.

Critical discourse analysis and political economy of communication : understanding the new corporate order

This article uses critical discourse analysis to analyse material shifts in the political economy of communications. It examines texts of major corporations to describe four key changes in political economy: (1) the separation of ownership from control; (2) the separation of business from industry; (3) the separation of accountability from responsibility; and (4) the subjugation of ‘going concerns’ by overriding concerns. The authors argue that this amounts to a political economic shift from traditional concepts of ‘capitalism’ to a new ‘corporatism’ in which the relationships between public and private, state and individual interests have become redefined and obscured through new discourse strategies. They conclude that the present financial and regulatory ‘crisis’ cannot be adequately resolved without a new analytic framework for examining the relationships between corporation, discourse and political economy.

A critical analysis of sperm donation practices : the personal and social effects of disrupting the unity of biological and social relatedness for the offspring

This thesis critically analyses sperm donation practices from a child-centred perspective. It examines the effects, both personal and social, of disrupting the unity of biological and social relatedness in families affected by donor conception. It examines how disruption is facilitated by a process of mediation which is detailed using a model provided by Sunderland (2002). This model identifies mediating movements - alienation, translation, re-contextualisation and absorption - which help to explain the powerful and dominating material, and social and political processes which occur in biotechnology, or in reproductive technology in this case. The understanding of such movements and mediation of meanings is inspired by the complementary work of Silverstone (1999) and Sunderland. This model allows for a more critical appreciation of the movement of meaning from previously inalienable aspects of life to alienable products through biotechnology (Sunderland, 2002). Once this mediation in donor conception is subjected to critical examination here, it is then approached from different angles of investigation. The thesis posits that two conflicting notions of the self are being applied to fertility-frustrated adults and the offspring of reproductive interventions. Adults using reproductive interventions receive support to maximise their genetic continuity, but in so doing they create and dismiss the corresponding genetic discontinuity produced for the offspring. The offspring’s kinship and identity are then framed through an experimental postmodernist notion, presenting them as social rather than innate constructs. The adults using the reproductive intervention, on the other hand, have their identity and kinship continuity framed and supported as normative, innate, and based on genetic connection. This use of shifting frameworks is presented as unjust and harmful, creating double standards and a corrosion of kinship values, connection and intelligibility between generations; indeed, it is put forward as adult-centric. The analysis of other forms of human kinship dislocation provided by this thesis explores an under-utilised resource which is used to counter the commonly held opinion that any disruption of social and genetic relatedness for donor offspring is insignificant. The experiences of adoption and the stolen generations are used to inform understanding of the personal and social effects of such kinship disruption and potential reunion for donor offspring. These examples, along with laws governing international human rights, further strengthen the appeal here for normative principles and protections based on collective knowledge and standards to be applied to children of reproductive technology. The thesis presents the argument that the framing and regulation of reproductive technology is excessively influenced by industry providers and users. The interests of these parties collide with and corrode any accurate assessments and protections afforded to the children of reproductive technology. The thesis seeks to counter such encroachments and concludes by presenting these protections, frameworks, and human experiences as resources which can help to address the problems created for the offspring of such reproductive interventions, thereby illustrating why these reproductive interventions should be discontinued.

Corruption and political interest : empirical evidence at the micro level

The topic of corruption has recently attracted a great deal of attention, yet there is still a lack of micro level empirical evidence regarding the determinates of corruption. Furthermore, the present literature has not investigated the effects of political interest on corruption despite the interesting potential of this link. We address these deficiencies by analysing a cross-section of individuals, using the World Values Survey. We explore the determinants of corruption through two dependant variables (perceived corruption and the justifiability of corruption). The impact of political interest on corruption is explored through three different proxies presenting empirical evidence at both the cross-country level and the within-country level.The results of the multivariate analysis suggest that political interest has an impact on corruption controlling for a huge number of factors.

Health, endogenous time preference, and inequality : a political economy perspective

We study an overlapping-generations model in which agents' mortality risks, and consequently impatience, are endogenously determined by private and public investment in health care. Revenues allocated for public health care arc determined by a voting process. We find that the degree of substitutability between public and private health expenditures matters for macroeconomic outcomes of the model. Higher substitutability implies a “crowding-out" effect, which in turn impacts adversely on morality risks and impatience leading to lower public expenditures on health care in the political equilibrium. Consequently, higher substitutability is associated with greater polarization in wealth, and long-run distributions that are bimodal.