Arts governance - marching Western models to Asia

Corporate failures and fraud have turned attention to company governance. While much of the literature is on for-profit governance, there is a steadily increasing non-profit literature arguing for industry specific governance studies, such as this one. Researching arts organisation governance in Asia, where profitability or sustainability are not the only measures for performance, provides a better understanding of theses cultures and economies. Here, a comparative review of arts governance is undertaken in order to inform debate in a discipline and in countries less frequently included in analysis. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Singapore are included in this brief review of Asian governance. What constitutes good governance and the unique cultural variables in each region are considered.

Western science and Islamic learners : informing constructivism, quality learning and `internationalising the curriculum`

This presentation reports on a two-phase research program which focuses on the experiences of Islamic-background learners in science/environmental education. The research program explores perceived dissonances between western science and Islamic belief as an issue for: the highly visible discourse of constructivism in science and environmental education; the policy challenges of ‘internationalising the university curriculum’; and the pedagogical challenge of ‘Quality Learning’ – in particular responding to ‘faith-based’ commitments in education.
Conceptually, the research program is conducted within a constructivist discourse. Essentially, we are proposing that dissonances experienced by Islamic-background learners in a western science curriculum (as reported in Sharifah, 2003), and the effects of these dissonances on how learners construct meaning in science, can be understood within a constructivist discourse. Further, we believe the research has the promise of not only exploring and explicating some of the issues experienced by teachers and learners in Islamic science education contexts (and thereby contributing to our understanding of the idea of ‘quality learning’), but also expanding our grasp of the expressions, implications and limitations of the constructivist hypothesis in education. In this sense it has a transformative agenda by working to improve access to and experience in the science curriculum for Muslim students.

Carboniferous brachiopods from the "Levipustula Fauna" in central-western Argentina : biostratigraphic, palaeoclimatic, and palaeobiogeographic implications

The “Levipustula fauna” is a relatively diverse fossil assemblage composed of brachiopods, bivalves, bryozoans, gastropods and crinoids that appears in glaciomarine sequences related to the Carboniferous glacial event that affected the central-western Argentinean basins. Brachiopods that characterize this fauna have been studied in some of the classical localities of the Argentine Precordillera in San Juan province.

In the Hoyada Verde Formation, the “Levipustula fauna” is usually located immediately above the glacial diamictite horizons and appears to be associated with the mudstones facies of the postglacial transgression. From a palaeoecological study, three brachiopod subfaunas are distinguished in this formation: the lower “Neospirifer” (“Trigonotretidae” gen. nov.) subfauna, above which the more diversified Kitakamithyris subfauna occurs, and the upper Levipustula subfauna, with the dominant species being attributed to Levipustula levis Maxwell. The Hoyada Verde fauna, as well those identified in the La Capilla Formation (Cerro El Morado locality), have been proposed as the typical “Levipustula fauna”. However, in the Leoncito Formation, the “Levipustula fauna” occurs in sandstones horizons located below the glacial diamictite beds. This fauna is poorly diversified and the brachiopods are characterized by “Neospirifer” (“Trigonotretidae” gen. nov.)-Septosyringothyris assemblage and Levipustula is not abundant. This fauna has been considered a colder “pre-interglacial fauna”.

The significant taxonomic, palaeoecologic and taphonomic variations of the “Levipustula fauna”, as well as its position in the glacial sequences, suggest an important palaeoenvironmental control related to Carboniferous glacial dynamics. From the palaeobiogeographic viewpoint, this fauna shows the highest affinity with the Eastern Australian basins from where it was previously described.