Teaching and learning in the crucible: Actors with disabilities as experts preparing pre-service teachers to be inclusive educators

Dorothy Heathcote understood teaching and learning to take place in a kind of ‘crucible’ in which participants, who are both teachers and learners, contribute to the mix sometimes resulting in a radical transformation. This paper reports the ways Heathcote’s ideas have influenced both research and practice in the Teaching for Diversity workshop - a drama workshop that brings together pre-service teachers, teacher educators and actors from Fusion Theatre, a community-based theatre company for people with intellectual disabilities.

Electron backscattering diffraction analysis of a reconstructed wootz damascus steel blade

The historical impact and subsequent fame of wootz weaponry in the ancient world has created interest in what has come to be seen as an advanced material even by modern standards. Ancient wootz artifacts are classed as high carbon (hypereutectoid) crucible steels and are characterised by high strength, hardness and wear resistance, but especially by their attractive surface pattern.

Improving casthouse throughput using discrete-event modeling

The scheduling of metal to different casters in a casthouse is a complicated problem, attempting to find the balance between pot-line, crucible carrier, furnace and casting machine capacity. in this paper, a description will be given of a casthouse modelling system designed to test different scenarios for casthouse design and operation. Using discrete-event simulation, the casthouse model incorporates variable arrival times of metal carriers, crucible movements, caster operation and furnace conditions. Each part of the system is individually modelled and synchronised using a series of signals or semaphores. in addition, an easy to operate user interface allows for the modification of key parameters, and analysis of model output. Results from the model will be presented for a case study, which highlights the effect different parameters have on overall casthouse performance. The case study uses past production data from a casthouse to validate the model outputs, with the aim to perform a sensitivity analysis on the overall system. Along with metal preparation times and caster strip-down/setup, the temperature evolution within the furnaces is one key parameter in determining casthouse performance.

Deconstructing religious identity, difference, and belonging : implications for anti-racist pedagogy

Increasing numbers of Australians identify with a multiplicity of religion groups or have no religious affiliation. Despite this, the representation of religious groups other than Christian—and the implications of this for anti-racist pedagogy in Australian schools—is seldom explored. This article interrogates the ways in which the most prominent of these minority religious groups (Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish) were spoken about in two Melbourne newspapers and considers the implications of this interrogation for multicultural pedagogy in globally integrated local school contexts, such as those in Australia. Methodologies of social cultural theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) are used to investigate newspaper discussions from the different viewpoints of their experiential, systemic, and normative focus. I find that notions of religious identity described in the media are stylized in form and an almost-silent normative self-identity is defined against clichéd typologies made within a crucible of race, identity, and belonging.

Homeland, territory, property: contesting land, state, and nation in urban Timor-Leste

This article considers contestations over land, state and nation in Aitarak Laran, an urban settlement in post-independence Timor-Leste. Since 2010 the settlement has been resisting eviction by the East Timorese state, which wishes to use the land it occupies to build a National Library and Cultural Centre. In exploring the contestation, the purpose of this article is two-fold. Firstly, it explores the nature of social connection to land within postcolonial state- and nation-building. Here, the contestation at Aitarak Laran reveals counter-posed imaginings of land as homeland, territory and property. Secondly, the article draws out the implications of these counter-posed imaginings for thinking about the 'right to the city', a notion first theorised by Lefebvre (1996 [1968]) and subsequently developed to encompass a range of modes of urban protest. In the settlement, the promises of independence-unity, equivalence, and inclusion within the sovereign nation-state-are at odds with residents' experiences of what independence has in fact brought. Land, in its multiple imaginings, becomes a crucible upon which this painful disjuncture plays out. Reading Aitarak Laran as an instance of 'right to the city' struggle, these tensions emerge as well not only in practice but also in theory, reflected particularly in the limitations and ambiguities of rights discourse.