Creating teaching and learning in Europe: promoting a new paradigm

The tides of globalization and the unsteady surges and distortions in the evolution of the European Union are causing identities and cultures to be in a state of flux. Education is used by politicians as a major lever for political and social change through micro-management, but it is a crude tool. There can, however, be opportunities within educational experience for individual learners to gain strong, reflexive, multiple identities and multiple citizenship through the engagement of their creative energies. It has been argued that the twenty-first century needs a new kind of creativity characterized by unselfishness, caring and compassion—still involving monetary wealth, but resulting in a healthy planet and healthy people. Creativity and its economically derived relation, innovation, have become `buzz words' of our times. They are often misconstrued, misunderstood and plainly misused within educational conversations. The small-scale pan-European research study upon which this article is founded discovered that more emphasis needs to be placed on creative leadership, empowering teachers and learners, reducing pupils' fear of school, balancing teaching approaches, and ensuring that the curriculum and assessment are responsive to the needs of individual learners. These factors are key to building strong educational provision that harnesses the creative potential of learners, teachers and other stakeholders, values what it is to be human and creates a foundation upon which to build strong, morally based, consistent, participative democracies.

Thessaly and Macedon at Delphi

The Daochos Monument at Delphi has received some scholarly attention from an art-historical and archaeological perspective; this article, however, examines it rather as a reflection of contemporary Thessalian history and discourse, an aspect which has been almost entirely neglected. Through its visual imagery and its inscriptions, the monument adopts and adapts long-standing Thessalian themes of governance and identity, and achieves a delicate balance with Macedonian concerns to forge a symbolic rapprochement between powers and cultures in the Greek north. Its dedicator, Daochos, emerges as far more than just the puppet of Philip II of Macedon. This hostile and largely Demosthenic characterisation, which remains influential even in modern historiography, is far from adequate in allowing for an understanding of the relationship between Thessalian and Macedonian motivations at this time, or of the importance of Delphi as the pan-Hellenic setting of their interaction. Looking closely at the Daochos Monument instead allows for a rare glimpse into the Thessalian perspective in all its complexity.

Demonstrating the importance of criteria and sub-criteria in building assessment methods

Building assessment methods have become a popular research field since the early 1990s. An international tool which allows the assessment of buildings in all regions, taking into account differences in climates, topographies and cultures does not yet exist. This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of criteria and sub-criteria in developing a new potential building assessment method for Saudi Arabia. Recently, the awareness of sustainability has been increasing in developing countries due to high energy consumption, pollution and high carbon foot print. There is no debate that assessment criteria have an important role to identify the tool’s orientation. However, various aspects influence the criteria and sub-criteria of assessment tools such as environment, economic, social and cultural to mention but a few. The author provides an investigation on the most popular and globally used schemes: BREEAM, LEED, Green Star, CASBEE and Estidama in order to identify the effectiveness of the different aspects of the assessment criteria and the impacts of these criteria on the assessment results; that will provide a solid foundation to develop an effective sustainable assessment method for buildings in Saudi Arabia. Initial results of the investigation suggest that each country needs to develop its own assessment method in order to achieve desired results, while focusing upon the indigenous environmental, economic, social and cultural conditions. Keywords: Assessment methods, BREEAM, LEED, Green Star, CASBEE, Estidama, sustainability, sustainable buildings, Environment, Saudi Arabia.

A multidimensional comparison of discourse organization in English and Chinese university students' argumentative writing

Three methodological limitations in English-Chinese contrastive rhetoric research have been identified in previous research, namely: the failure to control for the quality of L1 data; an inference approach to interpreting the relationship between L1 and L2 writing; and a focus on national cultural factors in interpreting rhetorical differences. Addressing these limitations, the current study examined the presence or absence and placement of thesis statement and topic sentences in four sets of argumentative texts produced by three groups of university students. We found that Chinese students tended to favour a direct/deductive approach in their English and Chinese writing, while native English writers typically adopted an indirect/inductive approach. This study argues for a dynamic and ecological interpretation of rhetorical practices in different languages and cultures.

National experiences with insurgencies and counterinsurgencies: are there “National styles”?

There are clearly identifiable patterns in the way in which insurgents operate in certain geographic areas and cultures, and in which states deal with them. These have been stressed by writing about national "ways of war", strategic culture, or national styles. Nevertheless, there have been important ruptures and changes in some of these, so that for Britain, for example, three successive phases corresponding to patterns can be identified. For France, two pronounced rivaling traditions coincided over two centuries. Algerians by contrast changed fundamentally in their fighting style with the different political ideologies they were following. Palestinian insurgency against Israel is also marked by change in approach. Russia and China possibly show the longest continuity in their handling of insurgencies.

From warfare to welfare: veterans, military charities and the blurred spatiality of post-service welfare in the United Kingdom

The military offers a form of welfare-for-work but when personnel leave they lose this safety net, a loss exacerbated by the rollback neoliberalism of the contemporary welfare state. Increasingly the third sector has stepped in to address veterans’ welfare needs through operating within and across military/civilian and state/market/community spaces and cultures. In this paper we use both veterans’ and military charities’ experiences to analyse the complex politics that govern the liminal boundary zone of post-military welfare. Through exploring ‘crossing’ and ‘bridging’ we conceptualise military charities as ‘boundary subjects’, active yet dependent on the continuation of the civilian-military binary, and argue that the latter is better understood as a multidirectional, multiscalar and contextual continuum. Post-military welfare emerges as a competitive, confused and confusing assemblage that needs to be made more navigable in order to better support the ‘heroic poor’.

'Off with his head!' : Inexplicable Faith in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

Examining how, in the novel, Bulgakov shows the conflict between logic and faith through the actions of his characters : the characters who are logical are generally not portrayed as wise and are said to not appreciate, nor understand, faith.

Upside Down World -- the Opposition Between Light and Dark in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

A look at the role that symbolism plays in the novel. In this case, as it is in many other great novels, we see that symbolism is used to enhance the mood and the atmosphere of the novel rather than adding anything of importance to the plot.

The Bird and its Flight: A Struggle for Freedom in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

The Russian senior seminar this semester focused on Bulgakov’s famous novel, Master and Margarita. This presentation focuses on one of the themes of the novel, specifically Bulgakov’s use of birds in his work. Birds appear numerous times in Master and Margarita, and it always has a connotation of either a lack of freedom or a recent achievement of this goal. There are even instances in which characters themselves, as they seek freedom from their former oppressive lives, become the “birds” in the novel. This paper is an exploration of bird imagery in the novel.

Epidemiological Survey of Equine Pythiosis in the Brazilian Pantanal and Nearby Areas: Results of 76 Cases

A clinical epidemiological study was conducted among 34 rural properties located within the Brazilian Pantanal region and nearby areas between 2007 and 2010. The diagnosis of equine pythiosis was based on antibody detection (by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), polymerase chain reaction, histopathological analysis, and cultures positive for Pythium insidiosum. The majority of the affected animals (85%) were in the Pantanal biome, which had a higher disease prevalence (0.9%-66.7%) than that of the Cerrado (2.7%-33.3%). The disease was more prevalent in the rainy season (January-March), with an abrupt fall in the number of cases during the drought period (April-September; correlation of R 2 = 0.77; P < .01). Generally, the average prevalence of equine pythiosis in both regions was 5%, with mortality and lethality rates of 1.3% and 23.1%, respectively, in the Pantanal and 2.3% and 45.5%, respectively, in the Cerrado. However, the treatment with immunotherapy may have underestimated these numbers, especially in the Pantanal. Animals older than 1 year were 8.09 times more affected by the disease than younger animals in the same environment (P < .05). A correlation between the anatomical area of the lesion and the type of skin color was also observed. Approximately 73% of the lesions were found in dark-pigmented areas, and animals with a dark coat color were affected more frequently. These findings highlight the importance of hematophagous insects in the epidemiology of pythiosis because these areas are preferred for blood feeding. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Serology, isolation, and molecular detection of Leptospira spp. from the tissues and blood of rats captured in a wild animal preservation centre in Brazil

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, and Defecating Men: The Power of Storytelling in Maithil Women’s Tales

What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and maintain a counter-system of ideational patterns and practices.

'Listen, Rama’s Wife!’: Maithil Women’s Perspectives and Practices in the Festival of Sāmā-Cakevā

As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal to each, betraying, in a sense, each, but demonstrating, by his movements, the currents and avenues of power. This article makes available to other scholars of South Asian culture and society an extended description and analysis of this distinctive festival, while also contributing to the scholarly discussion of women’s expressive traditions.

Revisioning a Japanese Spiritual Recovery Through Manga: Kobayashi Yoshinori’s ‘Gōmanism’ as Aesthetics and Ideology

This essay provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic ideology of “Gomanism” in the manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), particularly Yasukuniron (On Yasukuni, 2005) and Tennōron (On the Emperor, 2009), in order to flesh out the implications of the author’s “revisionist” approach to Japanese religion, politics and history.