Contributing to a lack of studies related to generic skills assessment, especially in non-Western university contexts, this article reports a study that explored practices and challenges of assessing students’ GS in the Business Administration programmes in six Vietnamese universities. Content analysis of interviews with 41 teachers of skills subjects and specialised subjects revealed that teachers were organising different formative and summative GS-assessment activities. Unfortunately, the analysis indicated that their GS-assessment practices were fragmented across subjects in the curriculum. Teachers’ beliefs regarding (...) their roles in the university, teachers’ expertise and several contextual factors were found to influence their assessment practices. The article argues that leadership should be exercised more effectively in order to remove obstacles and engage teachers with assessing GS, which will yield washback effect on students’ learning of these skills. (shrink)

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most original philosophers in the twentieth century. In this book, continuing his thought on obligation, he investigates the possibility that the word God can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. The thirteen essays collected in this volume offer an introduction to the wide range of Levinas's thought, addresses philosophical questions concerning politics, language and religion and the philosophies of, amongst others, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Marx and Derrida. The (...) essays also touch on the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. Nine of the essays appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

Rik Peels has once again forcefully argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he endeavors to refute the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and to advance what he calls the “New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. I defend the Standard View against his new attempted refutation.

It is found that a coherent state of the cavity field can be generated in a micromaser with injected atoms in a coherent superposition of the upper and lower states. The dependence of the density matrix elements of the field on the number of injected atoms indicates that due to the same initial atomic coherence the emission of separately injected single atoms in the cavity is a cooperative process.

China's music education has historically been rooted in Western aesthetic pedagogy and traditional Chinese musical systems, based primarily on the conventional epistemology of subject-object dichotomy. In the context of China's significant economic and cultural growth in the 21st century, several issues have become increasingly evident in this educational system, including cultural detachment, dominance of rational-technical logic, and a growing disconnect between music and everyday life. This paper employs the core principles of philosophical hermeneutics—situation, vision, and dialogue—to explore these challenges within (...) China's music education landscape. By adopting hermeneutical approaches, the study aims to illuminate potential paths towards a more diversified, open, and inclusive future for music education in China. It proposes new conceptual frameworks and practical paradigms that could realign music education with the evolving cultural and social dynamics, highlighting the potential for music to enrich spiritual and religious experiences. (shrink)

Lors des fouilles du Prytanée de Délos en 1987, un puits d’époque classique fut mis au jour. Ce puits avait été entièrement comblé, vraisemblablement en une seule fois, à la fin du iii eou au début du iv e s. apr. J.-C., avec des matériaux divers pris sur place et une grande quantité de céramiques. Cet ensemble clos, contenant un minimum de 215 individus, est presque exclusivement constitué de fragments de céramiques communes très diverses, de céramiques culinaires et d’amphores de (...) 24 types différents. Un tel matériel permet d’enrichir considérablement notre connaissance sur la céramique cycladique d’époque impériale romaine, qui reste à ce jour encore très mal documentée. Il apporte également un nouvel éclairage sur tout un pan — jusqu’à présent souvent resté dans l’ombre — de l’histoire économique, commerciale et artisanale de Délos en ces siècles « tardifs ». (shrink)

On présente trois projets de théories des machines: la « mécanologie » de l’architecte Jacques Lafitte (1932), inspirée de l’évolution biologique; l’ «Analyse mécanique» de Louis Couffignal, spécialiste des machines à calculer (1938), qui préfigure l’analyse fonctionnelle; et la théorie algébrique des machines du mathématicien Jacques Riguet (début des années 1950). À cette période, les trois hommes sont membres du Cercle d’études cybernétiques. On s’intéresse au dialogue des projets, aux axes d’unification et de divergence, aux styles, aux stratégies et postulats (...) de ces trois candidats à la généralisation convergeant vers la référence constituée par la cybernétique. (shrink)

This article presents an argument for the return to the original meaning of the concept value. This is achieved by revisiting the genealogy of the concept and by placing in perspective and questioning the common parlance thereof in contemporary legal discourse. The approach is decidedly against the often casual way in which courts and commentators treat the concept, seemingly as concretisation, validation, exegesis or reinforcement of fundamental norms, but without paying attention to its original meaning and use. It is submitted (...) that we confine our talk of values to the products of valuation, that is, the taste, the will, the esteem and/or perspective of some individual or group. Yet, it is not suggested that we completely discard the use of values discourse in law, the goal is rather to restate the inherent relativity of values language in legal discourse. This will bring necessary order to the current conceptual disarray and will foster mutual understanding and alliance. (shrink)

Offering a new answer to an age-old problem: the meaning of a just or equitable distribution of resources, Julian Le Grand examines the principal interpretations of equity used by economists and political philosophers. He argues that none captures the essence of the term as well as an alternative conception relating equity to the existence or otherwise of individual choice. Le Grand shows that this conception is not only philosophically well-grounded but is also directly relevant to key areas of distributional policy. (...) His theoretical argument is complemented by detailed discussion of the application of the central idea to specific areas of policy, including the distribution of health and health care, central government grants to local governments and the measurement of income for tax purposes. Equity and Choice is written by an economist, but is intended for political philosophers and social policy analysts as well as economists. Hence the key chapters are written in a non-technical fashion, with specialized material relegated to appendices. This book is a unique combination of philosophical, economic and policy analysis and represents a major contribution in all three areas. (shrink)