Context: Convictions arising from different, separate and distinct domains and paradigms, Papert’s constructionism, literature on play from the domain of early childhood education, complexity theory) agree in favor of a need for a shift in education that will allow children to access what Papert refers to as “hard learning” that consequently leads to “hard fun.” Problem: Nevertheless, such an achievement demands supporting learning in a manner that seems difficult for teachers to comprehend and handle. Method: In this article, we provide (...) three learning stories. These constitute parts of an effort to develop a joint mathematics and science curriculum for early childhood education parallel to supporting teachers so that they deliver and, at the same time, are able to value and assess the learning involved. The first story concerns teachers’ learning whereas the second and third story concern 5-year-olds’ learning. Results: In all three stories, we see how the researcher, teachers and children learn together. By the end of this article, the three stories will allow us to describe and redefine MbL and at the same time highlight the constructivism foundations of MbL and the common ground between MbL and the constructionism paradigm. Implications: Furthermore, the stories as a whole will allow us to argue that all it takes to move away from traditional practices is a shift in how learning is conceptualized. Constructivist content: The article is built on the constructionism approach, which focuses on the value of learners acquiring access to powerful ideas through meaningful constructivist learning processes. (shrink)

Upshot: Building on the commentator’s responses to the target article and bringing together all the valuable arguments, I pin down the challenges raised by reconsidering the concern Papert had at some point that school reform is impossible.

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning about Learning with Teachers and Young Children” by Chrystalla Papademetri-Kachrimani. Upshot: The activities that Papademetri-Kachrimani presents in her stories create situations that lead to unexpected results, thus opening the potential for learning about learning in teachers’ professional development. These integrate modeling-based learning - arguably a form of constructionism -, and allow learners to move back-and-forth between representations in order to develop strategies and rules.

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning about Learning with Teachers and Young Children” by Chrystalla Papademetri-Kachrimani. Upshot: In my commentary, I focus on the concept of surprise underlying the design of the learning experience presented in Papademetri-Kachrimani’s target article. I treat surprise as a concept that integrates the creative, open and non-predictable characteristics of constructionist teaching and learning. In my analysis, I show that current technological and societal developments have made these ideas of constructionism more (...) relevant than ever. Within this rendering, it becomes clear that there is a need to revisit the position of constructionism in education. (shrink)

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death, a special annotated edition of his Christian classic, The Screwtape Letters, with notes and excerpts from his other works that help illuminate this diabolical masterpiece. Since its publication in 1942, The Screwtape Letters has sold millions of copies worldwide and is recognized as a milestone in the history of popular theology. A masterpiece of satire, it offers a sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the (...) vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to “Our Father Below.” At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, The Screwtape Letters comprises the correspondence of the worldly-wise devil Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. For the first time, The Screwtape Letters will be presented in full-text accompanied by helpful annotations in a striking two-color format. These annotations will give fans a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the popular book, providing background information, explanations of terms, historical significance, and excerpts from Lewis’s other works that more fully explain the ideas in this volume. For both expert Lewis fans and casual readers, The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition will be a beautiful and insightful guide to a beloved classic. (shrink)

This paper explores Plato and Aristotle 's responses to the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, who paradoxically said that there is no such thing as non-being, and no such things as change. I argue that Plato’s response would have been good enough to defeat the claim in a debate, thereby remedying the political aspects of the Parmenides problem. However, Aristotle ’s answer is required to answer some additional philosophical and scientific aspects. Plato's Sophist is a very difficult dialogue to understand; seeing it (...) in light of Aristotle 's discussion of the same topic helps to explain the complexities of what his teacher Plato wrote. (shrink)

'Original and provocative . . . engagingly written. (C Fred Alford) counters Levinas's notorious obscurity with a goodly dose of transparency' - John Lechte, Macquarrie University Abstract and evocative, writing in what can only be ...

Rising global demand for meat will result in increased environmental pollution, energy consumption, and animal suffering. Cultured meat, produced in an animal-cell cultivation process, is a technically feasible alternative lacking these disadvantages, provided that an animal-component-free growth medium can be developed. Small-scale production looks particularly promising, not only technologically but also for societal acceptance. Economic feasibility, however, emerges as the real obstacle.

Studies suggest that when a language requires grammatical marking of future events, speakers prefer immediate payoffs and engage in less future-oriented behavior. If future costs of tax avoidance are non-trivial, we posit that strong future time reference in languages would lower managers’ perceptions about costs, encouraging more tax avoidance. Using a large sample of 56,243 firm-year observations across 31 countries, we find that tax avoidance is higher where FTR in the language is strong. We also find that tax avoidance is (...) more prevalent in Swiss regions with strong FTR and in US firms whose CEOs were born in countries with strong FTR. Collectively, our evidence suggests that costs of tax avoidance can be non-trivial, and that linguistically driven time perception helps explain the cross-country variation in tax avoidance. (shrink)

Sir Richard Phillips was a London-born author and publisher of educational textbooks who used a vast array of pseudonyms, including that of Reverend C. C. Clarke. Phillips' marketing techniques - the systematic borrowing of famous authors' names for his textbooks, along with the multiplication of easy to produce related educational products - were key to his success. No doubt meant as an accessible encyclopaedia, this 40th edition of 1834 - attributed to Phillips himself - is a surprisingly vast and heterogeneous (...) survey, which compiles natural and man-made curiosities across the world. The Himalayas and Mont Blanc share a chapter with the Peak of Derbyshire; famous rivers lead to mysterious subterranean forests; and Stonehenge is closely followed by St Paul's cathedral. Halfway between reference book and textbook, this richly illustrated volume is a fascinating catalogue of the world's wonders as perceived in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

Introduction: conceptual analysis of teaching, by B. P. Komisar and T. W. Nelson.--A concept of teaching, by B. O. Smith.--The concept of teaching, by I. Sheffler.--A topology of the teaching concept, by T. F. Green.--Teaching: act and enterprise, by B. P. Komisar.--Must an education have an aim? By R. S. Peters.--Curriculum as a field of study, by D. Heubner.--Can and should means-ends reasoning be used in teaching? By C. J. B. Macmillan and J. E. McClellan.

The Holocaust marks a decisive moment in modern suffering in which it becomes almost impossible to find meaning or redemption in the experience. In this study, C. Fred Alford offers a new and thoughtful examination of the experience of suffering. Moving from the Book of Job, an account of meaningful suffering in a God-drenched world, to the work of Primo Levi, who attempted to find meaning in the Holocaust through absolute clarity of insight, he concludes that neither strategy works well (...) in today's world. More effective are the day-to-day coping practices of some survivors. Drawing on testimonies of survivors from the Fortunoff Video Archives, Alford also applies the work of Julia Kristeva and the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicot to his examination of a topic that has been and continues to be central to human experience. (shrink)

Any theory of information needs to comply with what we call the implementation, formalization, and representation constraints. These constraints are justified by basic considerations concerning scientific modelling and methodology. In the first part of this paper, we argue that the implementation and formalization constraints cannot be satisfied because the relation between Shannon information and IIT must be clarified. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the representation constraint. We argue that IIT cannot succeed in satisfying this constraint (...) for semantic contents without offering models for concepts, conceptual roles, and context sensitivity. In the final part of the paper, further complications are raised with respect to the distinction between consciousness and attention, which apply more specifically to the representation constraint. We conclude with some recommendations as to how IIT may succeed in solving these problems, highlighting the advantages and enormous potential of IIT as a scientific theory. (shrink)

While for many years Locke was viewed almost universally as the prophet of liberalism, today a successive reading of C.B. Macpherson's Possessive Individualism, John Dunn's The Political Thought of John Locke and Richard Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics and Locke's �Two Treatises of Government�, might produce a schizophrenic vision of Locke as simultaneously an accumulative bourgeois villain, an irrelevant Calvinist moralist and a radical egalitarian revolutionary hero. This essay addresses an issue examined to a greater or lesser extent by these and other (...) interpreters: John Locke's thoughts on the conduct of everyday political life. Consideration of this topic can serve to moderate one's impression of Locke, just as currently Ashcraft holds Locke to be less radical and Dunn finds Locke less irrelevant than they did before. The essay seeks to identify the group of persons Locke presumed would govern in a well-ordered nation, to examine the qualities required of these governors in order for them to perform their calling, and to illuminate Locke's personal efforts to promote these qualities in the governors of the next generation. In particular, I will examine the concept of trust, which John Dunn in recent years has found to be of continuing political relevance. In the first section, I will review the use of the word �trust� in Locke's Second Treatise to display the fact that trustworthiness in governors is constituted by possession of the qualities of virtue and prudence in the second section, I will argue that Locke's educational writings ought to be viewed as attempts to encourage the formation of the qualities necessary for good governors. In the following two sections, I will examine the meaning Locke ascribes to both �prudence� and �virtue� in his various political, philosophical, and educational writings. Finally, I will endeavour to show that an understanding of these qualities, along with the importance of status and breeding, are instrumental to an understanding of Locke's conception of the conduct of everday political life. (shrink)