Notion Of Diversity Research Articles

Does Early Years Education have a Role in Creating Children's Notion of Difference and Diversity?

Does Early Years Education have a Role in Creating Children's Notion of Difference and Diversity?

Disability as a human condition discussed in a theological perspective

What, if any, is a Christian theological perspective on disability? Studies of disability in a theological perspective have both epistemological and ethical implications. Theology can inform society's understanding of disability by arguing that an inclusive concept of humanity must guide law and politics. However, people with disabilities experience discrimination in many contexts and have often been treated as objects of charity and healing rather than as subjects with equal rights. Theology and the Church also form disabling barriers and mechanisms that need to be identified and changed. From a disability studies perspective, a medical understanding of disability has been criticised for not focusing on disabling structures in society and the built environment. In this article, I argue that theology and the Church ought to be challenged for insufficient understanding of disability in light of a notion of human diversity that includes disability as a human condition. This article argues that disability as a hermeneutical perspective can develop new theological insights. However, being both a human experience and condition, disability needs to be further explored as a source of theological reflections on anthropology and the image of God as trinity.

Teacher's Role in Students-Centered English Intensive Reading Class in China

Inspired by the theory of Constructivism, the notions of learner diversity and learner choice get a lot of awareness and recognition of many educators, therefore more and more emphasis has been placed on the position of students in the classroom. As a consequence, the traditional teacher-centered foreign language teaching pattern has been supplanted by a new students-centered pattern by which students are the main body of the class and the owner of their learning. However, teachers’ role in students-centered foreign language teaching class should not be neglected. In intensive reading class, which is a course to cultivate the students’ comprehensive abilities of language, the roles of the teacher, instead of as a controller and a dominant, should be played fully as a manager and an organizer of the language teaching class, a designer of the teaching process, a source of teaching material, an investigator and a counselor of students’ learning and a promoter of deepening and confirming the accepted knowledge. Key words: Teacher’s role; Students-centered; Foreign language teaching; Intensive reading

The Impossibility of Representation: A Semiotic Museological Reading of Aboriginal Cultural Diversity

By undertaking a semiotic analysis of the Canadian Museum of Civilization depiction and celebration of Aboriginal cultural diversity we question the constructed nature of the representations therein and how these representations encourage us-visitors to read the gallery as mirroring ‘the real’ of Aboriginal cultures. Located in Ottawa, Canada, we chose one exhibition within the Museum where we identified key messages that encouraged us-visitors to attach an abstract notion of Aboriginal diversity to the texts. Through abstraction, the selection of objects and images, we argue, take on a connoted meaning which enables them to stand in for or represent an abstract concept of diversity. As important sites of critical curriculum studies (Ibrahim, 2004), we suggest through what we are calling ‘semiotic pedagogy’ that educators and learners take a critical reading of such exhibitions, with particular attention to the way the logic of the narratives presented reinforces or disrupts (their) notions of Aboriginal cultures.

All the Pretty Things

All the Pretty Things Aimee Parkison (bio) The Beautiful Anthology. Elizabeth Collins, ed. TNB Books. http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com. 264 pages; paper, $14.99, eBook, $9.99. From crazy beautiful to beautiful ugly and the many shades of beauty in between, The Beautiful Anthology examines the politics, sensations, and life-altering consequences of the power of perception. The anthology also reveals the powerless sensations of being perceived. An intimate portrait of types and archetypes, contemporary obsessions and timeless fascinations, the collection delves into gray areas where dichotomies break down. Beauty blurs into ugliness as what was once ugly becomes beautiful. Essays, poems, and art offer a fresh perspective on diverse notions of beauty by revealing interpersonal and cultural conflicts. Unlike many recent works on contemporary myths surrounding the concept of beauty, this anthology focuses on both male and female perspectives. James D. Irwin’s “From The Venus de Milo to Porno Mags: The Evolution of Beauty, & Vice Versa” contemplates female desirability from Helen of Troy to the sex symbols of present day. In “Truth and Booty,” Tyler Stoddard Smith provides a hilarious cultural reality check, challenging quotations about beauty from Khalil Gibran, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pablo Picasso, Gabriela Mistral, Helen Keller, and Albert Einstein. Going far beyond the traditional notion of the objectification of “beautiful women,” writers embrace the notion that beauty can be found not only in people (male, female, young, old, middle-aged, and of diverse races and cultures) but also in everyday objects. Steve Sparshott’s essay “Fin” proves that beauty can be found in unexpected places, even in a men’s restroom with its elegant sculptural design of fin-shaped urinal dividers. In “The Line Waver,” Greg Olear questions the popular aesthetics responsible for a McMansion’s garish windowed entryway and predicts that consumers will enter a new phase: the rejection of perfection. Careful not to fall into pop-culture snares, Matthew Baldwin explores male body image and finds “The Form within the Stone.” Celebrating the joys of sportsmanship, J. E. Fishman discovers masculine beauty in “Spinning” through a tennis miracle, where a perfectly masterful serve by a student of the game shocks his teacher. Poetry becomes the focus of diverse notions of beauty with Uche Ogbuji’s reflective analysis in “21st Century Beauty in Poetry.” Ogbuji reveals the way literature must evolve along with personal and cultural preferences as diversity and technology change the tastes of an increasingly global population connected by social media, information, and travel. In “No Animals or Insects Were Tortured or Killed in the Making of This Poem,” Rich Ferguson exudes confident musicality, exploring linguistic freedom with the beauty of radioactive language. Judy Prince’s heart-pounding “Summate” traces the journey of a hand moving over a lover’s body, creating a map of touch as silky skin meets the sea. Stephen Walter’s sensual poem “Upland Fall” transforms natural images of changing seasons into a poignant allegory encompassing male and female voices wondering about the splendor of natural love that fades even as it’s encountered. Catherine Tufariello’s poem “Meditation in Middle Age” reveals how the loss of physical beauty through aging allows a person to see what was once lost in the imprisonment of vanity. Writers such as Zoe Zolbrod and Nora Burkey explore international experiences with beauty. In “Pai Foot,” Zolbrod’s trip to Thailand offers unique erotic imagery in a glimpse of a young Thai man’s thorn-pierced foot. In “The Politics of Beauty,” Nora Burkey writes about teaching young female students in Cambodia, where politically motivated views of beauty threaten to rob girls of cultural freedom. Taking on the issue of race, Angela Tung’s “Blemished” provides an unflinchingly honest portrait of growing up as an Asian girl surrounded by images of whiteness. Tung reveals how having friends of different races and cultures sometimes impacts self-image in childhood. A more comforting view of beauty is found in familial experiences and universal rites of passage in growing up and growing old. In Victoria Patterson’s “The Beautiful,” beauty is discovered in unique expressions of kinship. In Robin Antalek’s “Inked,” a mother finds beauty in a daughter’s personal expression through body art. In...

The Topological Quality of Infrastructural Relation: An Ethnographic Approach

This article seeks to address how topological approaches to cultural change might be combined with ethnographic analysis in order to suggest new ways of thinking empirically about the dynamic political and moral spaces that infrastructural systems create and sustain. The analytical focus is on how diverse notions of relationality and connectivity are mobilized in the production of infrastructural systems that sustain the capacity of ‘state-space’ to simultaneously emerge as closed territorial entity and as open, networked form. The article seeks to establish that the differences and discontinuities inherent in all spatio-temporal relations might productively be considered as ‘intervals’ that both separate and connect across time and space. The notion of an infrastructural system as an interface that conjures both topological and topographical space is the idea that I set out to explore.

Children as agents of their own health: exploratory analysis of child discourse in Spain

The promotion of children's decision-making is one of the principles of health-promoting schools, and the empowerment of children means that they are enabled to influence their lifestyles and living conditions. The aim of this study was to find out the suggestions of Spanish school pupils in Year 3 and Year 6 of primary education to promote their own health and the health of the people closer to them, through their ideas about health. We analyse the discourse on health in the school environment from focus groups of primary school pupils aged around 8 and 12 of five schools in the town of Alicante (Spain). The groups were organized according to the type of school (public, private), the socioeconomic status of the neighbourhood (residential, working-class) and gender (single-sex, mixed groups) to ensure both the highest intergroup diversity and intra-group homogeneity. The findings show that primary school pupils have a wide and diverse notion of health. The application of the focus group technique has proved useful in eliciting information from groups of primary school pupils, and involving students in health-promoting programmes because it allows them to identify the social and interpersonal determinants of health. There is a firm basis to consider school pupils as health agents, particularly regarding interventions within the school environment itself. With the support of teachers, it is possible to train school pupils as community health agents, and increase their control over their own health.

The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (review)

Reviewed by: The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology Yulia Egorova Nadia Abu El-Haj , The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 328 pp. The use of genetics in the study of human history and personal ancestry tests has become the subject of a growing literature in the Anthropology, History, and Sociology of Science. The Genealogical Science focuses on the voluminous DNA research carried out among Jewish communities. Do people around the world who identify themselves as Jewish have a common origin? If so, is this origin in Palestine? Is the biblical account about the lineage of the Jewish priests correct? These are some of the questions that the genetic research subject of the Nadia Abu El-Haj's inquiry has tried to address. As the book shows, the scientists' attempts to answer these questions have been informed by the broader socio-cultural discourses about Jewish descent and history. The Genealogical Science begins with a useful discussion of the origins and historical context of what became known as genetic anthropology or genetic history—studies which attempt to use genetics to describe the formation of human populations. Drawing on the work of other scholars in the Anthropology of Science and wider Science and Technology Studies, Abu El-Haj discusses how human population genetics both reproduces existing concepts of race and creates new, biologized, notions of human diversity. As far as specifically genetic history is concerned, Abu El-Haj argues that DNA data provide the wrong type of evidence to answer the questions that geneticists take upon themselves to address. The book elucidates well the numerous socio-political and ethical problems associated with genetic research. It critiques the attempts made by geneticists to create a "firewall" between questions of culture and DNA evidence, and demonstrates that despite the scientists' [End Page 967] assertions that their research does not do much more than reconstruct early human history by using "neutral" markers, genetic anthropology still invites its audiences to "infer behavior from DNA evidence" (48) and contributes to the construction of a "biologico-historical" self. Abu El-Haj argues that while, on the one hand, genetic studies create a discourse suggesting that it is up to the individual to choose whether to learn about his or her biological self or not; on the other hand, they reinforce the idea that it is this biological self that is the most authentic one. The book reminds us that "the search for the biologically meaningless marker cannot be safely cordoned off from the search for culturally, medically, or cognitively meaningful traits" (179). Abu El-Haj has based her analysis of genetic history on studies of Jewish origins, which the book considers against the backdrop of earlier constructions of Jewish physicality. The Genealogical Science first focuses on the work of European and American Jewish scientists devoted to the perceived racial composition of the Jews conducted at the turn of the 20th century. The author then proceeds to explore studies in population genetics carried out in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s, and, finally, discusses more recent genetic history projects which aimed to identify the origins of different Jewish communities around the world, including the communities who declared their affiliation to the Jewish tradition in the 20th century. The book also discusses ancestry tests offered to individuals interested in using genetics as a means of deciphering family history and looking for possible Jewish roots, and on the research which argued for the genetic origins of what has entered the public discourse as Jewish intelligence. In each case, the author argues that the studies in question promote a particular understanding of Jewish peoplehood which constructs the Jews as members of a universal community connected to each other not just on the level of culture and religion, but also through their origin, which is supposed to be evident in their physicality. This particular understanding of what it means to be Jewish receives a great deal of the author's critical attention. Abu El-Haj makes it clear that what she intends to explore and critique in the book is the naturalization of Jewish...

Zoning and Diversity in Historical Perspective

The notion of urban diversity is a key component of successful urbanism. It is ironic that the rules of citymaking—in particular, zoning—came to be associated with the near antithesis of diversity. Instead of promoting the mixing of people and uses, zoning produced just the opposite. While the history of zoning and its negative effects on urban diversity are widely known, the history of this association is more complex than is generally reported. This article sheds light on the connection between zoning and diversity from a new, historically informed perspective. The author contends that, although zoning was used for exclusionary purposes, the original thinking about zoning was often more nuanced with regard to diversity and mix than most critics of zoning allow. The author presents an historical review of what the original framers of zoning thought about the mixing of people and land uses in cities, and what their motivations were. The author concludes with an assessment of current zoning reform efforts in light of this history.

Citizenship Education and Its Implications for Education

This paper addresses the purpose of citizenship education and its role in educational setting. Citizenship is the core concept that provides the learning focus for social studies at all grades. To identify the skills, knowledge, and values that students will need as active democratic citizens, social studies must take into account the society in which students live, and anticipate the challenges they will face in the future. Citizenship is a fluid concept that changes over time: its meaning is often contested, and it is subject to interpretation and continuing debate. Citizenship education is fundamental to living in a democratic society. The concept of citizenship takes on meaning in specific contexts and is determined by time and place. Diverse notions of citizenship have been used in the past and are being used in the present, for both good and ill. The purpose of this study is, surveying the nature of citizenship and its implication for education. This paper explores the ways in which citizenship education is used in an effort to create particular kinds of citizens as part of a larger effort in education systems.

An assessment of water governance trends: the case of Bangladesh

Water governance is a complex regulatory process which continuously changes over time. In this study, we apply a novel approach to investigate trends in water governance regimes, using Bangladesh as an example. Among the diverse notions of governance, we consider seven indicators representing legal, political and administrative aspects. Changes are analysed by considering both shifts indicated by policy documents and the quality of governance perceived by water user groups. To get an overall picture, we aggregate all seven indicators based on the weightings provided by experts and water user groups. Our results show that, according to the policy documents, all notions of governance have significantly improved and will further improve. However, according to water user groups, the actual implementation of these policies seems to be far behind what the policy documents indicate and, moreover, this gap has even been increasing over time. Although only seven indicators might not do sufficient justice to the complexity of an issue such as governance, these results convey an understanding of observed and perceived tendencies in arenas of water management, making this approach a relevant contribution to a better informed decision-making.

American rhapsodies revisited: figures de l'altérité et voix mêlées dans Music through the Floor (2005) d'Eric Puchner

The collection of short stories Music through the Floor, published in 2005, is Eric Puchner's first fictional work. In the wake of some of his famous predecessors such as Cheever or Carver who have deeply influenced his writing, Puchner gets to grips with the closely related notions of diversity, otherness and alienation which lie at the core of his characters' concerns with identity and response to their social and linguistic environment. As suggested by the title itself, music stands as the overriding metaphor for the conflicting identities, peculiarities and human relationships staged by the short stories in many different ways, just as music actually performed is a major element through which various voices can be heard. In keeping with some famous works of art–mainly musical or cinematographic–aimed at characterizing the U.S.A. as a whole, Puchner's writing gives birth to a rhapsodic form in which, even though they do blend sometimes in an elusive way, each voice is that of a soloist performing on his own in a community of loners.

‘Including’ while excluding: race, class and behaviour support units

This article examines the workings of informal exclusion units located within British secondary schools. Although articulated in terms of inclusion and support such initiatives effectively work to remove students regarded as troublesome from mainstream classrooms. Drawing on ethnographic research in three inner-city schools we show how a therapeutic ethos governs activities within the units. A focus on developing personal skills is maintained in an effort to compensate for the perceived shortcomings of parents and wider communities. As we demonstrate, this reasoning drives a culturally intolerant approach concealed within a broader commitment to multicultural values. While notions of diversity are celebrated within the schools, issues of race and racism are routinely avoided, ensuring that institutionally ingrained patterns of discrimination remain unchanged.

Faith Schools and the Plural Society: Exploring Notions of Diversity in School Provision in England

Around thirty per cent of all schools in England have a religious character. The author argues that the current ‘faith schools debate’ is more about the nature of its ‘plural society’ than about the place of such schools within the state-maintained sector. He suggests that to assume we are, in fact, living within a determinedly plural society is not as clear-cut as one might suppose, and that the very existence of the current ‘faith school debate’ in England is an indication that we are not as committed to pluralism as we might like to think. First he sets out two differing conceptions of the plural society - one strong, one weak. Then he sketches the historical and legislative backdrop to the present English state-maintained educational system. His third objective is to chart, briefly, the development of the educational system since the 1980s and to describe how it corresponds to changes from a strong to a weak concept of a plural society in which societal attitudes which once championed legislation supporting minority communities now seem to be leaning towards marginalising or even suppressing the contribution of such groups to the common good. Finally, he argues that the continuing existence of a distinctive dual system of educational provision in England, of which the Catholic sector is a paradigm, provides a bulwark against a creeping tide of weak pluralism, which has been likened to a form of damaging totalitarianism.

Zebra crossing: walking in two continents sharing and celebrating difference through music

I use the metaphor zebra crossing in my reflective narrative to describe my plight and struggle as a non-white person growing up and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the apartheid era. This article considers and compares the notions of culture, diversity and identity as I now work in a tertiary institution in Melbourne, Australia. I reflect on my teaching of African music and position myself as ‘the other’ at zebra crossings, as I create a space in multicultural Australia. By engaging in meaningful dialogue with music and culture, I contend, we do have opportunity to explore, experience and express music making and sharing globally. The inclusion and embracing of non-western music can serve as a dais for understanding and celebrating cultural difference not as distant experiences but as integral aspects of our daily lives.

Assessing biological variation from the perspective of diversity

Particularly in ecological and evolutionary genetics, methods of discerning complex traits are improving at a considerable rate. As a consequence, the resolution of intrinsically qualitative traits such as species affiliation or genetic type is increasing to degrees that blur their distinction from continuously varying characteristics. The common notion of diversity, however, relies on distinct features such as the states of qualitative traits, and it aims to assess variation as a counting of these features or types. This situation brings up the question of whether and how the diversity perspective of variation can be broadened to cover higher levels of complexity without sacrificing its concept. The present paper suggests two approaches that refer to established criteria for measures of diversity and that complement each other. The partitions approach treats complexity through general measures of difference between trait states, and the relations approach rests on general binary relations that capture structural aspects of diversity. Both approaches are shown to consistently imply effective numbers of types even in cases where distinct types are not explicitly specified. Practically all of the common methods of measuring diversity can be classified into either of the two approaches, and new opportunities for analyses of the diversity of complex traits are provided. The latter analyses include those of diversity in subdivided collections. Other perspectives of variation (such as dispersion, variances, etc.) are discussed and analyzed for their distinction from the diversity perspective. In many cases, the distinction can be made apparent with the help of diversity portraits.

NOVOS LETRAMENTOS, ENSINO DE LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA E O PAPEL DA ESCOLA PÚBLICA NO SÉCULO XXI

O mundo de hoje se transforma contínua e rapidamente, e se torna cada vez mais “tecnologizado” ou “digitalizado” (LANKSHEAR; KNOBEL, 2003, p. 155). O contato entre culturas de diferentes partes do mundo torna-se cada vez mais possível e frequente (LEMKE, 1998). A presença de culturas diferentes em nosso próprio país e em nossa própria comunidade também fica cada vez mais evidente. Como acompanhar as mudanças da nossa sociedade frente às novas tecnologias? Qual o papel da educação na formação de indivíduos nesse novo mundo? O que significa ser cidadão no mundo de hoje? Qual o papel da escola pública na formação da cidadania? Como o ensino de língua estrangeira (LE) pode interferir nesse processo? Essas e outras questões serão aqui discutidas tendo como base as noções de diversidade cultural, globalização/localização, e as teorias de Letramento Crítico.

Sexual equality and diversity in UK local councils

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the recent introduction of equality and diversity initiatives to the workplace in the UK public sector. It provides an overview of the changing work patterns through the experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) employees in UK local councils.Design/methodology/approachA case study has been conducted into the perceptions of managers and staff around council's approach and its impact on equality and diversity issues through a quantitative survey and a set of semi‐structured qualitative interviews. A framework of equality and diversity is constructed to create much needed linkages between the organisation's policies, processes and culture.FindingsThe study has revealed that despite a lack of promotion of the equalities framework, the “hard” notion of equality and diversity is understood and embedded in many parts of the organisation. However, there is little evidence that councils are perceived to have a clear organisational equality and diversity strategy, and there is little activity intended to encourage active discussion around the issue of sexual orientation, inhibiting the development of “soft” knowledge and of confidence in managing day‐to‐day issues of sexual orientation.Originality/valueThe paper illuminates the effectiveness of equality and diversity management strategies focusing on sexual orientation in UK local councils. The findings should be of value to policy makers who need to understand the needs of a diverse workforce in order to plan new ways of managing equality and diversity.

A metric for unsupervised metalearning

We argue the value of unsupervised metalearning and discuss the attendant necessity of suitable similarity, or distance, functions. We leverage the notion of diversity among learners used in ensemble learning to design a distance function for the clustering of learning algorithms. We revisit the most popular measures of diversity and show that only one of them, Classifier Output Difference COD is a metric. We then use COD to produce a clustering of 21 learning algorithms, and show how this clustering differs from a clustering based on accuracy, and how it can be used to highlight interesting, sometimes unexpected, similarities among learning algorithms.

From Affirmative Action to Diversity: Toward a Critical Diversity Perspective

This article provides an overview of changes in the discourse about inclusion as it has evolved from debates about affirmative action to various notions of diversity. The article seeks movement away from ‘colorblind diversity’ and ‘segregated diversity’ toward a ‘critical diversity’ that examines all forms of social inequality, oppression, and stratification that revolve around issues of difference. It lays out concrete strategies for doing so: (1) target goods and resources to excluded people; (2) advocate an expansive notion of diversity, but seek out distributive justice that will serve to assist ‘disprivileged’ groups; (3) shift resources away from privileged groups, especially when invoking the rhetoric of diversity; (4) reconnect diversity to affirmative action and the need to offset historical and ongoing racial and gender discrimination, segregation, and bias; (5) remind people that diversity is consistent with legal compliance; and (6) demonstrate to organizational members that diversity is institutionally beneficial.