scholarly journals The IAU and Education: Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S367) ◽  
pp. 2-7
Author(s):  
Ewine F. van Dishoeck
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
School Level ◽  
Astronomy Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Meetings ◽  
The Many ◽  
Literate Society

AbstractThis paper provides a brief overview of the many facets of astronomy education and heritage, and how the IAU stimulates them. Activities range from training in astronomy through scientific meetings and schools for young astronomers, to using astronomy as a tool for development and for stimulating science education at school level. Communicating astronomy with the public and engaging in outreach activities with children to inspire curiosity is yet another way of how astronomy can help build a literate society and install a sense of global citizenship. The involvement of many people at all levels is key to success.

Closing Remarks

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S367) ◽  
pp. 515-517
Author(s):  
Debra Meloy Elmegreen
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Astronomy Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Many ◽  
Collaborative Efforts ◽  
Made In

AbstractThis symposium has highlighted key first steps made in addressing many goals of the IAU Strategic Plan for 2020–2030. Presentations on initiatives regarding education, with applications to development, outreach, equity, inclusion, big data, and heritage, are briefly summarized here. The many projects underway for the public, for students, for teachers, and for astronomers doing astronomy education research provide a foundation for future collaborative efforts, both regionally and globally.

scholarly journals Initiatives in Astronomy Education in South Africa

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-130
Author(s):  
Case L. Rijsdijk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Science Education ◽  
South African ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
School Level ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Large Telescope ◽  
Astronomy Education ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Education Initiative

AbstractA brief review of the issues affecting the current status of science education in general, and astronomy education in particular, is given. The paper looks at the present situation at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. South Africa has unique educational problems and the initiatives by local observatories and universities at school level are described. The problems encountered by the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) Science Education Initiative (SEI) are typical, as is the SEI approach to addressing some of these. The experience of the SEI is described, as are some of the resources developed by them for primary and secondary schools. Finally a brief look is taken at future developments, in particular, ways in which the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) can contribute to astronomy and science education.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

Archaeologists and the Dead

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Experience Effect

This volume addresses the relationship between archaeologists and the dead, through the many dimensions of their relationships: in the field (through practical and legal issues), in the lab (through their analysis and interpretation), and in their written, visual and exhibitionary practice--disseminated to a variety of academic and public audiences. Written from a variety of perspectives, its authors address the experience, effect, ethical considerations, and cultural politics of working with mortuary archaeology. Whilst some papers reflect institutional or organizational approaches, others are more personal in their view: creating exciting and frank insights into contemporary issues that have hitherto often remained "unspoken" among the discipline. Reframing funerary archaeologists as "death-workers" of a kind, the contributors reflect on their own experience to provide both guidance and inspiration to future practitioners, arguing strongly that we have a central role to play in engaging the public with themes of mortality and commemoration, through the lens of the past. Spurred by the recent debates in the UK, papers from Scandinavia, Austria, Italy, the US, and the mid-Atlantic, frame these issues within a much wider international context that highlights the importance of cultural and historical context in which this work takes place.

Provincial Governance of Education—The Western Cape Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Robert ◽  
Brian Levy
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Political Party ◽  
School Level ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Education Department ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Public Education System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Bureaucracy

The focus of this chapter is the management and governance of education at provincial level—specifically on efforts to introduce performance management into education by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), and their impact. Post-1994 the WCED inherited a bureaucracy that was well placed to manage the province’s large public education system. Subsequently, irrespective of which political party has been in power, the WCED consistently has sought to implement performance management. This chapter explores to what extent determined, top-down efforts, led by the public sector, can improve dismal educational performance. It concludes that the WCED is a relatively well-run public bureaucracy. However, efforts to strengthen the operation of the WCED’s bureaucracy have not translated into systematic improvements in schools in poorer areas. One possible implication is that efforts to strengthen hierarchy might usefully be complemented with additional effort to support more horizontal, peer-to-peer governance at the school level.

Law as a Field of Tension

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini
Keyword(s):  
Public Authority ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
The Many

As it had been in the communal age, so, in the Visconti-Sforza era, law was the instrument that the public authority relied upon in order to subordinate the many actors present and to subjugate their political cultures. There is, therefore, the attempt to tighten a vice around competing powers—a vice that is at the same time legislative, doctrinal, and judicial. And yet, it is difficult to escape the impression of an effort whose outcomes were somewhat more uncertain than had been the case in the past. The chapter focuses on all these aspects of the deployment of legal and other stratagems to consolidate or to wrest power.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Public Life ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Many

The Conclusion ties together the book’s main arguments about Crispus Attucks’s place in American history and memory. We do not know enough about his experiences, associations, or motives before or during the Boston Massacre to conclude with certainty that Attucks should be considered a hero and patriot. But his presence in that mob on March 5, 1770, embodies the diversity of colonial America and the active participation of workers and people of color in the public life of the Revolutionary era. The strong likelihood that Attucks was a former slave who claimed his own freedom and carved out a life for himself in the colonial Atlantic world adds to his story’s historical significance. The lived realities of Crispus Attucks and the many other men and women like him must be a part of Americans’ understanding of the nation’s founding generations.

scholarly journals Introducing New Guidelines on Geoheritage Conservation in Protected and Conserved Areas

Geoheritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crofts ◽  
Dan Tormey ◽  
John E. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Practice Guidelines ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Communication To The Public ◽  
The Public ◽  
Best Practice Guidelines ◽  
The World ◽  
New Guidelines ◽  
The Many ◽  
Ethical Basis ◽  
Improve Practice

AbstractThis paper introduces newly published guidelines on geoheritage conservation in protected and conserved areas within the “IUCN WCPA Best Practice Guidelines” series. It explains the need for the guidelines and outlines the ethical basis of geoheritage values and geoconservation principles as the fundamental framework within which to advance geoheritage conservation. Best practice in establishing and managing protected and conserved areas for geoconservation is described with examples from around the world. Particular emphasis is given to the methodology and practice for dealing with the many threats to geoheritage, highlighting in particular how to improve practice for areas with caves and karst, glacial and periglacial, and volcanic features and processes, and for palaeontology and mineral sites. Guidance to improve education and communication to the public through modern and conventional means is also highlighted as a key stage in delivering effective geoconservation. A request is made to geoconservation experts to continue to share best practice examples of developing methodologies and best practice in management to guide non-experts in their work. Finally, a number of suggestions are made on how geoconservation can be further promoted.

scholarly journals Science needs more external evaluation, not less

2021 ◽  
pp. 053901842110191
Author(s):  
Loes Knaapen
Keyword(s):  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
External Evaluation ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Quantitative Performance ◽  
The Many ◽  
Lay Public

When science is evaluated by bureaucrats and administrators, it is usually done by quantified performance metrics, for the purpose of economic productivity. Olof Hallonsten criticizes both the means (quantification) and purpose (economization) of such external evaluation. I share the concern that such neoliberal performance metrics are shallow, over-simplified and inaccurate, but differ in how best to oppose this reductionism. Hallonsten proposes to replace quantitative performance metrics with qualitative in-depth evaluation of science, which would keep evaluation internal to scientific communities. I argue that such qualitative internal evaluation will not be enough to challenge current external evaluation since it does little to counteract neoliberal politics, and fails to provide the accountability that science owes the public. To assure that the many worthy purposes of science (i.e. truth, democracy, well-being, justice) are valued and pursued, I argue science needs more and more diverse external evaluation. The diversification of science evaluation can go in many directions: towards both quantified performance metrics and qualitative internal assessments and beyond economic productivity to value science’s broader societal contributions. In addition to administrators and public servants, science evaluators must also include diverse counterpublics of scientists: civil society, journalists, interested lay public and scientists themselves. More diverse external evaluation is perhaps no more accurate than neoliberal quantified metrics, but by valuing the myriad contributions of science and the diversity of its producers and users, it is hopefully less partial and perhaps more just.

Big Data in the philippines: How do we actually use them?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Lisa Grace S. Bersales ◽  
Josefina V. Almeda ◽  
Sabrina O. Romasoc ◽  
Marie Nadeen R. Martinez ◽  
Dannela Jann B. Galias
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
High Speed ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Complex Data ◽  
Official Statistics ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Many ◽  
Current Utilization

With the advancement of technology, digitalization, and the internet of things, large amounts of complex data are being produced daily. This vast quantity of various data produced at high speed is referred to as Big Data. The utilization of Big Data is being implemented with success in the private sector, yet the public sector seems to be falling behind despite the many potentials Big Data has already presented. In this regard, this paper explores ways in which the government can recognize the use of Big Data for official statistics. It begins by gathering and presenting Big Data-related initiatives and projects across the globe for various types and sources of Big Data implemented. Further, this paper discusses the opportunities, challenges, and risks associated with using Big Data, particularly in official statistics. This paper also aims to assess the current utilization of Big Data in the country through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Based on desk review, discussions, and interviews, the paper then concludes with a proposed framework that provides ways in which Big Data may be utilized by the government to augment official statistics.

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