365 research outputs found
Deconstructing STEM: A Reading Through The Postmodern Condition
No full textSince the beginning of the new millennium, educational research and policy making have increasingly involved integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (i.e. STEM). Integration of the four disciplines is argued to provide students with contextualized learning experiences that resemble real-life work in STEM fields, along with solutions to interdisciplinary problems that human face. In the U.S., the STEM movement has been boosted by global economic-based competition and associated fears, in terms of STEM graduates, when compared with other nations. However, many critiques question the nature and goals of this competition, as well as, the possibilities to improve STEM talents through the current conceptualizations and practices of STEM education. Through Lyotard’s (1984) conceptions of knowledge in the postmodern society, this paper analyzes some aspects of the STEM educational movement. It explores the construction of STEM discourse within competitive frames that place prime value on high performativity. There seem to be two characteristics of current STEM education that support performativity; these are an increased focus on technological and engineering designs, and a tendency for interdisciplinary education/curriculum integration. At the same time, the eagerness for performativity and competition seems to drag STEM education into selectiveness, thereby jeopardizing its possible benefits. Recommendations for educators are finally discussed
Issues of power and control in STEM education: a reading through the postmodern condition
No full textSTEM Discourses and Distinction in An Elite School: Leadership through Relationships to Knowledge
No full textSTEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has become an influential discourse in many educational contexts. Despite varied conceptualizations and practices of STEM and STEM education, main goals of these discourses have largely been to support skilled STEM workforce to compete in the global economies. Although there is a plethora of publication regarding STEM education, a still underexplored context for STEM education is elite private schools.
The rationale for examining STEM education discourses in elite private schools stems from these schools’ roles in perpetuating the status quo and securing privilege to dominant social groups. They do so by supporting their students to cultivate recognizable forms of capital, a sense of distinction, and entitlement to their privilege. As such, they allow their students to envision leadership roles. Hence, examining how STEM education is conceptualized and practised in these schools can provide understanding of how elite identifications might be facilitated through available STEM discourses and related meanings of excellence and distinction. This is particularly significant when acknowledging that STEM fields tend to have and produce their own status hierarchy.
Through critical discourse analysis, this research examines STEM discourses that are available in an elite independent, co-educational, secondary, day school in Ontario, Canada, and how educators in this school conceptualize distinction in and through STEM (education). Using semi-structured interviews with teachers/administrators and document analysis of the school’s website and viewbook, this research further theorizes how these constructs might contribute to elite identifications.
This research shows that, in contrast to the narrative of skilled STEM workforce, in this elite school there is an overarching discourse of leadership that defines what distinction in STEM means and what tends to be embraced, rejected and/or recontextualized regarding dominant STEM discourses. Such a leadership discourse subsumes other discourses of impact, intellectual distinction, competitive achievements and active participation. These discourses and related conceptualizations and practices can support students to develop particular “relationship[s] to knowledge” (Bourdieu, 2004) or, more specifically, particular harmonised relationships to STEM knowledge as thinkers, experts and risk-takers, allowing students as such to envision and assume leadership roles and to validate their high status/elite positions.Ph.D
Rent - seeking trade policy : a time series approach
No full textUsing a time-series approach, the author analyzes the relationship between the extent of rent-seeking trade policy and both political and economic variables. For rent-seeking trade policy, the indicator he uses is the number of foreign-trade regulations passed each year for the benefit of a single firm or industry. The author uses data from Uruguay for 1925-83. Uruguay, which experienced an impressive economic decline, is an outstanding example of a rent-seeking society. After being a wealthy economy in midcentury, it suffered almost complete stagnation, which led to social and policital disintegration by the end of the 1960s. Three decades of restrictive regulations on foreign trade had created a nearly closed economy by the end of the 1960s. It was worth analyzing whether policymakers'great receptiveness to demands for protection could account for Uruguay's decline. Over the period 1925-83, the author finds almost 4,000 laws, decrees, and administrative resolutions that create, maintain, or modify a foreign-trade regulation for the benefit of a single firm or industry. About half of them explicitly identify the petitioner - usually a firm or guild. Since the size of the Uruguayan economy changed over the period studied, the author scales the annual number of regulations by output or exports to measure the extent of rent-seeking trade policy. The author shows that the extent of rent-seeking trade policy increased with discretionary policies and under dictatorship. (In the period studied, there were two stages of democracy - until 1932 and from 1943-72 - and two stages of dictatorship.) He also shows that rent-seeking trade restrictions increased under import-substitution strategies and, more unexpectedly, under active export promotion. This suggests that discretionary power leads to wasteful distribution, whether it is used to support inward- or outward-oriented policies. Finally, the author analyzes the correlation between innovations in the trade policy indicator and innovations in the growth rates of output and exports, with a lag of up to 20 years. Surprisingly, he finds a positive correlation with output growth rates after two or three years. But the correlation becomes negative some years later, particularly in the case of exports. The short-run positive impact on growth rates, together with the surprisingly long time lag before the negative impact, may account for policymakers'receptiveness to demands for protection.Trade Policy,Achieving Shared Growth,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies
A Qualitative Study of Team Level Factors Affecting Innovation
No full textInnovation is a necessity to embrace possibilities and face challenges and problems in our continuously changing world. Multidisciplinary capstones can be a place for students to be innovative. Students not only get a chance to work on a real project from industry, but they also work with students from different disciplines. This diversity of knowledge and perspectives can lead to team innovation. This paper explores team level factors affecting innovation in 4th year multidisciplinary capstone design at the University of Toronto. This paper is a qualitative study that explores the effect of diversity of knowledge, support for innovation from supervisor and client, team size, and team vision on innovation. Our research sheds some light on what behaviors in teams lead to innovation. Supporting and encouraging these behaviors from educational institutions provides an environment for students to be more innovativ
‘In the Eye of the Hurricane’: Using STEPWISE to Address Urgent Socio-political Issues in Venezuela
No full textA Qualitative Study of Team Level Factors Affecting Innovation
No full textInnovation is a necessity to embrace possibilities and face challenges and problems in our continuously changing world. Multidisciplinary capstones can be a place for students to be innovative. Students not only get a chance to work on a real project from industry, but they also work with students from different disciplines. This diversity of knowledge and perspectives can lead to team innovation. This paper explores team level factors affecting innovation in 4th year multidisciplinary capstone design at the University of Toronto. This paper is a qualitative study that explores the effect of diversity of knowledge, support for innovation from supervisor and client, team size, and team vision on innovation. Our research sheds some light on what behaviors in teams lead to innovation. Supporting and encouraging these behaviors from educational institutions provides an environment for students to be more innovative</jats:p
McMaster Grid Scheduling Testing Environment
No full textTitle: McMaster Grid Scheduling Testing Environment, Author: Majd Kokaly, Location: ThodeWith the phenomenal growth of the Internet and the advancement of computing hardware,
grid architectures have been developed to exploit idle cycles in large networks of
computational resources. One key aim of resource management (scheduling) schemes
is to find mappings of incoming workload to machines within the grid to maximize
the output. The first contribution of this thesis is the construction of a tool to aid
researchers in testing and improving scheduling schemes, namely the McMaster Grid
Scheduling Testing Environment (MGST). The Linear Programming Based Affinity Scheduling Scheme (LPAS_DG) was introduced
by researchers at McMaster, and simulation results have been promising
in suggesting that this scheduling scheme outperforms other schemes when there is
high system heterogeneity and is competitive under lower levels of heterogeneity. The
second contribution of this research is providing suggestions to improve this scheme,
based on the results of experiments where the LPAS_DG scheme was actually deployed
on the MGST test bed.ThesisMaster of Applied Science (MASc
Teacher Candidates’ Relationships to Knowledge and to Their Practices for Critical and Activist STSE Education
No full textCritical and Active Public Engagement in Addressing Socioscientific Problems Through Science Teacher Education
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