'Technoscience' Education: Empowering Citizens Against the Tyranny of School Science

The status quo for school science and technology is unacceptable. While the former often is required for admission to university engineering, as well as to science programmes, the latter is deemed most appropriate for less able, concrete thinkers. This situation persists, despite the fact school science tends to generate large groups of citizens who are relatively scientifically and technologically illiterate, largely as a result of its preoccupation with identifying and training potential scientists and engineers. This practice is tyrannical. It must be abandoned forthwith. A realistic alternative is a combined technology and science programme – perhaps called 'technoscience' education – that would treat science and technology as equals. Such courses may, as well, be more democratic in the sense that technological problem solving often is more natural to everyday situations that everyone may find useful, not just future scientists or engineers. A framework for combined technology and science courses is described and defended here. Originally developed through collaborative action research amongst practising teachers of science, the approach appears to be feasible, under certain – perhaps ideal – conditions. A number of changes to science and technology education may be necessary for broader implementation, not the least of which is a general retrenchment in expectations for pre-determined learning, along with adjustments to teacher education. Nevertheless, the approach is recommended because of its emphasis on: personalization, inclusion, problematization, explicitness, apprenticeship, authenticity, contextualization and freedom. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Strategyproof multiple assignment using quotas

The allocation of heterogeneous and indivisible objects is considered where there is no medium of exchange. We characterize the set of strategyproof, nonbossy, Pareto-optimal, and neutral social choice functions when preferences are monotonic and quantity-monotonic. The characterized sets of social choice functions are sequential; agents are assigned their favorite objects among the objects not given to others before them, subject to a quota. Received: 5 January 1999 / Accepted: 14 June 1999     

Beyond the renaissance of the traditional Voss sheep's-head meal: Tradition,culinary art,scariness and entrepreneurship

Attempts have been made to make traditional local foods a part of the tourists' experiences, but few have caught great interest among the tourist and leisure consumers. An exception is the Norwegian traditional Sheep's-head meal. This article focuses on driving factors behind this success. Sheep's heads have been continuously available and used at private meals, albeit the status of the meals has changed from everyday food to party food, and a festival and commercial meals with unique ceremonies have developed. Participation in these may give a sense of symbolic proximity to traditions and historical “roots”. The culinary qualities of the product are important especially for the experienced sheep's-head meal participants. The scariness of the product itself and the measures taken to make the meal an enjoyable adventures trigger the feelings of courage, mastery and inclusion in the “in-group” of sheep's-head eaters. Most important for the success were the individual entrepreneurships and entrepreneurial networks which were the number one drivers behind the rejuvenation of these unique meal experiences. This case illustrates the significance of the individual and network entrepreneurial processes in the branding and development of tourism destinations.     

Strategyproof exchange of indivisible goods

The exchange of heterogeneous indivisible goods is considered among agents with responsive preferences, who may be endowed with several goods. We introduce the segmented trading cycle rules which allow the agents to trade goods, one-for-one, subject to market segmentation. In particular, the market is divided into segments such that each agent in each segment may trade at most one good. The segmented trading cycle rules are characterized by four axioms: strategyproofness, nonbossiness, trade sovereignty, and strong individual rationality.     

Unique stability in simple coalition formation games

We investigate the uniqueness of stable coalition structures in a simple coalition formation model, for which specific coalition formation games, such as the marriage and roommate models, are special cases that are obtained by restricting the coalitions that may form. The main result is a characterization of collections of permissible coalitions which ensure that there is a unique stable coalition structure in the corresponding coalition formation model. In particular, we show that only single-lapping coalition formation models have a unique stable coalition structure for each preference profile, where single-lapping means that two coalitions cannot have more than one member in common, and coalitions do not form cycles. We also give another characterization using a graph representation, explore the implications of our results for matching models, and examine the existence of strategyproof coalition formation rules.     

Exchange in a general market with indivisible goods

We show how to restrict trades in exchange markets with heterogeneous indivisible goods so that the resulting restricted exchange markets, the fixed deal exchange markets, have a unique core allocation. Our results on fixed deal exchange markets generalize classical results on the Shapley-Scarf housing market, in which each agent owns one good only. Furthermore, we define the class of fixed deal exchange rules for general exchange markets, and prove that these are the only exchange rules that satisfy strategyproofness, individual rationality, and a weak form of efficiency.     

Play in adventure tourism: The Case of Arctic Trekking

This paper discusses narratives of polar adventure tourism from a multidisciplinary perspective of play. Reviewing discussions on the motivation behind this subject, it examines two concurrent approaches in particular: risk and insight theories. Based on empirical evidence obtained from a winter trekking trip to an Artic tourism destination, the paper argues that these theories may be particular components of adult play. The interplay among risk, insight seeking, and play is explored in this paper with a particular emphasis being placed on the competence, materiality, and bodily techniques demonstrated by Arctic adventure tourists.     

Strategyproof and Nonbossy Multiple Assignments

We consider the allocation of heterogeneous indivisible objects without using monetary transfers. Each agent may be assigned more than one object. We show that an allocation rule is strategyproof, nonbossy, and satisfies citizen sovereignty if and only if it is a sequential dictatorship . In a sequential dictatorship agents are assigned their favorite objects that are still available, according to a sequentially endogenously determined hierarchy of the agents. We also establish that replacing nonbossiness by a stronger criterion restricts the characterized class of allocation rules to serial dictatorships , in which the hierarchy of the agents is fixed a priori.     

Promoting student-led science and technology projects in elementary teacher education: entry into core pedagogical practices through technological design

Future elementary school teachers often lack self-efficacy for teaching science and technology. They are particularly anxious about encouraging children to carry-out student-directed, open-ended scientific inquiry and/or technological design projects. Moreover, because this often also is the case with practising elementary school teachers, it is difficult for student–teachers to gain practical experience facilitating student-led project work during practicum sessions. To provide student–teachers with expertise and motivation for promoting student-directed, open-ended project work, therefore, a group of future elementary teachers were taken through a constructivism-informed ‘apprenticeship’ during their university-based teaching methods course and then invited to make project work the subject of the action research that they were required to complete during their practicum. In this paper, successes that one student–teacher (out of 78 studied) experienced in promoting student-directed, open-ended technological design projects are reported. Although she judged children’s designs to be modestly successful, data indicate that her self-efficacy for promoting project work increased significantly. Analyses of qualitative data collected during the methods course and practicum also indicate that aspects of the curriculum, teachers, students and milieu appeared to contribute to this success. Such findings suggest that teacher educators should focus on helping future elementary teachers to develop expertise and motivation that would enable and encourage children to conduct technological design projects before conducting scientific inquiries. Such a tack may be the most pragmatic—and, arguably, epistemologically-sound—approach for helping ‘science- and technology-phobic’ student–teachers to move from the periphery to the core of practices in science and technology education.