Uncertainty,story-telling and transformative learning: An instructor’s experience of TEFI’s Walking Workshop in Nepal

ABSTRACT

This article recounts three stories from TEFI’s walking workshop in Nepal: the construction of a road through what was once a trekking path; a dance-floor encounter at a Himalayan party; and the arrival of one participant, fatigued by jet lag and disoriented by the new surroundings. These stories of confusion, discomfort and fear are linked by one common theme: the potential of uncertainty to foster deep reflection and nuanced conclusions. The premise that uncertainty is to be valued and even cultivated has been explored in educational theory, spiritual traditions, and research on transformative learning. These sources affirm the role of uncertainty in the process of knowledge creation. However, accepting this role can be challenging for educators because it requires they assume a new identity, one which they may perceive as being at odds with their status as “teacher” the identity of learner. One way for the educator to address this challenge may be through recounting their own stories of uncertainty. Stories of being immersed in unfamiliar situations that challenge, confuse and even frighten – stories, in other words of being a tourist – can foster reflection on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level, engaging the “whole” person, and thus initiating the educator/learner’s transformative journey.     

The Right Choice at the Right Time: A Herding Experiment in Endogenous Time

Herding describes the phenomenon in decision-making where an economic agent disregards his own private information to follow the actions of his predecessors as in Banerjee (1992). With later decision-makers simply copying earlier decisions their private information cannot be inferred by other decision-makers and will be forever lost. There is some experimental evidence on simple sequential herding of this type in the literature, notably Anderson and Holt (1997). This paper differs by allowing subjects to delay their decision-making in order to benefit from observing others' actions as in more recent herding models such as Chamley and Gale (1994). The results in this paper suggest that subjects will indeed delay when their private information is not sufficiently strong. Despite this ability to wait, as predicted in the theoretical literature, cascades remained ubiquitous and more worrying still, reverse-cascades occurred in which incorrect decisions made by early decision-makers produced informational cascades on the wrong action. In an alternative design, informing subjects that they had made incorrect choices only made matters worse as subjects moved further away from rational behavior.     

Victory margins and the paradox of voting

This paper addresses a simple question: why do people vote? Though simple, this question remains unanswered despite the considerable attention it has received. In this paper, I show that purely rational–instrumental factors explain a large fraction of turnout variations, provided that the effect of the margin of victory on implemented policy is considered. I extend Myerson's models of elections based on Poisson games, and show that, when platforms are responsive to vote shares, the predictions of the model become consistent with several stylized facts, including the secular fall in turnout rates in the US.     

The Impact of the Implementation of Technology Education on In-Service Teacher Education in South Africa (Impact of Technology Education in the RSA)

In this article the impact of technology education, as a new learning area (subject) in the curriculum, on in-service teacher education in South Africa is described in order to ascertain the extent of the impact. The research on which this article is based draws on a variety of experiences and observations in the field at grassroots level (in particular an outreach project in rural communities). The envisaged impact of technology education on South African schools, communities, teacher educators and teachers, the range of in-service teacher education that is required, and the impacts in urban and rural areas are discussed. Finally a number of concluding remarks are made about the extent of the impact of the inclusion of technology education in the new National Curriculum Statement and whether the situation has changed since the implementation of a pilot technology education project in 1998. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The approximation capabilities of the minflex-Laurents,translog, and generalized Leontief forms

This paper compares the approximation capabilities of the minflex-Laurents translog and minflex generalized Leontief cost functions with their translog and generalized Leontief counterparts in Monte Carlo experiments. The minflex Laurent specifications generally provided closer approximations to underlying technical and economic parameters. Imposition of nonlinear restrictions on some of the parameters of the minflex Laurent models yielded measurable improvement in estimated elasticities of substitutions, returns to scale, and rates of technical change.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through E. Appelbaum.     

A NOTE ON ARBITRAGE AND CLOSED CONVEX CONES

We give an example of a subspace K of     such that     , where     denotes the closure with respect to convergence in probablity. On the other hand, the cone   C ≔ K − L ^∞₊  is dense in   L ^∞  with respect to the weak-star topology  σ( L ^∞, L ¹)  . This example answers a question raised by I. Evstigneev. The topic is motivated by the relation of the notion of no arbitrage and the existence of martingale measures in Mathematical Finance.     

Lead markets, innovation differentials and growth

This article suggests that the specialization of countries in international trade is determined by the lead-lag market pattern of national markets. Many internationally successful innovations have been adopted first in one country while other countries initially either preferred other designs or an established product. A model for the international diffusion of innovations is presented in which nationally preferred innovation designs compete to become a globally dominant design. In this model, there are country-specific market attributes that increase the likelihood that the choice a country makes among alternative technologies is followed around the world. It is argued that technological knowledge gaps are not the origin of an international competitive advantage. Instead, a country gains a competitive advantage because a specific innovation design was adopted earlier than in any other country. This gives local firms a head start in producing, gathering marketing intelligence and securing the property rights of a globally successful innovation. In countries with lag market characteristics, domestic innovations are less likely to get adopted worldwide. Lag markets often switch from a domestic innovation design to a foreign innovation design, which increases imports. The lead-lag market explanation of trade specialization has implications for national policies. In this model domestic innovations do not always foster exports; idiosyncratic innovations induced by lag market contexts can hamper the export chances of local firms and in the end lead to an increase in imports. It is suggested that in order to increase exports, national policies have to distinguish between a domestic lead and lag market context in each industry. While in a lead market context, traditional policy instruments that enhance the rate of innovations are effective, in a lag market situation national follower strategies are more appropriate.     

浅析公共服务有效供给的新模式

通过对公共服务的属性分析，结合新政治经济学理论和政府失败的现实因素，探索公益物品的有效供给模式，提出了公共服务的签约转包机制，并分析了这一机制的不足和政府的作用。     

高等职业技术教育专科学制改为二年的探讨

高等职业技术教育专科学制由三年改为二年是教育部根据市场需要、提高高等教育毛入学率的要求以及从减轻家长负担的角度考虑所做出的综合发展战略。我们要紧紧把握高等职业技术教育培养高技能型紧缺人才这一目标，重新定位，坚持以服务为宗旨、以就业为导向，进行广泛的校企合作。通过课程调整，实现与岗位的高匹配、零接轨，提高高等职业技术专科学生的就业率。