陕西高职教育人才培养模式创新的实现途径

陕西高职教育人才培养模式一直存在着职业教育特色不突出、专业特色不明显、人才培养方案与区域经济发展严重脱节等问题,只有在对陕西社会经济发展环境进行综合分析的基础上,通过切实可行的途径实施高职教育人才培养模式创新,才能确保陕西高职教育真正满足区域经济发展的需要。     

Indebted to development: microcredit as (de)marginalisation in rural China

Microcredit schemes have been increasingly incorporated into development policies that aim to de-marginalise rural China. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the various roles that microcredit programmes play in development outcomes at the local level. It demonstrates that microcredit has the ability to facilitate the de-marginalisation of certain individuals/groups, while simultaneously (re)producing inequalities, thus exacerbating the marginalisation of others. This finding demonstrates that microcredit does not induce uniform, predictable and linear development through the integration of marginal places and people into the formal financial system and wider economy. Instead, microcredit programmes reflect and reinforce the interlocking sets of unequal relationships that are the root cause of marginality and underdevelopment in China. Through this detailed analysis of the contradictory outcomes of Chinese microcredit programmes, this paper provides the basis for a wider relational critique of microcredit as an intervention aimed at inducing a specific type of market-oriented linear development that is beneficial for some and detrimental for others.     

“It makes it legit”: local semiotic perceptions of the linguistic landscape in a market in Soshanguve,South Africa

This article explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of a semi-informal market in a South African township called Soshanguve. The fieldsite is situated in an area that is characterized by diversity and longstanding multilingualism. An ethnographic approach draws on the semiotic reading of the LL by a participant whose analysis of the multilingual commercial signage provides insight into local perceptions on language use and materiality. The study focuses on the participant’s analysis of the indexicality of African languages and traders’ names used in the LL that is in general dominated by English. Furthermore, the use of Sepitori (mixed language) in the signage will be explored for the first time. Findings contribute to disentangle and expand the notion of luxury and necessity. More specifically, we suggest that these concepts can be extended to include the notions of sponsorship and mediation, which can potentially involve reinterpreting the process of production, use and perception of the materials in signage.     

Building something beautiful with stones: How regions adapt to,shape and transform the EU opportunity structure

The literature on the relationship between regions and the European Union (EU) has generated three important insights. First, research has found that the EU empowers as well as disempowers regions. Second, studies have demonstrated that regions adapt to the EU opportunity structure. Third, scholars have discovered that regions also change the EU opportunity structure. However, the three dimensions are rarely brought together. To examine the mutual influence and constant interaction between the three, the article applies a strategic-relational approach to regional action within the EU. Using the empirical example of the EU macro-regional strategy for the Alpine region, the article shows how regional motivations, differential opportunities and constraints and strategies of adaptation and transformation interact. The conclusions imply that both opportunity structures and regional strategies together produce the mosaic of rules, resources, relationships and ideas that makes up the EU.     

A Comparison of Tobacco Policy in the UK and Japan: If the Scientific Evidence is Identical,Why is There a Major Difference in Policy?

Tobacco policy in the UK and Japan has diverged markedly. In the 1980s, both countries oversaw regimes with minimal economic and regulatory policies. Now the UK has become one of the most, and Japan one of the least, controlled (advanced industrial) states. These developments are puzzling to public health scholars who give primary explanatory weight to scientific evidence and a vague notion of “political will”, because policy makers possessed the same evidence on the harms of tobacco, and made the same international commitment to comprehensive tobacco control. Instead, we identify the role of a mutually reinforcing dynamic in policy environments, facilitating policy change in the UK but not Japan: policy makers accepted the scientific evidence, framed tobacco as a public health epidemic, placed health departments at the heart of policy, formed networks with public health groups and excluded tobacco companies, and accentuated socio-economic conditions supportive of tobacco control. This dynamic helps explain why the UK became more likely to select each tobacco policy control instrument during a series of “windows of opportunity”. Such analysis, generated by policy theory, is crucial to contemporary science/practitioner debates on the politics of “evidence-based policy making”: the evidence does not speak for itself, and practitioners need to know how to use it effectively in policy environments.     

Disentangling Actors from Their Environment? Pitfalls and Added-Value of the Strategic-Choice Approach

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the Strategic-Choice Approach (SCA) put forward by Lake and Powell (1999b) can be further developed in two directions. First, the article highlights the challenge posed by the interdependence between actors and their environment. From this it draws two conclusions. A) The SCA approach is most fruitful for synchronic analysis but more challenging to implement in a diachronic research design. B) The interdependence between actors and their environment can be lessened by distinguishing between three types of actor preferences: meta, ranked, and pragmatic-preferences. Second, it argues that the SCA is an ideal framework to combine qualitative and quantitative research designs.     

现阶段社会治安状况评价研究综述

社会治安状况评估是测量国家或地区的总体治安状况的标尺。因此,它是政府部门掌握社会治安真实情况的重要途径。从社会治安状况评价的概念、研究方法和指标体系等方面进行归纳和总结,有利于明晰社会治安状况评价指标体系的研究思路。     

Use of an Automated System to Evaluate Feature Dissimilarities in Handwriting Under a Two-Stage Evaluative Process*†

The two-stage evaluative process is an established framework utilized by forensic document examiners (FDEs) for reaching a conclusion about the source(s) of handwritten evidence. In the second, or discrimination, stage, the examiner attempts to estimate the rarity of observations in a relevant background population. Unfortunately, control samples from a relevant background population are often unavailable, leaving the FDE to reach this determination based on subjective experience. Automated handwriting feature recognition systems are capable of performing both feature comparison and discrimination, yet these systems have not been subjected to empirical validation studies. In the present study, we repurposed a commercially available automated system to generate empirical distributions for ranking feature dissimilarity scores among pairs of handwritten phrases. The blinded results of this automated process were used to survey an international cohort of 36 FDEs regarding their strength of support for same- and different-writer propositions. The survey served to cross-validate FDE decision-making under the two-stage approach. Results from the survey demonstrated a clear pattern of response consistent with ground truth. Predictive regression analyses indicated that the automated feature dissimilarity scores and the log of their cumulative distribution functions accounted for 72% of the variability in FDE opinions. This study demonstrated that feature dissimilarity scores acquired using automated processes and their distributions are closely aligned with FDE decision-making processes supporting the heuristic value of the two-stage evaluative framework.     

痕迹检验学成绩评定方式方法改革构想

成绩评定的方式方法对于教学质量有着重要的影响,充分发挥成绩评定的评价作用和导向作用,是提高教学质量、提高学员素质的重要途径之一。笔者通过对以往成绩评定方式方法的反思,借鉴其他学科的经验,提出了本课程成绩评定改革的初步方案。