Ideological and pedagogical tensions in an environmental sustainability education project: A review of adult education practices around Lake Fundudzi,South Africa

ABSTRACT

Research in poor communities in South Africa faces intellectual challenges and tensions which offer lessons for evaluating environmental education (EE). This article illuminates five such tensions that emerged during the course of an adult environmental education programme, implemented from 1999 to 2002, in communities surrounding the catchment of Lake Fundudzi in South Africa: tensions arose between traditional and modern concepts of community; between traditional and post-apartheid structures of local governance; between liberal empowerment and traditional conservationist ideologies; and also within and between environmental ideologies and research paradigms. Paramount among the lessons learned is the need to develop multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) practices that are sensitive to local community and environmental needs, and to solutions expressed through local residents, community workers and academics – in other words, the recognition and affirmation of local indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs).     

Contextualising City-regional Issues,Strategies and their Use: the Flemish Story

This paper presents a contextualised analysis of what might be called the city-regional debate. The debate is unfolded in terms of four types of city-regional issues, eight common strategies to tackle the latter and the use thereof in Flanders. It is concluded that the way in which city-regional issues are dealt with in Flanders can be explained by its regime, consisting of an administrative, political and cultural dimension, in terms of a centralistic policy style combined with a weak institutional position of local governments, by a ‘localisation’ of regional politics and policies, both dominated by an anti-urban bias.     

Republican China: Chaos,Process, and Revolution*

A pivotal figure in the birth of Chinese cinema, Zheng Zhengqiu (鄭正秋 1889–1935) established an art of dramatic film integral to the creation of early Chinese motion pictures. His style incorporated unique cross-media perspectives, producing theatrical works fundamentally grounded in his experiences in graphic arts (illustrated news) and theater. This article focuses on crucial links between Zheng's films and his work for various illustrated newspapers, as well as between his stage plays and his own experience of family life. The author offers new approaches to and interpretations of Zheng's art, analyzing his emotional modes of narrative and provocative forms of engagement. These artistic traits are rarely discussed in contemporary scholarship on his contributions to Chinese cinema. Emerging during the 1911 Revolution, Zheng's sensational style of drama aimed to foster broad social and cultural reforms. For Zheng, art was never for art's sake alone; instead, art was always in the service of society.     

Exploring contextual influences on the architectural structure of South African television news programmes This article is partly based on a paper presented at the International Broadcasting Content Regulation Conference,Johannesburg, 27–29 May 2005

Abstract

This article uses a qualitative textual analysis of in-depth interviews with senior news processors as a methodology to explore the unique contextual dimensions that may influence the architectural structure of South African television news programmes. The discussion rests on the basic assumption that news will always present a mediated and constructed version of reality. Six communicative frames categories have been selected to investigate operational processes and issues organising the production process of news: short, straight-forward, ‘objective’ news reports; single-sourced news items based on one major voice or main perspective; investigative news reports; marketable news chosen for financial potential; news items based on community and cultural events; and mythic tales. The findings indicate that the interface between contextual factors and journalistic practices contributes to the unique challenges facing the industry in South Africa. The article concludes with an appeal to news processors to reflect on the consequences and effects their programmes have on audiences’ perception of reality, and proposes recommendations to enable audiences to become more empowered and engaged viewers.     

F.H. (Terry) Terblanche (17 June 1939 – 30 April 2014)

ABSTRACT

Research shows that there is a perception that gender equity in the South African news media has reached maturation and that the power female journalists hold in the newsroom equals that of their male counterparts. these perceptions might be attributed to the fact that South african news media have reached near gender parity in terms of the workforce. However, the question is whether this translates into women having equal power to influence news agendas and to extend the broader public discourse.

Through interviews with journalists from a cross-section of the South african english- and afrikaans-language media, the study shows that despite improved gender equity in the workforce, female journalists do not think they have the same power to alter news agendas as their male counterparts. Furthermore, the study shows that despite women and men often covering similar beats and stories, they emphasise different story angles and also articulate their role in society differently.     

Measuring the Media Agenda

Measuring media attention to politically relevant topics is of interest to a broad array of political science and communications scholars. We provide a practical guide for the construction, validation, and evaluation of time series measures of media attention. We review the extant literature on the coherence of the media agenda, which provides evidence in support of and evidence against the emergence of a single, national news agenda. Drawing expectations from this literature, we show the conditions under which a single national news agenda is likely to be present and where it is likely to be absent. We create 90 different keyword searches covering a wide range of topics and gather counts of stories per month from 12 national and regional media sources with data going back to 1980 where possible. We show using factor analysis wide variance in the strength of the first factor. We then estimate a regression model to predict this value. The results show the conditions under which any national source will produce time series results consistent with any other. Key independent variables are the average number of stories, the variance in stories per month, and the presence of any “spike” in the data series. Our large-scale empirical assessment should provide guidance to scholars assessing the quality of time series data on media coverage of issues.     

Family Group Conferencing: An Indigenous Practice Approach to Compliance With the Indian Child Welfare Act

Native American children are perpetually over-represented in the U.S. child welfare system, despite the creation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. This article examines the use of family group conferencing, particularly initiated in Indian child welfare systems, as a practice method to reduce the disproportionality in this area.     

Using Cost Analysis to Examine Variability in Replications of an Efficacious Child Neglect Prevention Program

This article reports on a program- and case-level cost analysis of five replication sites of an efficacious child neglect prevention program. Approximately one-third of all sites' total labor hours were expended on direct family services and casework support for a specific family, with the remainder spent on indirect implementation support and program administration activities. Including non-personnel costs, the all-site mean total cost per family was $6,276, ranging across sites from $2,245 to $10,260. Costs varied greatly among individual families within sites. More research is needed to understand factors associated with differences in cost.     

Implementing Developmental Screening Programs for Infants and Toddlers in the Child Welfare System

In 2003, revisions to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act required states to develop plans to refer children younger than 3 years of age with a substantiated case of abuse and neglect for developmental screening. A decade after legislation was passed, its implementation varies considerably across states. This article explains how research informs the need for careful developmental monitoring of young children, especially those experiencing trauma or living under stressful conditions. Finally, this article presents how one community used colocation to increase developmental screenings for young abused and neglected children.     

多维视角下的生物多样性法律问题论纲

生物多样性的法律问题具有交叉性、综合性、复杂性和现实性的特点.法律是保护和利用生物多样性的间接驱动力,而生物多样性对法律也产生反作用力.我国对于生物多样性法律问题的研究主要集中在知识产权法和环境法领域,存在着研究视角过于单一、固守学科领域和缺乏整体观等问题.研究生物多样性的法律问题,必须要注意到其产生的根源在于人类对于生物多样性系统认识的变迁;以国际环境法为出发点,结合多维视角对其加以研究.从整体上看,生物多样性的法律问题主要包括传统知识的法律保护以及遗传资源的获取与惠益分享问题、生物技术的专利性及相关问题以及生物安全问题和生物剽窃问题.