The field of early childhood education is increasingly dominated by a strongly positivistic and regulatory discourse, the story of quality and high returns, which has spread from its local origins in ...the favourable environment provided by a global regime of neoliberalism. But though dominant, this is not the only discourse in early childhood education, there are alternatives that are varied, vibrant and vocal; not silenced but readily heard by those who listen and forming a resistance movement. The article argues that this movement needs to confront a number of questions. Do its members want to influence and shape policy and practice? If so, what might a transformed and commensurate policy and practice look like? What are the possibilities that such transformation might be achieved, especially given the apparent unassailability of the current dominant discourse, and the force of the power relations that have enabled this discourse, local in origin and parochial in outlook, to aspire to global hegemony? And if such transformation were to occur, is it possible to avoid simply replacing one dominant discourse with another? Some partial and provisional answers are offered to these questions.
Written by two leading international experts, Early Childhood in the Anglosphere offers a unique comparison of early childhood education and care services, and parenting leave, across seven ...high-income Anglophone countries. Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell explore what these systems have in common, including the dominance of 'childcare’ services, widespread privatisation and marketisation, and weak parenting leave. They highlight the substantial failings of these systems, and the causes and consequences of these failings. But this book is ultimately about hope, about how these failings might be made good through major changes. In other words, it is about transformation: why transformation is both necessary and possible at this particular time, what transformation might look like, and how it might happen. Part of that transformation concerns the need for new policies and structures, but even more it is about how the Anglosphere thinks about early childhood. The authors call for turning away from conceptualising early childhood services as `childcare' and marketised businesses selling commodities to parent-consumers; and for reconceptualising them as education imbued with an ethics of care, a public good available as a right to all children and families, and complemented by well-paid, individual entitlements to parenting leave. Using examples from the Anglosphere and beyond, and in a context of converging crises, the book argues that transformation of thinking, policies and structures is desirable and doable.
Early childhood education and care has been a political priority in England since 1997, when government finally turned its attention to this long-neglected area. Public funding has increased, policy ...initiatives have proliferated and at each general election political parties aim to outbid each other in their offer to families. Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a Democratic Education argues that, despite this attention, the system of early childhood services remains flawed and dysfunctional. National discourse is dominated by the cost and availability of childcare at the expense of holistic education, while a hotchpotch of fragmented provision staffed by a devalued workforce struggles with a culture of targets and measurement. With such deep-rooted problems, early childhood education and care in England is beyond minor improvements. In the context of austerity measures affecting many young families, transformative change is urgent. Transforming Early Childhood in England offers a critical analysis of the current system and proposes change based on young children’s universal right to education. The book calls for provision built on democratic principles, where all learning by all children is visible and recognised, educators are trusted and respected, and a calmer approach called ‘slow pedagogy’ replaces outcomes-driven targets. Combining criticism and hope, and drawing on inspiring research and examples from home and abroad, the book is essential reading for students, educators, practitioners, parents, academics and policymakers - anyone, in fact, who seeks to understand the policy problems for early childhood education and care in England, and see better prospects for the future.
This paper reviews the main technical solutions adopted by the next-generation mobile broadcasting standard DVB-NGH, the handheld evolution of the second-generation digital terrestrial TV standard ...DVB-T2. The main new technical elements introduced with respect to DVB-T2 are: layered video coding with multiple physical layer pipes, time-frequency slicing, full support of an IP transport layer with a dedicated protocol stack, header compression mechanisms for both IP and MPEG-2 TS packets, new low-density parity check coding rates for the data path (down to 1/5), nonuniform constellations for 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and 256QAM, 4-D rotated constellations for Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), improved time interleaving in terms of zapping time, end-to-end latency and memory consumption, improved physical layer signaling in terms of robustness, capacity and overhead, a novel distributed multiple input-single output transmit diversity scheme for single-frequency networks (SFNs), and efficient provisioning of local content in SFNs. All these technological solutions, together with the high performance of DVB-T2, make DVB-NGH a real next-generation mobile multimedia broadcasting technology. In fact, DVB-NGH can be regarded the first third-generation broadcasting system because it allows for the possibility of using multiple input-multiple output antenna schemes to overcome the Shannon limit of single antenna wireless communications. Furthermore, DVB-NGH also allows the deployment of an optional satellite component forming a hybrid terrestrial-satellite network topology to improve the coverage in rural areas where the installation of terrestrial networks could be uneconomical.
Beyond the Investment Narrative Moss, Peter
Contemporary issues in early childhood,
12/2013, Letnik:
14, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The current policy interest in early childhood education and care is driven by an investment narrative, a story of quality and high returns emerging from a dominant neoliberal political economy. This ...short note expresses deep reservations about this narrative, and hints at another narrative that foregrounds democracy, experimentation and potentiality.
Summary
There is a risk of a building suffering unsustainable structural damage in the event of a large fire. Therefore, it is necessary to design buildings to withstand expected fires. A widely used ...simplified calculation method is the so‐called ‘time‐equivalence’ method. There are significant concerns about the suitability of this method. This paper is Part I of a twofold study examining the state of the art of time‐equivalence methods. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed background of the development of time‐equivalence methods since its first introduction in 1928 and to provide an initial high‐level assessment of the accuracy of these methods. A simple scoring system is used to assess the methods based on the accuracy of the analysis techniques used in their derivation. The study revealed that most methods do not account well for structural system response to fire exposure. While some time‐equivalence methods do yield accurate results, further analysis is required to fully assess their suitability.
Summary
There is a risk of a building suffering unsustainable structural damage in the event of a large fire. Therefore, it is necessary to design buildings to withstand expected fires. A widely used ...simplified calculation method is the so‐called “time‐equivalence” method. There are significant concerns about the suitability of this method. This paper is part II of a twofold study examining the state of the art of time‐equivalence methods. The purpose of this paper is to identify methods and/or analysis concepts which show the potential for use in modern design. A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is used for this purpose. However, as there is a large number of time‐equivalence methods to assess, a numerical case study is first undertaken to identify methods which have sufficient accuracy to warrant further study. These analyses found that, while none of the time‐equivalence methods studied have sufficient accuracy for use in their present form, the methods derived using the equal energy concept provide a good basis to model the effects of fire on a structure. This study recommends that a new time‐equivalence method be developed using the equal energy approach.
This paper presents modifications to the adoption of a Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) framework in Probabilistic Structural Fire Engineering. Potential Fire Severity Measures, which ...capture significant characteristics of fire scenarios, are investigated. A suitable Fire Severity Measure (FSM), which best relates fire hazard intensity with structural response, is identified by satisfying efficiency and sufficiency criteria as described by the PBEE framework. The study also implements a new analysis method called Fire Stripe Analysis (FSA) to obtain the relationship between FSM and the structural response. In order to obtain the annual rate of exceedance of damage and repair cost/time for an office building, an occurrence model and an attenuation model for office structure fires are generated for both Christchurch city and New Zealand. The process is demonstrated with the help of a case study performed for a steel–concrete composite beam. Structural response is recorded for the beam exposed to several fire profiles which are generated by varying fuel loads from 200 MJ/m
2
to 1000 MJ/m
2
and ventilation factors from 0.02 m
1/2
to 0.08 m
1/2
. FSA and dispersion curves of structural response are plotted for every fire severity measure. Cumulative incident radiation is found to be the most efficient and sufficient FSM. The mean annual rate of exceedance of given levels of fire severity and structural response are evaluated for both New Zealand and Christchurch city. It is found that Christchurch city has a 15% less probability of exceedance of the given fire severity level in comparison to the whole of New Zealand. The extension of this work would facilitate designers/insurers to evaluate the probability of damage or failure of a structure due to a probable fire hazard.
Why can’t we get beyond quality? Moss, Peter
Contemporary issues in early childhood,
03/2016, Letnik:
17, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The article, by one of the authors of the book Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care, has three goals. The first is to recap the ‘problem with quality’, the starting point for the ...book. The second is to summarise the argument in Beyond Quality for problematising the concept of quality, and why, therefore, ‘quality’ is a choice and not a necessity. Lastly, it is to examine the paradox of Beyond Quality and, in so doing, to worry away at a troubling issue: Why has it proven so hard to get beyond quality? Why does it exert such a strong gravitational pull?
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