Transformative Learning: Suggestive Assumptions and Practices

This essay argues that most proposed forms for schooling learning are founded on assumptions associated with Normal Science. While most of these forms of school learning are inherently conservative, even the most well know approaches to transformative learning, such as critical pedagogy, are also beholden to the dictates of Normal Science. The limitations of Normal Science suggest a need for learning approaches that push against the limits of this paradigm. Such a push is suggested by looking at the assumptive framework and practices associated with a newly developed technology platform—UnEarth. UnEarth moves between Normal Science and Experimental Art is an attempt to create communities of difference, share knowledge across those differences, store knowledge in personal and community libraries that show gaps and strengths in learning as well as interests that can be used for curriculum planning and future job recruitment and do so within an “open text” that creates possibilities as opposed to directing participants to do this or that. By doing so communication patterns, the nature of schoolwork and the stop-go-stop nature of education were transformed. These findings suggest that technology can stand side by side with transformative ambitions, a stance not possible with platforms like UnEarth

Obeticholic acid for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: interim analysis from a multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial

Background Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a common type of chronic liver disease that can lead to cirrhosis. Obeticholic acid, a farnesoid X receptor agonist, has been shown to improve the histological features of NASH. Here we report results from a planned interim analysis of an ongoing, phase 3 study of obeticholic acid for NASH. Methods In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, adult patients with definite NASH,non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) activity score of at least 4, and fibrosis stages F2–F3, or F1 with at least oneaccompanying comorbidity, were randomly assigned using an interactive web response system in a 1:1:1 ratio to receive oral placebo, obeticholic acid 10 mg, or obeticholic acid 25 mg daily. Patients were excluded if cirrhosis, other chronic liver disease, elevated alcohol consumption, or confounding conditions were present. The primary endpointsfor the month-18 interim analysis were fibrosis improvement (≥1 stage) with no worsening of NASH, or NASH resolution with no worsening of fibrosis, with the study considered successful if either primary endpoint was met. Primary analyses were done by intention to treat, in patients with fibrosis stage F2–F3 who received at least one dose of treatment and reached, or would have reached, the month 18 visit by the prespecified interim analysis cutoff date. The study also evaluated other histological and biochemical markers of NASH and fibrosis, and safety. This study is ongoing, and registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02548351, and EudraCT, 20150-025601-6. Findings Between Dec 9, 2015, and Oct 26, 2018, 1968 patients with stage F1–F3 fibrosis were enrolled and received at least one dose of study treatment; 931 patients with stage F2–F3 fibrosis were included in the primary analysis (311 in the placebo group, 312 in the obeticholic acid 10 mg group, and 308 in the obeticholic acid 25 mg group). The fibrosis improvement endpoint was achieved by 37 (12%) patients in the placebo group, 55 (18%) in the obeticholic acid 10 mg group (p=0·045), and 71 (23%) in the obeticholic acid 25 mg group (p=0·0002). The NASH resolution endpoint was not met (25 [8%] patients in the placebo group, 35 [11%] in the obeticholic acid 10 mg group [p=0·18], and 36 [12%] in the obeticholic acid 25 mg group [p=0·13]). In the safety population (1968 patients with fibrosis stages F1–F3), the most common adverse event was pruritus (123 [19%] in the placebo group, 183 [28%] in the obeticholic acid 10 mg group, and 336 [51%] in the obeticholic acid 25 mg group); incidence was generally mild to moderate in severity. The overall safety profile was similar to that in previous studies, and incidence of serious adverse events was similar across treatment groups (75 [11%] patients in the placebo group, 72 [11%] in the obeticholic acid 10 mg group, and 93 [14%] in the obeticholic acid 25 mg group). Interpretation Obeticholic acid 25 mg significantly improved fibrosis and key components of NASH disease activity among patients with NASH. The results from this planned interim analysis show clinically significant histological improvement that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit. This study is ongoing to assess clinical outcomes

Educative Research, Voice, and School Change

In this article Andrew David Gitlin argues that the politics of research is not adequately addressed in current educational research. This, he says, is because methodological discourse often focuses on traditional definitions of reliability, validity, and compatibility, which ignore how method structures a particular type of relationship between the researcher and those studied. Most traditional methods, Gitlin writes, establish an alienating relationship which silences those studied, disregards their personal knowledge, and strengthens the assumption that researchers are the producers of knowledge. To alter this relationship, Gitlin proposes the use of "educative research," a dialogical approach that attempts to develop voice as a form of political protest. He then outlines the theoretical assumptions of educative research, and describes his experience using this method with twenty public school teachers. Drawing on the teachers' writings in his research, Gitlin describes how the use of personal and school histories, along with a peer evaluation model,can facilitate a question-posing process that can lead to the development of teachers' voices. Gitlin also includes his own account of what he learned as he participated in this educative research project.</jats:p

Gitlin, Andrew David, Educative Research, Voice, and School Change, Harvard Educational Review, 60(November, 1990), 443-466.

Proposes and describes a dialogical approach to research that develops voice as a form of political protest; illustrated by a specific study

Transformative Learning: Suggestive Assumptions and Practices

This essay argues that most proposed forms for schooling learning are founded on assumptions associated with Normal Science.  While most of these forms of school learning are inherently conservative, even the most well know approaches to transformative learning, such as critical pedagogy, are also beholden to the dictates of Normal Science. The limitations of Normal Science suggest a need for learning approaches that push against the limits of this paradigm.  Such a push is suggested by looking at the assumptive framework and practices associated with a newly developed technology platform—UnEarth.  UnEarth moves between Normal Science and Experimental Art is an attempt to create communities of difference, share knowledge across those differences, store knowledge in personal and community libraries that show gaps and strengths in learning as well as interests that can be used for curriculum planning and future job recruitment and  do so within an “open text” that creates possibilities as opposed to directing participants to do this or that. By doing so communication patterns, the nature of schoolwork and the stop-go-stop nature of education were transformed. These findings suggest that technology can stand side by side with transformative ambitions, a stance not possible with platforms like UnEarth

Teacher Evaluation: Educative Alternatives

A systematic exploration of the nature of teacher evaluation is presented. After a critique of the widespread impositional (or "dominant") mode of teacher evaluation, two alternative forms of teacher evaluation, referred to as "educative," are proposed. These educative teacher evaluation approaches, "horizontal" evaluation and a "critical" version of clinical supervision, take into account the relationship between teacher ideology and practice, encourage participants to form dialogical relations that critically assess this relationship, and attempt to shift the dialogue beyond individual teachers so that as many community members as possible become actively involved in assessing educational aims and practices. The educative model of teacher evaluation gives teachers more, rather than less, control over their work and allows teachers to examine a whole range of issues associated with the pedagogical process and school structures. The history of teacher evaluation in the United States, Australia, and England is reviewed briefly, suggesting that a view of teacher competency based on technical rationality has come to be used as a way of reproducing existing social relations and cultural capital

Precarious creativity: Changing attitudes towards craft and creativity in the British independent television production sector

This article focuses on television workers’ attitudes towards craft and creative practice within the field of factual television production in the British independent television production sector (ITPS). Based on longitudinal qualitative research, it argues that a radical shift has occurred in the professional values that television producers’ associate with their creative work, by focusing on ethical and professional norms within factual television production. By considering the historical and contemporary discourse of ‘craft’ within this area of creative work, the article interrogates the nature of the changes that have taken place. The wider significance of these changes is also considered, through an engagement with theoretical concerns about the place of craft within late modernity (Sennett 2006), and with debates about the changes that have taken place within the political economy of independent television production. The article’s findings have contextual significance within contemporary debates about creative work (Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2010). Despite the celebratory policy rhetoric of the ‘creative industries’ (DCMS 1998), the transformed production environment within contemporary British television has had a detrimental effect on skills retention and development, as well as on the potential for creativity within the industry

A Vertex Model for LLT Polynomials

Abstract We describe a novel Yang–Baxter integrable vertex model. From this vertex model we construct a certain class of partition functions that we show are essentially equal to the LLT polynomials of Lascoux, Leclerc, and Thibon. Using the vertex model formalism, we give alternate proofs of many properties of these polynomials, including symmetry and a Cauchy identity.</jats:p