Teacher training and multiculturalism in a transitional society: the case of the Slovak Republic

The authors explore a number of issues surrounding multicultural education in “societies in transition”, emerging from their experiences during a TEMPUS project that took place in the Slovak Republic. The TEMPUS project entailed the development of a multicultural education curriculum for teacher trainers, as a response to the conditions for entry into the European Union. The paper provides background information on the position of ethnic minorities in Slovakia, in particular the Hungarian and Roma population and the development of policies, especially in education, for combating racism. In examining the challenges to educators in developing a more open system than the command education of the recent past, issues such as the predominance of traditional pedagogies, multiculturalism and antiracism, the problems of “other isms” and of giving voice to minorities are considered.     

Scale-space theory: a basic tool for analyzing structures at different scales

An inherent property of objects in the world is that they only exist as meaningful entities over certain ranges of scale. If one aims to describe the structure of unknown real-world signals, then a multi-scale representation of data is of crucial importance. This paper gives a tutorial review of a special type of multi-scale representation—linear scale-space representation—which has been developed by the computer vision community to handle image structures at different scales in a consistent manner. The basic idea is to embed the original signal into a one-parameter family of gradually smoothed signals in which the fine-scale details are successively suppressed. Under rather general conditions on the type of computations that are to be performed at the first stages of visual processing, in what can be termed ‘the visual front-end’, it can be shown that the Gaussian kernel and its derivatives are singled out as the only possible smoothing kernels. The conditions that specify the Gaussian kernel are, basically, linearity and shift invariance, combined with different ways of formalizing the notion that structures at coarse scales should correspond to simplifications of corresponding structures at fine scales-they should not be accidental phenomena created by the smoothing method. Notably, several different ways of choosing scale-space axioms give rise to the same conclusion. The output from the scale-space representation can be used for a variety of early visual tasks; operations such as feature detection, feature classification and shape computation can be expressed directly in terms of (possibly non-linear) combinations of Gaussian derivatives at multiple scales. In this sense the scale-space representation canserve as a basis for early vision. During the last few decades, a number of other approaches to multiscale representations have been developed, which are more or less related to scale-space theory, notably the theories of pyramids, wavelets and multi grid methods.Despite their qualitative differences, the increasing propularity of each of these approaches indicates that the crucial notion of scale is increasingly appreciated by the computer.vision community and by researchers in other related fields. An interesting similarity to biological vision is that the scale-space operators closely resemble receptive field profiles registered in neurophysiological studies of the mam- malian retina and visual cortex.     

‘Something sensational…* The sexual diary as a tool for mapping detailed sexual behaviour

Reliable information about the detail and context of sexual behaviour is crucial for describing high-risk behaviours for the transmission of Aids/HIV, and for estimating parameters of epidemiological models. It is possible to adapt the method of systematic diary-keeping to this end and develop a tool which is also close to the subject's conceptions of the ‘chunks’ of sexual behaviour. The structure of reports of sexual behaviour is viewed as akin to linguistic structure, with a basic unit of the sexual act built into a ‘session’. Such structure leads naturally to a coding system which allows natural language accounts to be represented symbolically, and parsed and analysed formally. The coded version is easily learnt and used, and is incomprehensible to outsiders. Examples are given of its use to collect systematic data on homosexual and bisexual behaviour.     

Econometric analysis and managerial decision making

Econometric analysis is concerned with the quantitative relationships between economic variables and it can provide an important input into the decision making process of managers. Typically econometrics differs from other apsects of management science in that it considers problems primarily, though not exclusively, from a background of economics rather than of other disciplines and behaviour is usually dealt with at higher levels of data aggregation than the individual firm.This paper considers some applications of typical econometrics to the general area of managerial decision making, where primarily the techniques have a role to play in assisting the general process of data analysis. Initially discussion is pointed towards the use of the analysis for predictive purposes and the contrast with time series methods. Subsequently examples are presented where the objective is to obtain a better understanding of individual economic relationships that aim to be important inputs into the decision making process, for example cost and revenue analysis. Finally, an example is given of how these ideas contribute more generally to the activity of model building for the firm as a whole both for the purpose of forecasting and policy simulation.     

Your picture is your bait: use and meaning of cyberspace among gay men

The Internet is seen by many as a form of cyberspace or environment in which to interact and socialise. This research project drew from the data of a quantitative and qualitative study of gay men in Perth, Western Australia. We examined gay men's usage patterns of chat rooms and other social aspects of the Internet to meet sexual partners. We then reviewed in detail the meanings gay men have for the various Internet environments, and the range of friendship, relationship, casual, or esoteric sex-seeking goals. We argue that gay men view and engage with the Internet differently from how they view and engage with other more traditional gay spaces. This different approach influences how interaction between the men, either online or face-to-face, progresses and how assumptions and expectations are built. This has implications for how sexual health promotion interventions determine the appropriate role and relationship they have with these online social spaces.     

Convenience and independence: do physicians strike a balance in admitting decisions?

This paper contrasts economic and professional models of physician admitting behavior. Economic models emphasize physician convenience and income maximization, while professional models emphasize physician autonomy and independence. The paper examines the relative power of these models to explain two types of admitting decisions made by physicians: which hospitals to begin admitting patients to, and how many patients to admit to a hospital. Analyses of physician admitting patterns over a three-year period suggest that economic considerations outweigh professional considerations in both decisions. Results are interpreted in light of recent changes in the profession of medicine and physician-hospital relationships.     

A case of mistaken identity? Debating the dilemmas of street-level bureaucracy with Musil et al.

Lipsky's Street-level Bureaucracy (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980 Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of Individuals in Public Service, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.  [Google Scholar]) has exerted a strong influence on the study of public service organisations. There has been a growing interest in using this perspective to understand the organisational context of social work and Musil et al.'s article in the EJSW (2004, ‘Do social workers avoid the dilemmas of work with clients?’, European Journal of Social Work, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 305–319) reflects this interest. Musil et al. argue that it is possible to identify two forms of practitioner response to the constraints of street-level bureaucracies: adapting working practices in ways that disadvantage service users or challenging working conditions in order to achieve more professionally acceptable practice. Their contribution to the debate is helpful, particularly with regard to their identification of responses by practitioners that seek to advance the interests of service users. However, we view their approach as constrained by lack of consideration of the construction of social work roles within particular street-level bureaucracies. We suggest that Lipsky's work should be approached as a tentative analytic framework, rather than as a fixed model and we argue that a productive approach to research on social workers as street-level bureaucrats is conjunctural analysis. Such analysis examines the contexts, circumstances and statuses of practitioners and how these factors shape the specific forms of street-level practice that operate in particular organisational settings. We illustrate this in our discussion of the factors that are likely to have had a bearing on the two practice settings used as case studies by Musil et al.