Issues in improving geography and earth science teacher education: results of the #IPGESTE 2016 conference

Earth Science and Geography teacher preparation has developed to some degree along different lines, despite sharing many of the same issues, especially with regard to challenges in teacher education. The conference “International Perspectives on Geography and Earth Science Teacher Education 2016” wanted to bring together educators from both sciences from around the world together to move the debate about these challenges forward. From the research presentations and the discussion during and after the conference, several issues emerged: (1) the importance of the two subjects not losing sight of each other; (2) the need to overcome language barriers; (3) the question of standards/objectives for geography teacher education (e.g. with regard to teachers’ (P)CK); (4) media used in teacher education (including ways to improve them); (5) ways to improve learners’ geography and earth science content knowledge; and (6) strategies to increase teachers’ professionalism. We already suggest some specific steps teacher educators in the two fields can take to improve teacher education. Yet, it also became clear that more research and strengthening international collaborations are needed, as well as better communication of the results of these efforts to practitioners.     

Decision Making and Uncertainty: Bayesian Analysis of Potential Flood Heights

This paper provides a case study of a method to estimate the value of additional information, before its acquisition, to aid decision making in the face of uncertainty. The approach employs conditional simulation in a Monte Carlo framework to conduct a Bayesian assessment of the value of information in an explicitly spatial setting. This paper demonstrates the procedure as applied by a hypothetical decision maker concerned with coastal flood control where flood damage is dependent on the spatial distribution of elevation. A set of known survey points provides the decision maker with limited knowledge of elevation. The method explored in the paper allows the decision maker to ascertain the potential value of additional survey information in terms of its ability to reduce uncertainty about flood damage.     

The Legitimacy of Nostalgia

In Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin criticizes nostalgia as obstacle to conservative reforms. This essay defends nostalgia as a indispensable element of politics. Rather than dismissing nostalgia, we should attempt use it, guided by the virtue of prudence. Shakespeare, Tocqueville, Mencken, and Dos Passos provide models of this prudent nostalgia.     

Magical Beliefs and Practices among the Galician Ukrainians

PYTH0N: a study of Delphic Myth and its Origins. By JOSEPH FONTENROSE. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959. Pp. xviii, 617, 28 illustrations, 3 maps. Reviewed by H. J. Rose.

THE PLAY PARTY IN INDIANA. By L. J. WOLFORD. Indianapolis Historical Society Publications, 10. Indiana, 1959. Pp. 105–326. Reviewed by Douglas Kennedy.

NEHALEM TILLAMOOK TALES. Recorded by ELIZABETH DEER JACOBS. Edited by MELVILLE JACOBS. University of Oregon Monographs, Studies in Athropology, No. 5, February 1959. Pp. 216+ix. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

TALES OF ANCIENT INDIA. Translated from the Sanskrit by J. A. B. VAN BUITENEN. University of Chicago Press, 1959. Pp. 260. Reviewed by J. H. H.

DEUTSCHES JAHRBUCH FÜR VOLKSKUNDE. Vol, v, Part I. Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1959, Pp. 233, 8 plates, 6 maps, 35 text illustrations. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

STUDIES IN IRISH AND SCANDINAVIAN FOLKLORE. By R. TH. CHRISTIANSEN, Copenhagen, 1959. Pp. vii, 249. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

DIE VEREHRUNG DES HEILIGEN BLUTES IN WALLDÜRN. By W. BRÜCKNER P. Pattloch-Verlag, Aschaffenburg, 1958. Pp. 352, 12 maps and 79 photographs. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

VÖLKERKUNDE. Edited by H. TISCHNER. Fischer Bücherei, Francfort, 1959. Pp. 368, 94 illustrations (photographs, drawings and maps). Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

ATLAS DER DEUTSCHEN VOLKSKUNDE. Edited by M. ZENDER. New series, first issue. Maps 1–12. ERLÄUTERUNGEN ZUR I. LIEFERUNG. N. G. Elwert Verlag, Marburg, 1958, 1959. Pp. 232, 25 illustrations. ZWEITE ARBEITSTAGUNG ÜBER FRAGEN DES ATLAS DER DEUTSCHEN VOLKSKUNDE, Protokollmanuskript, Arbeitsstelle, Bonn, 1959. Pp. 59, 4maps. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

ULSTER FOLKLIFE: Vol. 5, 1959. Published by the Committee on Ulster folklife and traditions. Pp. 72.58.6d. Reviewed by W. B.     

Apparatus of capture: Fiscal state formation in the republic of Georgia

How did the rate of central government tax revenue more than triple in the (post-Soviet) Republic of Georgia over 2004–2007? This paper investigates fiscal state formation in Georgia using ethnographic fieldwork to document how the reformist government brought to power by the 2003 “Rose Revolution” impelled tax compliance using a set of tactics of anti-corruption, anti-tax evasion, individual accountability, and compromising information collected through extra-legal surveillance. The use of ethnographic methods to examine the recent and rapid process of state formation in Georgia is a departure from much of the extant literature on state formation, which is dominated by historical scholarship that examines relatively long-term processes of political and economic change culminating in the present state. In contrast, the approach taken here uses the Deleuzian concept of assemblage to examine how the state is a process of continuous formation. The fast emergence of a historically unprecedented scale of tax compliance in Georgia was the result of the application of particular techniques of government that assembled micro-subjective dispositions into a macro-institutional process of revenue capture.