We will review some of the major results in random graphs and some of the more challenging open problems. We will cover algorithmic and structural questions. We will touch on newer models, including those related to the WWW.

Random graphs

Degeneration and regeneration of the nervous system

It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across

Book review : the posthuman

The 2019 Coronavirus pandemic has triggered significant changes in education systems worldwide and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes have been particularly affected by the associated chall...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02619768.2020.1820981

Online teaching placement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile: challenges and opportunities

The aim of the present article is to review the international evidence about emotional aspects related to educational leaders. The review focuses on empirical studies published in peer-refereed educational journals between 1992 and 2012. First, we address the importance of researching emotions for understanding educational leaders. Next, we present the method used in the production of this narrative review. The bulk of the article presents empirical evidence from 49 studies organized along themes. Three central themes have emerged in the review: (a) the factors influencing the leaders’ emotions, (b) leaders’ behaviors and their effects on followers’ emotions, and (c) leaders’ emotional abilities. Within each theme, we present subthemes that include summaries of the relevant key findings. The article concludes with several methodological recommendations and an outline of possible directions for future research.

Educational Leaders and Emotions: An International Review of Empirical Evidence 1992–2012

https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/98723840/Letting_the_right_one_in_copy_for_PURE.pdf

’Letting the right one in’: provider contexts for recruitment to initial teacher education in the United Kingdom

A challenge for higher education, in the context of the ‘Fourth Industrial Age’, is to prepare students for uncertain futures. Proposed is a model of integrated scholarship drawing on, and developi...

/pdf/rising-to-the-pedagogical-challenges-of-the-fourth-2detentqgf.pdf

Rising to the pedagogical challenges of the Fourth Industrial Age in the university of the future: an integrated model of scholarship

This article offers insights into the leadership enactment of primary school heads in terms of the dramatis personae or ‘masks of the drama’ they perceive themselves to portray during interactions with staff in their schools. The article draws on the reported identities and performances of ten heads in their day-to-day leadership of staff and reveals perceptions held about the presence of a dominant performance supplemented by a wide variety of sub-performances intended to meet particular circumstances. Heads convey reasons for the performances adopted and report on the real emotional cost involved in the portrayals they give in daily school life. The study begins to reveal implications for the ongoing study and practice of leadership, and in particular headship, within contemporary educational settings both in the United Kingdom and internationally. The article invites reflection upon the preparation and development of individuals seeking or already cast in this exacting role.

Dramatis personae: enactment and performance in primary school headship

We present an analysis of pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) conceptions of their own learning, focusing on relationships between where PSTs learn and conceptions of their own learning. Our data come fro...

Pre-service teachers’ conceptions of their own learning : does context make a difference?

The human brain is a formidably complex network, the seat of cognition and consciousness and many other remarkable features, including the capacities of growth, self-organisation, reorganisation and the ability to recover from significant damage. This combined dynamic capability is known as plasticity. Considerable neuro-reorganisation is a feature of the brain commonly thought to be restricted to childhood (the Kennard Principle); however, it is known to be a feature of adult brains as well. This paper provides a brief history of early theory and research, still valid today, on brain or neuroplasticity before discussing how current network theory and new brain mapping research on modularity can be synthesised to provide insight into this adaptive function from structure.

Celia Greenway

Papers

’Letting the right one in’: provider contexts for recruitment to initial teacher education in the United Kingdom

Rising to the pedagogical challenges of the Fourth Industrial Age in the university of the future: an integrated model of scholarship

Dramatis personae: enactment and performance in primary school headship

Pre-service teachers’ conceptions of their own learning : does context make a difference?

Neuroplasticity explained by broad-scale networks and modularity?