Teams and their Motivation for Business Process Reengineering: A Research Note

When business process reengineering (BPR) is undertaken, one of the requirements leading to its development and implementation is that of teams. There have not been many publications about the teams that are formed for undertaking BPR. This article addresses the theoretical issues surrounding such teams and attempts to provide an understanding of the role of motivation in such teams. Furthermore, an overview of the research process that is undertaken within the article is presented.     

Education Through Art

In this article, the author revisits a case study presented in Arts Education Policy Review 105(1) in September/October 2003. The author discusses Arts Collaborator's Incorporated's (ACI) efforts to educate the community about art and about arts opportunities in River City. Themes visited in the discussion are community development through the arts, and connecting economic development to education. Implications for the arts education community that the author draws from this discussion are (a) ACI has assets and connections that the arts education community may not have, (b) ACI uses its influence to teach and promote certain kinds of art, and (c) the arts education community needs to be aware of advocacy groups to maintain education standards and to fully use available opportunities.     

Doodle-Do Board

The field of dance arts education in the United States is in an entirely different place today than it was at the turn of the century. Much of this change is due to a convergence of events that involved: federal and state legislation, policy, and funding that supported dance in arts education; a forty-year transition of dance out of departments of physical education into the colleges of fine and performing arts; and the establishment of the National Dance Education Organization, which provided infrastructure (standards, assessments, research, certification, teacher training, professional development, and programs and services) that was needed to support dance taught as an art form. This infrastructure has become an integral component to building, nurturing, and sustaining strong arts-based programs over the years at local, state, or national levels.     

Liberts’ Wet-in-Wet Painting

This article describes important global and local initiatives that have one common goal: to give access to and equal opportunities for arts/music education to all children and adolescents. The article also discusses the lack of information available to global leaders in arts education—without a worldwide picture of arts education practices, it is difficult to design local or global policies. The case of Brazil is presented, showing a timeline of advocacy campaigns and the success of establishing a law that assures compulsory music education in schools, as well as the challenges of regulating the profession and the need to rethink our pedagogical paradigm in a contemporary world. Regardless of local or international perspective, the establishment of policy needs to be based on research data and include dialogue between policymakers and arts teachers.     

National Alliance on Art and Industry Shows New Design Trend

Since the Bush administration enacted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002, lawmakers and school administrators have questioned what changes, if any, the Obama administration will make. This article discusses the effects of NCLB on nontested subjects, specifically music and arts in the general curriculum. Major effects on scheduling and funding policies have forced educators to reconsider how advocacy for the arts should be approached.     

Catalogue

The author presents reviews that identify success factors in music and arts education partnerships between cultural institutions and K-12 schools. She incorporates the evaluation of one Massachusetts partnership, Arts Can Teach (ACT), to examine the connection between partnerships and K-12 arts-program policy decisions. ACT is a collaborative effort among Boston's Wang Center for the Performing Arts, the Lynn Public Schools, and LynnArts, which matched music specialists and teachers in other disciplines with practicing artists for oneyear partnerships. Success factors of the ACT partnership are considered in terms of their similarity to success factors from the literature on music education partnerships. The author discusses implications for increasing and sustaining music and arts education programming and local arts education policy development.     

From Lessons Learned to Local Action: Building Your Own Policies for Effective Arts Education

This article explores the process of using lessons learned about high quality, effective arts education programs to help local educational leaders and practitioners create their own policy statements. It raises questions about policy implications from those lessons and connects them to the readers'own experience. It provides an intellectual framework and an action agenda for developing local policy at the classroom, school, or district level that supports high quality arts education for every student. It argues that effective arts education programs must be supported by responsive policy and ongoing tax levy funds to have a greater chance for providing quality arts teaching and learning that endures.     

SARS-CoV-2抗原表位分析及相关疫苗研发的进展与挑战

疫苗的接种被认为是阻止时下2019冠状病毒病(Corona Virus Disease 2019,COVID-19)疫情进一步蔓延的最有效手段.目前,国内外多个研究团队采用了不同的技术路线开展严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,S...     

Arts teacher evaluation: How did we get here?

Arts educators recently have found themselves in unfamiliar and sometimes-frustrating situations regarding their performance evaluations. The push for value-added models, effectiveness ratings based on schoolwide test score averages, portfolios, student learning objectives, and other measures of teacher effectiveness has dramatically changed arts teachers' evaluation procedures. Without sufficient knowledge of relevant educational history, these changes may seem to have emerged out of thin air. This article offers brief histories of teacher evaluation practices and teacher effectiveness/quality research, and discusses how the two histories recently collided to shape policy. Lingering questions for arts teachers are examined. Finally, recommendations are offered for how arts teachers can proactively deal with current and evolving teacher evaluation policies.     

Abstract Nature Forms

Abstract

This article is the introduction to the special issue about Evaluation, Educational Policy Reforms, and Their Implications for Arts Education. A summary of all the articles comprised in the special issue is reported, mainly featured, on the one hand, by a discussion about how the education policy reforms shape a particular approach to evaluation that ends up conforming education and arts education and, on the other hand, it shows some magnet examples of arts curriculum evaluation combining both standardized assessment with qualitative strategies pertinent to the nature of arts content and experiences. The article also discusses how it could be possible to move from the current scope of school arts education most of the authors depict to the development of another way of evaluation and curriculum development where the experiential process is taken into account. While these signals might be still scarce, for some other authors could be the opportunity to overcome at least partially the current demise of school arts curriculum.     

Looking Toward the Future

Changes in education policy—particularly at the federal and state levels—during the current era of ideologically and profit-driven “education reform” threaten balanced education in general and music/arts education in particular. Emerging answers to a number of pivotal questions will determine the future of the arts, arts education, and public education in general. Music educators and other advocates of quality arts education must not only adapt their curricula and instructional practices to reach students in a twenty-first century context, but also develop effective communications systems and organize coalitions powerful enough to influence policymakers and thereby shape policies supportive of quality music/arts education. Recent advocacy efforts by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) provide examples of how supporters of arts education might accomplish these goals.     

Biographies for Artistic and Social Intervention: A Youth-Driven Project

This article discusses how biographical materials may be used in youth arts education projects to develop new methodologies and approaches that can stimulate artistic and social intervention in contemporary urban communities, thus changing the field of arts education policy at the community level. Through their creation of Artistic Society Projects, a group of young people from the arts education project Bando à Parte: Youth Cultures, Arts and Social Inclusion (O Teatrão, Coimbra, Portugal) have created a voice that may be used to transform their own communities. The starting points for this transformation are the young peoples’ biographical paths. The influence of youth on education policy may be strategically understood in the context of formal and nonformal school curricula. How can youth use their biographies to develop specific contributions both to change in individual behaviors and to social change in urban communities, influencing arts education policies to instigate action? The exploration of these processes through the work of artistic creation, inspired by collected biographical materials, represents a contribution to ongoing reflection on the issues of memory, identity, youth resistance, and community change in urban settings, influencing the ways in which arts education policy is understood and implemented.     

In the World of Contemporary Design

Assessment is essential to all forms of work in the arts. Successful arts assessment concepts, patterns, and methods have evolved over many centuries. They are inherent in all arts teaching and central to art-making at all levels of proficiency and sophistication. And they work: achievements in the arts are among the highest in civilization. At present, these arts-based systems of assessment are increasingly pursued in a problematic context. Regnant assessment values and systems are often so highly technocratic, so narrowly focused on what can be counted easily, and so prosaically engineered for application on a massive scale that they are incompatible with the nature of arts assessment and regularly discount its value and its results. Means for responding and acting are needed that preserve the fundamental nature of arts teaching and learning. There are ways for those professionally concerned about the arts and arts teaching to reaffirm and rearticulate essential principles of artistic evaluation and, in the present environment, pursue applications of those principles in various forms of evaluation. Reaffirmation, rearticulation, and pursuit must be deeply rooted in an understanding of why these principles are essential for the progress of the arts disciplines and for arts-centered student learning. Such reaffirmation, rethinking, and rearticulation can establish the basis for explaining arts principles, achievements, and methods to others; debating when necessary; and ensuring the preservation of conditions that encourage the effective incorporation of new findings or capabilities in assessment into the ever-evolving assessment and evaluation systems developed by and suitable for the arts in ways that are compatible with their nature and the integrity of their practice.     

The development of STEAM educational policy to promote student creativity and social empowerment

ABSTRACT

The Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) movement argues that broad-based education that promotes creativity recognizes student learning diversity, increases student engagement and can potentially enhance Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning by embracing cross-cutting translational skills common to STEM and arts and design disciplines. This article describes and discusses the advocacy strategy designed at Rhode Island School of Design to promote STEAM education policy. Recommendations presented include (a) recognition of the arts (and design) as core subjects alongside STEM; (b) addressing issues of equity/resources to deliver arts education; (c) calling for research into potential outcomes of STEAM educational models; and (d) funding for professional development and latitude for teachers to explore interdisciplinary learning.     

Gardening for Homonyms: Integrating Science and Language Arts to Support Children's Creative Use of Multiple Meaning Words

Curriculum integration can increase the presence of science at the elementary level. The purpose of this article is to share how two second-grade teachers have integrated language arts content as a part of science-language arts instruction in a garden-based learning context. One application was a teacher-designed Gardening for Homonyms lesson, which supported new ways of thinking about words and wordplay while developing science vocabulary related to structure and function, diversity of life, and interdependent relationships in ecosystems. This article provides the lesson and discusses its implementation in two second-grade classrooms. Examples of student work illustrate children's creative thought around and application of multiple meaning words. Pre-, post-, and extended posttest measures of students' ability to generate and to use homonyms demonstrate that this science-language arts integrated lesson can result in both short- and long-term learning. Applications and follow-up from the lesson over two subsequent years have engaged second and third grade students in study/inquiry about plant growth and life cycles while utilizing many facets of language arts, which have ranged from labeling an experimental design and writing predictions and results to conversing about digital “GigaPan” images on growing strawberries.     

Teaching the arts as a second language: A school-wide policy approach to arts integration

The arts can be used to teach, not just as activities that enhance learning, but also as the primary medium through which students process, acquire, and represent knowledge. This means the arts can function as a language. If we accept this metaphor, and we truly want students to be fluent in the artistic languages, then the arts can be taught in the same constructive, sequential way language is taught, where the rules of the system are explicitly learned and fluency is acquired through regular application within a meaningful context. This article provides a framework for the implementation of effective arts integration in line with second language learning: Arts as a Second Language. In doing so, it addresses two common problems in arts education: when arts integration is disconnected from artistic development, and when discipline-based arts education is disconnected from other learning. Nine principles for teaching with an Arts as a Second Language policy are proposed. Ultimately, it is a call for pedagogical reform that enables equitable access for all students to learn in, about, and through the arts with school-wide policy that scaffolds artistic learning across the grades, embedded in meaningful contexts.     

Creating a Fit Between BPR and IT Infrastructure: A Proposed Framework for Effective Implementation

As business imperatives change and new high-capability information technologies (IT) appear, organizations recognize the need to remain at the forefront of change by reengineering their business processes and implementing enabling responsive IT infrastructures. However, experience in this context indicates a lack of comprehension of essential elements and their mutual relationships that can contribute to the success of business-process change-implementation efforts. This article proposes a framework for managing IT for effective business-process redesign (BPR) implementation. After establishing BPR principles, components, and the relationship of BPR to some organizational and technological approaches, it presents the role and benefits of IT in BPR. The article then discusses in detail the core elements of the framework. Its theme is that an IT infrastructure that covers issues of BPR strategy development, IT strategic alignment, IT infrastructure development, IT sourcing, legacy systems reengineering, IS integration, and IS function competence is essential and critical for effective implementation.     

Biotechnology software in the digital age: are you winning?

There is a digital revolution taking place and biotechnology companies are slow to adapt. Many pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and industrial bio-production companies believe that software must be developed and maintained in-house and that data are more secure on internal servers than on the cloud. In fact, most companies in this space continue to employ large IT and software teams and acquire computational infrastructure in the form of in-house servers. This is due to a fear of the cloud not sufficiently protecting in-house resources and the belief that their software is valuable IP. Over the next decade, the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, with agile software teams, will quickly become a compelling competitive advantage. Biotechnology companies that do not adopt the new regime may lose on key business metrics such as return on invested capital, revenue, profitability, and eventually market share.     

Dancing to the top: How collective action revitalized arts education in Boston

In 2009, a group of local foundations, the school district, arts organizations, and the Mayor's Office launched the Boston Public Schools Arts Education Initiative (BPS-AE)—a multiyear, citywide, public–private initiative aimed at increasing BPS students' access to in-school arts education. Managed by a strong local intermediary with deep experience in education, this initiative used several complementary, overlaid strategies: direct service, system building, and community engagement—all of which were supported by a philanthropic collaborative of local and national funders. Today, 17,000 more BPS students receive arts education; nearly 130 additional full-time certified arts teachers have been hired; and district spending on arts has risen to $26 million annually, compared to $15 million in 2009. There is also growing demand from the larger community for more and better arts education. In 2015, BPS-AE produced a case study that provides a more detailed explication of the multitiered strategy it used to achieve these results. The study offers recommendations as to how other cities can involve diverse key constituencies to advance this kind of initiative, create leadership structures that support effective citywide collaboration, engage community stakeholders in participatory planning processes, leverage private philanthropy to boost public funding, and develop a centralized support system for school principals and arts teachers.     

Life in a Three-dimensional Grid

There have been two sharp demarcations in my life in science: the transition from fine arts to chemistry, which happened early in my career, and the move from New York to Stanford University, which initiated an ongoing collaboration with the physicist Harley McAdams. Both had a profound effect on the kinds of questions I posed and the means I used to arrive at answers. The outcome of these experiences, together with the extraordinary scientists I came to know along the way, was and is an abiding passion to fully understand a simple cell in all its complexity and beauty.