This report provides an overview of a research Initiative to Study the Social Effects of Culture (ISSEC) which was jointly undertaken by the Department of Canadian Heritage (PCH), the Canadian Cultural Research Network (CCRN) and the University of Ottawa as a result of discussions that took place at a jointly-sponsored colloquium held in November 2003. The participants at that colloquium, which was entitled “Accounting for Culture: Examining the Building Blocks of Cultural Citizenship”, concluded that more basic research was required on the social effects of culture to supplement ongoing investigations regarding the economic impact of culture and to fill a significant knowledge gap in this area. In particular, it was noted that without a sound and plausible understanding of the connection between individual cultural involvement and other social behaviours and without rigorous empirical evidence, it is difficult to make the case that cultural consumption and participation produce socially valuable externalities that warrant public policy support. The participants at the workshop, held in Montreal on August 24 and 25, 2004, concluded that there were six possible functional social effects of culture:
1) fostering civic participation
2) contributing to community development
3) formation and retention of identity
4) building social cohesion
5) modifying values and preferences for collective choice
6) enhancing collective understanding and capacity for collective action.
These effects, which are inter-related and mutually reinforcing, were tested via a series of research propositions, and resulted in a series of papers which are intended to contribute to the evidence base on this subject.
This paper describes an approach for pre-service or in-service mathematics education that teaches sophisticated mathematics using only the tools of high school mathematics. The idea is to start with a standard problem from high school mathematics and let the solution to this problem serve as a platform for asking good mathematical questions and searching for deeper mathematical structure beyond the obvious "answer" to the question. Surprisingly, it turns out that high school mathematics is remarkably open to this sort of analysis, and the results are more interesting mathematically than one might initially think.Response to Reviewers: We have tried to respond to all reviewers, along the lines that Anne Watson suggested (several original reviewers did not know our paper was in conjunction with Irene Bloom's).
@BCL@840427A7.doc
Extended Analyses: Finding Deep Structure in Standard High School MathematicsDick Stanley and Manya Raman Abstract This paper describes an approach for pre-service or in-service mathematics education that teaches sophisticated mathematics using only the tools of high school mathematics. The idea is to start with a standard problem from high school mathematics and let the solution to this problem serve as a platform for asking good mathematical questions and searching for deeper mathematical structure beyond the obvious "answer" to the question. Surprisingly, it turns out that high school mathematics is remarkably open to this sort of analysis, and the results are more interesting mathematically than one might initially think.
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