John Smyth is Professor of Teacher Education and Director of the Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching of South Australia. This paper explains and develops its author's initial claim that 'We need to start unravelling some of the complex issues, some of the undisclosed interests, and some of the manipulation that is masquerading under the rubric of devolution' in schools. In a forceful concluding section, Smyth proposes an alternative approach.

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We live in an era where forms of education designed to win the consent of students, teachers, and the public to the inevitability of a neo-liberal, market-driven process of globalization are being developed around the world. In these hegemonic modes of pedagogy questions about issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism, religion, and other social dynamics are simply not asked. Indeed, questions about the social spaces where pedagogy takes place-in schools, media, corporate think tanks, etc.-are not raised. When these concerns are connected with queries such as the following, we begin to move into a serious study of pedagogy: What knowledge is of the most worth? Whose knowledge should be taught? What role does power play in the educational process? How are new media re-shaping as well as perpetuating what happens in education? How is knowledge produced in a corporatized politics of knowledge? What socio-political role do schools play in the twenty-first century? What is an educated person? What is intelligence? How important are socio-cultural contextual factors in shaping what goes on in education? Can schools be more than a tool of the new American (and its Western allies') twenty-first century empire? How do we educate well-informed, creative teachers? What roles should schools play in a democratic society? What roles should media play in a democratic society? Is education in a democratic society different than in a totalitarian society? What is a democratic society? How is globalization affecting education? How does our view of mind shape the way we think of education? How does affect and emotion shape the educational process? What are the forces that shape educational purpose in different societies? These, of course, are just a few examples of the questions that need to be asked in relation to our exploration of educational purpose. This series of books can help establish a renewed interest in such questions and their centrality in the larger study of education and the preparation of teachers and other educational professionals.More information about this series at

Developing an exploitation plan for an oil field has always been challenging. This paper presents different approaches and addresses the important question of how to allocate asset resources to maximize profit. This study presents the analysis of integrated field case studies. Because of their complexities, integrated studies can offer valuable insights. Based on a field's heterogeneity and complexity, it can be relevant to divide it into different investment units. Individual studies can be generated, and based on their results, different exploitation strategies can be visualized. The strategies are based on economic criteria, such as net present value and the efficient use of resources. Capital investment efficiency is the key indicator that should direct resource allocation. Although there is no fixed method to find optimal decisions in a capital project, the FEL (front-end-loading) methodology measures and increases the level of project definition, thereby increasing the probability of project success at any stage of the life of the oil field. Traditionally, economic resources have been the principal metrics for analysis. However, the term resources encompasses many potential inputs to the system, e.g. drilling, facilities, enhanced recovery, and allocations. In complex oil fields with many independent reservoirs, it has been found that each reservoir has its own characteristics. That leaves room to experiment on new combinations for development, such as infill drilling, injection in the most favorable reservoirs or new potentional drilling locations. In many cases, it was found that the oil price had the greatest impact on projects, because their profit margin is lower than the rest of field. Small reservoirs or reservoirs that require marginal investment show the highest efficiency in investment, which means that investment efficiency is inversely related to the total amount of investment. This finding indicates that focusing solely on investment efficiency can mislead the optimal decision. Introduction An integrated field study is traditionally a sequential process; decisions are often broken down and disconnected. Often, reservoir engineers just model reservoir response to the bottom-hole, production engineers model the whole wellbore to the well-head, and process engineers model the surface facilities from the wellhead to the tank [Saputelli et al., 2002]. In general, most parties assume constant pressures at the boundaries throughout the simulation period. For the above reasons, project results often deviate from the project plan. In the building of field development plans, not all subsurface uncertainties are considered when evaluating all feasible surface scenarios. Changes in well productivity, water-front advance, free-gas production, and fluid composition will affect both reservoir and surface response. Because of these fluctuations, surface facilities may remain sub-utilized, a reservoir's full potential may not be obtained, and field economics may not reach peak performance. Field development decisions must be made despite uncertainties in well performance, subsurface response, equipment failure rate, and downstream demands. The heterogeneity of information and complexity of current hydrocarbon assets requires an iterative approach to identify the best opportunities. To succeed, this approach requires risk and uncertainty management. Optimal field development planning may involve identifying opportunities for increasing production from reservoirs, wells, and surface equipment, with the minimum effort.

As a response to the ever increasing demands made on advanced electronics interconnection, a new interconnection technology based on a combination of etched printed gold conductors and a new kind of inorganic dielectric has been developed. The gold conductors are patterned to provide dense interconnection networks with conductor line widths and spacings of less than 25 gm (0.001 in). The dielectric forms insulating layers between these gold conductor planes and allows them to be interconnected through tiny holes (vias) in the dielectric of less than 50 gm diameter, giving extremely high density three dimensional multi-layers. The dielectric also has a low permittivity (around 4) along with very low dielectric loss, necessary for high speed performance and reduction of cross-talk, and is hermetic. In addition, relatively low costs are maintained. Since the first introduction of this system [1, 2] continual testing and improvements have been carried out and thousands of tiny vias have now been successfully incorporated in multi-layer circuitry. This paper reviews the latest results of this work, concentrating on botte the processing and performance of the materials in high density multi-layer circuits.