Porters Five Forces of Competition Essay Example for Free

Porters Five Forces of Competition Essay Porter’s Lesson: Michael E. Porter’s article, the five competitive forces that shape strategy, is an article that dissects the true underlying factors of competition and industrial structure. Throughout the context of the article, Porter thoroughly explains how competition and profitability does not only derive from production of goods and services or the level of sophistication of a firm. Instead, he claims that in order for an industry to be truly competitive and profitable, the industry as a whole must hold a solid structure. Porter educates the audience by introducing the five key forces of strategy that will essentially lead to a firm’s prevalence of competitiveness. He labels these forces as direct competition, customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. Porter claims that each of these forces of competition plays their roles within any competitive and even temporarily non-competitive industry. Porter’s main lesson for his audience is that in order for an individual firm or an industry to succeed, it must strategically know how to react to any shift within the industry, whether its competitiveness, supply and demand, economical issues, potential entrants, or even natural issues. Porter also strives to explain how a company could or could not earn a return on investment based on the intensity of the competition within the industry. All in all, Porter explicitly explains each of the five forces that shape an industries competition with a breakdown of different factors for each force, as well as real life examples that make the topic very clear for the audience to understand his lesson. Analysis of the Lesson: Of the five forces, Porter clearly educated the reader about the importance of potential entrants and their threat to an industry. I felt that one of Porter’s greater lessons in this matter was when he described the seven major sources of entry barriers, and how an incumbent can strategize to react to the competitiveness of the industry if a desired entrant were to exist. One aspect that really sparked my interest was when Porter went about explaining the entrant’s hesitancy of entering into an industry based on the level of retaliation from the existing firms within the market. On the other hand, it was also interesting to know that the entrant could also alarm the incumbents, when the entrant has a large amount of capital to invest as they enter from another market which they succeeded in. Another force that Porter dissected is what most people would think of in reaction to the term competition, and that is direct competition of one firm and another, or for the lack of a better word, rivalry. Porter made a statement, and that was, â€Å"The degree to which rivalry drives down an industry’s profit potential depends, first, on the intensity with which companies compete and, second, on the basis on which they compete.† As Porter discussed the different factors that affect the intensity of a rivalry, he noted that intense rivalry tends to destruct profitability if the battle between two firms is focusing solely on price because at that point, price competition is simply transferring profits directly from an industry to its customers, which will ultimately result in the degradation of an industry. I couldn’t agree more with Porter about the fact that when it comes to rivalry between multiple firms, the industry can find an advantage when each competitor aims to serve the needs of different customer segments, by focusing on a variety of price, products, services, features, or brand identities. Most people would think of a rivalry in terms of competition, and not necessarily take the time to think of other factors that are just as important when it comes to an industry’s competitiveness. Many are so focused on what goes on within their own market that they forget to acknowledge the outside forces until it slaps a firm across the face. Porter used an example of the photographic industry as he explained the importance of substitute products. Here he argued that long time competitors such as Kodak Fuji, two large photographic film companies, were in a position to lose profitability if they didn’t focus on outside forces, such as the entry of digital cameras. Although they are not as profitable as before, both companies made large investments, along with large amounts of research and development, and both prevailed in continuing to be somewhat profitable and slightly competitive in their industry rather than falling off all together. After reading that example, I instantly thought of different firms that didn’t focus on innovating at times where substitute products came into play, and those companies are no longer around. A few examples of companies that fell or are bound to fall are Blockbuster, Circuit City, Best Buy, K-Mart, and Sears. Once Porter ended his presentation of the five forces of competition and profitability, he continued to approach his final lesson, and that is the value created if a strategist accurately analyzes the five forces of competition within an industry. He enlightened the audience that if a strategist understands the competition within the industry, he will not only prevail beyond existing rivals, but could also uncover new opportunities such as differences in customers, suppliers, substitutes, potential entrants, and rivals that can become the basis for distinct strategies leading to superior performance. The only minor detail I felt that should have been added to this section on value is the possibility of losing value based on time devoted towards each force. Porter most definitely stated the facts when explaining the potential for new opportunities if understanding the industry as a whole. One thing he didn’t explain is what could also happen if a strategist possibly focuses on one aspect for too long, or fails to devote enough time to one competitive force versus another. I would imagine that this could possibly cause problems to arise rather than opportunity if a firm were to not manage its strategic time wisely. My Takeaways: I am fortunate that I am currently involved in a family business that allows me to relate to so many aspects of this article. My family currently owns and operates a five-store, soon to be six, supermarket chain in several parts of southern California. Like many other businesses, the everyday operation of a supermarket is exposed to countless aspects of business and its overall environment. I myself am within the world of supermarkets six out of the seven days in the week, and I can most definitely admit that this article completely enhanced my understanding of the terms competition and profitability. The amount of connections I could make with topics in this article to my everyday work is countless. For this paper, I’ll simply discuss what stood out most. First, I’ll have to give my takeaway on price competition and bargaining power. Item prices throughout the stores are what I’d consider to be the bullets in a gunfight between two competing supermarkets. There was a topic I discussed in my analysis that stated, â€Å"Firms that solely focus on price competition ultimately gives industry profitability to the customer.† In the supermarket industry, buyers constantly negotiate with suppliers for the lowest costs to provide customers with the most aggressive prices. This also relates to the section on buying power that Porter touches on. Here I learned, any store can simply raise prices or drop prices at store level, but the company that will prevail is that who is dominant in getting the lowest cost from the supplier, resulting in more aggressive margins verse the competitor. If both you and your competitor have the same price on one item, allow the competitor to give its profit to the customers by you being the one to pay less for the supply. The second factor that I can relate to which I will discuss is threat of new entrants and retaliation. If someone pulls up a map of supermarkets in a specific area, they will find seven to ten different supermarkets in a five mile radius. Competition from one company to another usually occurs within each region. At times, successful independent supermarket chains will raise awareness of other supermarket chains in a specific region by preparing to open a new store or buying out a current store that is not profitable. This is when the incumbents will do everything in their power to keep their customers from going to the new store that is most likely going to enter with highly aggressive pricing. At this time, you will see incumbent’s prices dropping, promotions increasing, advertisements become incredibly aggressive, prizes being given out, and any other form of retaliation a company can perform to keep its market share. As stated before, the connections are countless, and I could truthfully admit that I could write a twenty page paper on all the topics I can relate to in this article. I discussed a few relations above, but I must also state that this does not limit what I took away from Porter’s article that I can apply to my family’s business today. All in all, it was a highly educational read and a great tool for any business who seeks to increase competitiveness and profitability, let alone a great tool for any individual who plans to one day be a successful businessman.

Different viewpoints and opinions on education

Different viewpoints and opinions on education Indoctrinational vs. democratic/participatory teaching methods and techniques John Dewey argued that education should use a critical democratic approach to raise student consciousness about values, attitudes and worker responsibilities. He stated that the primary purpose of education in United States was to foster the growth of democratically minded citizens, and Dewey made no distinction in the education of those who would manage the companies and those who would work on the shop floors. Dewey strongly advocated vocational exploration as a means to acquire practical knowledge, apply academic content and examine occupational and societal values. However, he adamantly opposed the use of vocational education as merely trade education as it would overemphasize technical efficiency. If this occurred, and some would argue it has, education would then become an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the existing industrial order of the society, instead of operating as a means of its transformation (Dewey, 1916). Dewey believed that it was educations role to combat soc ial predestination, not contribute to it. In contrast, Charles Prosser and David Snedden advocated an indoctrinational approach for teaching work value and attitudes; students should learn, without question, the ethical standards of dominant society and the professional ethics of the desired professional area (Prosser, 1939). Supporters of this approach believed the primary purpose of public education was the development of human capital for the success of industrial economy. To accomplish this, they argued that scientific management principles, drawn from the industrial sector, were employed in the public school setting, creating a hierarchically structured and production oriented educational system (Spring, 1990). Prossers sixteen theorems of vocational education support this vision of schooling. According to him, vocational educational should replicate the occupational environment (i.e. processes, machinery, tools), emphasize efficiency (e.g. outputs, costs) and teach functioning facts rather than in the mere acquiring of abstract and socially useless knowledge (Prosser Quigley, Vocational education in a democracy, 1949). In the past thirty five years the argument initiated by Dewey, Prosser and Snedden has resurfaced between educational theorists, outside the realm of vocational education, and business leaders concerned about the decline of industrial productivity in industrialized nations. Expanding upon Deweys perspective, these educational theorists have used a socio-political-economic framework to guide their critique. Specifically reproduction theorists have criticized vocational education for transmitting work values and attitudes necessary for a compliant workforce as well as primarily employing indoctrinational pedagogies for work values and attitudes instruction (Bowles Gintis, 1976). Reproduction and critical theorists have argued that the indoctrinational approach is exploitative because it produces attitudes in students that correspond to the type of work in which students will most likely participate upon completion of their formal education (Anyon, 1980); (Giroux, 1983); (Macleod, 1987 ). Another facet of this debate was represented in the report Americas choice: high skills or low wages! which focused on corporate organizational structure and its relationship to worker behaviors (National Center on Education and the Economys Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990). It stated that about 80% of United States companies utilize a pyramidal mass manufacture model that values reliable and compliant workers who perform their tasks almost robot like. This is in contrast to democratically structured organizations that need workers who are adaptable, resourceful, critical and capable of making decisions. While Dewey and critical theorists are concerned primarily with implementing democracy in the schools and the workplace to create a more just and equitable society, the industrial sociological literature has provided evidence that work organizations that employ democratic processes or participatory management also increase worker productivity (Hall, 1987); (J ain, 1980); (Zuboff, 1983). The Commission suggested that, while there is a trend towards companies implementing more participatory management, vocational education needs to teach democratic skills and utilize primarily democratic strategies so that future workers will be prepared to participate in, and assist in transforming companies into high performance organizations. Ineffective learning The nature of work has changed and our understanding of how people learn has also changed. Both developments call into question the organization, goals and pedagogy of our educational system. What makes these developments so powerful is that our new understanding of both work and learning suggest very similar directions for reform. Strengthening the educational system so that it conforms more to the ways people learn will also directly enhance the ability of that system to prepare students for the type of workplaces that are emerging in factories and offices throughout the industrialized world. The following discussion of effective learning emerges from a powerful knowledge base known as cognitive science. From the perspective of cognitive science this discussion purports to underscore two basic points about learning and teaching. First, school routinely and profoundly violates what we know about how people learn effectively and the conditions under which they apply their knowledge appropriately to new situations. Second, these practices seem to permeate all levels and sectors of education and training in developed countries right from elementary grades to corporate training. Mistaken assumption # 1: The educational enterprise assumes that people predictably transfer learning to new situations As a society, we presume that the ultimate point of schooling is to prepare students for effective and responsible functioning outside of school. Accepting this assumption means that we have to confront what is known as the knowledge transfer problem. Knowledge transfer simply means the appropriate use in a new situation of concepts, skills, knowledge and strategies acquired in another. Historically, lower-skilled workers had a very limited need for transfer. Transfer becomes important when you encounter the unfamiliar and non-routine, and lower skilled workers encountered little that was not familiar and did not have the responsibility for handling the non-routine that they did encounter. Goods and services were limited in number, allowing long production runs of the same thing or service and reducing the number of events that have not been previously encountered. Within this limited product or service range, companies organized the work as specialist work workers had responsibility for a narrow range of activity. Supervisors and managers were expected to handle the non-routine events that did occur within this narrow, repetitive world. That is, responsibility for events that required problem solving, judgment, heuristics, analogues, or other mental activities enhanced by the access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations was detached from lower-skill jobs and vested in middle-skill managerial jobs. However, technological innovations and changed market conditions ushered by globalization and in its wake increased competition means an increased number of non-routine events. Companies in developed countries are gradually shifting from highly specialized and repetitive jobs at lower skill levels toward teams expected to handle a broader range of activities, and they are also increasingly vesting problem-solving, supervisory responsibilities in these teams. Thus, a broader range of workers is being asked to exercise the mental activities enhanced by access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations. Extensive research, spanning decades, shows that individuals do not predictably transfer knowledge in any of the three situations where transfer should occur. They do not predictably transfer school knowledge to everyday practice (Pea, 1989); (Lave, 1988). They do not predictably transfer sound everyday practice to school endeavors, even when the former seems clearly relevant to the latter. They do not predictably transfer their learning across school subjects. We focus on the first two transfer problems: from school to nonschool and from nonschool to school. Transferring from school to outside of school: This transfer situation is at the heart of schooling. Usually, the major claim for school-type instruction is its generality and power of transfer to situations beyond classroom (Resnick, 1987). The fundamental question is whether knowledge, skills and strategies acquired in formal education in fact get used appropriately in everyday practice. Students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulae. However, even after instruction, they revert to naÃÆ' ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations to which their school learning is relevant (diSessa, 1983). Studies of expert radiologists, electronic troubleshooters and lawyers all reveal a syrprising lack of transfer of theoretical principles, processes or skills learned in school to professional practice (Resnick, 1987). For example, Morris and Rouse found that extensive training in electronics and troubleshooting theories provided little knowledge and fewer skills directly applicable to performing electronic troubleshooting (Morris Rouse, 1985) Transferring from outside of school to school: People learn outside of school all the time. The question then is what people do with what they learn outside of school when they move into school. Does sound, everyday practice get transferred to get used in school learning? How does incorrect learning outside school affect correct learning inside school? Dairy workers, although almost errorless in their use of practical arithmetic at work, performed badly in on arithmetic tests with problems like those encountered in their jobs (Scribner Fahrmeir, 1982). Brazilian street vendor children successfully solved 98% of their marketplace transactions, such as calculating total costs and change. When presented with the same transactions in formal arithmetic word problems that provided some descriptive context, the children correctly solved 74% of the problems. Their success rate dropped to 37% when asked to solve the same types of problems when these were presented as mathematical operations without descriptive context (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). Other studies show that training on one version of a logical problem has little, if any, effect on solving an isomorphic version that is represented differently (Hayes Simon, 1977). Teaching children to use general context-independent cognitive strategies has no clear benefits outside the specific domains in which they are taught (Pressley, Snyder, Cariglia-Bull, 1987) Cognitive experts agree that the conditions for transfer are not fully understood. Even though studies cited in previous paragraphs continue to find no evidence of transfer, others identify conditions under which transfer seems to occur (Holyoak, 1985); (Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, Cheng, 1987); (Lehman, Lempert, Nisbett, 1988); (Singley Anderson, 1989). We know that people routinely apply skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic to new situations with some success. These skills are used most effectively in well understood content domains. For example, readers get more out of their reading when they know something about the domain in which they are reading than when they do not. Nonetheless, skills such as reading do let us enter unfamiliar content areas we do use these skills in new situations, and they do help us. At the same time, we also keep finding lack of transfer. We now know that certain practices in school impede learning. More effective learning may not be sufficient for transfer, but poor initial learning will certainly impede it. Mistaken assumption # 2: Learners are best seen as passive vessels into which knowledge is poured In a typical schoolroom or a corporate training session, the teacher or expert faces the learners in the role of knowledge source. The learner is the passive receiver of wisdom a glass into which water is poured. This instructional arrangement comes out of an implicit assumption about the basic purpose of education: the transmission of societys culture from one generation to the next. The concept of transmission implies a one-way flow from the adult members of the society to the societys young, or, from the expert to the novice (Lave, The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding: Report No. IRL88-0007, 1988). In fact, schooling is often talked about as transmission of canonical knowledge in other words, of an authoritative, structured body of principles, rules and knowledge. Education as canonical transmission thus becomes the conveying of what experts know to be true, rather than a process of inquiry, discovery and wonder. This view of education leads naturally to the student as the receiver of the word, to a lecture mode of teaching, and to the teacher as the controller of the process. This organization of learning, with the teacher as order-giver and the student as order-taker, fits the traditional organization of work for lower-skilled workers in both civilian workplaces and the military. The workers à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ responsibility was à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ to do what he was told [to do by the management] (Callahan, 1962). Ben Hamper, an auto assembly line worker, uses more colorful language: Working the line at G. M. was like being paid to flunk high school for the rest of your life (Marchese, 1991). The assumption that the teacher is the pourer and the student the receptacle has several unfortunate consequences. Passive learning reduces or removes chances for exploration, discovery and invention: Passive learning means that learners do not interact with problems and content and thus do not get the experiential feedback that is key to learning. Students need chances to engage in choice, judgment, control processes and problem formulation; they need chances to commit mistakes. The saying, experience is the best teacher, is borne out by the research you learn what you do. While not sufficient for effective learning, doing is nonetheless necessary. However, schools usually present what is to be learned as a delineated body of knowledge, with the result that students come to regard the subject being studied mathematics, for example as something received, not discovered and as entity to be ingested, rather than a form of activity, argumentation and social discourse. This organization of learning mirrors the traditional organization of work, especially for lower skilled workers. Under the system of industrial management known as scientific management or the Taylor System, each mans task was worked out by the planning department. Each worker received an instruction card which described in minute detail not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it' (Callahan, 1962). This system was highly prescriptive; it left no room for deviation or innovation. Passive learning places control over learning in the teachers, not the learners, hands: Passive learning creates learners dependent on teachers for guidance and feedback, thus undercutting the development of confidence in their own sense making abilities, their initiative and their cognitive executive skills. The example of Brazilian street vendor children may be recalled at this juncture. The researchers found that when the children tried to work school math problems, they did not check the sensibleness of their answers by relating them back to the initial problem. Although virtually errorless in their street math activities, they came with preposterous results for school math problems (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). In a study of supermarket shoppers use of arithmetic, the researchers assessed the shoppers command of structurally similar school math problems. The shoppers spoke with self-deprecation about not having studied math for a long time. Lave clarifies what is happening here. Individuals experience themselves as both subjects and objects in the world. In the supermarket, for example, they see themselves as controlling their activities, interacting with the setting, generating problems in relation [to] the setting, and controlling problem solving processes. In contrast, school à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ create[s] contexts in which children à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ experience themselves as objects, with no control over problems or choice about problem-solving processes (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988) in sum, control in the teachers, not the students hands undercuts students trust in their own sense making abilities. As companies have started shifting decision-making power to the shop floor, managers find that workers conditioned to depending on their supervisors telling them what to do are frightened and lack confidence in their ability to solve problems and make decisions. In addition to its effects on confidence, passive learning also undercuts the development of a particular set of higher order cognitive skills called the cognitive self-management, or executive thinking, skills. These are simply the skills that we use to govern our problem-solving attempts. They include goal setting, strategic planning, checking for accurate plan execution, monitoring our progress and evaluating and revising our plans. We now know that those who function as independent and effective learners are people with these skills. However, as Pea has observed, passive learning is disastrous for developing them. Classroom studies of reading, writing, and math and science instruction show that the executive processes for controlling thinking and learning processes are under the teachers control, not the students. These processes seem to get developed when the learning situation is structured to shift control from the teacher to the student, the teacher gradually removing the support that students need initially as they begin to show the ability to work autonomously (Pea, 1989). Passive learning creates motivational and crowd control problems: Jordan describes a Mexican public health training program designed to improve the practice of Mayan midwives. Her analysis spotlights behaviors that American teachers constantly complain about their students (Jordan, 1987). The teaching is organized in a straight didactic material in a mini-lecture format. When these lectures begin, the midwives shift into what Jordan calls their waiting-it-out behavior: they sit impassively, gaze far away, feet dangling, obviously tuned out. This is behavior that one might also observe in other waiting situations, such as when a bus is late or during sermons in church, (p. 3). We see the same behaviors in American third graders. Hass found that students were deeply engaged in team problem-solving during their drill and practice time, but invested little attention or involvement in the teachers instructional sessions. During three weeks of observation, the children did not adopt any of the specific strategies demonstrated by the teacher during general instruction time (Hass, 1988). As teachers know it so well, motivational problems often end up as crowd control problems, as illustrated by the behaviors of different groups of children at a Metropolitan Museum display of Ice Age art and artifacts. Most of the school groups were moved from one exhibit to the next, pausing before each to hear a guides or teachers lecture. Since the children were bunched in front of an exhibit, they could not all hear the lecture, and even when they could, they lacked understanding of the time frames involved or the archaeological significance of bits of bone. Teachers had not set up the museum visit so that students became involved in what they were going to see. Groups were therefore restless and crowd control became the teachers primary concern. One junior high school class behaved very differently, exhibiting a quiet intensity as they moved through the exhibit gallery. They had packets of worksheets with questions about issues and problems that they were expected to solve at the exhibit. Some questions were factual, but most required inference and thought. The students had to figure out for themselves where and what the evidence would be concerning particular questions (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Motivational and crowd control problems with students have shown up for decades with lower-skilled workers in the forms of high turnover, absenteeism and, in extreme cases, sabotage. Mistaken assumption # 3: Learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and correct responses Based on his animal experiments, the brilliant psychologist Edward Thorndike developed a new theory of learning. As Cremin observed, the theory presumed that learning was the wedding of a specific response to a specific stimulus through a psychological bond in the neural system. The stimulus [S] then regularly called forth the response [R]. the bond between S and R was stamped in by being continually rewarded; an undesired bond was extinguished through punishment or failure (Cremin, 1961). For the purpose of this research, this psychological theory had three major effects. It led to the breakdown of complex ideas and tasks into components, subtasks and items (stimuli) that could be separately trained. It encouraged repetitive training (stamping in). And it led to a focus on the right answer (successful response) and to the counting of correct responses to items and subtasks, a perspective that ended up in psychometrically elegant tests that were considered the scientific way to measure achievement. The result was fractionation: having to learn disconnected subroutines, items and subskills without an understanding of the larger context into which they fit and which gives them meaning. As Farnham-Diggory notes, fractionated instruction maximizes forgetting, inattention and passivity (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Since children and adults seem to acquire knowledge from active participation in complex and meaningful environments, school programs could hardly have been better designed to prevent a childs natural learning system from operating (p. 146). The phrase a childs natural learning system goes to the heart of why the usual school programs do not meet their own learning objectives well. Human beings even the small child are quintessentially sense-making, problem-solving animals. The word Why is a hallmark of young childrens talk. As a species, we wonder, we are curious and we want to understand. Pechman talks about the child as the meaning maker. Fractionated and decontextualized instruction fails to mobilize this powerful property of human beings in the service of learning (Pechman, 1990). Mistaken assumption # 4: What matters is getting the right answer Bothe the transmission and the behaviorist views of learning place a premium on getting the right answer. A transmission view stresses the ability of the learner to reproduce the Word; a behaviorist view, the ability of the learner to generate the correct response. The end result is the same: students and teachers focus on the right answer, jeopardizing the development of real understanding. The focus plays out in several ways. An instructional focus on the right answer discourages instruction in problem solving: A right answer focus encourages an emphasis on facts. Facts are important, but by themselves constitute an impoverished understanding of a domain; a fact-focus does not help students abilities to think about the domain in different ways. Cognitive analyses of a range of jobs show that being able to generate different solutions to problems that are formally the same is a hallmark of expert performance (Scribner, Head and hand: An action approach to thinking, 1988).Employers and college educators both complain that American high school graduates are limited in their thinking and problem-solving abilities, deficiencies that stem partly from an educational emphasis on facts and right answers. Students resort to veneers of accomplishment: Students respond to a focus on right answers by learning to test right within the school system. They figure out what answers the teacher or the test seems to want, but often at the cost of real learning. These surface achievements have been called the veneer of accomplishment (Lave, Smith, Butler, Problem solving as an everyday practice, 1988). Also, Jordans analysis of a Mayan midwives training program illuminates basic truths about the learning and testing of American students (Jordan, 1987). She found that midwives who had been through the training course saw official health care system as powerful, in that it commanded resources and authority. They came to distinguish good from not good things to say. Specifically, they learned new ways of legitimizing themselves, new ways of presenting themselves as being in league with this powerful system, but with little impact on their daily practice. Although they could converse appropriately with supervisory medical personnel, their new knowledge was not incorporated into their behavioral repertoire. It was verbally, but not behaviorally fixed. Jordan notes that the trainers evaluated their program by asking the midwives to reproduce definitions, lists and abstract concepts. She observes that if these tests measure anything at all, they measure changes in linguistic repertoire and changes in discourse skills [not changes in behavior] (pp. 10-12) The same behaviors show up with Hasss American third graders. He noticed that in mathematics lessons the students got much practice in problem-solving methods that they had brought into the classroom with them methods that were not being taught and were not supposed to be used. The children used these methods to produce right answers, which the teacher took as evidence of their having grasped the formal procedures that she was teaching them. In fact, all that had happened was the appearance of learning. Teachers do not get behind the answers: We end up with appearances of learning because, in their search for right answers, teachers often fail to check behind the answers to insure that students really grasp the principles that they want the students to master. In typical American classrooms the time devoted to a lesson on a particular topic makes it hard to bring to the surface, let along change, the ideas and assumptions that individuals bring to the lesson. Traditional curriculum design is usually based on a conceptual analysis of the subject matter that ignores what is already in the learners head, with the result that students make mistakes that arise from undetected ideas that they brought to the lesson. Or they can play back memorized canonical knowledge and conceptions but return to their own ideas when confronted with unfamiliar questions or non-routine problems. As noted earlier,, students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulas, but even after instruction revert to naÃÆ' ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations (Raizen, 1989). Teachers do not focus on how to use student mistakes to help them learn: In their search for right answers, teachers tend to regard student errors as failures rather than as opportunities to strengthen students understanding. American teachers placed little emphasis on the constructive use of errors as a teaching technique, a practice that the researchers attribute to the strong influence of behaviorism in American education. Behaviorism requires teaching conditions that help learners make only correct responses that can be reinforced through praise. Mistaken assumption # 5: To insure their transfer to new situations, skills and knowledge should be acquired independently of their contexts of use This idea is often talked about as decontextualized learning, which simply means learning out of context or meaning. The rationale for decontextualised learning goes back to the presumed conditions for the transfer of learning. As Lave observes, extracting knowledge from the particulars of experience was thought to make that knowledge available for general application in all situations (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988). Almost seventy five years ago, John and Evelyn Dewey wrote about the learning costs of decontextualized education. A statement, even of facts, does not reveal the value of the fact, or the sense of its truth of the fact that it is a fact. Where children are fed only on the book knowledge, one fact is as good as another; they have no standards of judgment or belief. Take the child studying weights and measures; he reads in his textbook that eight quarts make a peck, but when he does examples he is apt, as every schoolteacher knows, to substitute four for eight. Evidently the statement as he read it in the book did not stand for anything that goes on outside the book, so it is a matter of accident what figure lodges in his brain, or whether any does. But the grocers boy who has measured out pecks with a quart measure knows. He has made pecks; he would laugh at anybody who suggested that four quarts made a peck. What is the difference in these two cases? The schoolboy has a result without the activity of which it is the result. To the grocers boy the statement has value and truth, for it is the obv ious result of an experience it is a fact. Thus we see that it is a mistake to suppose that practical activities have only or even mainly a utilitarian value in the schoolroom. They are necessary if the pupil is to understand the facts which the teacher wishes him to learn; if his knowledge is to be real, not verbal; if his education is to furnish standards of judgment and comparison. (Dewey Dewey, Schools of tomorrow, 1915) Get over the traditional distinctions between head and hand The indictment of traditionally organized learning was coming out of a powerful research base, cognitive science. At the heart of this research was the presumption that intelligence and expertise are built out of interaction with the environment, not in isolation from it. It thus challenged the traditionally held distinctions between: Head and hand Academic and vocational education Knowing and doing Abstract and applied Education and training School-based and work-based learning Recent EU policy indicates a reassessment both of the relationship between work and education and the role of work experience in academic and vocational programs, on the basis that globalization is generating the need for new learning relationships between education and work which will support lifelong learning (European Commission, 1995). Thus, in the case of work experience in both general and vocational education, it is now envisaged that it could fulfill an important new role, providing an opportunity for those young people in full-time education and training to develop their understanding about changes in the world of work, to enhance their key skills and to make closer links between their formal programs of study and the world of work (Green, Leney, Wolf, 1999). However, although there has been

Philosophy and the Dialectic of Modernity :: Philosophical Essays

Philosophy and the Dialectic of Modernity ABSTRACT: Habermas' social philosophy can now be perceived in its oppositional structures and their symbolic meaning. His repetition of structural opposition finds its expression in the symbolism which pervades The Philosophic Discourse of Modernity in the opposition between the dreaded myth of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and the redemptive fantasy of the path yet to be taken. More significant for the intellectual culture of modernity is the neglect, by erasure on the part of this esteemed philosopher, of the great drama of philosophy in our time. This is the drama occasioned by the dialectical struggle, rushing to climax in the 20th Century, between Enlightenment reason and its Counterenlightenment opponent. The struggle between these philosophical constellations is refracted in the great wars of this century. Thus the drama of the philosophical thought of the century and its historical development is lost. The philosophic discourse of modernity has yet to be written. Its text, o nce it has been freed from the tenacity of ideological hostilities and their erasures and concealing circumlocutions, will at the same time provide the sought-for foundation for social philosophy and a just society: it is the philosophic framework of Modernity itself which is the foundation of all modern philosophies, in the dialectic of Enlightenment and its Counterenlightenment other. The social philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, outstanding philosopher and master dialectician of our time, has an immediate appeal to American philosophers, educated in the history of the Protestant migrations to the New World in search of religious freedom; educated also in the Founding Fathers who drew up a constitution for a modern republic heralded by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence proclaiming the universality of human equality and natural rights; educated as well in the social philosophy of American pragmatism, in which Enlightenment principles of democracy and science become normative social processes. The appeal of Habermas to American philosophers long acculturated in the Enlightenment tradition is that of a voice speaking for reason and justice; he stands forth philosophically on behalf of "rehabilitating the Enlightenment" in the face of various current modes of thought engaged in its undermining. Habermas has been widely commended for his strong unequivocal stand as a German intellectual against the Nazi movement and the Holocaust it produced, and against any revisionist circumlocutions seeking to obscure those atrocities. Habermas is also commended for his repudiation of Martin Heidegger's complicity with Nazism and his retreat to linguistic mysticism.

Classroom Management Plan :: essays research papers

Management Plan Attendance: You are expected to be at all rehearsals and all events. During band camp, attendance is extremely important because you will miss that day’s new material, and may have to be written out of the show. It is very difficult for new members to make up what they have missed. Any conflicts should be handled IMMEDIATELY! ALSO Since the band functions as a single unit and not a group of individuals, Band performances are diminished by even a single absence. Hence, you will be at ALL band rehearsals and performances. It is the responsibility of the student to notify one of the Directors IN ADVANCE with a note or a phone call from the parent or guardian. Each request will be evaluated individually. Forged Excuses will be referred to the Principal’s office for disciplinary action. Unexcused absences from rehearsals will result in dismissal or other punitive measures. This will be considered on a case by case basis by the Band Director. Travel: We travel to events together and we return together. If a parent wishes to make other arrangements, they must submit a written note to one of the Band Directors, IN ADVANCE. The only exception is at the conclusion of an event; the parent must make personal contact with one of the Directors to verify that they are in attendance and will take responsibility for their child. Otherwise, students will ride the bus. Driving yourself, traveling with a friend, non-immediate family member, boyfriend, girlfriend, or neighbor is unacceptable. When in doubt, ask a Director. Other Guidelines To Note: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Bus conduct will be exemplary at all times. The bus driver’s instructions must be followed. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Only personal radios, tape, or CD players with headphones will be allowed. You must be seated at all times. Do not kneel or stand on the seats. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Wear the correct designated clothing under your uniform. 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The buses will be kept clean. All riders are responsible and no one may leave until it is clean. Uniform Care and Maintenance: Band uniforms typically cost $350 to replace. You are expected to return the uniform in the same condition it was issued. Replace all parts of the uniform neatly into the garment bag. In the Stands: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  No one will play their instruments unless instructed to do so. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Everyone will have their own music lyre with them. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Recently graduated band members may not distract, socialize, or sit with the band or color guard unless permitted by the band staff.

Mimosa :: essays research papers

Separation from their original home was one of the many past events that caused tensions and turmoil between a father and his two daughters. While each individuals thoughts about each other fluxuated between both positive and negative, one thing remained constant through out the progression of the poem, the ever enduring presence of religion, faith and its beliefs. Religion has always had a place in the life of Vito and his family, he had his own ways of using his faith to comfort himself as well as his own visions on what a heaven would be to him, while his daughter also held a strong faith in religion. Just as the weak Mimosa plant needs support to grow or face death, each of Vito’s daughters , especially Lucia, has attached themselves to a faith, a religion to support and help themselves through life. Vito like many, have found a place for his faith. He believed that a true heaven would be back in his homeland, back in the garden that he cared for so dearly. This garden in fact acted like his own garden of Eden. For his character was like that of the tender Mimosa plant, which when faced with the slightest touch or trouble from an outside source, would recoil its leaves and take a defense position close to the garden that it grew within. Vito would retreat to this garden to escape the troubles of the outside world when they became unbearable. He describes the garden to us as; “The garden that kept them little children even as adults;'; This could be taken as that it did not actually affect Vito physically young but rather it altered him mentally. He would become like Adam and Eve before evil and like that of a young child, all ignorant of all troubles. Complexity and all other dilemma’s that plagued their lives. So in this garden he would escape his troubles through the means of ignoring them and not acknowledging their existence and thus a bit closer to peace, and less degrees of separation between himself and his God.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Though his daughters once also joined him in his “light';, in essence his garden, it is said that his daughter, Lucia (an cleaver metaphor of Lucifer?) Is that of a luckless fallen angle, refusing to join him in his light. Lucifer himself was a fallen angle, and now Lucia clutches to

Strategic Analysis Zara

BRAND POSITIONINGSingapore Market Size Zara's size is at 1.3% of Singapore apparel industry, 6th place after other brands like Mango, Guess, Esprit, Raoul and Giordano.Visionâ€Å"ZARA is committed to satisfying the desires of our customers. As a result we pledge to continuously innovate our business to improve your experience. We promise to provide new designs made from quality materials that are affordable†Mission Statementâ€Å"Through Zara’s business model, we aim to contribute to the sustainable development of society and that of the environment with which we interacts.†Target Market & PriceZara sells apparel, footwear and accessories for women, men and children. Product lines were segmented into these three categories, with further segmentation within the women’s line as it was considered the strongest out of the three, with an overwhelming majority of women in the target market (78%).Zara’s consumers are young, value conscious and highly sens itive to the latest fashion trends in the industry. An advantage that the brand has over conventional retailers is that they do not define and segment their target market by ages resulting in designs and styles that can reach a broader market.Zara offers cutting edge fashion at affordable prices by following the most up-to-date fashion trends and identifying consumers’ demand, and quickly getting the latest designs into stores.BACKGROUNDAbout ZARAZara is a flagship brand of the Spanish retail group, Inditex group. Inditex is the world's largest fashion group, which owns other fashion brands such as Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home,  Lefties and Uterqà ¼e. It was founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega, when he decided to expand his factory in Arteixo by opening a store in La Coruà ±a. Zara has expanded since and currently operates a total of 1,671 stores in continents such as Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, of which 333 of them are in Spain.In the BeginningFounded by Amancio Ortega in 1975, Zara opened its first store in downtown La Coruà ±a, Galicia, Spain. Its first store carried low-priced lookalike products of popular, higher-end fashion brands. The store proved to be a success in the early 1980s, and Ortega began opening more Zara stores throughout Spain.Global ExpansionIt was only in 1988, Zara decided to venture into the international market. This was spurred by Portuguese youths crossing the border into Spain to shop in Zara. Hence, Zara responded by opening its first store in Oporto, Portugal. The expansion strategy proved to be a success. Subsequently, new stores popped up in New York (1989) and Paris (1990), the fashion capitals of the world. Since then, more stores have opened globally to a standing of 1,671 stores. Zara Company has become an icon for Spanish fashion.FinancialsThe Inditex group currently boasts revenue of 13.79 billion euros (2012), with profits standing strong at 1.932 billion Za ra swot analysis

True Colors: Carolyn Kalil’s Personality Assessment

Calm, happy, complex, practical, spontaneous – these are a few ways to describe one’s personality. Everyone has several different pieces to their personality, almost as a puzzle has many pieces that make up one big picture. Throughout time many individuals have come up with their own methods to analyze one’s personality. This essay will describe my understanding of Carolyn Kalil’s True Colors personality assessment and present evidence to support its accuracy. Kalil’s personality assessment has four possible outcomes. After taking the assessment one will be given a color; blue, green, gold, or orange. Each color resembles a different personality type. Some examples are calm, curious, organized, and active, respectively. After taking this assessment I found out that my personality is blue, which fits me. I prefer calm, harmonious relationships, working in groups, helping and nurturing others, along with well though decision making. The assessment asks a series of â€Å"would you rather† style questions. One of the questions, for example, is â€Å"When in a relationship I (a) prefer my partner to know that I love them without telling them, (b) tell my partner that I love them. After the assessment your results are generated with some information about your color. For best results, one must be truthful when answering the questions. Some people lack personality ethic, which is when one pretends to be likeable rather than showing their true colors (Lamberton, Minor&, 2010). Lacking personality ethic may give false results, such as how you want to be rather than how you really a re. I was a little shocked at the accuracy of the results. This pushed me to dig deeper to find more information on Kalil’s strategy. Carolyn Kalil’s study used analysis and interpretation, a common method in creating and evaluation surveys. She gathered her information and then assigned meaning to it which helped her to determine conclusions and give her findings significance. Her independent variables were the personality types listed above. Her depended variables were â€Å": 1) Feeling, Thinking, Judging, and Perceiving from the MBTI, 2) the General Occupational Themes of Social, Investigative, Conventional, and Realistic from the SII, and 3) the Orientation Scales of Helping, Analyzing, Organizing, Producing, and Adventuring dimensions of the CISS. (Kalil, 1998). Instrumentation Carolyn Kalil used two instruments when developing her True Colors personality assessment. These instruments were character cards and words clusters. The character cards consisted of an individual ranking four cards, each of which represents one of the four personality types (Krathwohl, 1998). This test appeals more to the blue and gold personalities. The word clusters required the individual to rank a list of adjectives one a scale of 1 to 4 with 4 being most like the individual and 1 being least like them (Krathwohl, 1998). Obviously, this test was self-scored. This test appeals more to the green and orange personalities. Result Kalil operated on the principal of convergent validity. This means that her assessments are related to what they should, in theory, be related to (Lowry, 1990). An example of this would be similarities among test scores. This is because one assumes if you’re taking a test then you should have certain knowledge for that subject, resulting in a high test score. Although the subjects for both instruments were male and female, no gender differences were found in Kalil’s studies, (other personality assessments such as the Strong Interest Inventory or the Campbell Interest Skill and Survey did, however, show strong differences between genders) concluding that gender does not affect personality types (Lowry, 1990). Kalil found that personality types do change over time and may be influenced by outside factors such as the environment in which they are testing or their current mood (Kalil, 1998).