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The purpose of this paper is to show how to enact a Batesonian system to teaching an ecology of mind course.

The approach develops a practical framework for teaching with examples of teaching approaches and student work.

The overarching approach involves a depth-abstraction-abduction model. This model was used to engage students in examining a variety of transdisciplinary phenomena with emphasis on contexts, meaning, multiple perspectives, stories, relationships and systems, patterns, and epistemology. Epistemological shocks and shifts were a common occurrence.

This work is unique in that it focuses on a course based upon the film: “An ecology of mind: a daughter's portrait of Gregory Bateson”.

Gregory Bateson defined a metapattern as a “pattern of patterns.” But, what did he mean by metapattern (which he used only once)? Can there be a meta‐science, in which metapatterns are its objects or principles? The authors explore these issues.

The authors review examples of Bateson's “great pattern” of “combination,” which the authors call the binary. Bateson showed that binary is the minimal solution to the problem of gaining new characteristics by combining parts into a larger whole. Thus, binary is clearly a metapattern, a discipline‐transcending structural and functional principle. The authors select parts of Bateson's writings to highlight his search for other great patterns, some of which correspond with those developed by T. Volk.

The authors suggest that the basis for a science of metapatterns is the following: functional patterns that confer advantages on the systems that possess those patterns can converge, in a meta‐realm that includes all of what Bateson termed stochastic sequences, namely, in biological, cultural, and cognitive realms. The convergences are common solutions to the same functional problems that span a wide variety of systems. Other general principles in the organization of systems, such as borders, arrows, cycles, centers, and networks, constitute members of a system of metapatterns, the objects in a Batesonian metascience. The authors show that the metapatterns have implications for research in the humanities and social sciences, as well as for dynamic learning along the lines of Bateson's broadly‐extended concept of epistemology.

As nearly universal functional patterns, metapatterns could serve to create a scale‐bridging form of descriptive scholarship and thus contribute to the quest for a unified body of knowledge, which E.O. Wilson termed Consilience.

One of the major foci of universities in relation to the educational missions is to promote the growth and development of students as leaders. This article discusses the role of academic advising as a strategic partner with classroom and extracurricular leadership development programs. To that end, this article reviews the roles of academic advising in higher education and discusses the viability of expanding these roles to include the role of advisor as leadership educator. In so doing, I provide a review of the literature related to student leadership development, discuss the similarity in advising outcomes and leadership development outcomes, and examine how the roles of academic advisors in higher education relate to leadership development as well as how advisors can become intentional leadership educators.

This study aims to consider assurance of learning among undergraduate business students enrolled in capstone business strategy courses using the GLO-BUS competitive simulation. Gender, academic major and business core course performance were examined.

Participants were 595 undergraduate capstone business students from 21 course sections taught over a four-year period. Variables included learning assurance measures, simulation performance, gender, major, business core course grades, capstone course grade and cumulative grade point average. Correlations, linear regression, multiple regression and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to analyze the data.

Learning assurance report scores were strongly related to simulation performance. Simulation performance was related to capstone course grade, which, in turn, was significantly related to the grade point average (GPA). Core business courses were related to learning assurance and performance indicators. Significant differences for gender and degree major were found for academic performance measures. Women and men did not differ in simulation performance.

Limitations include the use of one simulation (GLO-BUS) and studying students at one university taught by one professor. Assurance of learning measures needs further study as factors in business program evaluation. Future research should analyze post-graduate performance and career achievements in relation to assurance of learning outcomes.

This study conducts empirical analyses of simulation learning that focuses entirely on direct measures, including student characteristics (gender, major), learning assurance measures, business core course grades, capstone course grades and student GPAs.

Providing specialized services to a specific population requires assessment and identification procedures to avoid providing services to those who are ineligible to receive them as well as ensuring that eligible individuals are provided the services intended for them. Education of the gifted is such a specialized service, and so, assessment procedures are necessary for this population. Special educational programs are not an entitlement for individuals who are gifted as they are for individuals with disabilities. Consequently, operational definitions and procedures vary widely across states and even across school divisions within states. Therefore, the present paper summarizes characteristics that are considered to be early markers of giftedness and discusses some of the ways that they can be assessed. Problems in assessment (e.g., ceiling effects on norm-referenced measures, and difficulties in assessing creative aspects of performance) are also discussed. In the absence of consistent definitions and formal measures that are able to tap aspects of the definition with reliability and validity, assessment and identification of individuals who are gifted is likely to remain an impressionistic task in which individuals are compared to poorly defined prototypes of what it means to be gifted.

The valuation of innovation investments still poses several unresolved questions. Although some authors have analyzed these problems within a framework based on real options theory, their work has not explicitly tested the value of specific real options. The model of firm market value presented in this paper formally includes a technology switching option, which allows a firm to exchange an existing technology with a new technology. We test the model on a panel of publicly traded British firms operating in different manufacturing industries. The results provide support to the claim that the stock market recognizes and evaluates a technology switching option.

For a number of years there has been persistent agitation for the addition of fluorides to public water supplies with the object of reducing dental caries in children. Where fluorides are absent or below about 0.25 p.p.m. in water supplies, the incidence of dental caries is said to be much higher than where the fluoride content is about 1 p.p.m. and to this extent, dental caries is in inverse proportion to the fluorides present. Reports from areas in the United States, where State legislatures have made artificial fluoridation compulsory, would appear to leave no doubt that stronger and better teeth result. In this country also, Weaver's report comparing the dental condition of children in North and South Shields, where the natural fluoride content of the different water supplies enabled one of these towns to act as a control of the other town on the opposite bank of the Tyne, confirmed the work of the other observers. There is nothing really new in all this; it has been known and discussed for many years, although it is fair to state that it is not universally accepted. Many doubt the ability of fluoridated water to reduce the incidence of dental caries in every community and still more believe that the condition remains a diagnostic index of dietary unbalance.