The article examines the genesis of the medical education model proposed by A. Flexner in the United States and compares it with Antonio da Silva Mello's 1930s proposal to apply the German university model to Brazilian medical teaching. The heart of these medical reforms - which sought to introduce the teaching of biomedicine and to boost the esteem of the scientific career - did not depend sol...

For some time the notion ‘technocracy’ has been, for better or for worse, associated with the functioning of the European Union (EU). But what role do technocratic assumptions play in the EU’s new ‘symbolic’ policy agenda of democracy promotion, if any? Some authors have suggested that ‘depoliticising’ technocratic biases exist in the EU democracy promotion framework, despite its ‘normative’ rh...

extended abstract 1. introduction without a doubt, people communicate their feelings and thoughts through discourse and texts. every text is formed based on some metalinguistic variables including, culture, history, relations of power, politics, norms, and rules of the society. the author is supposed to organize a text considering all these mentioned variables and the translator is expected to ...

In this paper Robert Leeson offers what he calls a ‘dynamic framework’ for policy analysis. He uses the term ‘dynamic’ not in any technical sense but, in a sense akin to what McCloskey (1994) called the ‘rhetoric of economics’ – the battle for the hearts and minds of fellow economists and policy-makers. We are introduced to a world of cynical, campaigning and revolutionary scholars, who study s...

Political debate over medical malpractice reform seldom takes meaningful account of its policy context, including the emerging science of patient safety. Instead, stakeholders on both sides use the rhetoric of patient safety to support entrenched positions on hardened proposals such as capping damages and limiting access to information about errors. Despite its déjà vu quality, the current malp...

This paper examines the hypothesis that all public policies are based, at least in part, on rhetorical strategies. By analysing public policies implemented in the context of sustainable development, this article emphasises the need for and the challenges of providing legitimate foundations for the rhetorical means used to encourage change; it is these foundations that determine a given policy’s...

In this paper we discuss several different perspectives on persuasion and behavior change and consider how they may be used to inform the design of serious games and other digital media for sustainability. These perspectives include the classic “information deficit” model of persuasion, as well as two more recent perspectives: “procedural rhetoric”, and “emergent dialogue”. We discuss how these...

This article addresses the hypothesis that scholarly argument as it is presently pursued is mediated through print; but the advent of modern ICT offers alternative media to support scholarly publication. However, few academics have much expertise with these media. Accordingly, if this technology is to be fully exploited the academic community will need to acquire such expertise and this may hav...

The below article, published by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, AFCC, and similar articles by these co-authors and disciples, seems to be cited these days just about every time some custody evaluator wants to throw a baby or toddler into joint custody as if speculative agenda-driven hypotheses constitute research findings. They don't. This -as well as the numerous articles li...