Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study investigated whether competitive and noncompetitive educational mathematics computer games influence 4-7-year-old boys’ and girls’ mathematical learning. A mixed repeated measures within-and-between-subjects experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of type of computer games and gender on preschool children’s learning of mathematical addition. The results showed that both boys and girls demonstrated improved mathematical learning after playing either competitive and noncompetitive computer games. Preschool girls learned mathematical addition as effectively as did preschool boys. Thus, this study suggested that both competitive and noncompetitive mathematics computer games might have the potential to be used effectively in teaching preschool girls mathematics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The WTO and its apologists argue against opening the organization's mostly opaque policy processes to greater outside scrutiny or democratic control. Were the WTO’s rule-making process to be opened to those outside national trade delegations, they argue, rent-seeking and protectionism would become the order of the day, eventually killing the WTO “goose” and the golden eggs laid by the trade liberalization regime it has promoted.

Such arguments actually are very close to those offered by Joseph Schumpeter and followers advocating strict limitations on popular participation in the domestic democratic context. The WTO arguments are vulnerable to the same sorts of critiques that were levied against Schumpeterian competitive elitism, and in practice, WTO governance is more aptly described as “noncompetitive elitism.”

As the WTO has continued to expand its policy reach, it must also begin to expand its democratic access. The first step would be to accommodate a modified form of Schumpeterian competitive elitism, creating the kind of consultative WTO parliament proposed several years ago by Pascal Lamy, who this year was named WTO director general. Over time, we could see movement toward more than a consultative parliament, to a system in which the input afforded those within states is more nearly symmetrical to the impact that supranational policy making has on their lives.