一种教育体制改革新模式——社区教育

社区教育是一种由地方政府间接管理、社会各界参与,学校、家庭、社区联体进行教育和教育管理的新体制。它是我国“七五”期间贯彻《中共中央关于教育体制改革的决定》,实行基础教育“地方负责,分级管理”的教育体制改革中在上海和全国部分地区涌现出来的实践模式。社区教育具有社会性、效益性、协调性和创造性等四方面的基本特征。实践社区教育必须解决好三个关键的问题:明确实践的指导思想,处理好长远的学校、社会双方的共同利益,建立一个科学完整的管理体制。     

浅谈社区教育工作

社区教育旨在提高社区全体成员整体素质和生活质量,促进区域经济建设和社会发展的教育活动,是改革开放以来我国经济社会发展的必然产物,也是当今世界教育改革的基本潮流。社区教育侧重点放在社区居民急需的而正规学校还覆盖不到或不能很好解决的教育培训上,是社区内正规教育的延伸和补充;是构建终身教育体系,建立学习化社会的重要依托和必由之路。     

论社区场域的教育叙事模式

多年来忽视社区内部动态性活动的教育叙事研究已经使得教育研究者遭遇到瓶颈问题,这也会导致研究者与决策者在解决社区教育问题的时候处于信息失真的地位而导致策略错位。深入探讨社区教育场域的叙事模式有助于发掘社区教育场域的真相与意义,有效缓解理论困境,并使得教育文化研究获得现实的生命力。社区场域的教育叙事模式可以从三个研究视角进行教育叙事研究,即社会体系视角、社会冲突视角、社会场域视角。     

农村小学活动课程建设的实践与探索

在我国基础教育新课程体系中,“综合实践活动”课程是一种与各学科课程领域有着本质区别的新的课程领域,是我国基础教育课程体系的结构性突破。解决好农村小学活动课程设置和推行的规范问题,必须较好地融合三个维度(自然、社会和我)和四个领域(研究性学习、信息技术教育、社会实践与社区服务)的农村小学活动课程资源,确定活动课程的内容,形成比较有效的活动课程模式,规范活动课程的管理和实施。     

论未来基础教育学校的形态特征

基础教育学校作为促进学生基础性发展的核心场域,它是一个开放的系统,学校自身需要不断地与社区之间进行物质、能量和信息的交换。然而在当前,基础教育学校和社区常常处于彼此隔绝的状态。我国基础教育的未来发展和学校变革,必然涉及到社区、家庭和学校等多个层面,这意味着封闭的基础教育学校必须走向开放,以实现学校、家庭与社区之间教育功能的整合。学校与家庭、社区之间的良性互动是建立现代学校制度的前提,未来的基础教育学校必定是"社区中的学校"。     

实现教育公平需要重点解决的四个问题

教育公平与正义是社会公平与正义的重要基础。解决教育公平问题,是化解人民内部矛盾、构建社会主义和谐社会的需要。实现教育公平当务之急是要解决好四个方面的问题:第一,基础教育投入与基础教育工作者待遇公平问题;第二,城乡教育公平问题;第三,重点与非重点学校公平问题;第四,高等教育公平问题。     

推进基础教育均衡化发展的实证分析——以厦门市思明区为视角

基础教育服务是公共服务的重要组成部分,是社会发展不可缺少的关键环节.基础教育服务供给机制实质上是政府、学校、家长三方主体之间的互动、博弈关系.基于厦门市思明区基础教育的实证分析,总结了其值得借鉴的做法,并发现了尚未解决的问题：公办民办学校教学设施和管理情况差距显著、优质教育资源相对短缺、学校发展失衡等.笔者建议促进校级均衡发展,完善片区化管理制度,建立信息披露和多方参与监督机制以及财政补助机制等,不断提高基础教育服务供给的效率、质量与公平程度.     

构建学习化社区 推进农村现代化

一、对学习化社区的诸多思考社区既是社会构成的基本单元 ,又是社会的特定空间。最早由滕尼斯明确了社区的基本要素 :有一定的地域 ;有一定的人群 ;有一定的组织形式 ;有共同的价值观念、行为规范及相应的管理机构 ;有满足成员物质和精神需求的多种生活服务设施。学习化社区是学习化社会的根基 ,因为学习化社会的形成 ,必须以学习化社区的普遍建立为基础。社区教育是一种由社区成员与学校等教育机构共同参与的教育行为、教育活动 ,其目标指向是为社区服务和促进社区发展 ,而不同的国家和地区则有相异的侧重点。倘要研究学习化社区的内涵 ,则…     

浅议学校教育与社区教育一体化

本文首先论述社区教育与学校教育资源整合的背景—终身教育、学习化社会理念的提出,对社区、社区教育的概念进行界定,分析学校教育与社区教育的关系;其次就学校教育与社区教育一体化的必要性和当前存在的问题进行分析;最后提出相应的对策,以期建构一个学校—社区—家庭协调互动的全方位新型教育模式。     

以教育促进贫困农村地区民族文化传承的实践探索——以云南省寻甸回族彝族自治县六哨乡为例

为了探索以教育促进贫困农村地区民族文化传承的方法,我们在云南省寻甸县六哨乡开展了以学校教育和社区教育为中心促进民族文化传承的探索。在实践过程中,形成了以学校教育为中心,培养教师和学生的民族文化认同感和自豪感、开发民族文化校本课程、开展丰富多彩的民族文化活动的基本路径;构建了以社区教育为中心,依托学校建立社区学习中心、依托政府设立文化活动中心,开展民族传统节日活动的发展模式,有效地推进了当地教育与文化、社会的和谐发展。     

从融合到融和:培智学校与社区互动研究

培智学校教育对象的变化、融合教育的倡导实施、原有课程实施方式使得培智学校的改革势在必行。以北京市某特殊教育学校为研究对象,采用质性研究的研究方法对该校与社区互动的原因、历史、具体举措、效果及问题进行了研究。研究结果表明,在文化氛围、学校管理、课程方面培智学校都有其与社区互动的机制。培智学校与社区互动的特点有:“双赢”是培智学校与社区互动的基础、“利益共同体”是培智学校与社区互动的表现形式、“改革发展”是培智学校与社区互动的动力。要更好地促进培智学校与社区互动,不仅需要协调学校内学科课程与社区课程的冲突、突破学校改革和质量发展的瓶颈,更需要处理好学校、社区、家庭、政府在培智学校与社区互动中的支持服务关系。     

Education for Sustainability in Scottish Secondary Schools: boundary maintenance or professional reorientation?

This article reports on a study of education for sustainability in Scottish secondary schools. The study was based at the Institute of Education, University of Stirling, and was sponsored (between November 1997 and March 1998) by the Sustainable Schools Partnership, with funding from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Worldwide Fund for Nature Scotland and (between April 1998 and July 1998) by the University of Stirling. It comprised three research strands: a trawl of documentary evidence relating to policy and practice within the field of education for sustainability; interviews with key personnel in secondary schools identified as developing good practice in the field of education for sustainability; and a series of discussions with policy makers having a national and/or international perspective on education for sustainability and its development in schools. Although the prime focus was on Scottish schools, each of these strands also covered as a secondary concern relevant work in the other national regions of the UK. Having briefly clarified some issues of definition, the article offers an analysis of the central problem faced by schools (secondary schools in particular) involved in cross‐curriculum developments of this kind. That analysis focuses upon the aspiration of these schools to bring about whole‐school change within an institutional context characterised by strong boundary maintenance. The article then outlines the first of two findings: where education for sustainability is being developed within a secondary school setting, whole‐school change is likely to be conceived as modest modifications to existing structures. The article goes on, however, to outline some of the changing practices within these schools and, in doing so, introduces the second finding: where education for sustainability is being developed within a secondary school setting, whole‐school change is likely to be conceived in terms of a reorientation of professional interest and practice towards the local community and wider community concerns. These two findings, we argue, should be seen neither as complementary nor as existing in creative tension. They point to a school system seriously at odds with itself: pulled by one set of professional and managerial priorities towards piecemeal change within fixed parameters and by a very different set of professional and educational responses towards the reconceptualisa‐tion of teaching and learning and the closer involvement of schools in the local communities. This increased interest in the outward‐looking school community extends to issues of global concern. The article concludes with some thoughts on how this tension might be resolved through a radical reordering of educational priorities in favour of boundary realignment and community participation.     

The private problem with public service: rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children's educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.     

The impact of community schools on student dropout in pre-vocational education

Dropout prevention is highly ranked on the political agenda in many countries. It remains unclear, however, how dropout can be effectively reduced, as many different factors determine student dropout. Community schools recognize this and aim to modernize education such that it better accommodates students’ personal needs. As a result these schools cooperate more with external organizations, stimulate parental involvement in the educational process, and organize more extracurricular activities. This study examines the impact of Dutch community schools on student dropout. It focuses in particular on pre-vocational education, because dropout is particularly high in this educational track. Moreover, the focus is on the city of Rotterdam because this city is a frontrunner in the Netherlands in establishing community schools. Use is made of unique registration data on all Rotterdam students who were enrolled in pre-vocational education between 2004 and 2008. The impact of community schools is identified by exploiting the fact that community schools were not created before the beginning of the school year 2006/2007. This enables us to estimate the community school impact by means of a difference-in-differences estimation model combined with an iterative matching approach. The estimation results suggest that community schools are as effective as regular schools with respect to dropout reduction. Community school subsidies do not seem to contribute to reducing dropout.     

Walanbaa warramildanha: The impact of authentic Aboriginal community and school engagement on teachers’ professional knowledge

The conundrum of Indigenous education in Australia is that there are multiple, highly contested and polarising narratives that vie to inform both public and policy debate about how to construct effective schooling of Aboriginal students. Two of these contested discourses, which are seen to drive much of this debate, highlight the complexity of concerns—one which is essentially aspirational in its intent but unperceptive to the realities of Aboriginal student achievement and a second data focused discourse that is managerial and evaluative in its focus to disclose policy and pedagogic failures on student outcomes. The first has posed the politically more palatable proposition that there has been a slow, sometimes faltering but inexorable improvement in Aboriginal education, while the second highlights a mounting body of qualitative data that document an overall failure by school systems to lift Aboriginal student education achievement. The author recognises the complex and historical nature of the multilayered ‘issues’ that sit at the heart of Aboriginal underachievement. He argues that one of those underpinning issues that has plagued Aboriginal education centres on the depth of the socio-cultural disconnect between Aboriginal students and their communities, and teachers. He also argues that, too often, teachers are appointed to schools with limited social, political and professional knowledge about the particular needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students such that it impacts on their capacity to establish authentic connections to students. The research on which this article is based sets out to provide an understanding of both the nature and dynamics of community and school engagement in sites with high proportions of Aboriginal students. The study aimed to investigate teachers’ capacity to develop authentic pedagogic practices that are responsive to the educational, cultural and aspirational needs of Aboriginal students. In particular, the research highlights how the relational dynamics between schools and Aboriginal people have been deeply affected by colonial histories of exclusion and systemic disadvantage, pervasive school discourses of marginalisation and in particular an ignorance about holistic needs of Aboriginal students at school and the resultant negative relational interactions between schools and Aboriginal families. This multisite ethnographic study was undertaken with Aboriginal community members, teachers and school principals in 2012 as doctoral research. It was conducted within a relational landscape characterised by an enduring socio-cultural dissonance between schools and their Aboriginal communities. The study focused on examples of authentic collaboration and purposeful interactions between Aboriginal communities and schools that were shown to support teachers in building deeper understanding that enhanced their cognisance of the wider needs of Aboriginal students. The findings in this article highlight that when authentic engagement between Aboriginal people and schools occurred, it appeared to positively impact the teachers’ professional knowledge and created a consequent interest within these communities to engage with their schools. The research further identified that in each site the Aboriginal participants articulated an interest in developing authentic school collaborations that would enhance student outcomes. These findings suggested that teachers need to honour, understand and actively reflect on community history, contexts and aspirations to develop the skills and knowledge to address the particular socio-cultural and educational needs of Aboriginal students.     

School-based Sex Education in Russia: The current reality and prospects

The last decade has been characterised in Russia by a sharp increase in the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially in teenagers, as well as by a high level of unwanted pregnancies, sexual violence and other phenomena relevant to the issues of reproductive and sexual health and behaviour. Though the overwhelming majority of Russian teenagers, their parents and teachers favour the introduction of sex education in schools, there is no national programme of school-based sex education in Russia at the moment. Currently, some conservative forces and the Russian Orthodox Church are actively opposing school sex education and family planning. Opponents of sex education have mounted an aggressive campaign against the implementation of sex education in schools. The attempt of the Russian Ministry of Education, in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNESCO, to implement in-school sex education has practically failed. At present, direct instruction of schoolchildren in these matters is in fact forbidden. So in the near future, it is only really feasible to promote direct educational work with youngsters on a local basis and in cooperation with some foreign experts within the framework of separate, fairly small-scale projects.     

School‐based teacher collaboration in Sweden and Greece: formal cooperation,deprivatized practices and personalized interaction in primary and lower secondary schools

During recent years, educational restructuring efforts have commonly regarded schools as both learning communities and sites for teachers’ professional development. A plethora of attributes influence prerequisites as well as outcomes of the efforts, while teachers’ local cultures constitute a cornerstone. More specifically, enhanced school‐based teacher collaboration is associated with upgraded school effectiveness and enhanced professional growth. However, the comparative study of school‐based teacher collaboration remains a subjective research area. The overall aim of this study is to highlight teacher collaboration in Sweden and Greece utilizing nationwide surveys with physical education teachers in both countries. The final sample consisted of 707 Swedish and 451 Greek professionals. The high response rate combined with restricted internal dropout forms the basis of the generalization of the findings. The presentation of the results is connected with issues of formal cooperation, deprivatized practices and personalized interaction in four teachers groups: primary and lower secondary schools in Sweden and in Greece. According to the data, formal cooperation and deprivatized practices occur more frequently in Sweden than in Greece. However, personalized interaction is rather high in Greek lower secondary schools. Despite differences between the four contexts, a second order model represents obtained information adequately with very good fit indexes. It seems that school‐based teacher collaboration in authentic settings can be connected to complex processes with multifaceted characteristics in different national contexts as well as in educational stages within one country as well. Manipulating distinct aspects of schooling may consequently jeopardize expected outcomes, as development ambitions should be targeting several interdependent dimensions. Swedish schools generally and lower secondary schools specifically constitute original examples of enhanced school‐based teacher collaboration, while an intensification of combined endeavours is needed in Greece. The comparative mapping of interconnected collaboration characteristics might contribute to more holistic restructuring struggles towards schools as learning communities and sites for teachers’ professional development.     

Promoting the implementation of inclusive education in primary schools in South Africa

The British Index for Inclusion was selected to be used in three primary schools in the Western Cape Province in South Africa in order to develop a South African model to assist in the development of inclusive schools. The Index for Inclusion process entails progression through a series of five developmental phases and this paper, written by Petra Engelbrecht, professor in educational psychology and special education and senior research director at Stellenbosch University, Marietjie Oswald, lecturer in special education at Stellenbosch University, and Chris Forlin, associate professor in special education at the Hong Kong Institute of Special Education, is a reflection of the first two phases. Qualitative data were generated from the consultative process followed in the schools during the first phase and both qualitative and quantitative data from questionnaires regarding the perceptions of all school community members on the inclusive practices or lack thereof in their schools during the second phase. The authors drew out the following five themes from the three sets of data: an inclusive school philosophy; democratic leadership, structures, processes and values; collaboration; addressing learner diversity; and resources. Petra Engelbrecht, Marietjie Oswald and Chris Forlin, all of whom were working on a UNESCO-funded project to trial the use of the Index for Inclusion in South Africa, suggest that these themes provided invaluable insights into both the common and unique complexities, the problems and the assets of the different school communities. The themes are discussed in detail in this article, raising fascinating issues for the development of inclusion in different contexts around the world, and will be used to inform the three remaining phases of the Index for Inclusion process.