The Role of Central Government in Higher Education

This paper addresses three questions: (i) How has the role of central government in higher education evolved? (ii) What have been the main concerns of government? (iii) How should government canny out its role? The first two questions are examined by looking at the historical record in Australia. Australia's experience does not differ greatly from that of Britain.     

What’s involved in ‘the work’? Understanding administrators’ roles in bringing trans-affirming policies into practice

ABSTRACT

Researchers have concluded that policy implementation is a process of mutual adaptation between policies and implementers. Our study draws attention to that relationship, especially with respect to policies that challenge assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. We focus on how six administrators in one United States school district understood ‘the work’ of bringing the district’s Guidelines for Supporting Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students into practice. Our analysis of interview data focused these questions: How do administrators describe their motivation and commitment to engage in the work? What puzzles of practice do participants name? How do they talk about the work of implementation? What does that work mean/involve in everyday practice? What were their roles? We found that implementation was locally defined and enacted; participants’ sense-making, their roles in enacting the Guidelines, and the puzzles they negotiated were influenced by their unique contexts. We share examples of diverse cases in an effort to create policy knowledge.     

A review of research on formal reasoning and science teaching

A central purpose of education is to improve students' reasoning abilities. The present review examines research in developmental psychology and science education that has attempted to assess the validity of Piaget's theory of formal thought and its relation to educational practice. Should a central objective of schools be to help students become formal thinkers? To answer this question research has focused on the following subordinate questions: (1) What role does biological maturation play in the development of formal reasoning? (2) Are Piaget's formal tasks reliable and valid? (3) Does formal reasoning constitute a unified and general mode of intellectual functioning? (4) How does the presence or absence of formal reasoning affect school achievement? (5) Can formal reasoning be taught? (6) What is the structural or functional nature of advanced reasoning? The general conclusion drawn is that although Piaget's work and that which has sprung from it leaves a number of unresolved theoretical and methodological problems, it provides an important background from which to make substantial progress toward a most significant educational objective. All our dignity lies in thought. By thought we must elevate ourselves, not by space and time which we can not fill. Let us endeavor then to think well; therein lies the principle of morality. Blaise Pascal 1623-1662.     

In ‘Numberland’: play-based pedagogy in response to imaginative numeracy

The overarching interest of this study concerns how to outline learning opportunities and support in early childhood education (ECE) without losing its play-based character. More specifically, the study reports an empirical investigation into the evolving activity of a 6.5-year-old child and an adult conversing about the child’s drawing of ‘Numberland’. What the child’s drawing and his discussion about it with the adult tell us about his emergent mathematics skills is analysed. How the child shifts between speaking and enacting as if and as is, and how the adult supports his mathematics understanding through entering into the play-frame are analysed. How imaginary, play-based activities like this can provide the means for ECE and what this implies for the teacher are discussed.     

‘The way I understood it,it wasn’t meant to be understood’ – when 6th grade reads Franz Kafka

In recent years, literacy problematics and different concepts (Cooperative Learning, Learning Styles) have taken up much of the school’s literature teaching. It has pushed discussions of the professional content into the background. This article takes up the content discussion for renewed debate, but now also with the aim of discussing the literary texts one can present to children in school. The research questions posed are: Which texts can justifiably be presented to children as part of teaching in school? What will happen if 10 to 12-year-old Danish school pupils are presented with classical and canonized texts by authors like Kafka, Proust and Dostoyevsky? How will they react? How will they read the texts? The point of departure for the article is an observational and interview study of a Danish 6th grade’s reading and analysis of classical and canonized adult literature. The study takes its starting point in three concepts rooted in theory, i.e. unpredictability, defamiliarization and entitlement, which are subsequently used to get to grips with the empirical part of the study. The article does not attempt to depict a hard-and-fast picture of all children being equally enthusiastic about the new texts. Instead it presents a picture of a class in which lively literary conversations are conducted. And irrespective of whether the child is one of those who enjoys the texts, whether the children are irritated, challenged or provoked by them, they are never experienced as trivial or irrelevant.     

A Complexity Approach Toward Mind–Brain–Education (MBE); Challenges and Opportunities in Educational Intervention and Research

In the context of an educational or clinical intervention, we often ask questions such as “How does this intervention influence the task behavior of autistic children?” or “How does working memory influence inhibition of immediate responses?” What do we mean by the word influence here? In this article, we introduce the framework of complex dynamic systems (CDS) to disentangle the meaning of words such as influence, and to discuss the issue of education and intervention as something that takes place in the form of complex, real‐time, situated processes. What are the applied implications of such a CDS framework? Can we use it to improve education? Five general principles—process laws—are introduced, which can be used to guide the way we formulate research questions and methods, and the way we use the results of such research. In addition, we briefly discuss a project in progress, in which we ourselves attempt to apply the process laws that govern educational activities. Finally, we report about a discussion about the usability of the process laws, both in educational research and in the classroom, as was held during our workshop at the Mind, Brain, and Education Conference, November 2014.     

Computerized Adaptive Testing With Different Groups

How does the use of computerized adaptive testing affect the performance of students from different groups? How consistent were the results of computerized adaptive and “conventional” tests? What did the students think about the test experience? What advice do the authors have for test developers and users?     

The Multiple True-False Item Format: A Status Review

How do multiple true-false items differ from other item formats? What does past research indicate about the quality of multiple true-false items? What additional research is needed?     

The Pedagogical Value of the Lecture Method: The Case of a Non-Formal Education Programme in Ghana

Adult learning rests on the foundation of learner experience and involvement in the teaching and learning process. The methods employed in facilitating adult learning have to a large extent sought to place the learner at the centre of the entire teaching and learning encounter. The lecture method is one of the many methods used to facilitate learning in many educational programmes. This article reports on a study that posed the question; How effective is the lecture method in facilitating learning in non-formal adult education programmes? The case study design was used for the study. The National Functional Literacy Programme of Ghana was purposively selected for this investigation. Two classes in the programme comprising 10 adult learners and one facilitator each were purposively selected as sample for the study. It was found that the lecture method was ineffective in promoting learning in non-formal adult education programmes in Ghana since it failed to stimulate the comprehension of subject-matter and learner involvement in class activities.     

Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: a review of the research literature

The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to sustainability? Our analysis identified two different definitions of ESD: first, as a threefold approach to education based on questions concerning education about, in and for the environment; and, second, as an approach to education that includes three interrelated dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Two major research areas are identified in this study. The first area relates to how teachers understand ESD, while the second area focuses on how ESD can be implemented in educational practice. During the period studied, the research has evolved from teaching children facts about the environment and sustainability issues to educating children to act for change. This new approach reveals a more competent child who can think for him- or herself and make well-considered decisions. The decisions are made by investigating and participating in critical discussions about alternative ways of acting for change.     

Student Loans: The Failure to Consolidate an Emerging Political Consensus

This article contends that over a long period of time there was growing support for a student loan scheme. In the event, the Thatcher Government adopted proposals which failed to consolidate that emerging consensus. What was it about the Government's legislation that achieved this political own goal? How can such politically maladroit behaviour be explained? What elements should the legislation have contained if the consensus were to be firmed up and enhanced? These are the key questions which we attempt to answer in this article.     

E—Leaming数据挖掘：模式与应用

随着教育信息化的快速发展特别是数字化校园和网络高等教育的日益普及,教育领域中部署了众多的软件系统．在这些软件系统中存储着海量的教育数据。如何利用这些教育数据,使这些数据转变为信息、知识,并为教育决策、教学优化服务。可从E-Learning数据挖掘中找到一些答案。文章系统梳理了国内外E—Learning数据挖掘的研究进展．并采用格语法分析方法对“E—Leaming”的关键要素和过程进行分析,提出可以“谁在学、学什么、怎么学、学得如何”这一系列问题为主线。开展E—Learning数据挖掘工作,从而获得对E—Learning现状的更加完整的认识。在尝试回答“谁在学、学什么、怎么学、学得如何”的过程中,分解出三类挖掘任务情境即用于回答“谁在学”的学习者特征挖掘。用于回答“学什么、怎么学”的学习过程挖掘以及用于回答“学得如何”的学习结果挖掘．并对应地构建出三种数据挖掘模式。对模式的应用结果表明,这三种数据挖掘模式在E—Learning要素和过程分析中是有效的．较好地拓展了对E—Learning关键要素认识的完整性。包括对“谁在学”有了更全面的认识、对“学什么、怎么学”有了更准确的认识和对“学习的结果如何”有了更深入的认识。     

Multicultural education as an emotional situation: practice encountering the unexpected in teacher education

Juxtaposing the concepts of screen memory, counter-transference and the holding environment within psychoanalytic theory, this essay explores the author’s emotional experience, who begins the exploration by asking several questions. What happens to a teacher’s emotional world and her consciousness in the process of trying to shift students’ consciousness in multicultural education? What is the psychical consequence for teachers of colour who must listen to racist discourse as a precondition to convincing those to do otherwise? How does a teacher’s emotional world influence student learning and development of critical consciousness? In working through her emotional response aroused by the students’ questions in her multicultural education classes, the author discusses the importance of a conversation between psychoanalysis and critical multicultural pedagogies and why the conversation matters.     

School leadership and teachers’ pedagogical orientations in Hong Kong: A comparative perspective

As a secondary analysis of SITES 2006, this paper aims to explore the school leadership factors that potentially affect teachers’ pedagogical orientations. The exploration is guided by four questions: (1) How do we describe school leadership factors? (2) What are the principals’ perceptions about pedagogy and ICT use? (3) What are the teachers’ perceptions about pedagogical orientations? and (4) How does the school leadership associate with teachers’ pedagogical orientations? Eight school leadership constructs were identified, which cover four areas: learning goals, priority for resource allocation, types of assessment, and priority of competencies for school leadership to acquire. The findings also indicate a gap between principals’ and teachers’ perceptions on pedagogy and ICT use in Hong Kong.     

Anxieties of Democracy and Education: Naoko Saito's American Philosophy in Translation

The article is an essay on Naoko Saito's recently published book American Philosophy in Translation. We attempt to draw out the central argument of the book as it moves through its eight chapters. The author finds that American philosophy, which she takes to be rooted in pragmatism, whilst it owes much to Dewey, needs to be reconstructed in order to meet contemporary political challenges, with their implications for political education. She asks questions such as what is the place of the tragic sense of life in philosophical thought? What is a philosophy of affirmation and chance? How are we to understand the significance of the untranslatable? What are these connections between transcendence, translation and transformation? More specifically, how are we to understand the distinction between philosophy in translation and philosophy as translation? And how does all this offer us new ways of thinking about the current state of democracy, political education and education more generally? One specific suggestion is that an education in foreign language can be transformative in terms of political education. The article concludes that Saito's project throws up some important ideas that are pertinent to our times. We question the central idea regarding language education, whilst we welcome this scholarly volume.     

Table of Contents

• Mi Casa Is Not Exactly Like Your House
  • By Vasti Torres
  • Latino students make up an ever increasing proportion of today's students. What do we really know about the experiences and needs that they bring to the task of being students?
• What's Going on in Higher Education? Charles Schroeder Talks to Russell Edgerton
  • Russell Edgerton has been driving change in higher education for over thirty years. What does he think about what is going on now? Edgerton shares his thoughts on the impact of the undergraduate reform movement, “deep learning,” and more.
• How Should We Talk about Student Drinking—And What Should We Do about It?
  • By Alan David Berkowitz
  • Does the language we use to talk about student drinking impede or enhance our ability to work with students on this problem? The author weighs in.

• DEPARTMENTS
• In Practice—A Model for Strategic Thinking and Learning
  • By Nannette Evans Commander
  • How can we help students truly take responsibility for their own learning? They need, says the author, strategies for learning that go well beyond the skills taught at many campuses.
• Campus Commons—Farcical Moments
  • By Lee Burdette Williams
  • When the going gets tough, the tough start laughing.
• What They're Reading—How Do These Colleges Do It?
  • By Elizabeth S. Blake
  • A look at the recent book Stand and Prosper: Private Black Colleges and Their Students.
• Bottom Line—The Color of Service
  • By Toby S. Jenkins
  • Do students of color have a special responsibility to serve their communities? The author says, yes.

     

Consequential Validity: A Practitioner's Perspective

What happens when philosophical and theoretical propositions meet the harsh realities of the nation's largest school district? How does consequential validity play out in the Big Apple?     

Thinking aloud together: A teacher’s semiotic mediation of a whole-class conversation about percents

How does classroom interaction support students’ apprenticeship into the ways of speaking, writing, and diagramming that constitute the practice of mathematics? We address this problem through an interpretative analysis of a whole-group conversation about alternative ways of solving a problem involving percent discounts that occurred in a sixth grade classroom. This research study draws upon Dewey’s theory of inquiry, Vygotsky’s cultural–historical psychology, Freudenthal’s realistic mathematics education, and Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL). From Freudenthal, we borrow the notions of mathematizing and guided reinvention—the former notion offers a view of mathematics as an activity of structuring subject matter and the latter one provides insights into the processes whereby mathematizing is learned and taught in the classroom. We glean from Dewey his view of reflective thinking as inquiry and the role that conversations may serve therein. We rely upon Vygotsky’s notions of a verbal thinking plane and a social phase of learning in order to reconsider the function of whole-class interaction in apprenticing students into mathematizing. Finally, SFL provides us with tools for explaining the choices of grammar and vocabulary students and teachers make as they realize meanings in whole-group conversations. Treating the selected whole-class conversation as a text, we focus our analysis on how this text came to mean what it did. Our central questions are as follows: What meanings were realized in the whole-class conversation by teacher and students and how were these meanings realized? How did the teacher’s lexico-grammatical choices guide the students’ choices? In addressing these questions, we advance an interpretation of the conversation as paradigmatic of students and teacher thinking aloud together about percents.     

Politics,religion and social connections: pillars for progression among primary teachers in Jamaica

Perceptions about teacher progression among Jamaica's primary schoolteachers should force society to stop and ask itself several questions. Are these perceptions accurate? If not, how did these perceptions emerge and what can national leaders and those in positions of authority do to ‘manage’ if not resolve these perceptions? If there is any truth to them, a different set of questions need to be asked. How did things come to be like this? How can the perception of corruption and mistrust be minimised? What will be done differently going forward? Either way, there is a more fundamental question: Do the current perceptions among teachers mirror perceptions in other areas of public service? The answers to these questions are not easy. The main aim of this small-scale qualitative exploratory study was to identify and understand the perceptions of primary schoolteachers in Jamaica as regards progression to the rank of principal. The findings point to a number of perceived barriers including religious affiliation, political affiliation, ministry- and school-level politicking, social connections and predetermined outcomes. This study concludes that promotion on any basis other than merit is problematic and does not promote trust, openness and transparency, nor does it build confidence in those who are part of the system but themselves do not have such connections and/or affiliations.