Enterprise,Economic and Industrial Awareness: making the links in initial teacher education ‐‐ two case studies

Abstract

Two case studies of work in initial teacher education provide the stimulus for a discussion of the incorporation of enterprise, economic and industrial issues within student programmes’. The first case study describes a seminar at Manchester University where these issues are introduced to students within the constraints of a 36‐week PGCE course. The second describes IT‐INSET activities undertaken by primary BEd students from Edge Hill College of Higher Ecucation.

A number of issues are raised, not least of which is the need to overcome student concerns about the incorporation of the National Curriculum cross‐curricular themes into teaching. The conclusion reached is that much work remains to be done and some possible future developments are examined.     

Global citizenship education in conflict-affected settings: Implications of teachers’ views and contextual challenges for the Lebanese case

Despite embracing GCED themes, the Lebanese National Curriculum faces multifaceted challenges rooted in conflict. The 1997 curriculum is still in effect with revision attempts encumbered. Interviews with 56 public school teachers in Lebanon confirm prevalent knowledge transmission practices of prescribed civics content and lack of support for progressive teaching and critical dialogue. Findings suggest few teachers prioritise GCED constructs, while most promote nationalistic citizenship notions contributing to marginalisation. Moving forward, teacher education should develop teaching practice and mindsets for sustainable GCED with the intent of emancipating teachers and students from the limitations of national curricula.     

Learning from all? The World Bank,aid agencies and the construction of hegemony in education for development

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that was organised around the definition of the last World Bank Education Strategy (WBES2020) and focuses on the participation of three European aid agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Department for International Development of the UK. This paper acknowledges that a significant effort was made to promote the inclusiveness and transparency of the participatory process, yet it concludes that the conditions for promoting quality participation and substantive policy change were not provided. Furthermore, the way international aid agencies produce and use knowledge limits their role and influence in the context of the Bank's consultations. Hence, by not contesting the Bank's policy ideas substantially, the agencies contribute inadvertently to reproducing the Bank's predominance in the education for development field.     

The quality of equity? Reframing gender,development and education in the post-2020 landscape

The year 2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, with a goal to contribute to gender equality globally. As scholars continue in their quest to ‘take stock’ of the ways in which gender and education work in tandem to achieve greater gender equality, we observe a revival in interest regarding conversations on gender and education. These conversations cover a gamut of related issues, including teaching and achievement as well as a number of intersecting issues such as gender-based violence. Within the conversation has been a continued focus on the role of equity primarily defined as access and opportunity. This paper explores the context of quality as it relates to equity in education and addresses the problems that are still left on the margins. Our goal is to take stock and assess the strength of evidence and to provide directions for future research.     

First Nations,Métis,and Inuit education: The Alberta initiative for school improvement approach to improve indigenous education in Alberta

The education of minority students is of considerable interest within the literature. Ensuring that all children receive quality programming and that they successfully graduate from school is of concern for parents, educational stakeholders, and society alike. In Canada, the indigenous populations of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) students have fallen significantly short of acceptable graduation rates. In an attempt to address this issue, results from 16 selected projects funded by the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) that focused upon FNMI Education will be discussed. A comprehensive review of the projects suggests that by involving Aboriginal parents and Elders in meaningful ways and by focusing upon Aboriginal language, culture, and history not as an “add-on” but an integral part of Canadian history and culture, Aboriginal students are more likely to remain in school.     

The role of education in the development of Black feminist thought, 1860‐1920

Very few English secondary schools now include ‘Comprehensive’ in their titles, and political enthusiasm for comprehensive schools is hard to detect. According to David Skelton of Policy Exchange, politicians, like anthropologists, have often ‘investigated them, read thoroughly about them and even visited them, but they don’t really understand them’. Drawing on a variety of source materials, this article discusses the early comprehensive schools movement, the period of intensive circulars and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent waning of interest in comprehensive schools as a policy topic. At the heart of the discussion is a focus on politics and politicians at both the national and local levels, with close reference to some key personalities of the post-war period. It is argued that the story of comprehensive schooling in England needs more balance and that we should look to the present generation of politicians and historians to provide this.     

Socialisation,learning and the OECD’s Reviews of National Policies for Education: the case of Sweden

ABSTRACT

This paper suggests that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) education policy work of the last 20 years has achieved a paradigmatic shift in the thinking and framing of education; however, this process was not exclusively based and dependent upon the cold rationality of numbers. Crucially, as the article will show, it has also involved processes of socialisation and learning. The paper argues that a constructivist-institutionalist perspective based on the notion of socialisation provides adequate tools to explain the dominance of the OECD in the education policymaking world. The paper makes use of policy learning theory to show how and why it is the coming together of various actors in social terms that sustains and reinforces the numbers game, rather than simply the validity or strength of the numbers themselves. It uses the case of the publication of the OECD Review of Swedish education in 2015 to empirically flesh out the argument. Although the influence of the OECD has been great to a number of countries, Sweden is perhaps one of the few that displays such unanimity of public opinion and the academic and policymaking worlds in regard to the indispensability of the OECD as an education policy expert and actor.     

The significance of ‘participation’ as an educational ideal in education for sustainable development and health education in schools

This article examines the significance of the concept of participation for teacher meaning-making processes in education for sustainable development and health education. In Scandinavian public schools, education for sustainable development and health education focus on a wide palette of societal problems rather than on narrow curricula. Drawing on selected reviews of research literature on education for sustainable development and health education, Lacanian psychoanalysis provides inspiration for our analysis of the concept of participation, and how it is positioned and enacted in these fields of practice. Essentially, we argue that the concept of participation has a dual nature: it serves both as an educational ideal and as a teaching strategy. We also explore how the failure to achieve the ideal of ‘true’ participation may serve a positive purpose for the teacher; the acknowledgement that participation is not always as genuine as desired establishes a pedagogical situation where ideals of engaging pupils through true participation can continue to exist side by side with clear signs of a less consequential participation.     

Monitoring of education for sustainable development in Germany – insights from early childhood education,school and higher education

In Germany, the implementation of the UNESCO Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for sustainable development (ESD) 2015–2019 aims to implement ESD more profoundly within the structures of Germany’s educational system. In this context, a national monitoring has been set up in order to analyze the extent and quality of ESD implementation in all educational areas. The paper contains the results of an indicator-based desk research comprising a content analysis of key documents in three areas of education: early childhood education, school education and higher education over a period of 5 years (2011–2016). Overall, the main results indicate that, at the level of key documents, the goal of a broad implementation of ESD is not yet achieved, while there are considerable differences among the federal states. ESD and related concepts can be found more frequently particularly in documents that are more recent. At the same time, ESD is increasingly predominating other educational concepts such as environmental education. The results are one component of a comprehensive monitoring process of ESD-implementation on the level of documents and offer important insights relevant for further (political) activities aiming at a mainstreaming of ESD.     

Leadership in education: the case of Vice‐Chancellors

This paper is based on the Franklin Lecture given at the Guild of Educators on 17 November 2005 at the Bakers’ Hall, London.     

The case for mixed methodologies in researching the teacher’s use of humour in adult education

Inconsistencies within the literature result in teachers not having sufficient guidance to develop their humour use in support of learning without risking their professionalism. This article argues for more comprehensive evidence to guide teachers’ use of humour, based on mixed methodological approaches. The case is also made for the Interpersonal Communication Competence Model (ICCM) to be used as a consistent theoretical framework when researching teachers’ use of humour. A methodological literature review design is deployed to explore the conceptualisation, methodologies and situational factors within the selected research. The selected research is analysed in accordance with the ICCM’s five key concepts of motivation, knowledge, skills, outcomes and context. Comparisons are made against a depiction of humour based on the ICCM. The analysis reveals a diversity of conceptualisations of humour and different situational factors influencing teachers’ use of humour, and shows that findings conflict with ‘competent communication’. No research studies linked the various influencing factors together to provide all-embracing guidance for teachers. Studies based on mono-methodologies using qualitative or quantitative research designs only appear to provide the teacher with pieces of the jigsaw pertaining to humour use in teaching. Although mixed methodologies have their own design concerns, the author argues that they offer an opportunity to merge multiple situational factors to produce a more accurate representation of humour use within a teaching context. In conclusion, he proposes that future research utilises a mixed methodological approach along with the ICCM to capture supportive and contradictory perspectives of humour use.     

Intuitive rules in science and mathematics: the case of ‘more of A ‐‐ more of B’

In the last twenty years researchers have studied students’ mathematical and scientific conceptions and reasoning. Most of this research is content‐specific. It has been found that students often hold ideas that are not in line with accepted scientific notions. In our joint work in mathematics and science education it became apparent that many of these alternative conceptions hail from the same intuitive rules. We have so far identified two such rules: ‘The more of A, the more of B’ and, ‘Everything can be divided by two’. The first rule is reflected in students’ responses to many tasks, including all classical Piagetian conservation tasks (conservation of number, area, weight, volume, matter, etc.), in all tasks related to intensive quantities (density, temperature, concentration, etc.), and in tasks related to infinite quantities. The second rule is observed in responses related to successive division of material and geometrical objects, and in successive dilution tasks. In this paper we describe and discuss the first rule and its relevance to science and mathematics education. In a second paper (Tirosh and Stavy, in press) we shall describe and discuss the second rule.     

The Dimensionality of Inference Making: Are Local and Global Inferences Distinguishable?

We investigated the dimensionality of inference making in samples of 4- to 9-year-olds (Ns = 416–783) to determine if local and global coherence inferences could be distinguished. In addition, we examined the validity of our experimenter-developed inference measure by comparing with three additional measures of listening comprehension. Multitrait, multimethod modeling determined that the best fitting model included both text and inference factors, but the factor loadings of these final models showed that local and global inference factors could not be measured reliably. The Inference Task as a whole was reliable and showed good validity at all grade levels.