Scientists,Engineers and the Society of Free Choice: Enrollment as Policy and Practice in Swedish Science and Technology Education 1960–1990

This article portrays the formation of a new problem area within Swedish educational policy in the 1960s, namely the need of scientific manpower and the demands to entice more individuals into studies in science and technology. As a consequence school science was given the mission to be interesting, fun and to change young people’s attitudes towards these subjects. In the 1970s and 1980s many initiatives were taken to increase the numbers of applicants at high school and university levels, both within curricular frames and out-of-school activities such as science clubs. Through an approach inspired by governmentality studies, I describe the strategies deployed to remedy the problem as rationalities of liberal governmentality. The actions taken were executed in a way to make school children choose science or technology out of their free will. It was an exercise of power that was not meant to restrain but instead to enable action.     

Education,revolution and evolution: the Palestinian universities as initiators of national struggle 1972–1995

Since the concept of nationalism first emerged on the world stage, universities have played a key role in its collective formation and dissemination to the masses. Established under challenging circumstances and subjected to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the 1967 war, Palestinian institutions of higher education have trodden a thin line between the training of human resources requisite to their national movement and compliance with the dictates of a military regime bent on curbing such aspirations. This research examines the various roles played by Palestinian universities in the ongoing struggle for national independence. Spanning from its inception to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, this collection of first-hand accounts, historical documents and critical analysis explores the evolution and adaptation of Palestinian higher education amidst three decades of social and political turmoil.     

Course Design & Choice of Media by Applying the Theory of Transactional Distance*

This Paper presents a series of empirical studies involving approx. 850 students to show how flexibility in course design should be informed by the students culture and native language (L1), gender, and age, and explains how to decide on the most appropriate learning technology in course design by applying the Theory of Transactional Distance. Curves are presented to show how academic English reading rates online and offline are affected by the L1, gender, and age (over a wide age range 18-81 years old). To prevent inequitable culturally-distinct overload, course design should be modified using hypertext. Choice ofmedia--in particular synchronous versus asynchronous media--is decided according to the Theory ofTransactional Distance. This theory is here extended from tutor-to-one-student to multiple students in a group, and the masculinity can be modified. Briefly, at initial maximal distance (D -S-) early on, the community is fostered with synchronous media for cooperative group learning, followed by (D-     

Education as Séance: Specters,Spirits, and the Expansion of Memory

In this essay I propose that education be conceived as séance: a place where ghosts are summoned in order that we may come to (speaking) terms with them. Against the backdrop of my own summoning of the ghosts haunting my childhood visits to a nearby castle, I draw on the work of Jacques Derrida to provide a theoretical rationale for the importance of spirits and ghosts. The concepts of inheritance and hospitality place a central role in understanding how to come to terms with ghosts. I conclude with a reflection on the summoning of ghosts in education, and the role of the curriculum as medium in this séance.     

An Overdue Theoretical Discourse: Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice and Critical Race Theory in Education

Scholars often use Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Bourdieusian analyses with the aim of studying inequities in education. Despite their usefulness and popularity, a theoretical discourse between the two frameworks has not yet transpired and the two are sometimes constructed as incompatible, if not at odds. The argument in this essay is three-fold: (1) CRT has never fully engaged with Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, (2) Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice and CRT, although distinct, are not necessarily in opposition, and (3) CRT and Bourdieusian concepts have the potential to inform each other, resulting in a more nuanced engagement of the interplay between structure, agency, and racial realities in education.     

The Practice and Thinking of the Students’Exchange Program Under the Background of Internationalization

Based on the background of internationalization of higher education, the article analyzed the forms, size, significance and problems of the international students’exchange launched in Dali University of Yunnan Province; and then provided the sustainable developing strategies for the program.     

Physical Education Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding,Application, and Development of Critical Thinking

To better prepare physical education (PE) teachers, this study explored a group of pre-service teachers’ understanding, application, and development of critical thinking (CT) in a capstone methods course. Participants were 12 pre-service teachers from a PE teacher education (PETE) program at a large university in the southwestern United States. Data were collected through focus group interviews and post-lab assignments and were analyzed via content analysis. Findings showed that the PE pre-service teachers could define CT and recognize its importance to teaching and learning. Together with field-based teaching practices, course written assignments such as the encyclopedia article, curriculum project, lesson plans, and post assignments were identified as contributors to CT development. At the end of the semester, the PE pre-service teachers demonstrated an improvement in CT across three levels. Based on our findings, we recommend the integration of CT instruction into PETE programs.     

Theory and Practice ‐‐Two Fundamental Categories in the Philosophy of Teacher Education

Taking the Swedish teacher education as its point of departure, two related problems are discussed in the article. 1) Practice is often understood as completely immersed in itself. Consequently there arises the problem if and how it can get out of this enclosedness and get some perspective on itself. Three ways are proposed of introducing distance into practice and, thereby, of establishing knowledge about practice: self‐reflection, dialogue, and scientific research. 2) Sometimes theory and practice are regarded as absolutely different and incompatible. According to this kind of dualism it is not possible to integrate any kind of theoretical knowledge into teachers professional actions. By showing how distance can be eliminated from theory and transformed into practical skill, it is argued that this dualism is not maintainable.     

“Scenes of Subjection” in Public Education: Thinking Intersectionally as If Disability Matters

In this presentation I trouble the ways that critical scholars of difference turn away from the spectral presence of disability in search of more empowering narratives. The alternative narratives they support recreate limiting theorizations of the human/posthuman that continue to support ableist representations of disability. Refusing this disavowal of disability, I insist on looking (not straight but queerly) at disability in a defiant refusal of ableism to argue that disability, rather than being an additive to the discourses of intersectionality, is constitutive of other categories of difference within the historical materialist conditions of transnational capitalism. Drawing on the work of African American literary scholar Saidiya Hartman, Indigenous scholar, Eve Tuck, and award winning fiction writer Jesmyn Ward, I discuss the implications for re-envisioning futures as if disability as a historical materialist category really matters in educational contexts at the intersections of social difference.     

The Home as Educational Space: Bayonne Housing and the Architecture of Working Class Childhood, 1917‐1940

This paper examines an experimental industrial relations program by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in the Bayonne Housing Project and its implications for working class child and family life the interwar period, 1917 to 1939. The medium examined is architecture taken literally as the building of overt spaces for housing and the home but also in Michelle Foucault's sense of the structures of knowledge and understanding which shape our mental spaces thereby disciplining both our body and our mind. The educational facility being examined is the home and workplace which incorporates the intersection between childhood socialization and adult education as manipulated by elites with expert knowledge in the process where by the dominant classes establish hegemonic domination over the working classes.     

New Technology and Learning: Policy and Practice in the UK, 1980–2010

A previous version of this paper was first presented in October 1998 as an inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Huddersfield. It focuses mainly upon issues related to policy and practice in schools, with some cross-referencing to higher education. It is divided into three sections: the politicised nature of policy for new technology in education in the UK; key issues from the author's research on new technology and learning; and speculations on re-organising schooling with the help of new technology. The first section provides an analysis of the aspirations of politicians and how these shaped policy, as well as assessing the successes and weaknesses of policy implementation. The second section surveys the outcomes of a number of research studies, carried out over fifteen years, and from these identifies some generic findings about the impact of new technology on learning and ways of maximising its beneficial effects. The third section suggests an approach to re-structuring schooling to make best use of the lightweight, mobile, new technology tools, which are about to be widely available.     

New Methods in Design Education： The Systemic Methodology and the Use of Sketch in the Conceptual Design Stage

This study describes the application of a new product concurrent design methodologies in the context in the education of industrial design. The use of the sketch has been utilized many times as a tool of creative expression especially in the conceptual design stage, in an intuitive way and a little out of the context of the reality needs that the design should be attended. This methodology systematizes and guides the process of sketching by means of a conceptual model and a geometric model toward a feasible solution, complementing the role of the sketch in the phase of a product conceptual design. The model describes its operating principles, as well as the phases of implementation in the context of teaching the industrial design illustrated with projects carried out in the workshop of conceptual design of the University Technical College of Valencia and University of the Bio-Bio, Chile. Finally, we discuss the implementation of the systemic models, their relation with the optimisation of the sketching process in the conceptual design stage, and their implications in the educational context.     

The Rise and Decline of Comprehensive Education: Key Factors in the History of Reformed Secondary Education in Belgium, 1969–1989

In answer to economic needs and social demands, a structural innovation was introduced in secondary education in most West European countries, mainly in the 1960s. Contrary to the traditional schools, organized in vertical categories, the so‐called comprehensive schools brought together all branches in one school. There was protest against this type of school from the start but it was mainly in the 1980s and 1990s that comprehensive schools came under siege. In most countries the comprehensive structures have been abandoned or adjusted to a more moderate form.

This paper tries to explain the factors that stimulated innovation in the 1960s, and those that counteracted comprehensive education. As will be shown, these factors were not always related to ideological positions. In fact, the reasons for local educational authorities to “go comprehensive” (or not) were often practically rather than ideologically inspired. Theories of “dominant rationality” by Matthijssen and the “referential” by Jobert succeed in surpassing ideological parameters, and can be interesting tools to explain changing mentalities. However, a satisfying explanation for the history of comprehensive education cannot be offered without paying attention to everyday pragmatics, that – in the author's view – have been decisive for the evolution of comprehensive education.

The paper will be illustrated with examples from the Belgian case. Comprehensive schools were introduced in Belgium in 1969. All state public schools went comprehensive in the 1970s, and the number of comprehensive private schools grew rapidly until growth ceased around 1980. The ongoing struggle between Catholic comprehensive and traditional schools led to a compromise created by the Catholic educational authorities, a fusion of comprehensive and traditional elements. This structure was imposed by the Flemish government as a unitary structure for all secondary schools in the Dutch‐speaking part of Belgium in 1989.