Commonality among diversity

Senior lecturer, Department of Education, University of Hong Kong; board member, Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration; founding chairman, Hong Kong Council for Educational Administration Author of China's Education on the Move (1990), Planning Basic Education in China: Two Case Studies in the Province of Liaoning (research report for UNICEF, published by IIEP).     

Comparative education and education sciences: Variations on an old theme

where he teaches comparative education. Until 1988, President of the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE). Member of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and Vice-President of the Spanish Comparative Education Society. Publications include: Fundamentos de Educación Comparada (1982, 1986), Problemas mundiales de la educación (1982, 1986), Sistemas educativos de hoy (1984, 1987), Primary Education on the Threshold of the Twenty-first Century(published in Spanish and French; 1986 and 1987) and Pedagogía prospectiva (1989). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals of various countries.     

Supercomplexity and the university: Ronald Barnett and the social philosophy of Higher Education

Ronald Barnett's modern classic Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity (published December 1999), has had a crucial impact internationally on the field of Higher Education research and development since the book was published now nearly 20 years ago. Bridging an academic oeuvre across almost 30 years with close to 30 published volumes, Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity plays an important role in the development and transformation of Barnett's social theory of Higher Education into a social philosophy of Higher Education. In the book Barnett performs an important move from a focus on knowledge and epistemology to a focus on being and ontology in relation to Higher Education practices. Barnett shifts his fundamental perspective and view on the relation between universities and the wider society from one of caution and worry to a perspective of hope and vision that fully embraces the future of Higher Education. This way, Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity has not only paved the way for Barnett's own development of a social philosophy of Higher Education, but also contributed invaluably to the rise and maturing of philosophy of Higher Education as a research field in its own right.     

Explanations by University Presidential Assistant Zhang Weiying Regarding the Second Draft for Soliciting Opinions of the "Plan for Reforming Beijing University's Engagements and Promotions System" (Draft for Soliciting Opinions)

Rural Education (I) presented an overview of developments from the late 1970s through the early 1990s and was published in Chinese Education and Society, vol. 27, no. 5 (September–October 1994). Rural Education (II) focused on the critical 1987–1989 years, in Chinese Education and Society, vol. 29, no. 1 (January–February 1996). Rural Education (III) continues with selections from 1990 through early 1996.     

Citation Patterns in Recent Issues of Counselor Education and Supervision

This study compares the citation patterns of Counselor Education and Supervision with those of the Personnel and Guidance Journal, the Journal of Counseling Psychology, and the Counseling Psychologist. Citations from Counselor Education and Supervision for 1979 and 1980 were analyzed in terms of the most frequently cited authors and works published prior to and after 1958. The findings reveal that although there is some overlap between the works and authors cited in Counselor Education and Supervision and those cited in the counseling psychology journals, there is a sizable and unique body of literature and pool of authors cited in Counselor Education and Supervision. The impact of multiple authorship, the dependence function (within-journal citation) and other issues in counseling citation research are discussed.     

A Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education

England's university reform received its initial strong impetus from the Robbins Report (Higher Education, London, HMSO, 1963). During recent years, the focus and dimensions of this reform movement have passed beyond the concerns of the Robbins Report toward broader access to colleges and the rapprochement of academic higher learning and "further education," i.e., continued education for young adults. This trend is discussed in the following article, which was originally published in the Higher Education Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, Summer 1971 (now published by Tyrrell Burgess Associates, Ltd., 34 Sandilands, Croydon, England).     

Michael Sadler and the German Connection

Abstract

The peoples of Germany and their culture were a major preoccupation of Michael Sadler from his first visits to eastern Germany in the 1890s to his ultimate analysis of the Nazi‐zeit in 1940. Whilst holding the post of first Director of the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports (1895‐1903) he organised the publication of 11 massive volumes of reports and it is significant that papers dealing with German themes are numerous. Volume IX in 1902 is devoted to Education in Germany. In 1907 he published the results of his study of continuation schools and the pioneering of his friend Georg Kerschensteiner and in 1908 he edited the report of an international enquiry into Moral Education with a keynote essay by another of his German friends Professor Rudolf Eucken. The quintessence of all this pre‐war study is contained in an address on England's Debt to German Education which Sadler gave in Frankfurt‐am‐Main in 1912 when he suggested eight lessons that could be learnt from the German experience. Throughout the first world war Sadler wrote and spoke much about parallel movements in German and English education. Between the first and second world wars he watched apprehensively the emergence of Nazism. In his diary of November 1940 he attempted to identify seven tendencies of the 1930s which, had the Nazi leadership not been so powerful in curbing public opinion and ensuring totalitarian control, would have proved constructive and made a contribution towards unifying Europe economically andpolitically.     

BLACK MORATORIUM IN AUSTRALIA

The following article is reprinted from Education, published by the New South Wales Federation of Teachers in Sydney. Since original publication of this article, a general election brought a new government into office which is pledged to a program of reform in aboriginal welfare.     

Provisional Regulations of the State Education Commission Concerning the Work of Sending Scholars Abroad

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 10—With approval from the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the State Education Commission recently published "Provisional Regulations of the State Education Commission Concerning the Work of Sending Scholars Abroad."     

SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN GARY

This article contains the major findings and recommendations of a study of ability grouping. The writers are associated with College of Education, University of Georgia. A more detailed report of the study is available from the Center for Educational Improvement, College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30601     

European Survey of Master's and Doctoral Dissertions in Science Education

Editorial comment and summaries

English

Drs Kjöllerström and Lybeck present here a brief report of their European survey of master's and doctoral dissertations in science education, undertaken subsequently to a workshop on Research in Science Education in Europe held at Malente, FR Germany in 1976. The full report of their survey has recently been published by the Institute for Science Education (IPN), Kiel, FR Germany.

The article published here reports on the distribution, size and organization of science education research groups, their areas of research interest and higher degree programmes. It also surveys the main areas of science education research at master's and doctoral level undertaken during the period 1971‐1976, and the employment taken up by master's and doctoral students upon completion of their studies.     

Achieving the Lisbon Goal: the contribution of Vocational Education and Training

This article summarises the main conclusions of the ‘Maastricht study’: Achieving the Lisbon Goal: The Contribution of VET ( Leney et al., 2004 ), which the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), in collaboration with the Institute of Education and other international partners, prepared for the European Commission's DG Education and Culture in 2004. Based on the self‐assessment reports prepared by the Directors‐General for VET (DGVTs) of 31 European countries, and on independent expert reviews of the national and international literature on VET, the report analysed the contribution of VET to achieving the Lisbon goal and influenced the framing of the Maastricht Communiqué which the European education ministers agreed in December 2004. This summary of the findings of the report is organised under the following sections: 1) The potential of VET as an aspect of European cooperation; 2) The current state of play and progress of VET towards achieving the Lisbon goal; 3) Innovation in VET teaching and learning; and 4) Conclusions.     

This way please! Improving school leadership: the OECD way

In August 2008, the OECD published Improving School Leadership Volume 1: Policy and Practice and Improving School Leadership Volume 2: Case Studies on System Leadership. The main objectives of these reports were to compare school leadership policy between participating countries and to identify innovative practices and options for policy development. As part of the preparation for the final report, a background report on school leadership in the Republic of Ireland was prepared by the Department of Education and Science in 2007. This report will be analysed in this paper in order to identify the degree to which the background report achieved the objective of capturing the current and emerging issues facing school leaders in Ireland. A critique of the ‘one size fits all’ approach to policy in the area of school leadership detailed in Volume 1 of the OECD report follows. This critique contests that some of the policy recommendations contained in the report are based on a narrow and selective range of supporting evidence. A number of these are a cause of some concern particularly when considered in the context of specific features of the schools in the Republic of Ireland.     

Reconceptualising dyslexia provision in a primary school by applying the five ‘special educational needs in mainstream school’ EEF recommendations: meeting identified need in order to thrive

This article reports on an action-research improvement project undertaken in a primary school setting in London in collaboration with local authority advisors and a reference school. It describes the journey towards the goal of becoming a dyslexia-friendly school framed by the five key recommendations of the Education Endowment Fund recently published guidance report Special Educational Needs in Mainstream School. I argue that this framing supports the thriving of individuals, rather than perpetuating a reliance on outdated diagnosis-led support. I conclude that the EEF recommendations can support practitioners to embed inclusive practices that take individual needs seriously but reject deficit models of disability.     

FREEDOM DAY II IN CHICAGO

The following article consists of extracts from a recent UNESCO report, Better Teachers, which describes a joint project of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the UNESCO Institute of Education in Beirut. The complete report is obtainable from UNIPUB, P. O. Box 433, New York, New York 10016.     

Higher education and social change

An agenda for future higher education research is proposed which incorporates four interconnected elements: changing social contexts; their implications for higher education; mechanisms of interaction between higher education and society; higher education’s impact on society. The role of comparative research in investigating these topics is discussed and a set of priorities for future research questions is proposed. This final article draws heavily on the HELF final report published by the European Science Foundation entitled Higher Education Looking Forward: an agenda for future research and written by the author together with Jurgen Enders, Christine Musselin, Ulrich Teichler and Jussi Valimaa. The author acknowledges the contributions of his co-authors of the HELF report to the ideas and words contained in the present article.     

The School and ‘Contestation'∗

(The Editors are pleased to publish this article by Monsieur Maurice Niveau, Rector of the Academy of Lille, because it raises many issues that are also topical in English education: politicization of educational problems, inability to achieve a consensus, the effects of a hierarchical administration, and the composition and powers of school governing bodies (this last was discussed in the context of the Green Paper by Mr Joslyn Owen, the Chief Education Officer for Devonshire, in an article in our last issue). The recent House of Commons Expenditure Committee report ('The Attainments of the School Leaver’, HMSO, London March 1978) recommended that we should seek more information on education elsewhere in Western Europe. The publication of this paper is one small contribution to greater knowledge in this area. The paper was first published in French in the Revue de la Défense Nationale, Paris, July 1977.

Monsieur Niveau, as Rector of Lille, is nominal head of all educational institutions, including universities, in one of the largest and most densely populated ‘académies’ (educational administrative divisions) in France. He is no stranger to Britain and was one of the OECD ‘examiners’ who reported to that organization on the state of English education and which criticized the alleged secrecy of the DES. (cf. Reviews of National Policies for Education, England, OECD Paris 1977.))     

Twenty years of World Bank support for basic education

Chief of the Education and Employment Division in the World Bank's Population and Human Resources Department. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked for UNESCO and UNICEF in Africa. He has published extensively on educational planning and management; he is co-author, with Marlaine Lockheed, of Improving Primary Education in Developing Countries: A Review of Policy Options.