Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the neo-liberal subject

While the concept of class does not sit easily with a very changed labour market in which traditional markers of working-class masculinity have been eroded and many people would not define themselves in class terms, the differences and inequalities associated with class have certainly far from disappeared. This article aims to explore how we might think about the ways that 'class' enters the production of subjectivities in the present. In particular, the article explores the way in which narratives of upward mobility are lived as success and failure, hope and despair, for some young women entering the labour market in Britain at the turn of the millennium. The multiplicity and fracturing of past and present, belonging, not belonging, the dreams, aspirations and defences are explored in some detail.     

当代青年的道德构建与和谐教育观

处于社会转型期的青年的道德体系建构受到了很大的冲击,呈现诸多不和谐的现实状况。分析产生种种不和谐的成因,借鉴中外“和谐”教育思想的本质内涵,从而在“和谐”教育观的指导下实现青年道德构建是完全必要的。从宏观层面营造和谐的道德构建环境,包括和谐的价值取向、和谐的构建内容、和谐的构建方法、和谐的评价体系；从微观层面完善青年和谐的道德心理结构,包括和谐的道德认知能力、和谐的道德实践能力、和谐的道德人格养成。     

Gender and Education: a view from Latin America

Gender and Education publishes articles that are considered as key references in the field, but at present the journal has limited connection with Gender Studies in Latin America. To understand this, all the titles and abstracts of the issues published between 2011 and 2013 were read. In this period, Gender and Education published 141 original articles, and among them only four were about Latin America. Altering this situation demands specific actions, including those that the Editorial Board is already planning. However, such reading brought to light many other questions that might be analysed in the context of the North/South division of intellectual labour. This essay discusses only one of them: the fact that articles about countries in the global South often identify their location in their titles, while this is rare among papers about metropolitan countries. An apparently simple change is suggested: that the authors question themselves about how far their ideas are understandable to readers from other parts of the world.     

Contributions from citizen science to science education: an examination of a biodiversity citizen science project with schools in Central Europe

ABSTRACT

Despite the rising popularity of Citizen Science (CS) projects, there is little empirical evidence for effects on learning outcomes, particularly when young people are involved. It is also often not clear how CS projects are linked to science education (SE) research. The aim of this study was to examine biodiversity CS projects in an outdoor school class context and to measure the effects on individual learning outcomes (ILOs) with a perspective for SE. Five learning outcomes considered important for CS were tested: interest, self-efficacy/mastery, motivation, behaviour and attitude. These ILOs were measured via eight different scales and tested in an evaluation study of a large CS project with 428 students aged 8–18. Students recorded hedgehogs, wild bee activity, birds and butterflies in gardens. Results showed that students’ interest and motivation, as well as perceived mastery increased during the project. Most remarkably, positive attitudes towards wild animals, natural gardens and biodiversity rose significantly. For most ILOs there were significant differences between age groups: Primary school students showed the highest ILOs and also provided most database entries. The authors describe how well biodiversity CS projects contribute to SE aims and how discrepancies between educational and scientific aims in CS projects may be addressed.     

The student with a thousand faces: from the ethics in video games to becoming a citizen

Video games, as technological and cultural artifacts of considerable influence in the contemporary society, play an important role in the construction of identities, just as other artifacts (e.g., books, newspapers, television) played for a long time. In this paper, we discuss this role by considering video games under two concepts, othering and technopoly, and focus on how these concepts demand that we deepen our understanding of the ethics of video games. We address here how the construction of identities within video games involves othering process, that is, processes through which, when signifying and identifying ??Ourselves??, we create and marginalize ??Others??. Moreover, we discuss how video games can play an important role in the legitimation of the technopoly, understood as a totalitarian regime related to science, technology and their place in our societies. Under these two concepts, understanding the ethics of video games goes beyond the controversy about their violence. The main focus of discussion should lie in how the ethics of video games is related to their part in the formation of the players?? citizenship. Examining several examples of electronic games, we consider how video games provide a rich experience in which the player has the opportunity to develop a practical wisdom (phronesis), which can lead her to be a virtuous being. However, they can be also harmful to the moral experiences of the subjects when they show unethical contents related to othering processes that are not so clearly and openly condemned as violence, as in the cases of sexism, racism or xenophobia. Rather than leading us to conclude that video games needed to be banned or censored, this argument makes us highlight their role in the (science) education of critical, socially responsible, ethical, and politically active citizens, precisely because they encompass othering processes and science, technology, and society relationships.     

International student security: a view from Beijing

Security is an integral component of the relationships that shape the lives of students hosted by foreign countries. International student security became a source of contention between nations in 2008 when China's Government charged that Australia was failing to adequately provide for the safety of Chinese students. We discuss Beck's theorisation of the ‘risk society’ and Clements' notion of balancing risk with opportunity. We draw on interviews undertaken in Beijing to highlight the importance of student security and the need for hosts to accord attention to the views of parents as well as students. Our findings reveal that parents play a major role in the study‐location decision, tend to accord security greater weight than do students when location is being debated within the family, utilise a range of strategies to keep students secure and believe host governments and institutions have primary responsibility for student well‐being.     

Authentically assessing graduate teaching: outside and beyond neo-liberal constructs

In this paper, we challenge the current focus on ‘best practice’, graduate teacher tests, and student test scores as the panacea for ensuring teaching quality and argue for ways of thinking about evidence of quality beginning teaching outside and beyond the current neoliberal accountability discourses circulating in Australia and other countries. We suggest that teacher educators need to reinsert themselves as key players in the debates around quality beginning teaching, rather than being viewed as a source of the problem. To enable teacher educators to assume accountability for quality beginning teachers, we propose the framework of a capstone teacher performance assessment—a structured portfolio called the Authentic Teacher Assessment (ATA)—and examine examples of these assessments through the lens of critical discourse analysis. As a measure of ‘readiness to teach’, the ATA is compared with supervising teachers’ assessments of preservice teachers. We argue that structured portfolios that include artefacts derived from preservice teachers’ practice in classrooms along with graduate teacher self assessments provide a stronger accountability measure of effective beginning teaching and demonstrably address the current anxiety regarding ‘evidence’. We suggest that such an approach should be reliable enough to be ‘read’ by external assessors (and moderated across other teacher education institutions). Rigorous research on a national basis is called for in order to develop and implement a structured portfolio as rich evidence of graduates’ quality and readiness to teach.     

Making art invisible: visual education and the cultural stagnation of neo-liberal rationality

The popularity of visual literacy may have resulted, in part, from some school authorities rushing the process of determining school curriculum. This article argues that the haste is reflective of pressure placed on educational discourse to conform to neo-liberal reforms of the sector, and is not the result of a careful and complex debate within the education community. In Australia, such reform has contributed to the erosion of visual art as a discrete subject in the general curriculum. The article accounts for the fact that the lack of careful debate may be due to art educators rehearsing tired arguments for retaining the place occupied by visual art, which smack of sentimentality. The author examines the conceptualisation of visual art at a cultural and theoretical level, and argues that by considering the function art has traditionally played in relation to conceptions of human subjectivity, we may disclose the marginalisation of visual art as a signal of much larger threats to political and economic structures in democratic society. The article considers whether the absorption of ‘art’ within a broader preference for visual communication, graphic design, or design and technology, is symptomatic of a long-term cultural stagnation.     

Enfranchising the profession through evaluation: a story from Australia

Educational reform in Australia recognizes the need for an effective teacher evaluation system but has fallen short of actually prescribing one. Current practice does not align to policy intent, with teacher evaluation largely an exercise in compliance around performance management as opposed to a process that promotes evaluative thinking, continuous improvement and connection to student outcomes. The recent introduction of the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching has gone some way to providing a common language and the idea of a nationally acceptable pathway for teacher development and performance. Nonetheless, two things are missing in the Australian context: the privileging of developing evaluative mindsets in teachers and school leaders and the tools and methods that provide the ‘how’ of evaluation and support this thinking. Situated against a period of reform in Australia’s diverse federal and multi-sectoral education system, this article first provides an analytical review of the Australian approach to teacher evaluation. It then presents two innovative approaches that support the process of evaluation and the broader information needs of an evaluation system while developing teachers’ and school leaders’ evaluative thinking which engages evidence-informed change and ultimately more sustainable outcomes for the education system.     

Insights beyond neo-liberal educational practices: the value of discourse analysis

This article discusses the nature, power and effects of neo-liberal rationale in educational settings. By introducing discourse analysis of two cases, the influence of neo-liberal ideology on contemporary curricula and school programs were examined. The analysis showed that dominant discourses based on neo-liberal rationale presented themselves as “unquestionable truths” that influenced how educators interacted with others and went about their profession. The dominant discourses relied upon assertions by consensus or common conception and understanding to create an “officially” sanctioned way of thinking about education. Proponents of a particular dominant discourse argued that such sanctions were a necessary feature of an initiative or innovation, and provided a focus for energy and activism, winning teachers’ support, and conveying to the wider community a sense of purpose, action and rational planning; a clear path to salvation. On the other hand, these dominant discourses had a necessary effect in obscuring other perspectives and disallowing critique from taking place. This article argues that discourse analysis provides a platform to interrogate the dominant discourses to reveal alternative or previously unseen perspectives.     

A disjointed multi-campus system: the neo-liberal expansion and fragmentation of Mozambican higher education

This paper tries to accomplish two tasks. First, it uses a critical review of the concept of differentiation to shed light on the expansion of the Mozambican higher education system, a consequence of the global neoliberal dynamics of higher education. Second, the neoliberal framework is applied to account for the development of multi-campus systems in the country. The paper argues that, on the one hand, the dispersion of multi-campuses resulted from an early stage of loosely regulated expansion and differentiation of higher education in the context of the liberalisation of higher education. On the other hand, the competition for students, in a market driven economy dominated by the existence of two main public institutions absorbing two-thirds of the students, prompted the establishment of satellite campuses by both private and public institutions, with serious and adverse implications for quality.     

The Slovak Ethical Education Project: a view from the UK

This article provides a brief introduction to the Slovak Ethical Education Project and outlines some issues and parallels for values education in the UK.