The Dynamics of Professional Identity Formation: Graduates’ Transitions from Higher Education to Working Life

This paper explores the development of professional identity as a relationship between professional and personal aspects of life. The focus is on student and novice professional psychologists’ and political scientists’ processes of professional identity formation in their transition from higher education to working life. Drawing on Wenger’s theory of nexus of multimembership (1998), the findings indicate that professional identity is a dynamic relationship between different life spheres rather than an isolated phenomenon only taking place at the university or in the work context. The analysis yielded three different forms of professional identity, non-differentiated identity, compartmentalised identity and integrated identity, which exemplify different negotiated relationships between professional, personal and private life spheres. The findings show that these three forms of professional identities are sequential, from an individual focus to more relational and integrated ways of reasoning about one’s profession. It is through the negotiations between personal and socially derived imperatives that identity formation progresses throughout working lives.     

Vocational Education Students’ Generic Working Life Competencies: Developing a Self-Assessment Instrument

The current study reports on the process of developing a self-assessment instrument for vocational education students’ generic working life competencies. The instrument was developed based on a competence framework and in close collaboration with several vocational education teachers and intermediary organisations offering various human resource services. A first version of the questionnaire was presented to 26 students and 5 recent graduates who were asked to comment on the items. The pilot version of the questionnaire was completed by 826 students. Half of the data were used to explore the structure of the questionnaire (n?=?413) and the other half were used to confirm the structure (n?=?413). The results showed that 8 factors could be distinguished. Further analysis reduced this to 7 usable factors: empathy, listening, assertiveness, professional attitude, problem solving, cooperation ability and, planning and prioritising. The revised questionnaire containing 44 items was tested a second time to determine the stability and measurement invariance of the instrument. In total, 456 students from the first sample completed the questionnaire. The structure was confirmed and measurement invariance across students with and without working experience was established.     

Adult education and the modern nation‐state: reflections on ’Social Commitment and Adult Education‘

This paper, which is situated within a discourse of inclusivity, is concerned with Higher Education's response to the needs of groups, such as working class adults with negative experiences of school, who are currently excluded from higher education throughout Europe. It argues, using illustrations from a case study, that there are a variety of organizational and pedagogical implications that must be addressed if participation is to be widened which relate to both individual ability and attitude and to institutional and situational barriers. It concludes that all universities have conceptions of equity which reflect ideological positions and influence the practice that is seen as acceptable. The dilemma facing those committed to social inclusion is that too much emphasis on the structural can imply that the efforts of individual students are of little consequence in determining success or failure. It is argued that a counter-balancing position is needed in which, whilst acknowledging the contribution of the student, course managers and institutions build structures to challenge the negative effects of inequality.     

Preparing Students for Social Action in a Social Justice Education Course: What Works?

The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of how the curriculum and teaching strategies in a social justice education course prepared them for social action engagement. Past studies using a similar approach to teaching about social justice issues did not include student interviews. Students’ perspectives can shed light on how experiences in a social justice education course prepared them to challenge social oppression and work toward equity in their daily lives. Six students were interviewed one semester after they completed a social justice education course. Findings indicated teaching strategies (e.g., experiential activities) that included students’ lived experiences also increased their personal awareness, empathy, confidence, and knowledge about tools for social action. These teaching strategies were identified more often than content as key in preparing students to take action. Classroom implications are discussed.     

Where’s the Community Practice? Gaps in Community Practice Education in a Clinical-Community Social Work Program

Although the profession of social work has a rich history of supporting community organizing and engagement efforts, there has been a trend toward educational programs that focus heavily on the clinical components of social work. The purpose of this study was to perform an exploratory investigation of the potential need for more community-centered educational content at a school of social work in the Gulf Coast, which advertises itself as offering a clinical-community practice program. Researchers developed and administered a questionnaire to all current students of the School of Social Work to evaluate the program’s efforts to provide a balanced clinical-community practice education. Student responses to the questionnaire suggested that the community practice learning opportunities at the school were not represented equally in quality or quantity to the clinical material. Students reported limited access to field placements that focused on community practice. The researchers suggest that the results of this study are reflective of a potential national trend in social work education toward a narrower focus on clinical practice, and away from its roots in community organizing and advocacy.     

‘I Saw Angry People and Broken Statues’: Historical Empathy in Secondary History Education

Tasks which invite students to identify with historical actors and describe their perspectives are a common phenomenon in history education. The aim of this study is to explore the differences in students’ answers when completing a writing task in first person (‘imagine you are in the past’) or in third person (‘imagine someone in the past’), or a task in which such imagination is not explicitly asked. Furthermore we investigated the effects of the type of task on topic knowledge and situational interest. Students in Dutch secondary education (N = 254) participated by completing a task on the Dutch Iconoclasm. Our analysis of student answers focused on aspects of historical empathy: historical contextualization, affective elements and perspective taking.

Results were that all students gained some knowledge from the task, regardless of the type of task they completed. Students’ situational interest also did not differ between the three tasks. However, students’ written work showed that the first- and third-person writing tasks stimulated students to imagine concrete details of the past and emotions of historical actors. Students who were not explicitly asked to imagine themselves or someone in the past included more perspectives into their writings. Students who completed the task in first person tended to show more presentism and moral judgements of the past than students who completed a task in third person.     

Toward a Social Ontology for Science Education: Introducing Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblages

This essay’s main objective is to develop a theoretical, ontological basis for critical, social justice-oriented science education. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblages, rhizomes, and arborescent structures, this article challenges authoritarian institutional practices, as well as the subject of these practices, and offers a way for critical-social justice-oriented science educators and students to connect with sociopolitical contexts. Through diagramming institutional and community relationships using DG’s theory of assemblages, we envision new ontological spaces that bridge social and material entities. A conceptualization of science education through DG’s philosophy of rhizomes and assemblages allows educators to merge critical, post-foundational perspectives with questions of ontology: not just what exists, but what could exist in terms of human social organizations (governments and community groups), inorganic matter, microorganisms, and plant/animal populations.     

Education and nationalism in Scotland: governing a ‘learning nation’

Abstract

Nationalism is a key resource for the political work of governing Scotland, and education offers the Scottish National Party (SNP) government a policy space in which political nationalism (self determination) along with social and cultural forms of civic nationalism can be formed and propagated, through referencing ‘inwards’ to established myths and traditions that stress the ‘public’ nature of schooling/education/universities and their role in construction of ‘community’; and referencing ‘outwards’, especially to selected Nordic comparators, but also to major transnational actors such as OECD, to education’s role in economic recovery and progress. The SNP government has been very active in the education policy field, and a significant element of its activity lies in promoting a discourse of collective learning in which a ‘learning government’ is enabled to lead a ‘learning nation’ towards the goal of independence. This paper draws on recent research to explore recent and current developments in SNP government education policy, drawing on discourse analysis to highlight the political work that such policy developments seek to do, against the backdrop of continuing constitutional tensions across the UK.     

Citizenship Education and National Identities in France and England: Inclusive or exclusive?

ABSTRACT This paper examines and compares recent citizenship education policy documents from France and England and explores the extent to which they encourage inclusive or exclusive concepts of national identity and citizenship. Current policies are being developed in a context of perceived disillusionment and political apathy amongst the young. Whilst citizenship education has traditionally aimed to prepare young people to take their place in adult society and a national community, today the notion of a single national identity is increasingly questioned. Using framing questions from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) survey of civic education, we examine programmes of study in each country to determine the extent to which they promote human rights as shared values, make positive references to cultural diversity, and conceptualise minorities. We consider the potential of citizenship education thus defined to contribute towards the development of justice and equality in society and challenge racism and xenophobia. We note the strengths and limitations of each approach to education for citizenship and suggest what each might gain from the other.     

What’s in a Name? In Pursuit of Israel Education

Naming a discipline is a key component in both the shaping and unpacking of its development. Still, little attention has been devoted to studying the ways in which this process has influenced Israel Education. Based on a long-term ethnographic study, this article presents Israel Education name choices and discusses the manner in which this naming unfolds and affects the development of this field. I claim that this process symbolizes a development beyond the classroom environment; reflects sociocultural and political changes in Israel-Diaspora relations; and exposes conceptual shifts in Israel pedagogy and transforms the place of Israel in Diaspora Jewish education.     

Comparisons of ‘Education Reform’ in Britain and the USA: a new era?

ABSTRACT

This paper compares and contrasts the origins, objectives and outcomes of the New Right education reform movements in Britain and the USA. It considers whether the education reforms will create a new era for schools, in terms of diversity of public and private provision and social, sexual and racial differentiation. This is despite the emphasis on quality or excellence in education as opposed to equality of educational opportunity. The origins of the reform movements are to be found in both the politics and economic developments of the ‘social democratic’ or ‘liberal’ bipartisan political consensus. The objectives of the reforms are to deal with declining international competitiveness and the raising of educational standards through consumer or parental choice. The outcomes are likely not to be a general raising of standards but rather a bifurcation in terms of a complex mix of class, race and gender.     

Education for economic growth or human development? The capabilities approach and the World Bank’s Basic Education Project in Turkey

Turkey’s recent development plans suggest that, according to state planners, development is no longer identified with, achieved through or measured by economic growth. These documents evince that Turkey has embraced what is referred to as the capability approach. What remains unclear is whether this embrace is substantive or rhetorical. This paper is designed to analyse the extent to which Turkey has operationalised the capability approach in its planning and implementation of education for development projects. I argue that sections of development plans devoted to social policies reflect several themes of the capability approach. However, analysis of an education for development project in Turkey demonstrates that the capability approach has gained limited traction in practice. Equity, inclusion, participation and critical thinking in the World Bank’s Basic Education Project are either insufficiently realised or subordinated to productivity and competition within the global market.     

Education or Service? Remarks on teaching and learning in the entrepreneurial university

German universities come under fire: in contemporary political discourse they are considered to be antiquated, inefficient and unfit for international competition. Accordingly, the German government implemented an extensive program of reforms. Following the so‐called ‘Sorbonne Declaration’, the universities shall become part of an European higher education system with comparable and compatible structures. With the focus on the field of academic teaching and learning, this essay discusses the way of defining these activities in a new, entrepreneurial way, and the implications of this process within the university. The reflections lead to the thesis that the actual reforms ask for new forms of critique, because the neoliberal offer of marketable ways to teach and to learn makes the enduring asymmetry of power relations within the educational field invisible, endangers the democratic character of the university and trivializes education.     

Uniquely Similar or Similarly Unique? Education and development of teachers in Europe

Teacher education is at present being re-shaped in some, mainly Anglophone, countries by a variety of policies. Although some of the same trends are discernible in mainland Europe, other inheritances and perspectives are also evident. The present paper focuses on five European trends in the education and development of teachers: professionalism, inheritances, research, feminisation and globalisation. It is proposed that "Anglophone" policies (which are equated with neo-liberalism) and "European" policies (which are equated with social democracy) have different emphases and priorities, though, in turn, are shaped by specific national cultures and histories. At the same time, shared concerns are evident across nations, policies, cultures and histories--hence the question posed in the title of the paper as to whether teacher education in different countries is "Uniquely Similar or Similarly Unique?".     

The Role of Teachers and Schooling Experiences in Learners’ Adult Life Quality: A Senegalese Case Study

School attended, Qur’anic education attendance, fathers’ occupation, and some aspects of teachers’ classroom actions make a difference for the adult life of the former learners. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of the career and life situations of Senegalese individuals who were of school age in the beginning of the 1980s. Data was collected on teacher ratings and predictions of school success as well as absenteeism during the academic year 1980/1981. In a follow up study in 1999/2000 the individuals were 25-32 years old and they were interviewed and tested on a simple life-skills test.