Participation Patterns in Higher Education: a comparative welfare and production régime perspective

This article considers the counter-intuitive observation that some of the wealthiest nations can feature low tertiary graduation rates (e.g. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland). It also considers the observation that many countries with high tertiary graduation rates show low levels of social equity, while many countries with low tertiary graduation rates show high levels of social equity. These observations are considered through the lenses of institutional perspectives, and specifically welfare and production régime theories. The analysis elaborates on educational attainment, patterns and key aspects of economic functioning and development, and educational attainment patterns and their relationship to social inequality.     

‘When one person makes it,we all make it’: a study of Beyond Welfare,a women‐centered community‐based organization that helps low‐income mothers achieve personal and academic success

Access to post‐secondary education for welfare recipients has been profoundly curtailed by social and welfare policies. However, many low‐income mothers know that post‐secondary education is the best means to escape poverty. This article focuses on five ‘student mothers’ who have persisted in fulfilling their dreams of a college education with the aid of Beyond Welfare, a community‐based organization (CBO) that helps soften the hardships of juggling family, college, and work while in poverty. Based on interviews with five Beyond Welfare participants, this article explores the organization’s role in supporting the student mothers’ personal and academic success. This article illustrates how important it is for student mothers to have a supportive community, education focused on the structural barriers to leaving poverty, and encouragement for academic success. To conclude, the article reflects on why educators need to become involved in activism and research on behalf of low‐income families.     

Troubling our Desires for Research and Writing within the Academic Development Project

In this paper, I speculate on the work ‘usefulness’ does to regulate the research and writing of the scholarship of academic development project. My argument is not that academic developers ought to repudiate a fidelity to usefulness; rather, I want to expand our ideas for the possibilities of research and writing beyond purposes of institutional performativity that so often dominate the agenda. In essence, it is an argument for redeploying how we see usefulness. My search has led me to traditions of arts‐based inquiry. It is that form of inquiry that invites the academic development community to consider the narratives that constitute, organize, and render its scholarship meaningful. It is also that form of inquiry that supports academic developers’ inhabiting, perhaps even desiring, a creative space in which to examine and re‐imagine what can be legitimately written about the project of academic development.

Dans cet article, je spécule sur comment la notion « d’utilité » régule la recherche et la rédaction relatives au projet de développement pédagogique érudit. Mon argument n’est pas que les conseillers pédagogiques doivent renoncer à être fidèles à cette notion d’utilité ; plutôt, je désire élargir nos idées de façon à rendre possible la recherche et la rédaction au‐delà des buts reliés à la performativité institutionnelle qui dominent si souvent l’agenda. Essentiellement, il s’agit là d’un argument en faveur du redéploiement de notre façon d’envisager l’utilité. Mes recherches m’ont menée vers les traditions artistiques d’investigation. Cette forme d’investigation invite la communauté du développement pédagogique à considérer les récits qui constituent, organisent et rendent significatifs son érudition. C’est aussi cette forme d’investigation qui amène les conseillers pédagogiques à habiter, voire même désirer, un espace créatif à l’intérieur duquel ils peuvent examiner ou ré‐imaginer ce qui peut légitimement être écrit au sujet du projet de développement pédagogique.     

Making visible the literacy practices of elders through the day in the life methodology: considerations for literacy education across the lifespan

This pilot study uses ‘day in the life' methodology to observe the everyday literacy practices of a self‐identified thriving elder. Through the case of one nonagenarian female residing in an assisted living community in the United States, we identified the multimodal, posthuman nature of this elder's literacies, exploring how they were connected to a sense of well‐being and the types of literacies that remain relevant across the lifespan. We further consider what the insights gained from such a study might teach about literacy education more generally. We advocate for education that keeps open people's literacy options across the lifespan through acknowledging and cultivating the myriad interrelated constituents of literacies, including the physical, social and political.     

List of Reviewers

Research supervision development often focuses on improving the quality of researcher/student interactions and outcomes. Hence, academic development activity is usually oriented towards the development of individual capacities and practices. More recently, however, the focus has changed to the research enhancement needs of twenty‐first century institutions, recognising them as complex, research‐oriented workplaces. In this paper we present a model of academic development for institutional change which is situated within the framework of complexity theory: we use a case study based on a large‐scale change process to demonstrate our findings. The paper illuminates the position of research‐supervisor education as only one element of a complex system of changes that are necessary to effect sustained improvement in the quality of research and research training.

Le développement de la supervision de recherche se concentre souvent sur l’amélioration de la qualité des interactions entre chercheur et étudiant, ainsi que sur l’amélioration des résultats. Ainsi, les activités de développement pédagogique sont généralement orientées vers le développement de compétences et de pratiques individuelles. Cependant, le centre d’intérêt s’est plus récemment déplacé vers les besoins d’amélioration de la recherche au sein d’institutions du 21e siècle, les reconnaissant du coup comme des lieux de travail complexes, orientés sur la recherche. Dans cet article, nous présentons un modèle du développement pédagogique visant le changement institutionnel, lequel est situé dans le cadre de la théorie de la complexité. De façon à faire la démonstration des résultats, nous faisons appel à une étude de cas qui repose sur un processus de changement à grande échelle. L’article met en lumière le fait que la formation à la supervision de recherche ne constitue qu’un élément au sein d’un système complexe de changements nécessaires à l’amélioration soutenue de la qualité de la recherche et de la formation à la recherche.     

浅析西方国家福利经济制度的改革

20世纪80年代以来,由于政治、经济、社会等多方面的原因,西方各“福利国家”对福利经济制度进行了大幅度的改革。各国的改革大都比较注意根据经济形势的变化而对福利经济制度进行调整,已取得了一定的成绩,但也付出了经济增长率下降、失业率大幅度上升、贫富差距扩大、罢工增加等代价。而且,各国的福利经济制度改革出现了诸如公平与效率、福利经济制度的建立是根据“供给”还是“需求推动”、如何改进公共行政部门的低效率等问题。发达国家福利经济制度的改革对于我国福利经济制度的改革和完善、社会保障制度的改革具有重要的借鉴作用和参考价值。     

No Ivies,Oxbridge, or grandes écoles: constructing distinctions in university choice

Although we know a great deal about college choice in nations such as the United States, we know considerably less about how college choice operates in settings lacking well-defined hierarchies between higher education institutions. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, students from high socio-economic status backgrounds are over-represented in the Ivy League, Oxbridge, and grandes écoles, respectively. In nations without these hierarchies, how do privileged families distinguish between very similar institutions? Using the example of Canada, notable for its relative institutional flatness, I show that privileged families construct their own hierarchies and tap into established hierarchies in other nations. The data come from an ethnographic study of two elite private high schools in Toronto, Canada.     

Ontplooiing door communicatie: Geschiedenis van het onderwijs aan doven en slechthorenden in Nederland

During the French Revolution, education became an important instrument of socio‐cultural change; not only was it to consolidate the new Republic in its fight against the ancien régime, it was also to create the intellectual preconditions for the constitution of a civil society. The author analyzes this issue under the aspect of the theory of social modernization and mobilization. His main thesis is the fact that central contradictions of “modernization” which strongly influenced the development of education during the 19th century and which point to unsolved problems of modern society were already apparent during the French Revolution. These contradictions were based on a parallel development of enlightenment and bureaucratic rationalization, “demystification” and the search for new moral and religious ties, social rationalization and the construction of new forms of community. Education not only became a way to speed up modernization but also to resolve or even hide the contradictions of modernization.     

基于利益相关者的公立高校董事会治理结构研究

公立高校董事会治理结构是指为实现高校的教育目标,就高校内部治理的组织机构设置及其相互之间权力配置、制衡与激励等进行的制度安排,以及对高校与外部利益相关者等关系进行处理的机制安排。因而,在对国内公立高校董事会发展状况全面分析的基础上,从利益相关者视角,探讨构建公立高校董事会治理结构的途径。     

Firm-provided Training in Europe and the Limits of National Skills Strategies

This article addresses cross-country and cross-period differences in average levels of training activity from an institutional perspective. Firm-provided training in Europe between 1999 and 2010 is scrutinized in order to explore whether diverse institutional arrangements that can be linked to welfare state regimes can yield discernible cross-country patterns. An emphasis is placed on the limits of national skills strategies that are not well embedded in wider institutional environments. This is grounded in a view that policy efforts to influence training activity, involves nothing less than ‘reforming’ societies. Insights of this research should contribute both to a critical reflection of the EU's targets in the field of lifelong learning as well as supporting policy learning between member states.     

The long road—how evolving institutional governance mechanisms are changing the face of quality in Portuguese higher education

While a lot has been written regarding the changing management and governance arrangements in higher education, less is known about how this progression relates to quality in higher education. The purpose of this article is to describe the context of governance in Portuguese higher education institutions and how institutional governance arrangements impact on quality and quality assurance mechanisms of higher education. The study is based on four institutional cases studies, comprising two universities and two polytechnic institutions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers, middle managers, academics and students from Arts and Engineering, and documentary analysis was undertaken. The main findings show that national and institutional features of governance and management may influence the implementation of quality policy and procedures, and indeed quality improvement. The different institutional actors seem to be aware of the dynamic nature of the equilibrium between positive and negative impacts and recognise the need for checks and balances in the governance and management structures of higher education institutions, especially between collegial and managerial facets.     

Higher Education as the Producer,Transmitter, and Broker of Knowledge as well as of Competence

Higher education is a rapidly changing mutant. In post‐industrial society, the entire world of higher education is being questioned because new and different producers, transmitters, and brokers of knowledge and competence have emerged and are now flourishing. As the result of a wide‐ranging research exercise on reforms in higher education within the European Union Member States, this article discusses the most crucial problems and contradictions of the present life of the university and non‐University sectors of higher education and suggests the justifications for and the conditions of their new role within the globalization of economics and information. The relationships between research and teaching, academic and professional preparation, the independence of “culture” and its responsiveness to social demands, as well as the relevant changes in the types of publics entering higher education are critically assessed, and a new mission for the whole system of higher education is suggested.     

The idea of impact and its implications for academic development work

In the current context of higher education, those working in academic development feel the need to demonstrate the impact that their work makes on achieving desired institutional outcomes. In this paper, we examine the concept of impact, consider the various meanings of impact and review ways that the term has been used rhetorically and conceptually in relation to academic development. We explore our experience of working in an academic development unit (ADU) and what role impact may have played in our motivations and outcomes. Specifically, we document the changes in the focus, format and language of the ADU's annual reports over three years and reflect on what these revealed to us about our approach to academic development work and the idea of impact.

Dans le contexte actuel de l'enseignement supérieur, ceux qui oeuvrent dans le domaine du développement pédagogique ressentent le besoin de démontrer l'impact de leur travail en relation avec les résultats institutionnels escomptés. Dans cet article, nous examinons la notion d'impact, nous étudions ses diverses significations et nous passons en revue les façons avec lesquelles cette notion a été utilisée aux plans rhétorique et conceptuel en lien avec le développement pédagogique. Nous explorons notre expérience de travail au sein d'une unité de développement pédagogique (ADU) et quel rôle l'impact a pu jouer à l'égard de nos motivations et de nos résultats. De façon plus spécifique, nous documentons les changements de focus, de format ou de langage observés dans les rapports annuels de notre ADU sur une période de trois ans et réfléchissons à ce que cela nous a révélé au sujet de notre approche à l'égard du travail de développement pédagogique et de la notion d'impact.     

Childhood learning,life skills and well‐being in adult life: a Senegalese case

Education is not easily converted into human capital and well‐being in low‐income countries, because these countries do not have a high degree of economic and labour market differentiation that makes it possible to convert acquired knowledge and skills. Consequently, to have completed primary or even secondary education does not necessarily lead to a better life situation than some types of Islamic education. This paper reports findings from an ongoing longitudinal research project in Senegal. The study compares the relationships between educational/learning background, life skills and well‐being in adult life among individuals who attended primary school, Quranic, Arabic or Indigenous learning systems at the beginning of the 1980s. The findings illustrate some of the complexities in the relationships between, on the one hand, education and life skills and, on the other hand, individual well‐being in a low‐income society. Since this study enters into an area that has not been very much researched, this study is explorative and employs concepts heuristically. Some findings in relation to different theoretical approaches are also discussed here.     

A fresh approach to child protection practice and legislation in Australia

This paper outlines some of the findings and approaches of the Victorian Review. It assesses a stylized "orthodox model" of child welfare law and practice, a model which remains in many Australian jurisdictions and which has its popularity in Britain, Canada, and the United States. It concludes that serious consideration should be given to rebuilding and strengthening these arrangements. This entails emphasis on utilizing laws to serve an educative function and facilitating access by children and families to preventive and support services. It argues that a broad concept of neglect should be adopted and that the "welfare orientation" of the Children's Court requires reconsideration, because the capacity of courts to resolve entrenched structural problems of society has been overrated. Welfare practice, and specifically a community approach to welfare, should shape the primary response to protection of children; judicial involvement should be a last resort.     

LUMIÈRES,LIBÉRALISME ET ÉDUCATION EN ESPAGNE. AUTOUR DE DEUX BICENTENAIRES: LA MORT DE CHARLES III (1788) ET LA RÉVOLUTION FRANÇAISE (1789)

The outstanding events of the years 1988 and 1989 in the field of historical research were the bicentenary of the death of the “enlightened monarch”, Charles III of Spain and that of the French Revolution. Those years were devoted mainly to the Enlightenment ("La llustración” in Spain) and the first phase of revolutionary liberalism, the reform movement and the final death throes of the “ancien régime”, the rise of a new liberal social and political order, with diverse viewpoints certainly as far as the placing of the reform movement within a historical perspective is concerned. Differences exist between those who lay the emphasis on the changes and innovations and those who bring out the weaknesses and limitations of the Enlightenment. Compared to the 70s during which the main priority was given to university reform, the work recently carried out has stressed primary and mass education together with the new educational establishments of the Enlightenment era and the reforms undertaken in the fields of secondary, professional and technical education as well as the new scientific institutions and scientific activity in general.     

On the Ethics of Open‐Mindedness in the Age of Trump

Is it always ethical to ask a person to be “open‐minded” in volatile political contexts? What might open‐mindedness entail and when might such an expectation be harmful? Drawing on observations and interviews related to a controversial dialogue that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, following the violent Unite the Right rally of August 2017, Rachel Wahl argues, first, that whether we might consider someone “open‐minded” has little to do with their participation in processes that formally affirm and even genuinely aim for this virtue. Second, the division between people who view civil dialogue as the key to social progress and people who aver that direct resistance is what is called for is rooted in deeply different conceptions of the social world and what ails the nation. This divide is at once a response to the political moment and to the human condition, as it is a manifestation of an enduring tension between openness and commitment. Third, the disposition to be what one might call “open‐minded” about this division is premised on how one understands one's self and life. While popular and philosophical conceptions of this division tend to valorize either openness or commitment, Wahl draws on René Arcilla's conception of a life of education in order to articulate how these might be integrated. The possibility of understanding one's life as an education illustrates what may have made it possible for one exemplary participant in the Charlottesville dialogue to be open‐minded even about the value of some expressions of open‐mindedness while maintaining his principled commitments.     

Neo-liberal influences in a ‘conservative’ regime: the role of institutions,family strategies,and market devices in transition to higher education in France

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the interplay between institutional arrangements, family strategies, and market devices in the transition to higher education (HE) in France with a view to documenting both persistent features of the French ‘conservative’ educational regime and recent changes, in particular those related to neo-liberal influences. Using a theoretical model inspired by research on welfare regimes and integrating key elements of the sociology of networks, institutions, and markets, as well as data from a comprehensive qualitative study, the article focuses on three main topics: the impact of both institutional stratification and family choices on segregation and channelling into HE; the framing of students’ choices generated by impersonal policy instruments and personal human guidance; the role of private providers and agencies, as well as the devices they use to influence students’ transition to HE. The conclusion emphasises the impact of these different processes on the perpetuation of educational inequalities.     

观念、教育观念与教育制度——基于新制度经济学的分析

教育观念具有重要的制度性作用,而精英人物在教育制度形成与演变过程中扮演着重要角色。教育精英通过传播、创新教育观念,主导教育制度安排的建构行动。在教育制度安排的建构过程中,存在四种不同类型的教育制度变迁的路径:由改进效率的潜在机会所引起的教育制度变迁;由外部竞争压力引起的教育制度变迁;因思想观念中手段与目标之间的矛盾而引起的教育制度变迁;因制度的结果违背人类终极价值而引起的教育制度变迁。