Weight Bias and Social Justice: Implications for Education and Practice

Weight bias is a widespread and persistent form of oppression that adversely impacts the lives of individuals with obesity in many areas of society. In this paper, we discuss the implications of weight bias as a social justice issue for counsellor education and practice. We provide recommendations for professional education, including the need to examine social location, knowledge, assumptions, and biases about weight and individuals with obesity. We also provide recommendations related to advocacy for individuals with obesity in practice.     

南非高等教育质量保障体系:框架、特色与挑战

南非政府在高等教育变革和重建的宏观背景下,通过制定一系列的政策和法规构建了由南非资格局、国家资格框架和高等教育质量委员会组成的、统一的高等教育质量保障体系.该体系具有理念上创新性、价值取向上多元性、体系上全面性、程序和策略上互补性等特色,尽管其实施情况良好,但仍面临一些问题与挑战.     

Education Research for Policy and Practice: Secondary Education Reforms in Sri Lanka

With the establishment of a host of new education institutions, educational policy making in Sri Lanka demonstrated a marked change during the last fifteen years. The idea of a national education policy that emerged during this period attempted to ensure continuity of educational policy while at the same time contributing to the production of trainable youths who could become successful in any type of activity they selected for their future. The policy was formulated with the intention of providing a good general education to the young of the nation and began to be implemented in 1998. The high academic bias, rigidity of curricula, and the widening mismatch between education and employment are the priority issues that gave rise to new education reforms in secondary education. A number of strategies are tried out today at junior secondary (grades 6 to 9) and senior secondary (grades 10 to 13) levels of the general education system to address these issues while paying attention to ways and means of strengthening the link between research and policy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Education Policy Research and the Global Knowledge Economy

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold; it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.(Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge. , 1984, p.4)
We live in a social universe in which the formation, circulation, and utilization of knowledge presents a fundamental problem.If the accumulation of capital has been an essential feature of our society, the accumulation of knowledge has not been any less so.Now, the exercise, production, and accumulation of this knowledge cannot be dissociated from the mechanisms of power; complex relations exist which must be analysed.(Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx: conversations with Duccio Trombadori , 1991, p.165)     

教育:过去、现在与未来的全球挑战

1990年以来全球教育发展缓慢,且各国发展速度不同。普及基础教育仍是发展中国家政府与国际组织亟待实现的目标。这与近年来经济学关于人力资本对于经济增长以及社会发展的催化作用的研究发现形成鲜明对照。本研究基于一个新构建的教育数据库与1950—2010年的国民账户数据,采用不同的方法与若干国家案例,估计与人力资本积累缓慢相关的收入损失及其对公平的影响。研究还基于各国过去与未来加速人力资本积累的假设,推算了1900—1950年与2010—2050年的情况。研究发现,以人均收入表示的福利损失至少为7～10个百分点。此外,提高人均受教育年限对于减少收入不平等也有影响。     

高等教育招生政策的价值冲突与社会正义原则

高招政策作为一项社会公共政策,冲突性是其本质特征。其行政价值主体应充分考虑不同价值主体的利益关系和价值选择,坚持社会正义的原则,努力寻求价值冲突的协调与平衡,实现社会正义的最大化。     

美国SREB学分互认的政策与实践

2002年美国南部地区教育委员会之远程学习政策实验室的学生转学子委员会提交了一份政策报告,核心部分是11条政策建议.2007年该报告的所有建议在南部地区的16个州基本都得到了落实.通过历史纵向分析,笔者认为这个政策报告的特殊件和成功之处在于它顺应了信息时代网络教育发展的潮流,将学分互认适时的与远程教育结合在了一起,对实践的发展起到了明显的指导作用.     

我国素质教育政策及实践的反思

素质教育实施近20年了,已经成为国家重要教育决策和法律意志。素质教育改革历程中表现出两大特点:一是国家自上而下的政策推进,二是教育改革的实践先行。本文以各个层面的素质教育政策及实践为研究切入口,在宏观思考中分析各项政策、改革经验之间的相互关系,对改革的有效性、局限性等进行了较为详实的剖析。     

社会组织参与社会治理:理论、问题与政策选择

现代社会治理,强调多元参与、理性协商、建设性解决社会问题,是一个不断建构和积累友好、尊重、包容、信任等积极元素的过程。社会组织参与社会治理,既是社会治理的题中之义,也是政社合作的内在要求,它通过发挥动员社会资源、提供社会服务、参与社会事务管理等作用,不断提升社会整体的参与性、自主性和创新力,为不断发展的社会提供个性化、人性化和多元化的公益产品与服务。伴随全国各地社会治理创新实践,社会组织日益成为社会治理的主体力量,但也在政府、社会组织、合作机制等层面存在着政府职能转变不到位,社会组织支持、监管体系不健全,社会组织专业化职业化低、公信力不足、自治性弱、政府依赖性强、筹资渠道单一,政府与社会组织、社会组织与企业、社会组织与社会组织之间缺乏有效合作机制等诸多问题,需要从政府、社会组织及合作机制三个层面入手,进一步加强顶层设计、推进政社分开、完善社会组织支持、监管体系,不断提升社会组织专业化职业化程度、组织自主性和多渠道动员资源能力,以及加快构建政府、社会组织、企业、媒体、公众等多元主体协作平台与共治机制。     

Social Justice,Policy and Parents’ Understanding of their Voice in School Governing Bodies in South Africa

Despite the powers that parents are endowed with regarding governance of schools in South Africa, they are not yet given sufficient room and space to deliberate on issues of school governance; instead they are still excluded by some teaching staff who deny them (explicitly or implicitly) from taking part in crucial decisions affecting education of their children. There are still issues excluding parents from participation in school governing bodies, namely: the lack of clear demarcation between the roles of the teaching staff and those of the school governing body (SGB), lack of time, lack of confidence from some parents, transport problems which result in non‐attendance of SGB meetings by some parents, poor communication of information, lack of training which results in lack of knowledge of the Act and roles and responsibilities, the language barrier, and the high turnover rate of governors as parents have to leave the SGB as soon as his/her child leaves the school. The findings of this research partly concur with Karlsson, who also found that SGBs perpetuate rather than prevent the apartheid‐era inequalities of race, gender and social class. Despite these discrepancies, the study found that SGBs operate according to the general intentions of the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 and also help spread democracy in the school and to the wider society of South Africa.     

教育公平是最大的社会公平

随着构建社会主义和谐社会战略任务的提出和推进,教育公平呼声日高,成为上下关注的一大热点。研究教育公平、践行教育公平、促进社会和谐,是每一个教育工作者义不容辞的责任。     

Nonformal Education,Distance Education and the Restructuring of Schooling: Challenges for a New Basic Education Policy

This article argues that the present crisis of basic education for young people in Africa reveals problems that are more fundamental than enrollments, inputs and costs. They are related to the very structure and substance of educational provision. Of particular concern is the fact that schools find it difficult to respond to the different needs and circumstances of their pupils and to organize learning experiences that are sensitive to the social, cultural and economic environment. The author maintains that non-conventional approaches to learning, associated with nonformal education and distance education, have important but distinct contributions to make to the reform of mainstream schooling and could help to open up the formal system from within.