Environmental education in television narratives: a Brazilian case study

Abstract

This article discusses recent Brazilian research on the relationship between environmental education and cultural studies. Television narratives about the environment and/or sustainability in our everyday lives are used to pose some initial questions about this relation. First, culture is discussed briefly showing how it potentially relates to teaching and informs our role as environmental educators. We argue that culturalist perspectives on research in environmental education politicise teaching practices, even though they are in a context that strays from prerogatives that envisage a future world marked by sustainable development and a green economy. We investigate the impacts of television narratives and images on our everyday lives wherein we are consistently taught particular written and visual messages about how to plan for our future. Examples are draw from the teaching effects of a Brazilian television programme called Repórter Eco, broadcast on a public television network, including the sustainable management of the baru (a typical tree from the Brazilia Cerrado). We argue the educational aspects of television programmes should receive critique, as the relationships established between people and various media artifacts produce particular meanings and ways of seeing the world. This presents a challenge for teachers as examining these subjective ways carefully requires critical examination, not only in terms of education for sustainability or environmental preservation, but also teaching using media.     

论教育经济

教育经济是知识经济的一个重要组成部分，教育经济是产学研相结合的，教学科研生产一体化的经济，是教育与经济的一体化，经济教育化和教育经济化是经济发展的必然趋势；二是将最终融合成教育经济，我国应从;战略高度来认识和发展高等教育，开扩高教与经济结合的思路，促进高教产业化，从而建立教育，经济一体化的格局。     

Financing and political economy of higher education: The case of Lebanon

This paper assesses the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of higher education in Lebanon in both the public and private sectors, while highlighting challenges that are specific to Lebanon. It concludes by discussing various approaches and strategies to remedy the challenges facing higher education in Lebanon.     

Political economy of cost-sharing in higher education: The case of Jordan

This article analyzes patterns of expenditure on higher education in Jordan, explores the current system??s adequacy, efficiency, and equity, and identifies its strengths and weaknesses in light of current constraints and future challenges. Among the constraints are the relatively low public expenditure on higher education, leaving households to compensate through private expenditure. Moreover, despite more spending on university education, the quickly rising volume of students has required compromises in quality. Meanwhile, gradually falling subsidies have pressured public universities to reconsider their financing mechanisms and become more efficient. Cost-sharing mechanisms have been introduced through commercial private universities and ??parallel programmes?? at public universities. This generates much-needed income, but raises two critical issues. Students from poorer backgrounds find it even more difficult to enter university, and quality is constrained because universities must compromise on tasks that are essential but not profitable such as research and development. Among the suggested solutions are promoting the culture of charitable endowments, perhaps through a revision of the Islamic awqaf system, and developing innovative financial mechanisms to tap private savings without incurring the hazards of profit maximization.     

论学习型经济中职业教育的创新

企业的生产组织形式经历了从单件生产到福特制生产,再到后福特制生产即学习型经济生产的演进历程。学习型经济的生产组织形式对职业教育提出了许多挑战,在学习型经济中,职业教育应从“适应/顺应”到“形成/养成”,整合“普教”与“职教”,在课程上突显“专业性”与“模块化”,融通“职前教育”与“职业继续教育”。     

Praxis in vocational education and training: being and becoming a person

In this paper the concept of praxis is discussed against the background of professional and vocational education and training (henceforth, ‘VET'). The notion of praxis is considered to have at least four elements: contexts, theories, actions and persons (who hold theories and perform actions in specific contexts rather than acting in possible, abstracted, universal or armchair worlds). The relationships of these elements, what is taken as praxis, is discussed and in particular the complex nature of personhood is canvassed. It is suggested that insufficient attention is generally accorded to certain aspects of personhood relevant to action in both professional and VET contexts, that there exists a need for educators to develop a more nuanced and finely textured concept of persons (whom they teach and who they are; and who they, and those whom they teach, might become). Current inadequate metaphysical conceptions of persons should press VET educators and trainers toward longer‐term goals which demand deeper, and deeply secular, time‐based approaches to teaching.     

天津市高等教育与经济关系研究

通过定量与定性相结合的方法,对天津市高等教育与经济的关系进行了验证,分析了天津市教育及经济的协调性,得出了天津市教育与经济基本均衡、教育对天津市区域经济的发展发挥了巨大的推动作用的结论,针对天津市教育所存在的问题提出了相应的建议。     

Attitude and passion: becoming a teacher in early childhood education and care

By focusing on a collective aesthetics based on sensation and affect, researchers, especially in Stockholm, Sweden, are exploring a pedagogy that opens up space for assemblages of desire, acknowledging the expressions of children who transform themselves and their milieus into a weave of bodies, spaces, signs and media. By analysing this pedagogy, against the background of the theories of Henri Wallon and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I wish to investigate the concept of a ‘thinner skin mentality’. This willingness to transgress one’s own stabilising attitude, to move towards a greater sensitivity to relational and situational affectivity when accompanying the learning of children, may provide a point of reference for a preschool teacher qualification.     

Higher education reform in a transitional economy: a case study from the School of Economic Studies in Mongolia

One of the issues to be faced by countries in central and eastern Europe and parts of Asia undergoing transition to a market economy is how to prepare students for the new environment. This article explores the experience from a three year Technical Assistance to the former Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) funded project aimed at reforming economics education at the School of Economic Studies (SES) within the National University of Mongolia. The focus of the project was initially on curriculum reform, but it soon became evident that to be effective this would need to be supported by managerial reform.The article therefore commences by briefly outlining the context of the reform process in Mongolia and by describing the nature of curriculum reform within the SES, including issues relating to the learning environment, course content and structure, and learning and assessment methods. That leads to an analysis of consequential reform of institutional management including issues relating to the codification and common ownership of information, conditions of service of staff, financial flexibility and management information systems.The article reflects on achievements and constraints of implementing reform at a sub-institutional (School) level and concludes with a summary of findings which might be of general value to those involved in the management of change as institutions begin to prepare their students to operate within a market economy.     

The locus of evaluation: becoming a professional counsellor

Students who register for counselling courses in higher education are mature adults who come from diverse disciplines. They are rich in experience and during the process of counselling education become proficient in adapting to changing circumstances, and working with personal and professional challenge. The requirements for studentship in the field of counselling demand stringent self-examination in group settings, and surpass those required for courses which require only subject knowledge and academic skills. Because of their willingness to pursue self-discovery, counselling students provide a rich source of data for researchers interested in lifelong learning from an holistic perspective of achieving UNESCO's vision of the ‘full development of the personality’ (cited in Darkenwald and Merriam 1982: 13). Student counsellors must demonstrate a willingness to work with uncertainty, an ability to develop personal learning goals and have the capacity to appraise personal development (Mearns 1997: 99). This study examines how student counsellors discover strategies for learning, and how they manage the personal/professional divide. Existing intimate partnerships are viewed as supportive, but suspicious of the learning process. The narratives of students indicate that ‘professionalism’ is about acceptance of self, as much as about qualifications and practice. Participants describe the process of becoming professional, alongside the process of struggling to fit in with the academic requirements of a university. Lifelong learning is described as lacking a framework for acceptance by others, and therefore seen merely as a diversion in the lives of adults. From a counselling perspective, learning requires opportunities for employment so that professional and personal development can continue. Such courses at present appear to offer only a short-term ‘permissive structure’, for learning to take place.