Quality of education and student earnings

When a university increases expenditures in an attempt to improve quality, a natural question for social policy is raised: is the improvement worth the cost? One partial measure of “worth” in this context is given by earnings of graduates: will those earnings rise by enough to pay a reasonable return on the investment in higher quality? The question is hard to answer by statistical means: universities of higher quality have better reputations which allow them to select students who are themselves of higher quality; so in trying to measure the relation between earnings and university quality, quality of the school may be confounded with quality of the students. Recently, however, several large data sets have been made available which give sufficient information on the students' own backgrounds, and on their later earning, that we can hope to disentangle the effect on earnings of the school from that of the student himself. This article summarizes the results of several such studies, including our own work. The verdict to date is that the relation between “quality”, however measured, and earnings is significant, and that expenditures to improve quality are worth the cost, even when “worth” is measured narrowly as higher earnings for graduates.     

The Changing Corporate Mind: Organizations,Vision, Missions,Purposes, and Indicators on the Move Toward Societal Payoffs

Where are the world's organizations headed? What do they see as their primary destination and contribution? What do they commit to deliver and to whom? How rigorous are they in defining their destinations? What label do they use to describe statements of their intended future? To find the answers to these and other questions, we examined 26 of the leading organizations internationally as well as 60 leading organizations in the United States. Based on this sample of world organizations, we found indications that many organizations see some aspect of societal good as basic to their future, while many others regard their own organization's well-being as what is most important. We find no clear favorite for what organizations label their statements of purpose: most use “mission” while some use “vision,” and some use “values” or “philosophy.” Few of the organizations in our sample state their intended destination in measurable performance terms. From these data, we discuss the implications in terms of an increasing emphasis in the literature on organizations having to deliver outputs that contribute to external clients and society. We also note that purpose statements must be accompanied by appropriate actions to achieve those intentions. In addition, we discuss how this move toward socially-responsive organizations is impacting the role of the performance technologist.     

Speculations on qualities of difficult knowledge in teaching and learning: an experiment in psychoanalytic research

This paper explores two questions in relation to the authors' project, “Difficult Knowledge in Teaching and Learning: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry.” They describe how their original question, “What makes knowledge difficult?,” transformed into “What is it to represent ‘difficult’ knowledge?” They speculate on the resonances that this crisis of representation leaves in narration by way of three psychoanalytic concepts: deferred action, transference, and symbolization. They consider constructions of difficulties in teaching and learning from the vantage of psychoanalytic writing and their own attempts to interview university teachers and students on how they think about difficult knowledge. They offer a conceptual archeology of their project that highlights the shift from the first to the second research question, some clinical discussion on the difficulties of narrating teaching and learning, some constructions of difficulty proposed in their research protocol, and constructions of difficulty in their interviews. They conclude by discussing how the very design of their research enacted the crisis of representing teaching and learning.     

Learning subjects: Impersonal or user-friendly?

In this article, written in “interchange” with Anita Rampal's “A Possible ‘Orality’ for Science?” (Interchange, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 227–244), a distinction is made between (A) aims of science, which is a philosophical issue; (B) the existence of forms of thought in their own right; and (C) the question of whether we teach the most important forms. The general conclusion is that we have to subject students to transcendental forms of thought irrespective of their social or cultural background, by whatever methods are most appropriate.     

La violence médicale envers les jeunes enfants

Medical Violence Toward Young Children. Two types of medical “abuse” are to be considered: (1) Mandatory violence in the form of preventive medical activities, i.e., immunizations, and curative medical activities, i.e., intensive care medicine. Means of decreasing the psychological trauma associated with these inevitable activities are considered. (2) Avoidable medical violence, of which three different forms can be identified: ? In the institutions: separation of mother and child is still a common occurrence in maternity hospitals and in pediatric hospital services. ? In medical practice: too often symptoms common in infants and children are dealt with by prescribing unnecessary drugs (cough, cold, crying during the night). ? In placement of children under the pretence of medical cures for such foggy diagnoses as “rickets” or “recurring rhinopharyngitis,” which are cover-ups of the inability or refusal on part of the physician to apprehend a child's real problems. Such placements are apt to irreversibly destroy the psychological bonds of the child with his family.The physicians and health care personnel in general should be better prepared to cope with their own subconscious mechanisms, which often result in questionable automatic reflexes and decisions. This would result in a decrease in physical or symbolic abuses toward children.     

The Origins of Children's Growth and Fixed Mindsets: New Research and a New Proposal

Children's mindsets about intelligence (as a quality they can grow vs. a trait they cannot change) robustly influence their motivation and achievement. How do adults foster “growth mindsets” in children? One might assume that adults act in ways that communicate their own mindsets to children. However, new research shows that many parents and teachers with growth mindsets are not passing them on. This article presents a new perspective on why this is the case, and reviews research on adult practices that do instill growth mindsets, concluding that a sustained focus on the process of learning is critical. After discussing key implications and promising future directions, we consider the topic in the context of important societal issues, like high‐stakes testing.     

Teacher self-evaluation: an analysis of criteria,indicators and processes used by teachers in judging their success

This paper summarises the accounts provided by some 60 experienced infants and primary teachers and 18 student teachers to the questions “How do you tell when you've taught a really good lesson?” and “How do you evaluate your success as a teacher?” These accounts were analysed both in terms of the criteria and the indicators used by teachers in evaluating their own short- and long-term success. The results contrast strongly with those reported by Jackson (1968) and by Lortie (1975) and an attempt is made to delineate and describe the constructive processes used by teachers to evaluate their success in a classroom setting of complexity and uncertainty.     

Du tourisme pénitentiaire à “l'Internationale des philanthropes”. La création d'un réseau pour la protection de l'enfance à travers les congrès internationaux (1840–1914)

This paper proposes a kind of summary of research made from twenty years by historians and jurists about the question of philanthropy, ?patronage?, and the origins of the protection of children in Europe. The principal sources are the International Penitentiary Congresses between 1840 and 1914 and the International Congresses of protection of children (1880–1914).

Two periods and two generations of philanthropists have to be distinguished. The first one (1840–1850) that we can call the time of the ?Sainte Alliance? of European philanthropists against poverty and criminality, is characterised by individual action of personalities like prisons inspectors (Ducpétiaux in Belgium, Lucas in France) or private philanthropists like Suringar in the Netherlands who travel around Europe to visit reformatories and prisons to compare and promote their own solutions. This is the time of ?penitentiary tourism? and comparison between different models of treatment of juvenile delinquency, based on the concept of ?guilty children?, who have to be punish and re‐educated..

The second one, after 1880, is characterised by a new generation of philanthropists, members of government, ministers, lawyers, and the lobby of private associations of “hommes d'?uvres” and “dames patronesses” who try to change legislations and reform the ancient system of prison's children and reformatories. This the time of protection, “patronage” and prevention, based on a new concept of “children in danger? who have to be protected and not punish. The confrontation between European legislations and American experience of ‘juvenile courts” will give birth to a new model of treatment of juvenile delinquency, with more protection, less punishment. That stay the norm in Europe until these last years. But we can see today the return of a new American model, more punitive, based on the ideology of “tolerance zero” and the coming back to prisons.     

The Flipped Classroom: Primary and Secondary Teachers’ Views on an Educational Movement in Schools in Sweden Today

The aim of this study is to contribute to an increased understanding of the flipped classroom movement. A total of 7 teachers working in school years 4–9 and who both actively flipped their classrooms and had been early adopters in this movement were interviewed. Two research questions were posed: “What characterizes flipped classroom instruction according to the teachers?” and “What objectives do the flipped classroom meet according to the teachers?” Regarding the first research question, a characteristic of a flipped classroom was “the flip,” a task to be accomplished outside the classroom before class. In relation to the second research question we found three objectives: Student activity in class; Educational change; Being part of a digital learning community.     

MAD ABOUT IDEALS? EDUCATING CHILDREN TO BECOME REASONABLY PASSIONATE

Abstract The current public concern about radicalization and extremism challenges philosophers and particularly philosophers of education to explore questions such as “Why do adolescents with strong ideas transgress?” and “What can we do about it?” The first question can be addressed by examining the role of their passionate commitment to their ideals as well as how this passion manifests in their pursuit of these ideals. The second question refers to the role of education in orienting and directing young people’s passionate attachment to and pursuit of ideals. In this essay, Stijn M.A. Sieckelinck and Doret J. de Ruyter argue that educating children to become reasonably passionate about ideals is a justifiable, and in fact an important, educational aim. This educational aim rests upon the notion that people take a rational, moral, and prudent stance toward their ideals and that they pursue their ideals in a way limited (yet also enabled) by rational, moral, and prudent considerations. While extremism is not likely to be defeated by educational efforts only, democratic citizenship demands urgent educational attention to young people’s passion for ideals.     

Implications of the olympiad studies for the development of mathematical talent in schools

In this chapter educational implications arising from the data about the Olympiad winners in the U.S., Taiwan and Mainland China (Chapters 3–5) are offered. The discussion addresses two lines of questioning: (1) How can we ensure support for recognized math talent through schooling to professional life? (2) How can we increase the pool of gifted students who participate in the Olympiad and other academic competitions and programs? To address the first question, related research studies in a number of different areas are explored. The second part of the chapter looks at how and why schools should expand the number of students who participate in competitions. This view is supported by a rationale for the role of talent development, including whether broad or narrow curricula for secondary students should be pursued and how the “the leaky pipeline” leading to math-based careers can be “plugged.”     

Positive Perspectives on the Profession: Reframing through Appreciative Inquiry

Change theories and Organization Development strategies have long followed the problem-solving approach of looking at organizations, identifying the weaknesses and introducing interventions to “stop doing the wrong things.” In its simplest form, this approach has been successful in a variety of situations and has a popular following. Consultants or internal reviewers look for the problems, identify the cause of the problem, and introduce the intervention (new rule) to eliminate the opportunity for the repetition of the “problem.” Problem-solving is a popular perspective through which change is initiated in politics, academia, and in social media. Eliminate the “bad” and pay attention to what we have been doing wrong to improve. This article first reviews the problems posed in past Hanna lectures to some major themes: (a) the need to address societal concerns, (b) the need to reduce sub-disciplinary fragmentation, (c) the problems inherent on university campuses as a result of politics and the economy, (d) the need to re-examine the over-reliance on the scientific research paradigm at the cost of phenomenological understandings, and (e) the framing of problems to be solved by professionals in our field. The introduction of Appreciative Inquiry and is then provided as an alternative approach to examine current contextual setting with the primary emphasis away from “What problems are you having?” and toward “What is working around here?”. This alternative suggests that in all organizations there is some positive force that is moving the organization forward, and the identification of that force (what works) can lay the ground work for doing more of “what works.” Finally, three examples of Appreciative Inquiry opportunities in action from our discipline are offered for consideration.     

RADICAL HOPE AND TEACHING: LEARNING POLITICAL AGENCY FROM THE POLITICALLY DISENFRANCHISED

Abstract If teaching is a political act, how can teachers hope to make a difference through their work? In this review essay, Julian Edgoose explores this question of hope in relation to three recent books: David Halpin’s Hope and Education, Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher, and Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope. Halpin describes how hope comes from our targeted efforts to connect our critical analysis of the present to a better, yet realistic, idea of the future. In contrast, Kozol (echoing Cornel West’s “tragicomic hope”) describes a hopefulness that sustains him despite and alongside his critical view of schools. Edgoose asks a further question: can one reasonably remain hopeful in the absence of that critical stance — in the absence of a sense that one can understand the situation one faces enough to know a way out? To Lear, this would be a case of “radical hope,” and Edgoose offers a second reading of Kozol through the lenses of Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt to show what such radical hope might look like for teachers.     

Towards the Idea of a World University

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.     

Weibliche Bildung und Bildungspolitik: das International Council of Women und seine Kongresse in Chicago (1893), London (1899) und Berlin (1904)

The International Council of Women (ICW), founded in Washington in 1888, was the first international association of bourgeois women. Planned as a federation of women’s organisations united in national associations, it dealt with every question of the social, legal and political status of women. As for earlier national women’s movements, education held a key position; it was the means by which women were striving for emancipation and equal rights of the sexes. As late as 1909, however, when there already existed commitees for peace, law, morality or welfare, and on the other hand the congresses had lost their importance, a commitee for education was constituted. Its goal was to achieve the equality of boys and girls in the educational system and to increase women’s influence on education and school administration, in order to “civilise” children and teach them social responsibility and democracy. In the face of the cultural differences, which influenced the national educational systems as societal sub‐systems, exchange within the commitee for education had been operationalised by detailed research questions. However, the world congresses in Chicago, London and Berlin, which will be dealt with in more detail, still showed the complete variety of controversies in and between the countries. This essay will ask if or how, despite a variety of political and cultural differences, transnational understanding was possible, which educational topics were negotiated – i.e. were for the first time made understandable for an international audience with regard to their national contexts. It will ask in which way this debate was re‐“translated” into national debates and reform processes regarding education, and how then, based on new foundations, it was possible to exert influence there; in which way, on the other hand, did national solutions influence the transnational debate? By the example of these discussions it will be shown in what way these ICW congresses (their programmes and topics, their invitation, science and education policies) contributed to the development of an interplay with achieving national and international competence. This multi‐level communication on the topic of female education policy will be made clear through the examples of three educational fields: nursery school education, child study, as well as university studies for women and “female science”.     

A Visit to “The Clearing” and “Warrior Falls”: In Search of Brave and Beyond Spaces for Religious Education

Abstract

This article seeks to address the question: “How can religious educators learn from those who have been marginalized and whose voices are not usually heard because of the hegemony of whiteness?” My primary sources are scenes from the work of two U.S. black creatives. Specifically, I examine the “Clearing” scene in Toni Morrison’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction novel Beloved and the “Warrior Falls” scenes in Black Panther, a 2018 film co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler. I draw attention to their common themes and their implications for approaches to religious education that can de-center white normativity.     

Mexican American Mothers’ Conceptualization of Autonomy Support and Psychological Control in the Context of Cultural Values

This qualitative study explored the intertwining relationships among the concepts of parental autonomy support, parental control, and cultural values for Mexican American families. The study was guided by the following questions: (1) What elements of parental autonomy support are identified in Mexican American parents’ involvement in their children’s academic performance? (2) How do Mexican American parents conceptualize “autonomy support” and “parental control”? Sixteen Mexican American mothers expressed their own goals and strategies for home-based parental involvement to support their adolescents’ academic performance, and responded to the prototypes of autonomy support parenting and use of psychological control. Four themes emerged from the data to explain the participants’ practice: (1) Explain the expectations for behavioral and academic pursuit through persistent “telling” and “reminding”; (2) Respond to children’s feelings from parents’ perspectives; (3) Encourage with provisions, praises, and criticisms; and (4) Allow choices upon trust in child’s sense of responsibility. Discussion is focused on how Mexican-American mothers’ conceptualization of “autonomy support” and “parental control” is influenced by the cultural values of educación and respeto. Culturally appropriate autonomy support training is suggested for effective intervention programs for Mexican-American parents.     

Ohm’s law, Kirchoff ’s law and the Drunkard’s walk

Recall from Resonance, Vol. 1, No. 7 that when the Drunkard asks: “Will I ever, ever get home again?”, Polya answers: “You can’t miss, just keep going and stay out of 3D!” In this two-part article we show how to look at this question of recurrence and transience of random walks (which was originally asked and solved by George Polya) through electrical networks. In the first part we look at the related electrical networks.     

“Martin Luther King Fixed It”: Children Making Sense of Racial Identity in a Colorblind Society

Children in the United States grow up in a context wherein colorblindness and racism coexist. This article examined how colorblindness functions as a societal “master narrative” that shapes how children construct their own racial identities. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 217 Black, White, and Multiracial children (M_age = 9.92) in public schools in the Pacific Northwest during 2013–2014 academic year. Our analysis identified four race narratives, which varied systematically by child age and race. Associations were also found between narrative types and children’s ratings of racial identity importance. Although colorblindness infuses many of the racial narratives, there was evidence that children also question and disrupt this master narrative with stories of resistance that counter colorblind norms.