MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION – GOOD FOR BUSINESS BUT NOT FOR THE STATE? THE IB CURRICULUM AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM

ABSTRACT:  In the 1970s and the 1980s, multicultural education spread in many countries. However, in the mid-1980s the golden age of multiculturalism came to an end. Neo-conservative political forces attacked multicultural policies and progressively a neo-liberal discourse pervaded economic and social policies, also affecting national education systems. In contrast, multicultural approaches have emerged with tremendous vigour in the field of business management. Juxtaposing cognitive, emotional and socio-communicative multiculturalism found in organisational studies onto multiculturalism in the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum indicates whether multiculturalism in international schools aims to respond to the needs of global capitalism. The findings show that emotional, cognitive and socio-communicative multiculturalism are seen as essential traits for good performance in transnational corporations, and they are strongly encouraged in the IB curriculum. The relevance of multicultural skills in global management alongside the decay of multiculturalism in public education systems entails a growing educational disparity between lower class and higher class children. A new educational structure in which two differentiated systems – a national system and an international system – emerges and redefines the terms of inequality of opportunities.     

美国职业技术教育对我国的启示

美国从20世纪60年代开始形成全国范围的职业技术教育系统，80年代以来职业技术学校招生人数及规模日趋扩大，职业技术教育发展迅速。总结其经验，对我国的启示是：职业院校要依据社会需要，及时调整专业；重视毕业生的就业追踪调查；重视与工商企业界的合作关系；重视“双师型”教师在职业教育中的巨大作用。     

Market accountability in schools: policy reforms in England,Germany, France and Italy

This article concentrates on the policy reforms of schools in England, Germany, France and Italy, from 1988 to 2009, with a focus on the introduction of market accountability. Pressing demands for organisational change in schools, shaped by the objectives of ‘efficiency’ and competition, which were introduced in England in the 1980s, have been adopted in other European countries, albeit at a slower pace and within the continuing need for domestic institutional conformity. How does the increasing predominance of market accountability in state schools change traditional bureaucratic and professional accountability relationships between politicians, managers, professionals and users? The article argues that despite some evidence of convergence between different education systems, England remains the outlier and continental European countries have been much more reluctant to adopt choice and competition policies.     

The dearth of international Baccalaureate schools across Africa

The Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) celebrated its 50^th anniversary as an organisational entity in 2014, having first appeared in 1964 as the International Schools Examination Syndicate. In January 2015 the 5,000^th programme had appeared at a school in Albania. The IB, now offering four programmes, has moved significantly over recent years into state funded schooling, especially in the United States, and Ecuador. At the same time there has been no significant growth in Africa where the operational paradigm remains largely unchanged since the 1980s. The 76 schools in 25 countries located across the continent of Africa in mid-2015 accounted for just 1.8 per cent of all schools worldwide. Twelve countries in Africa had a solitary ‘international school’ offering the IB programmes. This paper is the first to address this situation. This article reveals the growth and extent of IB activity across Africa, and offers possible reasons for the ongoing dearth of schools.     

The multilevel impact of transformational leadership on teacher commitment: Cognitive and motivational pathways

A growing body of research indicates that transformational leadership affects teachers’ commitment to their school. The present study aims to investigate the processes explaining this effect at the organisational level. Using a sample of 660 teachers within 50 primary French‐speaking Belgian schools, the authors test a model hypothesising that the impact of the school principal's transformational leadership (as an organisational‐level construct) on teacher commitment to school is mediated by school culture strength (cognitive pathway) and teacher collective efficacy beliefs (motivational pathway). Results of multilevel analyses largely support the theoretical model, but show that schools have a limited impact on teacher commitment.     

Special education in Spain at the beginning of the 21st century: the challenge to educate in an unequal and multicultural society

An overview of the challenges facing the Spanish Special Education system at the turn of the century is presented. Significant changes have occurred in Spain over the last two decades that have affected the landscape of Spanish public schools in an unprecedented way. First, since the late 1980s, students with a variety of disabilities have been attending general education classrooms along with their peers. Additionally, for the last 20 years, Spain has experienced a dramatic increase in immigration patterns from Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Thus, Spanish educators are facing the challenge of educating an increasingly heterogeneous student body. Students' different educational needs are often handed down to the special educator teacher who is faced with the task of ensuring the student's academic and social participation. Reform efforts conducted by Spanish educators to ensure that all students, regardless of their gender, ability level, ethnic and social backgrounds, as well as language and religion of origin, have equal access to a full social and academic participation in their schools and communities are described.     

Two basic mechanisms for organisational learning in schools

SUMMARY In recent literature on teachers' professional communities and organisational learning in schools the focus is on conditions fostering teacher professional developments. Less attention has been paid to clarifying these concepts and to analysing the processes and the full range of outcomes of organisational learning in schools. The question in this article is whether and how teachers' professional communities can play a role in organisational learning and professional development. Firstly, recent research literature on teachers' workplace conditions, teachers' professional communities, and organisational learning in schools is discussed. Next, two basic mechanisms for organisational learning in schools are presented. Some conclusions are that the opportunities for steering intentional organisational learning in the school context are only weak, and that a balance should be created in the school between diverging conditions for organisational learning     

Remote Teaching with Digital Video: A Trans-national Experience

This paper analyses the psychological, technical, administrative, organisational, institutional and general pedagogical problems encountered during Phase 1 (the trial phase) of a trans-European distance-learning project. Using basic-rate ISDN videoconferencing for remote interactive tutorials, Phase 1 involved the University of Wales Swansea and HEC Liège (Belgium), and provided practice in business English for Belgian students and business French for UK students of French and Business. The difficulties which have arisen during the phase have been many and varied, and not all could have been easily predicted from a review of the research literature. Solutions to some of them are suggested.     

中国民族歌剧发展道路不均衡性原因探析

中国民族歌剧形成至今,历时近一个世纪,基本上是沿着两条路子向前发展的,即民族化的创作道路和大量借鉴西洋的创作道路,这两条道路在发展过程中存在着明显的不均衡性。前一种形式在80年代以前非常受欢迎,而80年代以后,后一种形式的发展比较快,逐渐居于主导地位。     

美国公立学校优秀教师激励体系及其评价

20世纪80年代以来，美国政府和教育机构为吸引、培养和挽留公立学校的优秀教师，在评估和激励机制方面进行了许多有益的探索。美国现行优秀教师激励体系大致可归纳为四个部分：优秀教师的国家级评价和标准、州级优秀教师评估标准和相应激励措施、把教师的工作表现与工资报酬紧密联系的教师报酬制度以及联邦、州政府和学区对优秀教师所授予的各种荣誉。该体系无疑也为我国优秀教师的培养和激励提供了制度上的借鉴。     

城市化进程对民族体育的影响及应对措施研究

通过文献资料和田野调查,对我国城市化的现状和发展趋势进行分析与调查,阐述民族体育开展现状,并就城市化对民族地区民族体育传承与开展带来的影响,做出进一步探讨,提出发展措施。研究认为：发挥学校在民族体育传承中的作用;建议政府职能部门和社会团体在传统节日开展丰富多彩的民间民俗体育活动;建立多层次的民族体育竞赛体系,通过多种途径传承民族体育文化。     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.     

Turning around low-performing private universities in China: A perspective of organisational ecology

While China has a long history of private institutions of higher learning, they disappeared almost entirely after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and did not re-emerge until the 1980s. Their reappearance is one of the ramifications of economic marketisation and privatisation in China. But private higher education institutions are now facing new challenges and competition in the education system. Approximately 500 of them were shut down between 2000 and 2009 for financial, legal or other reasons. Looking through the theoretical lens of organisational ecology – a sociological theory that applies ecological principles to organisational studies – this paper traces how the social and economic environment induced the re-emergence of private universities in China and how it has had an impact on their non-linear pattern of development. Using a number of relevant theory fragments from the overarching framework of organisational ecology as tools, the author then explores possible strategies for turning around low-performing private universities in China.     

ICT in French Primary Education,Twenty Years Later: Infusion or Transformation?

Twenty years have elapsed since ICT has been introduced on a large scale in French primary schools. Since then many developments have occurred, many of them outside of the technical sphere (for example decentralization has much progressed), new issues have appeared. This paper briefly analyzes changes and trends in the field of ICT in French primary education. It suggests that the development of ICT, still uncomplete, does not seem to have brought much change in the system. However, new ideas and activities have emerged, that deserve further research and invite to international comparisons. First contextual elements about France and the situation of primary education are recalled. Then issues linked with the development of ICT are analysed, taking into account the situation of both pupils and teachers.     

The cost of performance? Students' learning about acting as change agents in their schools

This paper explores how performance culture could affect students' learning about, and disposition towards, acting as organisational change agents in schools. This is based on findings from an initiative aimed to enable students to experience acting as change agents on an aspect of the school's culture that concerned them. The initiative was informed by contemporary practice and concerns in the field of student voice, and worked with a systemic action research approach focused on organisational dynamics. This research found that students' understanding of, and disposition towards doing, organisational change, seemed to be affected by how their internalisation of performance culture mediated with their concern to maintain their organisational status. Based on the theory of organisational socialisation, it argues that this may lead to a learnt inhibition towards doing organisational change in students who struggle with their organisational status in schools.     

发展国产名牌的认识思考

开放的世界是竞争的世界,综合国力的竞争将逐渐转化成经济实力的竞争,经济贸易的竞争,市场竞争的阵地将从传统的产品性能和价格优势等因素转移到以品牌为先导以质量为核心的较量.由于我国的市场经济体制建立的时间短,法制经济不完善,使我国在名牌管理方面还远远落后于世界水平.为在世界经济贸易竞争中取得优势地位,就必须重视发展国产名牌战略.拟通过对我国名牌发展存在问题的认识思考,提出一些实施名牌战略的对策供相关管理者参考.     

The Role of Cities in the History of Schooling: A French Paradox (Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries)

The centralisation of French educational institutions is more in keeping with a political and social model than with reality. The construction of a complete school system under state supervision started early but has been a process of more than a century and a half long, which until 1880 mostly concerned the education of the elite (higher education and the lycées), and which left an important role to cities. Part of the educational action of the state has long been based on the idea that training courses should be adapted to the needs of cities and regions. Towns were entrusted with a great part of the state educational policies while influencing the private sector at the same time. But although their school policies had abiding features and their financial commitments increased considerably during the nineteenth century, cities have never been independent of the state. Moreover, a great many other local groups and individuals took part in school development. Urbanisation in France has been gradual, which accounts for the lack of interest in urban educational studies on the part of French historians. The shift of the past few years has given us a whole new insight into our knowledge of the history of schooling and has brought to light its institutional, material and financial factors - overlooked until now. One of these factors is the permanent threat of pupil shortage which weighed heavily on most nineteenth century public and private post-elementary schools. Until public education became free - in 1881 in primary schools and in the 1930s in secondary schools - all schools were basically self-supporting. Recruiting a sufficient number of pupils was both a crucial necessity and one of the driving forces behind the creation and the renewal of educational provision, especially when several schools were in competition. Free education did not bring about any profound changes: the growth of school attendance reduced the unitary cost of studies and remained a major criterion by which the value of school management was judged.     

Conservative and liberal challenges to progressivist curricula in Scandinavia

ABSTRACT

The post‐war period in the Scandinavian countries has been characterized by successive school reforms administered by social democratic governments following a moderate form of progressivism. A central idea is of equality and of an equal right to quality education. The public schools dominate and the management is top‐down. For a long period of time there have been central national curricula. In recent years the System of public schools has been questioned, as has the ideological basis of the curriculum. Proponents of a new liberal ideology demand more private schools, decentralization and efficiency. New conservative ideas at the same time argue for the restoration of basic forms of knowledge, competition and moral qualities to be mirrored in the new national curricula.