Values and Practice: History teaching 1971-2001

From the biographical perspective of his own career as a history teacher and trainer, the author explores how the ideological ferment of the last 30 years has shaped the values and principles that have informed classroom practice in the period. The paper contrasts the tolerant, progressive humanism of the post-war era with the intense political controversies of the 1970s and explains how history teachers who recognised the post-modern dilemma and responded with new approaches and methods found themselves blamed for moral decline and falling standards. The arguments of Thomas Greenfield and Alasdair MacIntyre, with their frank acknowledgement of the contested nature of truth and knowledge, are compared with the certainties of Rhodes Boyson, Sheila Lawlor and Melanie Phillips. The History National Curriculum, with its apparatus of objectives and levels, is criticised as an incoherent set of bureaucratic procedures designed to close down classroom debate that appeared to threaten the established order. Research from Texas is cited as evidence that this standardised method may hinder teaching and learning, inducing compliance rather than understanding. In conclusion, a visit to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre provides an example of how effective history teaching engages with inescapable controversy and is trivialised by an excessive concern with objectives, tests and examinations.     

Negotiating a ‘Radically Ambiguous World’: Planning for the Future of Research at the Art and Design University

Theoretically and methodologically, understanding the role of research within art and design practices is a recurring theme within contemporary dialogue and debate. In the published literature, there are many questions around how categories and definitions of artistic research are employed within the increasingly under‐resourced realm of higher education. This article contributes to this larger discussion by building up our knowledge of a particular feature of this landscape: how research policy and planning documents at art and design universities represent and define artistic research. While examining research at the level of practice remains important, we must also understand the symbolic and practical weight that institutional directives carry. In light of recent literature on artistic research and the debates concerning its evaluation and institutionalisation, this article develops our contemporary understanding of the role of the art and design university as an important mediator of conflicting perspectives on the ‘value’ of art and design research. Based on a discourse analysis of research planning documents from Canada's three independent public art and design universities, this article will argue that it is not the definition of artistic research itself that is the most contentious feature of university research planning – it is defining the value of this research that invites conflict and concern.     

Education as if people matter: John Macmurray,community and the struggle for democracy

The educational writings of John Macmurray, one of the finest philosophers of his generation, have a special relevance for us today. In similar circumstances of international crisis he argues for the central importance of education addressing fundamental issues of human purpose—how we lead good lives together, the emphasis on wisdom rather than knowledge alone, the advancement of a truly democratic culture, and the overriding importance of community in human flourishing. A pioneering advocate of education of the emotions, he champions the development of imagination, spontaneity and authenticity as key to educating ‘the capacity for change itself’. For Macmurray, educators must place relationships and care at the heart of all they do. Overemphasis on technique and its typical separation from wider human purposes is emblematic of much of our contemporary malaise. An inclusive, caring community is the precondition of our human being and becoming. The paper concludes by taking some of Macmurray’s key philosophical insights and developing a framework which enables us to make judgments about whether or not contemporary approaches to education support or diminish our lives as creative, caring human beings within a context of social justice and democratic human fellowship.     

Let’s begin with ourselves: attempting resonance responses in the exchange of researchers’ professional autobiographies

The economic, social, cultural, technological and labour changes experienced by Spanish universities in the last 40?years have had their impact on the professional lives of the university teachers. Our methodological decision to study, through the construction of life histories, how scholars cope with social and institutional changes in their professional lives led us to start by writing our professional autobiographies which were followed by a resonance practice in which each of us wrote a response to a partner’s autobiography. Results show that our responses appeared to have three different functions: give some feedback to our partners, tell our group our position about our partner’s autobiography and make sense of it for us. It became clear that writing about our resonance responses is a difficult task for academics like us and that our texts were bound by the position each one occupied in the research group and at the university. Our experience lets us rethink the interweaving of reflexivity, personal practical knowledge and resonance. The tension between our academic rationality and our efforts to give spontaneous resonance responses shows that even with narrative researchers, changing one’s personal practical knowledge may conflict with a rationalist point of view.     

Differentiating knowledge,differentiating (occupational) practice

This paper extends arguments for differentiating knowledge into conceptualisations of occupational practice. It is argued that specialised forms of knowledge and practice require recognition and differentiation in ways that many contemporary approaches to practice theory deny. Drawing on Hager’s interpretation of MacIntyre, it is suggested that occupational practices are differentiated from non-occupational practices by their ‘purposiveness’, and by how their internal and external goods relate. Furthermore, we can differentiate within the category of occupational practices by (i) the character and extent of specialised knowledge that underpins the practice, and by (ii) how socio-epistemic and institutional conditions shape how knowledge is recontextualised within the practice. This leads to an outline differentiation between forms of specialised and non-specialised occupational knowledge and practice.     

‘Putting on band-aids’: the contradictory roles and ‘small wins’ of tempered campus radicals

Nancy Fraser's propositions regarding the nature of ‘boundary’ work carried out by experts within organizations suggests that individuals who work within bureaucratic structures are so constrained by the institutional context that they become detached, depoliticizing arbitrators of politicized claims. The purpose of the research reported in this article is to examine the assertion that workers in boundary roles necessarily engage only in work that depoliticizes the claims of oppositional social groups. By exploring the work of anti-harassment practitioners at Canadian universities, we uncover moments of both constraint and liberation in the practitioners’ work roles. Attending to the complexities of boundary role work illustrates that struggles over the definition of needs and claims made by marginalized social groups are not closed, nor are boundary workers completely co-opted by bureaucratic institutional prerogatives. Although variously constrained, interviews with practitioners reveal that their work can support counter-hegemonic challenges to the status quo.     

浅析大学生志愿服务的德育功能

大学生利用自己掌握的知识和技能为社会服务,不求回报的活动这些都是当下大学生志愿活动的社会实践。大学生志愿服务是高校德育工作的新的载体,其德育功能日渐明显,高校已经开始重视这项活动,鼓励大学生积极参与,开展这种新的社会实践形式,能够帮助大学生思想政治教育,能够使得大学生有着正确的世界观和人生观以及价值观。     

加强大学生思想政治教育的对策分析

当代大学生思想的嬗变与我国社会剧烈的变革是分不开的。在新形势下,如何发挥高校思想政治教育的积极作用,引导学生树立科学态度,正确认识社会、适应社会和健康成长,加强高校大学生思想政治教育的对策分析尤为重要和迫切。     

人道主义与反人道主义——阿尔都塞“理论反人道主义”思想初探

曾几何时,学界兴起了关于＂马克思主义究竟是不是科学＂的争论,双方各执一词,而阿尔都塞在《保卫马克思》中的思想或许能为我们提供一个参考。从人道主义和反人道主义这两个思想维度出发,通过分析阿尔都塞思想的前后继承性,主要论述了阿尔都塞的＂理论反人道主义＂的思想本质,从而重申了＂反人道主义＂并非＂反人道＂或＂非人道＂的观点。     

毛泽东执政视野下的官僚政治认知困境

官僚政治与官僚主义是存在区别的.建国后,中国官僚政治的存在有其合理性与有效性.但毛泽东以朴素的执政观念作为衡量标准,没有认识到这种合理性,导致了认知错位.官僚政治异化的后果是官僚主义的滋生,但毛泽东在反对官僚主义的过程中,从技术角度出发,忽视了制度根源,从而陷入了认知悖论.毛泽东认知困境的产生,既有社会历史条件的限制,也有毛泽东个人思想认知上的偏差.毛泽东执政视野下的官僚政治认知困境,对于中共在新时期的执政能力建设具有重要的启示意义.     

高等院校的应用性人才培养

应用性人才的缺失已经在一定程度上制约和影响着我国社会经济发展的各个方面。我国的高等院校特别是应用型院校要切实注重培养应用性人才,要注重培养应用性人才的自主创新能力、提高人才培养质量,要让学生能够将所学习的理论知识用于解决社会实际问题。应用型院校要发挥自身特长,利用各种资源,创新教师团队建设,始终把培养高素质创新人才作为根本任务。     

增强“概论”课课堂教学实效性的方法探析

用毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系武装大学生,实现科学理论进教材、进课堂、进学生头脑,增强高校思想政治理论课的针对性和实效性,是高校德育教师必须解决的重大理论和现实问题。通过运用穿插模式教学、着重讲解经典论断、合理运用视频资料、重点解读当前热点问题、坚持贴近社会生活实际、紧密结合学生思想实际等方法,以求增强＂概论＂课课堂教学实效性。在教学实践中,这些方法既能提高学生的学习兴趣,克服马克思主义理论课的枯燥乏味,使他们容易接受和掌握科学理论,实现科学理论进大学生头脑,以增强高校思想政治理论课的实效性;同时又使科学理论实现现实化与具体化,增强大学生的感性认识和理性思考意识,真正发挥科学理论指导实践的功能。     

高校青年教师素质能力要求探析

随着我国高校规模的扩大,高校青年教师队伍越来越庞大,并且青年教师必将成为我国未来高等教育发展的支撑者,同时也是我国向人力资源强国迈进的智力支持者,所以培养合格和优秀的高校青年教师的任务越来越紧迫。本文围绕怎样构建高校青年教师的素质能力要求体系,从党的教育方针、高校教师的思想政治道德要求、应具备的学科业务知识、教师职业修养、职业规划、高校师生关系几个方面进行了系统性的论述。     

Black women’s bodies,ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.     

Rethinking Social Policy

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government’s education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government’s attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of ‘empowerment’, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government.     

中国大学的文化责任

在现代社会分工中,大学承担着独特的文化责任,通过学术延续和发展人类的文化与智慧,不懈地为现代社会的发展、现代人的生活提供思想价值资源和理想图景,是现代大学的理想与使命所在。服务于中国文化大繁荣与大发展的中国大学,应当在诠释当代中国实践、培育当代中国的文化精英、为经济社会的发展提供文化资源、引领中国的文化创新等方面承担起义不容辞的责任。为此,中国大学需要在始终坚持社会主义的发展方向、形成中国特色的现代学术传统、建构人文精神与科学精神相统一的治校理念、强化大学的文化育人能力等方面加强自身的建设。     

After Higgins and Dunne: Imagining School Teaching as a Multi‐Practice Activity

There remains a concern in philosophy of education circles to assert that teaching is a social practice. Its initiation occurs in a conversation between Alasdair MacIntyre and Joe Dunne which inspired a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education. This has been recently utilised in a further Special Issue by Chris Higgins. In this article I consider two points of conflict between MacIntyre and Dunne and seek to resolve both with a more nuanced understanding of the implications of applying the concept ‘social practice’ to teaching. I critique both Dunne's and Higgins' focus on schools and school teaching. It is their focus on school teaching, rather than a broader account of teaching, that leads them astray. The result is that Dunne and Higgins have not shown that teaching is a social practice. School teaching is not a complex activity, but a complex set of different activities co‐located in one place and engaged in by the same agents. In a final section I offer an account of ‘school teaching’ as a multi‐practice activity which is consistent with MacIntyre's approach, and argue that schoolteachers have both an institutional and an educative role.     

A question of autonomy: Bourdieu’s field approach and higher education policy

The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology and the notion of ‘autonomy’ is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach enables higher education to be examined as a distinct and irreducible object of study. It then explores the value and limitations of this conceptualization through analyses of policy during two contrasting moments of transition in the same field. First, the insights offered by a field approach are illustrated by analysing the new student debate over the creation of new universities in early 1960s English higher education. This shows how the field’s relatively high autonomy shaped the focus and form of policy debates by refracting economic and political pressures into specifically educational issues. Second, considering contemporary changes in policy highlights how the erosion of the social compact underpinning higher education has increasingly fractured autonomy, necessitating the development of Bourdieu’s conceptualization. A distinction between positional and relational dimensions of autonomy is introduced to capture an increasing disjuncture between the origins of the actors running higher education and of the principles they are adopting, respectively. These concepts are utilized to illuminate the effects of current moves towards marketization and managerialism in higher education on principles, practices and identities within the field.     

反思与重构:高校数字思政教育研究

面对“流量一代”的当代大学生,高校思政教育从内容到手段都显滞后,整体缺乏现代感,现代技术的进步正潜在倒逼着高校思政教育改革。大数据视域下,需要增强思政工作者的技术敏感性,树立思政工作战略新思维,促进传统教育与现代技术相融合,挖掘科学价值背后的社会价值和教育资源,研究开发以数字技术呈现党的理论和实践发展最新成果,以网络空间培植和传播意识形态新型产品,开启数字化思政教育新范式,有利于改革创新高校思政教育学习模式、课堂方式和评价体系,使思政教育更具针对性和实效性。