Curiosity and Acquaintance: Ways of Knowing

Curiosity has rightly received much attention in epistemology and educational research. Although, through the centuries, it has been regarded with a degree of ambivalence, the trend now is towards its championing as an intellectual or epistemic virtue. The present discussion juxtaposes it against a contrasting way of knowing, which I refer to as knowledge by acquaintance. The notion of acquaintance pursued here parts company with Bertrand Russell's adoption of the expression, taking up instead a more ordinary use of the term. It is suggested that both curiosity and knowledge by acquaintance can present problems. Working through an example drawn from Stephen Poliakoff's film Close My Eyes, the paper seeks to reappraise the value of knowing by acquaintance for epistemology and for educational practice and research.     

Conceptualizing Teachers' Ways of Knowing

This article addresses issues related to the ways teachers learn mathematics and the teaching of mathematics and the relevance of those ways to their professional development. Preservice teachers' understanding of school mathematics lacks sophistication, a situation that needs to be addressed in mathematics teacher education programs. What is critical is the means by which they encounter and explore the mathematics they will be teaching. Fundamentally, their mathematical experiences need to be congruous with the kind of teaching we would expect of a reflective, adaptive teacher. The article contains both practical and theoretical considerations of how these experiences might be structured. Theoretical orientations for conceptualizing teachers' belief structures are offered as a foundation for conceptualizing teachers' ways of knowing. The moral dimension of teacher education is considered as a backdrop for understanding how teachers come to know.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Women,adult education and literacy: A Caribbean perspective

The main function of agricultural extension is generally thought to be the transfer through nonformal educational means of practical knowledge to agriculture and the enhancement of rural development. Agricultural extension has received renewed attention in recent years from international development agencies and considerable discussion has ensued regarding the appropriate role for extension programmes. Much of the attention has been directed towards improving the functions of existing services. This article discusses the policy considerations of extension within the broader context of agricultural development goals and the overall direction of the country's development objectives and strategies. A framework is presented for analysing important characteristics of different extension development options. The issues raised are relevant to the larger concerns of adult education policy and the promotion of lifelong learning strategies within society. They include the relationship of sectoral goals and policies to broader national objectives, the audience the public sector should target, the role of the private sector, the structural arrangements best suited to meet certain objectives and the correct mixture and co‐ordination of various services and programmes.     

Women studying childcare: integrating lives through adult education

Achieving organisational development through the enhancement of workplace learning is a popular recent strategy advocated in the management and business literatures. Yet what is learned is highly dependent on the workplace context. A lean production/just-in-time manufacturing environment is characterised by extreme time pressures. This paper outlines findings on how action learning was experienced in a manufacturing company employing lean production practices. An action learning program was implemented to foster learning in this company. Using a sociocultural framework, we describe how the production discourse surrounding lean production interacted with attempts to introduce reflective action and learning into that environment. The findings are that action learning practices were accommodated to a certain extent into the work routine during times of production stability, but were largely abandoned during times of crisis. Our analysis demonstrates that the cultural meaning of "work" in this lean production environment excluded all forms of "meaning" that were not visible, physical and targeted at immediate production needs. While there was evidence of individual personal and professional development achieved in this setting, there was little evidence to date of organisational development. The cultural hostility to non-urgent work hindered the reflective activity that could address the systemic issues that in turn could generate organisational development.     

Ways of Knowing and Epistemological Beliefs: Combined effect on academic performance

To obtain a more complete understanding of personal epistemology this study examines two epistemic paradigms – ways of knowing (specifically connected knowing and separate knowing) and epistemological beliefs (specifically beliefs about knowledge structure, knowledge stability, learning speed, and learning ability). Participants were 107 college students who completed questionnaires that assessed ways of knowing and epistemological beliefs. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that men score significantly higher on separate knowing. Path analyses revealed that the effects of ways of knowing on academic performance are mediated by belief in the speed of learning.     

Many Ways of Knowing: Creating classroom cultures in London's East End

Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century we have been led to believe that there is an inevitable link between poverty and early literacy and learning difficulties, and since the end of World War II, poverty has been translated into notions of cognitive or linguistic deficit. Teachers have turned to 'experts', often academics or those responsible for official education reports, for solutions. Each decade has brought a different group of experts, often vigorously denouncing the last. This paper argues that teachers and the public have been hoodwinked into believing that answers for success lie with any particular methods, materials or even parental involvement programmes. Rather than turning to 'experts', readers are invited to listen to the voices of successful learners across the last century in London's East End, as they reflect upon what really mattered for them during those early years in school.     

上海市中等职业学校开展成人中等职业教育

为贯彻<教育部关于贯彻落实全国职业教育工作会议精神,进一步扩大中等职业学校招生规模的意见>和<教育部关于加快发展中等职业教育的意见>等文件精神,以科学发展观为指导,优化高中阶段教育结构,扩大中等职业教育规模,提升中等职业学校办学能力,充分发挥优质教育资源作用,通过拓展招生对象的范围,改革办学模式进一步扩大招生规模,上海市教委为培养更多适应上海城市建设需要的高素质劳动者,从2005年起,在上海市中等职业学校中举办成人(业余)中等职业学校教学班(以下简称成人中职班).     

Ways of Knowing,Learning and Making Moral Choices

Abstract

This paper explores the epistemological dimensions in the thinking of adolescent girls. Using two different kinds of data ‐‐ (1) typical constructions of moral conflicts reported by adolescent girls that reveal either a justice or care (response) focus; and (2) girls’ responses to a story completion exercise ‐‐ this paper identifies epistemological perspectives in girls’ thinking that link ideas of self, knowing and morality. An hypothesized model of ‘learner's interests and goals’ and ‘approaches to knowing’ related to these conceptions of self and morality is presented and implications for teaching are discussed.     

Differentiated demand for private supplementary tutoring: Patterns and implications in Hong Kong secondary education

A growing number of students around the world receive private tutoring in academic subjects. Such tutoring is widely called shadow education because it mimics regular schooling as the school sector grows, so does the shadow; and as the curriculum in the school changes, so does the curriculum in the shadow. Private tutoring has long been a significant phenomenon in East Asia, but has not received adequate research attention.This paper focuses on private tutoring in Hong Kong. It draws on data collected through questionnaires from students in Grades 9 and 12, and analyzes the factors which shape the demand for private tutoring. The paper highlights the influence of school, family and individual factors on students’ demand, and reports on students’ declared reasons for taking private tutoring. It commences with a broad comparative picture, and concludes by showing what the Hong Kong data add to wider conceptual understanding.     

Women of Vision: Understanding the Ways Women Lead Change

In the midst of numerous global uncertainties, leaders are expected to have the ability to articulate a compelling vision of a preferred future that energizes and engages followers. In fact, Kouzes and Posner (2009) have argued that “Being forward-looking—envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future—is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from nonleaders” (p. 20). Given that context, it is notable that research by Ibarra and Obodaru (2009) that involved 360-degree evaluations of 2,816 leaders in the corporate sector concluded that male raters of executive performance viewed women as being less visionary than men. In contrast, women were rated by both male and female raters as being as effective or more effective than male executives on 9 of 10 other “critical components of leadership” (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2009, p. 66). The authors offer three potential explanations for this anomaly, including the possibility that the collaborative leadership style of many women gives credit to the group for visionary thinking and actions rather than taking individual credit. In the male-normed culture of Christian higher education (Longman & Anderson, 2016), the perception that women are less “visionary” may contribute to their underrepresentation in senior leadership positions. This article reports the findings of a qualitative, grounded theory study that explored how 12 female leaders at Christian colleges and universities successfully developed and implemented a vision that resulted in institutional change. The participants were asked to describe their process of envisioning and the internal drivers that motivated them to persevere through challenges related to the institutional change process. Data analysis led to the identification of four primary themes: (a) the role of internal drivers such as confidence, a sense of purpose, and calling; (b) evidence of a strong orientation toward people throughout the process; (c) language barriers that often seemed to inhibit envisioning; and (d) the importance of the change aligning with the institutional mission and values.     

Knowing through reflective practice in higher education

This article explores the use of reflective practice statements as sources of data. Under certain conditions reflective practice statements can be interpreted as providing insight into the underlying mechanisms at work in organisations. The article presents an analysis of reflective practice statements produced by lecturers in higher education who have participated in a course for research supervisors. Reflective practice in higher education has not yet become institutionalised as a form of professional socialisation and the article argues that participants were actively engaged in meaning making. Such statements can be seen as productive of real insight. The data is analysed in terms of the craft skills involved in supervision, the contradictions of maintaining a sense of expertise in modern universities, the significance of emotion at work and in terms of institutional power relationships. The article concludes that properly contextualised reflective practice can produce knowledge of the mechanisms at work in the contemporary academy.     

The impact on annual earnings of adult upper secondary education in Sweden

The public supply of adult education is very different between countries, making it likely that there is scope for efficiency gains. The contribution of this paper is to provide an economic evaluation of the earnings impact of adult education at upper secondary level (AE) in Sweden, where the supply is plausibly larger than in any other country. The analysis is based on register data for 1990–2002 of the cohort born in 1970 on accomplished AE course credits and possibly subsequent higher education. Difference‐in‐differences estimates indicate that for AE enrolees in 1994–1996, a year of AE credits increased earnings in 2002 by 6% for males and by 4.5% for females. The estimates are reconciled with conflicting results from earlier studies. According to crude calculations, which disregard other societal benefits of AE, the earnings benefits are sufficient to cover the costs incurred by society within 17 years.     

Dispositional factors affecting motivation during learning in adult basic and secondary education programs

Research indicates that about a quarter of adult students separate from formal adult basic and secondary education (ABE/ASE) programs before completing one educational level. This retrospective study explores individual dispositional factors that affect motivation during learning, particularly students’ goals, goal-directed thinking and action based on hope theory and attendance behaviors, and self-perceptions of competency based on affective domain attributions about external and internal obstacles to learning and employment, and demographic factors. Among 274 ABE/ASE students, those learners who made an education gain in 1 year significantly differed from those who did not in only a few dispositional or demographic variables; and by educational level they significantly differed in a wide variety of dispositional and demographic variables. These findings suggest researchable questions and programmatic considerations that may lead to future innovations that improve learner persistence.     

Knowing one's place: space,theory, education

In the latter parts of the twentieth century social theory took a spatial turn, one that education has yet to undertake, at least in any concerted way. Nonetheless, this paper aims to demonstrate that there could be, and perhaps is, a more decided turn towards unraveling spatial questions underpinning educational processes and practices. In this paper, we briefly set out the key ‘trajectories’ of space in social theory. We also examine what happens when spatial theories ‘escape’ traditional disciplinary confines and ask, in a rudimentary way: to what extent education is education any longer when spatial dimensions are added to its fields of concern? This paper concludes by ‘mapping’ various spatial foci in critical educational studies.     

Some Ways of Knowing Mathematics and Some Implications for Teacher Education

Editorial

Some Ways of Knowing Mathematics and Some Implications for Teacher Education