An essay on the implications of university expansion in Kenya

Although Kenya may be the most extreme example, expansion of university education is widespread throughout Eastern and Southern Africa. This article examines the irresistible rising tide of populism as it reaches the ivory tower in Kenya. Economic, political, and equity arguments supporting and opposing expansion are outlined. The conclusions, although directed at Kenya, are broadly applicable to those African nations embarking upon a program of tertiary-level growth.     

An essay on error

In recent years, researchers have started to take an increasing interest in errors that can frustrate teaching and training and learning. These enquiries have, however, tended to be of a special-purpose kind in the sense that they have focused on particular learning domains such as language learning, mathematics learning, and the acquisition of perceptual-motor skills. What is lacking is a more global approach to the problem of error or even, for that matter, a recognition that a global approach might be both possible and informative. This article tries to rectify this gap in the theoretical literature by indicating, in a comparatively discursive and non-rigorous way, the form that such an overall theory of error might take.     

Timed essay writing: implications for high-stakes tests

The majority of high-stakes tests from elementary school through postsecondary education include the timed impromptu essay as a measure of writing performance. For adolescents with writing disorders, this type of evaluation often presents a significant barrier. The purpose of the current study was twofold. First, we investigated the influence of handwritten, typed, and typed/edited formats of an expository essay on the quality scores received by students with (n = 65) and without (n = 65) dyslexia. Second, we examined the contribution of spelling, handwriting, fluency, and vocabulary complexity to the quality scores that students with and without dyslexia received on the same writing task. Analyses indicated that vocabulary complexity, verbosity, spelling, and handwriting accounted for more variance in essay quality scores for writers with dyslexia than for their typically achieving peers. Both group and individual student outcomes are reported to better understand the needs of struggling writers with dyslexia. Implications for assessment, instruction, and accommodations are discussed with an eye toward reform efforts that target improved teaching and learning.     

No time to think: policy,pedagogy and professional learning

In this study, we seek to illuminate the effects of the global policy convergence in education through a close study of its enactment within an Australian Teacher Education course. Building on an examination of the changing priorities of a cohort of pre-service teachers over a short space of time, we argue that the enactment of New Public Management approaches to the governance of teaching in Australia is having adverse effects on the professional learning of new teachers, defeating the policy goals. Previous studies have investigated the affective impact of current global policy formations on teachers. Building on that work, this study considers the impacts that the teacher policy emphasis on ‘performance’ has had on professional learning processes, which are understood with reference to Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory. The study is undertaken using an interpretative phenomenographic approach and informed by the related methods of discursive psychology, which positions discourse as a discursive practice to achieve specific goals in specific contexts.     

Self-determined change: An argument for new policy

Summary It has been argued in this paper that our concern with changing schools should not just be with large well-funded projects that affect many teachers but should extend to those individual teachers who have been professional enough to get on with the task of improving what goes on in their own classrooms. It has also been suggested that the open encouragement of innovation, and the showing of a willingness to negotiate content and process, will do much to improve present practice, will increase the number of ideas that are tried, and will promote the personal and professional development of teachers. Finally, it has been suggested that self-determined change, like outside-determined change, needs empirical study to determine its effects and generalizable processes.This work was drafted while the author was at the Centre for Applied Research in Education in Norwich, England. The author is indebted to Lawrence Stenhouse and his colleagues for many useful discussions.     

Vertical and Horizontal Discourse: An essay

The analysis in this paper has its origins in a critical account of the sociology of education (Bernstein, 1975) where the various approaches to the study of sociology were taken as the distinguishing feature of the discourse. This matter was further developed (Bernstein, 1996), with the distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses and their various modalities introduced in the context of differentiating this mode of analysis from more 'Bourdieuan' perspectives. This present paper is concerned with filling out and extending the sketches adumbrated in earlier work in a more accessible form. The model proposed generates a language which relates the internal structure of specialised knowledges, the positional nature of their fields or arenas of practice, identity constructions and their change, and the forms of acquisition for successful performances.     

Perspectives on complexity: An essay on curricular reform

Curricular reform is a complex endeavor having many facets including (a) the development of teaching materials, (b) the identification of appropriate instructional approaches, (c) the implementation of processes by which these new materials and approaches will be introduced into practice and sustained, and (d) the appropriate attention to the social context in which it all occurs. Its full understanding requires that it be viewed from a multiplicity of perspectives including various psychological, socio-cultural, subject matter, philosophical, and economic perspectives. In this essay, the many facets of curricular reform are explored in terms of what scholarship from these many perspectives has to offer. Examples of research results are cited and promising research opportunities are identified.     

American Indian identity and intellectualism: The quest for a new red pedagogy

In this article Grande argues that American Indian intellectualism and its central concerns - sovereignty and self-determination - have been ignored, obscured, and impeded by dominant modes of educational theory. More specifically, she argues that current obsessions with identity theory and formation work to deny the critical difference of American Indians as tribal peoples of distinct nations with sovereign status and treaty rights. Dominant modes of identity theory, thus, work to obscure the real sources of oppression of Indigenous peoples, substituting radical social transformation with a politics of representation. In working to address the inner contradictions between dominant modes of identity theory and American Indian tribal subjectivity, Grande employs the use of narrative, examining the text of her own identity formation through the lenses of differing modes of identity theory, namely essentialist, postmodern, and critical identity theories. She analyzes the potential of each theory to produce transformative knowledge and inform the discourse on American Indian identity and intellectualism. The author ends with a discussion of the need for a critical Indigenous theory of tribal identity and liberation, for a collectivity of critique that ultimately forms the foundation for a new Red Pedagogy.     

说"狂"

近几年,“狂”以各种形式频繁出现在报刊杂志、网络语言以及我们的日常口语中。本文将依据一些语言实例来分析“狂”的语法和语义方面的特点、它的发展变化以及它活跃在当下语言中的原因。     

Heidegger Teaching: An analysis and interpretation of pedagogy

German philosopher Martin Heidegger stirred educators when in 1951 he claimed teaching is more difficult than learning because teachers must ‘learn to let learn’. However in the main he left the aphorism unexplained as part of a brief four‐paragraph, less than two‐page set of observations concerning the relationship of teaching to learning; and concluded at the end of those observations that to become a teacher is an ‘exalted matter’. This paper investigates both of Heidegger's claims, interpreting letting learn in the context of Heidegger's larger philosophical project, and suggesting why in light of that project to become a teacher is an exalted concern. The methodology guiding the inquiry is largely hermeneutic, the purpose of the essay to interpret teaching from a Heideggerian perspective: its nature and general method.     

公共教育学的革命:由教师教育学向学生教育学转变

公共教育学作为师范生的一门必修课，长期以来对师范生向师性的培养并未起到应有的作用，其原因在于该课是以教师能教些什么为出发点而组织的教学内容，即教师教育学；而不是以学生为本所建构的教学体系即学生教育学。     

Limerence,language, and literature: An essay

Annals of Dyslexia -