Building the Future of Learning

Could it be that in our excitement about e‐learning we forgot about buildings? With the advent of the personal computer and ubiquitous networks were we enticed into thinking that they would suffice and learning would follow removing the need for places and communities for learners? We now seem to have woken up, however, as there is an enormous resurgence of interest in new building in Universities, Schools and Colleges — a real opportunity to ‘build’ our learning futures. But if the interest is just in building then it's an opportunity lost. However, if it is about transformation, place and community we could create the connected learning society, both physically and virtually, that we aspire to. New 21^st century buildings and refurbished spaces should reflect our educational approaches and philosophies and, even more importantly, they should not disable tomorrow's possibilities. The buildings that we build today can prevent us from doing what tomorrow might become the dominant ways of working and learning. Our buildings should combine educational ideas, with imaginative technology and architecture to create the learning futures we wish to see. The Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University, which opened in January 2006, started from the premise of a building that is flexible and does not disable the future. The building, through its variety of spaces, embraces learner differences and supports a concept of learning as a social process putting human social interaction and conversation at its heart. This article uses the Saltire Centre as a case study to illustrate how some current key ideas in educational thinking can influence the learning facilities that we provide.     

An Interview with Charles M. Reigeluth

Dramatic changes in society from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age are making our educational systems obsolete. Piecemeal changes to the horse and buggy could not have brought our transportation system to where it needs to be today. Similarly, piecemeal reforms can never bring our educational systems to where they need to be to meet the digital‐age needs of our students and their communities. Reigeluth offers some ideas about what the new paradigm should be like.     

论差异机会平等与政府民生政策的实施

差异机会平等是指社会成员之间的生存与发展机会的不完全相等性,存在程度上的差别。政府的各项民生政策的实施要以差异机会平等为前提,要高扬自由、平等理念,确立自致性、能力本位的价值取向;完善公平公正的体制机制,大力发展教育尤其是基础教育事业,把促进公平作为国家基本教育政策。     

Massive Open Online Courses: designing for the unknown learner

University teachers are faced with a problem of ‘knowing’ their learners when teaching on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This paper explores and analyses what the University of Edinburgh has come to know about its recent MOOC participants, highlighting one particular course. We draw attention to barriers and enablers from co-existent understandings and expectations of course design, and from an abundance of highly qualified participants. We compare characteristics of participants who report a positive experience with those who do not. Mixed messages about teacher presence may have implications that go beyond MOOCs. We contemplate whether the participant group should be seen as a single massive multivocal entity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential opportunity for MOOCs to challenge standardization, homogenization and commodification of education. Shifting attention from the achievements of an individual to what can be done with a multitude, MOOCs may open up new educational arenas.     

家庭功能的变迁与教育机会的发展——以社会性别理论为视角

随着现代社会经济的发展和科学技术的进步,人类社会的家庭及其社会功能发生了巨大改变,其中家庭社会实践活动的功能经历了重大变革,特别是家庭的教育功能在家庭与社会发展变革的联系和作用中发挥着重要功效,以不断满足人们生存和社会适应的各种需要以及适应和改变社会环境的需要。在家庭社会功能发展与变迁的过程中,人们依然在不断地追求美好的理想,即接受均等的教育,尽管人们对"教育机会均等"问题的认识和努力存在着一定的文化、传统、观念上的差异,但是追求和实现教育机会的均等仍是社会各级各类教育所要达到的教育目的之一。以女性主义的社会性别理论为依据来反思和分析传统家庭社会功能发展中所充斥着的男性中心思想和意识,可以重新审视家庭社会功能变迁对教育机会发展的影响,不断思考并解决家庭社会功能发展和教育机会发展的关系问题,努力促进社会教育机会平等发展。     

Secondary Education Reform and the Concept of Equality of Opportunity in Japan

This paper aims to throw light on the evolution and historical transformation of the concept of equality of opportunity as applied to educational policies in Japan from the end of World War II to the present day. It analyses the Central Council for Education's (CCE) reform proposals in the 1990s, and places them in the context of developing the concept of equality of educational opportunity in the years since 1945, when the post‐war education system was established in Japan. More specifically it addresses the following questions: What kinds of equality of educational opportunity have the central administrative bodies (Monbusho or the CCE), the political parties and teachers aimed to achieve since the war? How have they applied equality of opportunity to educational policies? What kinds of criteria are used by them to measure equality of educational opportunity? To do so, it looks in detail at the main agenda in relation to the issue of equal opportunity in the reports by the CCE on both the state of education in the 1990s, and its transformation during the five decades since the war. To trace the historical transformation of the concept of equality of educational opportunity, this article selects two major explanatory models—egalitarianism and meritocracy. Although there is widespread agreement that equality of opportunity is a requirement of a just society in Japan, there is also widespread disagreement about just what this requirement amounts to and how it is to be balanced against other requirements such as ‘meritocracy’.     

现代西方社会教育机会不均等的表现及其特征

在现代西方社会,教育机会均等的概念已经从早期的对入学机会均等和参与教育过程均等的要求,发展到了现今对教育结果和教育效果均等的追求,然而,不均等的现象却仍然广泛地存在.本文运用近些年来西方一些学者的重要研究,去说明和描述在教育入学机会、参与教育过程、教育结果和教育效果等四个教育机会均等的维度上,西方社会教育机会不均等是如何表现的,这些表现又呈现了什么样的特征.     

从百年语文教育变革看语文教育的本质

语文独立分科到今天不过百余年的历史,可这个百年却是人类社会最为动荡、变化急剧的百年。而百年语文教育变革核心其实就是语文教育本质的变迁。一切关于语文教育的现象归根结底都归结于“语文”是什么的问题。近代中国一直是缺乏民族自信、完全西化的,甚至亦步亦趋。我们抛弃了中国古代语文教育的宝贵经验。今天当我们这个民族建立了自信时,我们可以理智地反思我们的传统。所以反思近代语文教育理念的变迁、得失,认清语文教育的特质、规律对我们今天的语文教育改革来说意义重大,对未来中华民族的发展更是事关重大。     

试析我国实现教育机会均等的条件和策略

教育机会均等是马克思主义教育民主思想的核心内容之一 ,但由于各种客观条件的限制使社会主义现实生活中还存在着大量的教育机会不均等的现象。本文试图通过对在社会主义初级阶段条件下 ,影响我国教育机会均等进程的社会制度、经济发展、文化传统和教育体制等因素的分析 ,来初步探讨在我国发展教育机会均等的发展策略和途径     

Ways of knowing,outcomes and ‘comparative education’: be careful what you pray for

Comparative education as a field of study in universities (and ‘comparative education’ as practised by nineteenth-century administrators of education in Canada, England, France and the USA) has always addressed the theme of ‘transfer’: that is, the movement of educational ideas, principles and practices, and institutions and policies from one place to another. The first very explicit statement of this way of thinking about ‘comparative education’ was offered in the early nineteenth century in France and was expressed in terms of the expectation that if comparative education used carefully collected data, it would become a science. Clearly – about 200 years later – a large number of systems of testing and ranking, based on the careful measurement of educational processes and product, have provided us with hard data and these data are being used within the expectation that successful transfer (of educational principles and policies and practices from one place to another) can now take place. A transferable technology exists. This article argues that this view – that ‘we’ now have a successful science of transfer – ignores almost all of the complex thinking in the field of ‘academic comparative education’ of the last 100 years; and that it is likely to take another couple of hundred years before it can approximate to being a science of successful social and educational predictions. However, what shapes the article is not this argument per se, but trying to see the ways in which the epistemology of the field of study (academic comparative education) is always embedded in the politics of both domestic educational reform and international political relations – to the point where research in the field, manifestly increasingly ‘objective’ is also de facto increasingly ‘political’. The article is about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of that and what has been forgotten and what has not yet been noticed.     

教育增长与教育发展:历史、概念与政策

60年来,发展理论经历了从经济增长到经济发展再到经济、社会、人、自然全面协调可持续发展的变迁。我国教育正面临大改革和大发展。这一过程中,人们容易把教育增长即教育人数的增加、教育年限的延长和教育资源条件的改善当作教育发展,从而使教育发展面临GDP化、工业化、市场化和物质化的陷阱。而教育发展是指教育系统自身机能的改善和对社会教育需求的灵活满足,它包括教育的物质基础、结构、功能、教育机会数量、教育机会分配、受教育者素质变化、社会人力资源状况以及对社会的影响八个范畴。为了促进教育的发展,当前应在科学教育发展观的指导下,检视既有的教育发展道路,调整教育政策的价值标准、知识基础、政策领域和政策手段。     

Towards equality: the voices of young disabled people in Disability Rights Commission research

Increased participation and success in education for disabled people will improve their social inclusion and benefit society in general. In this article Louca‐Mai Wilson discusses Disability Rights Commission research on education and its implications for policy and practice. Research findings are considered in relation to the need for the voices of young disabled people to be heard in research, policy and planning. A key finding was that young disabled people want to be regarded and treated as equal to their peers, with the same rights of access and educational opportunity. But schools and educational establishments vary in their willingness and capacity to address and remove existing access barriers. Inclusion is a key issue for many young disabled people; many feel isolated at school and college and often have lower expectations about their future than their non‐disabled peers. Inclusive practice and participation are key to ensuring that disability equality in education is achieved.     

Fairness in education – a normative analysis of OECD policy documents

Educational policy depends on assumptions about fairness in education, whether they are made explicit or kept implicit. Without a view of fairness, one would be in the dark as to what should be done about the reproduction of social inequality through education, or whether or not anything should be done at all. The aim of this paper is to uncover the view of fairness in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) education policy. It is based on an analysis of the normative argumentation concerning educational fairness in a set of policy documents from the last seven years, with special emphasis on the association between social background and educational achievement. The main result of the analysis is that the OECD explicitly operate with a loose idea of equal opportunity, compatible with even a merely formal equality, but implicitly with a meritocratic variant of fair equality of opportunity. In the final section, I argue that the OECD approach to fairness suffers from a limitation in that it considers educational justice in isolation from social justice in general.     

Pakistani pre-primary teachers’ perceptions and practices related to gender in young children

A key area of interest is the way in which early years educators’ perceptions about the concept of gender may influence their practice in relation to how children’s ideas about gender might be supported and reinforced. However, this area has received little attention in the highly gender-segregated context of Pakistan. Understanding evidence-based issues related to gender in Pakistan is thus crucial to overcoming educational barriers. This article explored Pakistani female pre-primary teachers’ perceptions and practices related to gender in the early years. Interview and observation data were collected with seven teachers in one urban, co-education school and were analysed thematically. Results indicated that teachers’ perceptions reflect the complex and multifaceted dimensions of gender within the gradually shifting, but still traditional, cultures of Pakistani society. For the most part, female teachers’ views are rooted in dominant patriarchal ideologies, for example, of boys as active and assertive and girls as passive and quiet. However, in a few instances such as in children’s academic performance and play, their perceptions reflect attempts to push gender boundaries which challenge patriarchal ideologies. Teachers’ gender perceptions have significant implications for young children’s development and understanding of gender roles in Pakistan.     

回到船山(上)

几千年来的中国思想史,由于特殊的历史条件和文化背景,自然地形成了如下几个重大的思想史难题:一、道德主体何以证立;二、内圣外王如何贯通;三、生命意义何以在学理上予以说明。对于这些难题,古来多少思想家都在论说,就连现代新儒家诸贤亦竭尽心力。可时至今日,惟有三百年前的衡阳王子给出了合理的解答。他通过对“气”这一范畴的独特理解,构建起一座以历史本体论为骨架的哲学大厦,且凭此而对诸如政治、经济、历史、道德、宗教等论域提出了全新的解释模式,其见解之深刻,观念之现代,远在20世纪的熊十力、牟宗三等人之上:对于这样一份厚重而又富有现代价值的思想遗产,吾人实应将其宣扬于世界,功德于现实。     

回到船山(下)

几千年来的中国思想史,由于特殊的历史条件和文化背景,自然地形成了如下几个重大的思想史难题:一、道德主体何以证立;二、内圣外王如何贯通;三、生命意义何以在学理上予以说明。对于这些难题,古来多少思想家都在论说,就连现代新儒家诸贤亦竭尽心力。可时至今日,惟有三百年前的衡阳王子给出了合理的解答。他通过对“气”这一范畴的独特理解,构建起一座以历史本体论为骨架的哲学大厦,且凭此而对诸如政治、经济、历史、道德、宗教等论域提出了全新的解释模式,其见解之深刻,观念之现代,远在20世纪的熊十力、牟宗三等人之上。对于这样一份厚重而又富有现代价值的思想遗产,吾人实应将其宣扬于世界,功德于现实。     

Professions and educational counseling in Mexico and Latin America

Conclusion In these circumstances, the prospect of the counselor for the professions is to play a new and different role inside the field of educational counseling. This new role will rely, in great measure, on the foreseeable behavior of society and, consequently, educational systems.It is relevant to consider the kind of society which is expected to emerge in the next twenty-five years. When this desirable scenario has been defined it becomes possible and necessary to join efforts, open new pathways and formulate new alternative solutions to present problems.Educational counseling should acquire properties that give it a new, more concrete meaning in a way that allows it to be used in a more accurate and effective way institutionally, in relation to the educational system and to career and national planning.Educational counseling should be more aware of and open to what is happening in the sectors that give a mandate to education at the economic, political, and social levels.Educational counseling and counseling for professionals must have continuity inside the educational system, and it may not be reduced to the role of filling in holes and taking responsibility for the contradictions of the national education system. Counseling must have a preventive task. In order to fulfill this, it is important that counselors have a solid background in education, politics, economics, and social areas; so they should be able to establish a connection with fields of work and their development potential.It is essential to systematize and share research on the discipline in order to delineate problems which are immediate, medium, or long-range in the different areas of counseling.     

美国教育理念之探析--赴美考察笔记

美国教育理念主要有七点：追求教育公平和教育机会平等；教育的目标是培养合格公民；人文精神是教育之魂；独立思考，质疑一切；教育是社会自由的保证；教育是国家和社会的支柱；教育是一种信仰。这些教育理念被美国政府、政党、社会所接受，所遵循，具有广泛性、深入性和实践性特点。     

把教育办成第一基础性知识产业

从教育地位和作用的嬗变、我们国家的基本国情、国际经济追赶经验三个方面分析了在知识经济社会，以传授、生产和创新知识，特别是培养训练创新型人力资本为主的教育产业，应成为第一基础性产业。从建立适应社会主叉市场经济的教育投资体系、办学主体多元化和转变观念、灵活办学、向学习化社会推进等方面提出了思路。总之，用产业经济的理念和发展思路，推进教育成为第一基础性知识产业，是直面国际竞争，迎接挑战，根据中国实际，强抓机遇的理性选择。     

教育公平——中国古代科举制度“机会均等”之启迪

教育公平是整合社会各阶层利益、实现社会平等的“最伟大的工具”,教育公平程度与政治认同情感成正比例相关。“机会均等”的科举“穷人教育”是中国古代官僚政治得以绵延数千年的制度因素。以史为鉴,深入发掘中国古代科举制度蕴藏的“公平公正”、“知识本位”教育理念,理性审视当今中国教育产业化、重点大学招生地方化等教育制度,切实贯彻温家宝总理的“穷人教育学”,有利于促进当今中国社会的长治久安。