Time to reconsider the strategic role of system(s) for monitoring higher education graduates’ careers?

The “employability” paradigm is beginning to be publicly regarded as one of the key developmental paths and “modernisation” principles of higher education institutions. In this context, the article first overviews the existing practices for tracking graduates’ early careers in Europe. Next, it identifies and discusses relevant conceptual aspects for designing system(s) for tracking graduates’ careers and using the results of graduate studies. This includes understanding and interpreting employability, possible societal tensions surrounding higher education when seeking to support the needs of graduates, employers or initiating new “professional projects”, and the development of disciplinary assumptions about career success. Third, based on the results of a national survey among higher education institutions in Slovenia, it explores institutional views related to establishing systems for monitoring graduates’ “employability”. Understanding higher education institutions’ attitudes and capacities towards monitoring the employability of their graduates is important for the success of tracking surveys in terms of their involvement in the collection of data, adapting the research instrument to reflect possible disciplinary particularities and the use of survey results. By combining the institutional perspective with the previously elaborated conceptual framework, the article calls on higher education stakeholders to support the strategic function of career monitoring systems for exploring new professional opportunities of graduates in the context of broader societal and economic developments.     

Positionierungen zu „Elite“ und „Exzellenz“ in gymnasialen Bildungsregionen – Eine „Gretchenfrage“ für Schulleiter exklusiver Gymnasien?

Looking at two urban higher education regions, in this paper we investigate the question of which positions head teachers of “exclusive” German gymnasiums adopt with regard to concepts such as ‘elite’, ‘excellence’ and thus also to schools’ attempts to distinguish their own profiles in the education system, all the while bearing in mind the context of public discourses about ‘elite’ and ‘excellence’. In doing so, we reconstruct four modes of dealing with the elite concept. All of these modes—even the most positive references—show that for “exclusive” German Gymnasiums the term ‘elite’ is precariously situated, associated as it is with a considerable need for legitimation. By contrast, it is not problematic to refer to a meritocratic elite concept that involves functional academic and leadership elites in the sense of excellence. On the other hand, any association of these upper secondary schools with power, financial and business elites does seem highly problematic and is vehemently rejected. This clear rejection occurs—and this is the central thesis of this article—because otherwise meritocracy itself, as the hegemonic academic form of legitimation, would be threatened to its very core.     

Looking for Ways to Increase Student Motivation: Internationalisation and Value Innovation

Understanding what constitutes the perceived value of foreign education to international business students is critical for business schools in order to achieve their recruitment targets. One established method relies on a financial interpretation of the costs and benefits of business education. By contrast, this study advocates a holistic approach by employing the concept of “internal” and “external” career success as its theoretical underpinning. A survey of undergraduate Chinese students in two British business schools based on such approach provides confirmation of the importance of an individual's judgement of own success as the foundation of value‐related expectations and suggests that academic practice should be concerned with a wider range of competencies and responses to individual attitudes, shifting emphasis towards a greater spectrum of social values.     

On Change and Diversity: The Role of Governmental Policy and Environmental Influences

This article addresses the issue of change in the government‐university relationship. As has become increasingly clear for both analysts of higher education policy and for administrators in higher education institutions, a fundamental shift in the relationship between national governments and higher education institutions is taking place in many western European countries. In some countries, these changes are occurring at greater speed than in others, but the movement to what has been labelled “state supervision” is quite dominant. The first part of the article analyzes the rationale for this change at system level by tracing its historical imperatives; after which it discusses the concept of the supervisory governance model. The second part focuses in particular on one of the key objectives of higher education policy, namely diversity, and addresses the question of the extent to which a supervisory governance strategy can contribute to the attainment of this objective and what doing so implies for the role and function of higher education institutions. By focussing on the specific issue of diversity, the authors intend to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between governments and higher education institutions that is implied in the supervisory model.     

Teacher preparation: A collaborative model

Abstract

Criticism of education and teacher preparation persists. The “Teachers Educating and Motivating Students,” or TEAMS, model was developed to address this criticism. The TEAMS model has been structured using a Professional Development School (PDS) concept as the core component. The model is a competency‐based, structured block program featuring concurrent enrollment in groups of courses and a corresponding field component.

Evaluation of the TEAMS program is a continuing process. Completion of a “perceptions” survey and a workplace competencies instrument by students and mentors/administrators revealed that the TEAMS program is accomplishing intended goals. Furthermore, t tests revealed only one significant difference in perceived adequacy between students and mentors/administrators on the workplace competencies. The data also revealed an overall positive attitude toward the project and satisfaction regarding the achievement of workplace competencies.     

高职高专临床医学职业关键能力的培养

对临床医学专业毕业生职业工作的跟踪调查表明,高职高专临床医学职业关键能力培养至关重要.高职临床医学专业应将职业关键能力培养上升到人生规划,将其贯穿于临床专业学习以及学生的一日生活制度之中,并大力提高学生自我培养职业关键能力的主观能动性.     

Self-assessment instrument to measure the competencies of Namibian graduates: Testing of validity and reliability

Namibia has been reported to be one of the countries with the highest unemployment rates. In this work, the reliability and validity of the self-assessment instrument used to measure competencies of graduates in Namibia were assessed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The EFA results demonstrated that the twenty indicators can be categorized into five factors, namely, “management and resilience”, “professional and communication”, “teamwork and critical thinking”, “self-control”, and “achievement motive”. The CFA results showed that all of the factors and indicators are highly reliable with good construct validity. Students and graduates could employ this validated self-assessment instrument to assess or diagnose a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in their own competencies and provide themselves with a realistic and objective estimate of their employability, as well as help them increase effectiveness in their workplace.     

Who is responsible for employability? Student perceptions and practices

The paper examines to whom Portuguese students attribute responsibility for the development of employability, and what extra-curricular activities they undertake to improve their employability. Particular focus lies upon how far students internalise responsibility for employability and if/how they seek to position themselves in the job market. The data was obtained through a survey of 828 Portuguese students. The analysis explored differences among student groups (higher education sector, gender, age and discipline). The attribution of responsibility was primarily to students themselves and to higher education institutions as key vehicles for employability development, echoing the theoretical conceptualisation which sees employability as an individual ability/responsibility. Yet, the observed variations provide empirical support for the conceptualisation of employability as complex and multi-dimensional. The study also revealed relatively high engagement with extra-curricular activities, evidencing that students not only assume responsibility for employability, but are proactively seeking to gain positional advantage in the job market.     

FINITE RESOURCES

An introductory aperçu is given of the “Topic”, of this issue, “The Financing of Higher Education”. The general question asked is how higher education systems as well as individual higher education institutions are to diversify their sources of funding given that the public authorities can no longer be counted upon to foot the whole bill. Much is said as to how students, that is, users, are to be made to cover an increasing share of the costs of their own education. Little, however, is said of how the balance of power within institutions and between institutions and governments will be changed as out of necessity they develop fund‐raising units and other specialized commercial offices to handle the “sale” of their services to private sector organizations.     

Finding Voices in a Changing World: Standard Language Education as a Site for Developing Critical Literacies

What are the “key competencies” needed in our time? What literacy is needed to make students active participants in their societies and contributors to changing cultures? This article offers a contribution to the ongoing discussion about these questions. It takes as its point of departure the “key competencies” formulated in the OECD program Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) in response to educational challenges in a changing world, and the five “basic skills” to be developed in all school subjects from year 1 to year 13 in the Norwegian curriculum of 2006 (LK06). It argues, first, for the need to understand “basic skills” in the perspective of DeSeCo “key competencies”, with a focus, as formulated in DeSeCo, on using tools interactively, acting autonomously, and interacting in heterogeneous groups. Secondly, the aims and purposes of the school subject “Norwegian” in Norway, as formulated in LK06, are discussed in relation to the aims of the DeSeCo key competencies and the concepts of critical literacy and Bildung. Thirdly, the article offers a discussion of how standard language education can become a site for the development of key competencies and critical literacies, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas about utterances and voices and Roz Ivanic's about discoursal identities, and talking about the StLE subject as a potential public space, a stage, a resonance room, and a cultural workshop. Finally, some concluding remarks are made about the crucial role of the teacher in such a curriculum, and about the role of standard language education in relation to other school subjects.     

“互联网+教育”:颠覆、应对与重构

"互联网+"的出现对传统主流教育产生了巨大的冲击,现行教育体制的教学内容、教学手段都无一例外地受影响,在一定意义上教育的根基已被动摇;然而这种看似威胁性的影响对现行教育体系却是一种反推和倒逼,它促使现行教育体制必须进行一种革命性的改革。因此,从分析"互联网+教育"导致的传统教育模式中教育、知识及技术观念的颠覆性改变入手,重新思考这一变革过程中的应对手段和策略,对其进行二次革新,在其结构和彼此关系上对现有"互联网+教育"模式进行重构,实现教育行业的又一次飞跃和提升。     

Zwischen Selbsttätigkeit und Erziehungsbedürftigkeit: das Kind in der “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung”

In the history of education it is rather common to distinguish two opposing ideas of childhood: the romantic image of the innocent child on the one hand and the image of the evil child that has to be rescued on the other. According to historiography at the beginning of the twentieth century this dichotomy has gained a particular shape in German pedagogy: the exponents of Progressive Education recover the child and founded their pedagogy on trust in its good nature. Their agenda tries to overcome the prevailing Herbartian pedagogy. Those “conservative” educators stress the importance of the technological aspects of education. They are said to have no explicit understanding of the child as they would regard it only as the negative counterpart to an education that aims to overcome its nature. This article claims to prove that such a simple dichotomy is not sufficient to describe the complex image of the child in the German pedagogical debates at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. For this purpose the article concentrates on the first volumes of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” (Journal of Child Studies) that was founded in 1896. The ideology of the main editors of the journal is attributed to Herbartianism. In the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” those Herbartians aim to bring together pedagogy with child studies as well as with medicine and psychiatry. Moral education is an important topic within the journal’s discussion but the child is usually not morally judged itself and therefore regarded neither as evil nor as good. Instead the knowledge of natural research and child studies is adapted to learn about the nature of the child and its development. According to the journal’s authors the results of child studies form a crucial background for professional education in general. Later on, those children that do not develop as scientifically expected can be declared the object of special pedagogical care. Should the deviating development be classified as pathological, this “treatment” will be inspired by medicine and psychiatry. Thus the religious or ethical categories of “good” and “evil” are partly replaced by scientific ones such as “normal” or “pathological”. Nevertheless pedagogical theorising remains highly moral in its goals – and setting these goals is regarded as the duty of adults. Although the child is understood as an active being, the educational authority has to be borne by the grown‐up generation. Altogether the educational programme of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” conforms to the attitude of the Wilhelminian era. In contrast to most of the “progressive” movements, the ideas are not utopian – they aim neither for a republican society nor for the improvement of the German race as the basis for a new nation. The editors explicitly neglect the notion of a child as a political subject with its own rights. Later they remain highly sceptical about the character of human nature itself and do not believe that a new society can be built only upon the faith in it. Nevertheless some of the key authors are regarded as representatives of Progressive Education today – for example Karl Wilker, who acted as an editor of the journal and was also engaged in the New Education Fellowship later on. Also the journal authors’ claims for a renewal of education resemble those of the “progressive” movements: They also call for a turn to the child as the basis of pedagogy. These findings lead to the result that a history of childhood and education may not start out from a distinction between a child‐centred progressive education on the one hand and a conservative education on the other. Phrases like “the child” or “child‐centred” are to be found in very different pedagogies and hence are not sufficient to characterise a particular educational programme. In fact a great number of very different pedagogues recovered “the child” at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century and founded their model on this idea. In consequence “the child” turns out to be more like a metaphor. This insight does not mean that “the child” was an empty and useless phrase for historiography. On the contrary: as a medium of education it may help to gain a deeper understanding of the contrasts and similarities between different pedagogical approaches – regardless of whether they turn out to be more “progressive” or “conservative”. Therefore it is necessary to analyse in which contexts within the pedagogical discourse “the child” arises and which special functions it is meant to contain.     

我国高等教育重点建设政策的历程与省思

纵观新中国70余年我国高等教育重点建设政策演进,政府角色、资源配置方式、建设路径、制度运作模式等都发生了重大转变。制度自信日益凸显,但渐进式政策制定模式、政府主导的政策执行过程、效率优先的政策价值基础仍是我国高等教育重点建设政策的总体特征。由此,在政策实践过程中,呈现出关于“谁是主角、谁是配角、谁是参与者”、高等教育发展效率与公平以及制度运作的适度性等问题。未来,提高重点大学政策决策的民主与科学性,进一步明晰国家、地方政府和高校在重点大学建设中的权责,完善重点建设的制度体系与配套政策,处理好重点与特色的关系,平衡重点与非重点、公平与效率等关系问题将成为“双一流”建设推进的关键。     

The Contested Curriculum: Academic learning and employability in higher education

This article explores the discourse of employability in higher education by investigating the understanding of different stakeholder groups (students, staff, employers) of the University of Nottingham (UK and China), and their fit to each other and to the educational literature. It finds that, while theories of life-long or life-wide learning position employability as an outcome of a holistic curriculum embracing both discipline and employability, stakeholders perceive learning for employability as a threat to disciplinary learning. The results suggest that to progress significant curriculum development in support of employability, a greater consensus of stakeholder views is needed with a deeper sympathy towards the integration of academic learning and employability. The article concludes with an assessment of the re-envisioning needed by Nottingham and other universities as they prepare students for an “employability” fit for purpose in a twenty-first century characterized by change and challenge.     

Commercial civil society: A perspective on private higher education in China

Two distinctive paradigms have been used in researching higher education phenomena in China’s process of social transformation. The first might be described as “critical realist,” and the second as “interpretivist.” The book Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities: In the Move to Mass Higher Education, has inclined toward the second paradigm and a central concept is that of “civil society.” However, the authors of this article argue that the concept of “commercial civil society” may better explain the characteristics of Chinese private higher education. Different from civil society that is based on voluntary action and contributions, commercial civil society is characterized by profit making behavior. This article focuses on analyzing the profit making features of Chinese private higher education, and thus aims to supplement the interpretivist analysis presented in the book. The authors believe that the concept of “commercial civil society” not only reflects certain features of the social environment in which Chinese private higher education operates, but may also be helpful for analyzing private higher education phenomena in other countries.     

Improving prevention programs: first results on the relation between subjectively perceived levels of usefulness and social competencies

School-based aggression prevention programs have been implemented in many educational institutions, and fostering the development of social competencies is one of the central aspects of many approaches. The aim of the present study was to assess the level of subjectively perceived usefulness of the prevention program “Faustlos” in connection with the self-reported levels of aggressiveness and social competencies in a sample of German fourth graders. The children had completed the prevention program. Results suggest differences in the level of aggressiveness and social competencies between children with different levels of perceived usefulness of the prevention program.     

EFFECTS OF FUTURE MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ AFFECTIVE, COGNITIVE AND SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS ON THEIR KNOWLEDGE AT THE END OF THE TEACHER EDUCATION IN GERMANY AND TAIWAN

How individual characteristics affect the acquisition of knowledge in teacher education has been widely unexplored thus far. The “Teacher Education and Development Study—Learning to Teach Mathematics (TEDS-M)” provides a database for examining this research question across countries. Based on the Taiwanese and German sample of TEDS-M, the relationship between future lower secondary mathematics teachers’ knowledge and their affective, cognitive and socio-demographic characteristics was examined using multilevel modelling whilst controlling for the teachers’ opportunities to learn. The results reveal that in Germany, teacher knowledge is more strongly affected by future teachers’ individual characteristics than teacher knowledge in Taiwan. These results are interpreted against the background of cultural differences between “the West” and “the East” or “individualism” and “collectivism”, respectively.     

Complementary assessment in teacher and school leadership training: Necessity,conceptualization and validation

Contemporary education requires teachers and school leaders who have well developed basic skills and competencies such as interpersonal communication, teamwork and leadership, in order for them to lead their students toward successful integration into society. These skills and competencies are crucial for proper functioning in modern society. Existing training programs for teachers and school leadership roles, however, have little if any dedicated guidance for developing these skills and competencies. Inclusion of basic skill development in training programs necessitates a new model that focuses on their assessment. As a first step toward the development of such a model, this study, carried out using the Delphi method, offers definition and validation of a new concept called “complementary assessment”.     

The employability skills of higher education graduates: insights into conceptual frameworks and methodological options

In recent decades, a growing body of literature has emerged to illustrate the strong pressure on higher education institutions to prepare graduates for the world of work. This paper examines studies that attempt to incorporate the concept of employability skills in the empirical analysis. It thus focuses on the conceptual discussion and methodological options to show how researchers cope empirically with the assumptions associated with employability skills. This literature survey offers a taxonomy of methods that distinguishes between direct and indirect, as well as supervised and unsupervised, methods for the collection of data on skills. Although the underlying premise of the available research is that higher education institutions and policymakers should be provided with information on employability skills, the studies examined in this paper suggest that the identification of those skills is an impossible endeavour. Agreement is only found on some cognitive, technical, and relational skills. More importantly, it is argued that the supply-side approach overlooks economic and social processes that might affect employability. The problem of graduates’ employability transcends higher education institutions’ provision of useful and matched skills.     

On the Problems of Asking for a Definition of Quality in Education

In this article we discuss the problems of asking for a definition of quality in education from a philosophy of language perspective. We take the concept of quality as it appears in higher education discourse as our example. More specifically we discuss the possibility of obtaining a precise, unified definition of quality by addressing the problem of asking “what is” questions. We use definition theory and theory pertaining to linguistic vagueness, including Wittgenstein and the idea of family resemblance. We suggest that quality is an inherently vague concept, which runs us into boundary problems and forces us to operate in grey zones. This means that if your “what is” question is a question for the essence of quality, you make demands that the concept cannot fulfil. Recognition of this fact implies that our expectations concerning concept precision and unity should be modified. Our discussion illuminates why it is so difficult to find a definition of the concept of quality.