EDUCATION AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES: AGAINST REDUCTIONISM IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND RESEARCH

ABSTRACT:  This paper critiques what it sees as a tendency on the part of certain social researchers to engage in moralistic critiques of middle-class parents, especially in relation to the choices and actions of such parents within educational quasi-markets. It proceeds to a linked critique of the influence within education of certain aspects of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, with particular reference to the concepts of symbolic violence and the depiction of cultural meanings as arbitrary. It is argued that both these developments involve unhelpful and unjustified forms of reductionism that could have the effect of alienating middle-class support for a range of broadly progressive political endeavours within and beyond education.     

WHY WHAT WORKS WON'T WORK: EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE AND THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

A bstract .  In this essay, Gert Biesta provides a critical analysis of the idea of evidence-based practice and the ways in which it has been promoted and implemented in the field of education, focusing on the tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. Biesta examines three key assumptions of evidence-based education: first, the extent to which educational practice can be compared to the practice of medicine, the field in which evidence-based practice was first developed; second, the role of knowledge in professional actions, with special attention to what kind of epistemology is appropriate for professional practices that wish to be informed by the outcomes of research; and third, the expectations about the practical role of research implicit in the idea of evidence-based education. Biesta concludes that evidence-based practice provides a framework for understanding the role of research in educational practice that not only restricts the scope of decision making to questions about effectivity and effectiveness, but that also restricts the opportunities for participation in educational decision making. He argues that we must expand our views about the interrelations among research, policy, and practice to keep in view education as a thoroughly moral and political practice that requires continuous democratic contestation and deliberation.     

基于教育视角的内蒙古地区人力资本现状与投资分析

众多研究表明,人力资本投资对区域经济增长和可持续发展具有强大的促进作用。笔者从教育指标出发,研究了内蒙古自治区的人力资本现状及其投资,结果表明：内蒙古人口平均受教育年限呈上升趋势,但增长较慢;政府对教育的投资有所增加,但占GDP与财政支出的比重并未得到显著提高,政府用于初等教育的经费投入明显不足。据此,提出提高我区人力资本积累的建议。     

MAKING SENSE OF TRAUMATIC EVENTS: TOWARD A POLITICS OF APORETIC MOURNING IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PEDAGOGY

A bstract .  In this essay, Michalinos Zembylas examines how the work of mourning can evoke public and school pedagogies that provide an alternative way of relating to otherness and trauma — not through remaining fixated on simply representing the other's or one's own trauma, but in the insistence on remaining inconsolable before suffering. A major concern is the normalization of mourning in school and public discourses through the establishment of boundaries between grievable and ungrievable lives. Zembylas argues that the violence unleashed through national mourning and the reproduction of loss through rituals of commemoration in schools raise important issues about the ethics and politics of mourning embedded in public and school pedagogies. Using two examples of the workings of mourning — one in the context of the South African reconciliation tribunals and the other in the context of collective mourning of Missing Persons in his home country of Cyprus — Zembylas demonstrates that the recognition of our common vulnerability to loss can form the groundwork of school and public pedagogies of aporetic mourning.     

民本主义与我国民主建设

民本主义思想是中国历史重要的文化和精神遗产,是几千年封建社会中君主和士大夫阶层的统治之道,虽然民本与民主有着本质的区别,但民本主义思想主张“民为邦本”,重视人心身背,对我国现阶段社会主义民主的建设具有重要的借鉴作用。     

USE OF EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION BY THE INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

After a certain period of relactance and objective difficulties the use of television as an educational medium in the institutions of higher education is now increasing. The following article, written for “Higher Education in Europe” by Drs. Rainhard Borm and Sigrid Borm from the Institute of Higher Education at the Berlin Humboldt University, presents the current situation with regard to the application of educational television in the educational process by the institutions of higher education in the German Democratic Republic.     

“二次革命”论、新民主主义论与民粹主义——对陈独秀“二次革命”论之再评价

胡绳晚年,以民粹主义问题为切入点,对毛泽东新民主主义论所作的再评价,在中国现代思想史的研究中具有借鉴价值。在批判民粹主义问题上,陈独秀与毛泽东可说是殊途同归。陈独秀运用“二次革命”论批判民粹主义,而毛泽东所凭借的则是新民主主义论。这两个理论虽有原则区别,但在与民粹主义划清界限的问题上却达成了共识。这是因为,二者在对待资本主义的态度、主张有间断的革命和最终的革命目标等方面,见解相似,结论相近。我们应从这一角度对陈之“二次革命”论进行再评价。     

EDUCATIONAL DECENTRALIZATION IN COMMUNIST AND POST-COMMUNIST HUNGARY

National political reorganization in a post-communist era has reconceptualized both the societal role of education and the cultural significance of schooling for citizens in emerging democracies. To date, attention has focused primarily on changing structures rather than on participant perceptions within those structures. In this policy analysis of Hungary's overlapping decentralization and de-sovietization process, the author constructs macro and micro depictions of contemporary social and educational change. These two columns of inquiry illuminate the interactive dynamics between political, economic, and educational systems and the reidentification process of individuals within evolving systems. Because the decentralization of Hungary's educational system began long before the political break with Moscow in 1989, this case enables a more comprehensive and comparative perspective regarding the reorganization of power between school and state.