Co-operatives and education in the Basque Country: the ikastolas in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship

This article analyses the creation of the schools called ikastolas throughout the Basque Country from the 1960s onwards. The name ikastola refers to a unique school model whose major characteristic is to teach the majority of subjects in the Basque language, or euskera. It outlines the reasons why some of these schools took a co-operative organisational form and describes their major characteristics. The first part analyses the opportunities created under the Francoist regime for this kind of school, despite the repressive character of the dictatorship in other fields. The second part of the paper examines the important influence of the Mondragón co-operative movement, especially through its financial institution, in the creation of these educational co-operatives. The third and last part emphasises the role played by social mobilisation in defence of the Basque language in the creation of these schools and how this factor tied in with a co-operative governance system.     

Space: the final frontier in the learning of science?

In Space, relations, and the learning of science, Wolff-Michael Roth and Pei-Ling Hsu use ethnomethodology to explore high school interns learning shopwork and shoptalk in a research lab that is located in a world class facility for water quality analysis. Using interaction analysis they identify how spaces, like a research laboratory, can be structured as smart spaces to create a workflow (learning flow) so that shoptalk and shopwork can projectively organize the actions of interns even in new and unfamiliar settings. Using these findings they explore implications for the design of curriculum and learning spaces more broadly. The Forum papers of Erica Blatt and Cassie Quigley complement this analysis. Blatt expands the discussion on space as an active component of learning with an examination of teaching settings, beyond laboratory spaces, as active participants of education. Quigley examines smart spaces as authentic learning spaces while acknowledging how internship experiences all empirical elements of authentic learning including open-ended inquiry and empowerment. In this paper I synthesize these ideas and propose that a narrative structure might better support workflow, student agency and democratic decision making.     

When ‘research ethics’ become ‘everyday ethics’: the intersection of inquiry and practice in practitioner research

The act of engaging in sound and ethical practitioner research, regardless of context, encourages and indeed demands an alignment between the ethical framework employed in the research enterprise and the ‘everyday ethics’ of practice. This paper explores the ethical dimensions of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle have termed the dialectic of practitioner inquiry. The paper argues that the reflexive nature of the theory/practice dynamic means that, in the context of sustained practitioner inquiry, the ethics of research and the ethics of practice both hold the potential to be shaped by and to shape the other. Elsewhere in discussions of the issue of quality in practitioner and other practice-based research, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler have argued that ethical professionalism can and does work as a platform for quality, pushing practitioner inquiry ‘beyond celebration’. This paper builds on these ideas and, in exploring the intersection of inquiry and practice in practitioner research, examines the implications of issues relating to: informed consent; ‘voice’ and ownership; transparency and negotiation; confidentiality, anonymity and trust; and deliberative action in the context of both practitioner inquiry and classroom practice.     

The ethics of competition: accountability policy enactment in Chilean schools’ everyday life

ABSTRACT

Public policies have a moral order, an ethical horizon. They offer a vocabulary of imagined micro-policies. Using the case of Chile, this paper examines the ways in which accountability policies are reworked within schools and how they affect actors’ subjectivities. It adds new findings to the existing body of research on school accountability policies, offering in-depth evidence based on the case of Chile, which has a high-stakes testing model and a widespread competitive voucher system. The research is based on case studies of ten public and private subsidised schools, framed by a sociological perspective of policy enactment theory. The research findings show the ways that accountability policies are recreated, expanded, and intensified at the local level, permeating an ethic of competition. The analysis focuses on three qualitative trends: school actors’ sense-making of test scores and labels; zones of safety and risk for teachers under an accountability regime; and the emergence of a sticky web of persuasion, surveillance, and coercion among school members in order to improve performance. The practices examined are not understood as ‘secondary effects’ or an ‘implementation problem’, as if they occur unconnected from the policy rationale. The outcomes are consistent with the policy itself in interaction with school life.     

Paradox and Alienation in Kafka's short story—A Hunger Artist

A Hunger Artist, one of Franz Kafka's favorite works, arouses critics' great attention.Paradox permeates the entire story and is vividly displayed in it.Alienation is the major theme of the story.On the other hand, the short story traces out a tragedy of the hunger artist's struggle, which is also an actual portraiture of author's life.     

My life in the future

What will my own life be like in fifteen years?It is interesting for me to guess. Fifteen years from now, I'll live and work in Beijing. I'll be a teacher and meet a lot of in- teresting and funny children. Also, I'll live in a     

The children of the educational expansion era in Germany: education and further training participation in the life‐course

In this article, we examine the social dimension of inequality in educational participation. We look at the social transmission and gender‐specific channelling of education and further training in the context of employment and family. Based on quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data collected from a multi‐level empirical life‐course study (Hamburg Biographical and Life‐Course Panel: 1980–2006) conducted with a sample of the 1979 cohort of secondary school graduates in Hamburg, Germany, we discuss the education and further training practices in their lives – with special emphasis on social class of origin and gender.     

National exceptionalism in the ‘EduCanada’ brand: unpacking the ethics of internationalization marketing in Canada

Canada’s recently revamped international education brand, EduCanada, offers a rich example of developments at the intersections of higher education internationalization and marketization. In this paper, I examine the EduCanada website to consider how national exceptionalist and ‘othering’ narratives are reproduced in the recruitment of international students. From these findings I ask how internationalization relates to the overlapping and ongoing legacies of Indigenous colonization, and racialized regimes of personhood, citizenship, and immigration in Canada. Finally, I argue that the international marketization of higher education risks foreclosing critical examinations of the entanglements of empire within which we are all unevenly embedded.     

Excluded and dropped in: habitus and biographical identity in vocational adolescents’ life transitions

The ideal–typical distinction of normal/choice biography has been adopted by many youth researchers over the last 17 years as a means of approaching how vocational adolescents take decisions in a context in which life transitions are reversible and unsafe. In this article, we aim to show that this distinction is overestimated, by focusing on a specific problem current research has brought to the fore. While the agency of working-class adolescents until the 80’s resulted in social reproduction without their habitus being threatened by this intergenerational class continuity, what can we say concerning how today’s working-class adolescents’ identities are formed, given that they remain in vocational schools for a long time? Through life history interviews with 18-year-old vocational adolescents, we examine the reasons why biographical reflexivity plays a crucial role in habitus formation in ‘normal’ biographies and in their decision-making when they face turning points during their school years. We throw light on the narrative devices through which vocational adolescents are trying to reconcile in their identities the embodied skills they acquire in disadvantaged lifeworlds with the official knowledge vocational training offers. We argue that these devices set in motion a kind of biographical ambivalence which we consider to be crucial regarding their life transitions.     

Balancing the workload equation in English primary schools: a continuing story?

This article traces the gradual increase in primary teachers' workloads over several decades to the point where workforce reform was introduced to ameliorate the problem. A central feature of the reform was the use of teaching assistants to undertake various duties, so that time should be available for primary teachers to plan and prepare future lessons. Although official sources have described this initiative as a success, recent research that examines the consequences of these changes, from both the teachers' and the teaching assistants' viewpoints, would challenge these claims. This research is described in the article and shows that primary schools in England have increasingly come to rely on poorly paid untrained assistants to teach classes. The article concludes by looking at the implications for the future status of the profession as a result of this practice.     

Childhood learning,life skills and well‐being in adult life: a Senegalese case

Education is not easily converted into human capital and well‐being in low‐income countries, because these countries do not have a high degree of economic and labour market differentiation that makes it possible to convert acquired knowledge and skills. Consequently, to have completed primary or even secondary education does not necessarily lead to a better life situation than some types of Islamic education. This paper reports findings from an ongoing longitudinal research project in Senegal. The study compares the relationships between educational/learning background, life skills and well‐being in adult life among individuals who attended primary school, Quranic, Arabic or Indigenous learning systems at the beginning of the 1980s. The findings illustrate some of the complexities in the relationships between, on the one hand, education and life skills and, on the other hand, individual well‐being in a low‐income society. Since this study enters into an area that has not been very much researched, this study is explorative and employs concepts heuristically. Some findings in relation to different theoretical approaches are also discussed here.     

Re-manifestation of the Culture in the Bible——Domestication and Foreignization in Bible Translation

Translation is not only to transfer from one language to another;it is also a carrier between different cultures.The translators are responsible for transferring the cultural information of the source text for the target readers.The cultural feature can be frequently traced in the Bible.Both domesticating meuhod and foreignizing method have been applied in Bible translation.This paper explores the adequacy of domesticating method and foreignizing method in the re-manifestation of the culture in the Bible.It...     

The Internet in the everyday life‐world: a comparison between high‐school students in China and Norway

Based on in‐depth interviews, this study offers a comparison of how high‐school students in China and Norway are actively constructing the Internet as an element of their everyday lives. Through the Schutzian notions of everyday life‐world, social‐biographical situation and relevance, the study has revealed striking differences between the Chinese and Norwegian participants concerning their relationship with the Net, although both have been referred to as members of the Net Generation. These are summarised in four interrelated themes that highlight the differences. Together, they shed light on the different places and meanings the Net has acquired in the young people’s lives in the two cases and how they negotiate their identities as students within the Internet‐transformed context. It is argued that these differences cannot be explained merely by the material resources in the two societies. More importantly, they have to do with the individuals’ and their families’ relevance systems.     

Examining the associations between educators’ ethics position and ethical judgment in student assessment practices

The relationship between educators’ ethics position and ethical judgment in student assessment practices remain unclear. The current study filled the research gap utilizing a sample of 406 educators (in-service teachers, pre-service teachers, and educational administrators) who completed a survey with relevant questions. The respondents were classified into four ethics position groups – situationists, exceptionists, subjectivists and absolutists. They had divided opinions in making ethical judgments (ethical or unethical) on 13 out of the 18 assessment scenarios. The logistic regression results indicated that educators’ ethics positions were significantly associated with their ethical judgment in seven student assessment scenarios. Exceptionists were more likely to endorse certain student assessment practices that are not recommended by assessment books, while subjectivists were more likely to have similar opinions with assessment books in certain practices. The study helps us gain a deeper understanding of educators’ individual differences in making ethical judgments about student assessment practices.     

Woman and family in the African diaspora—mother and the sewing machine in Caribbean literature

‘… Miss Caroline

tell me how you spend your time

I spend all my time

around the Singer machine…’

These lines from a popular song of the nineteen forties sum up what was for many women a new reality. This paper identifies the space at the sewing machine as mother's space and the sewing machine as an important element in the psychological and financial liberation of the woman, here the Caribbean woman of the twentieth century. Evidence in support of this claim is offered predominantly from Caribbean creative writing, where artists have noted the importance of that invention in the lives of their mothers and in the achievements of their families.     

‘Let your data tell a story:’ climate change experts and students navigating disciplinary argumentation in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Science education trends promote student engagement in authentic knowledge in practice to tackle personally consequential problems. This study explored how partnering scientists and students on a social media platform supported students’ development of disciplinary practice knowledge through practice-based learning with experts during two pilot enactments of a project-based curriculum focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change. Through the online platform, scientists provided feedback on students' infographics, visual argumentation artifacts that use data to communicate about climate change science. We conceptualize the infographics and professional data sets as boundary objects that supported authentic argumentation practices across classroom and professional contexts, but found that student generated data was not robust enough to cross these boundaries. Analysis of the structure and content of the scientists’ feedback revealed that when critiquing argumentation, scientists initiated engagement in multiple scientific practices, supporting a holistic rather than discrete model of practice-based learning. While traditional classroom inquiry has emphasized student experimentation, we found that engagement with existing professional data sets provided students with a platform for developing expertise in systemic scientific practices during argument construction. We further found that many students increased the complexity and improved the visual presentation of their arguments after feedback.