Liberalism,Pluralism, and Political Education: Paradox or paradigm?

Inspired by concern about promoting civic participation and preserving the liberal democratic state, political theorists have recently reignited a debate about the nature of political education in a liberal society. These theorists' arguments in favor of teaching toleration are significant for the progress of education reforms currently being debated and implemented in current liberal democracies and some emerging nations. Despite the increasing attention paid to the value of liberal civic education, however, its specific content is typically left virtually blank. This article aims to redress this gap in the literature by developing a coherent and comprehensive (albeit still very general) curriculum for liberal political education. To this end, Section I analyses the nature of the ideal liberal democratic state and develops a general curriculum for liberal political education based on the type of citizens needed to preserve and take advantage of such a state. It concludes by introducing two potentially illiberal outcomes of this curriculum: children's forced development of the capacity for autonomy, and the reduction of diversity in the state. Section II argues that the development of autonomy is actually central to liberal theory and liberal education more broadly conceived, while Section III suggests that civic and social diversity will persist, but rightly play a secondary role to the goals of liberal political education. The article concludes, therefore, with a reassertion of the content and importance of liberal political education.     

Nomads and Education For All: Education for development or domestication?

Migrants, and particularly nomads, are among the most marginalised social groups, and are widely excluded from educational provision, despite pledges of Education For All. The phenomenon of movement itself presents many challenges for both providers, and would-be users, of educational services. Around the world, the provision of education for nomads has reflected and been instrumental to particular stances on pastoral development. The links between education and development are explored specifically in the case of a transhumant pastoral group in Western India. The article reveals Education For All as an ideological notion, reflecting values that contradict those of nomadic groups, and argues that the value positions underlying this notion need to be articulated and further contextualised if it is not simply to reflect existing, and exclusive, hegemonies.     

Schools and Moral Education: Conformism or Autonomy?

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education.     

Education,Education, Education: or,What has Jane Austen to teach Tony Blunkett?

The difference between training and education has been recognised at least since the days when Socrates searched Athens for someone who knew more than he himself did—and was disappointed to find many craftsmen but no philosophers. The distinction persisted strongly when the universities developed in the twelfth and thirteenth Christian centuries. It was continuously vindicated by poets, novelists, essayists, and generation after generation of teachers, from the Renaissance until about the time Kenneth Baker became Education Secretary, whereupon it vanished from English consciousness—so completely, that the polytechnics were renamed universities, the universities made polytechnics and the Departments of Education and Employment merged, as if that were not only obviously sensible in itself but perfectly consistent with two-and-a-half thousand years of previous thought and practice. The English educated classes are now composed of amnesiacs.     

Can Autonomy Counteract Extremism in Traditional Education?

The very purpose of traditional—especially religious—education is to induct the young into a unique vision of reality. When the compelling religious vision conflicts with other visions, extremist confrontations may result. This paper explores ways to 'square the circle' of the educational conundrum of how to educate for fervent commitment to tradition without precluding autonomy and diversity, both within the tradition but especially vis-à-vis outsiders. Some liberal educators see educating for autonomy as an antidote to extremism, but such an approach is found wanting both ethically and empirically. Reinforcing the roots of toleration within religious traditions is offered as a more effective alternative.     

Informal Mentors and Education: Complementary or Compensatory Resources?

Few studies have examined the impact that mentoring (i.e., developing a special relationship with a non-parental adult) has on educational achievement and attainment in the general population. In addition, prior research has yet to clarify the extent to which mentoring relationships reduce inequality by enabling disadvantaged youth to compensate for a lack of social resources or promote inequality by serving as a complementary resource for advantaged youth. Results from a nationally representative sample of youth show (1) a powerful net influence of mentors on the educational success of youth and (2) how social background, parental, peer, and personal resources condition the formation and effectiveness of mentoring relationships. The findings uncover an interesting paradox-that informal mentors may simultaneously represent compensatory and complementary resources. Youth with many resources are more likely than other young people to have mentors, but those with few resources are likely to benefit more from having a mentor-particularly teacher mentors-in their lives.     

Recurrent Education: Strategy for Change,or Cooptation?

Abstracts

English

Is recurrent education a practical strategy for change? This research paper reports some of the reactions of the Australian legal profession to recurrent education and suggests that a covert alliance between the profession and its educators results in a strong resistance to this rather radical approach to education.     

Intelligence,Global Terrorism and Higher Education: Neutralising Threats or Alienating Allies?

The British Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 appears to have drawn universities into the security apparatus of the state. Academics and administrators have been compelled to comply with measures aimed at monitoring the activities of mostly Islamic student societies. While it is not inconceivable that universities are exploited as sites for extremist propagandising or even as recruiting grounds for extremist causes, do the new counterterrorism measures suffice to reduce the threat; and if so, even in a small measure, does it outweigh the risks of alienating the many to defeat the few? This article draws on narratives of Muslim students, their experiences of existing counterterrorism policies, to examine the effects of the new security framework and asks whether there is another way – a broader framework in which intelligence agencies and academic institutions can pool resources, not to improve statecraft, but to respond more effectively to threats, both known and unknown.     

Integrating Learning Communities and Distance Education: Possibility or Pipedream?

As demands for accountability continue and increase, higher education administrators require tools for evaluating campus programs. Learning communities, as a course design strategy, have proven successful in confronting challenges associated with attrition and retention. Because high attrition is associated with online distance education, learning community principles might be applicable to online courses. The authors surveyed attendees at a learning communities conference to determine the applicability of learning community principles to Internet learning and assessment. On the basis of their findings, they developed a rudimentary diagnostic tool for ascertaining whether online course design takes learning community principles into account.David DiRamio is Assistant Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Auburn University. He received both B.S. and M.B.A. degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. David's research interests include studying technology's impact on postsecondary education from administrative, legal, and policy perspectives. Mimi Wolverton is Program Coordinator and Professor of Higher Education Leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received a B.S. from Northern Illinois University, an M.B.A. from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Arizona State University. Her research interests include academic deans, women and minorities in leadership, and elite M.B.A. programs. E-mail: diramio@auburn.edu.     

Education or Pedagogy?

This paper explores the meaning of education in contrast with 'pedagogy'. Whereas education can be defined as 'learning for its own sake', pedagogy can be defined as learning oriented towards social goals. An attempt to find an adequate conceptualisation is first of all sought in Aristotle, but his concept of education is found to depend on too narrow a concept of rational activity. A more adequate conceptualisation is found in Michael Oakeshott's contrast between morality and enterprise associations. However Oakeshott's definition of education needs modifying if it is to take account of the idea of critical knowing, which is seen as crucial to any definition of education.     

Good or Bad? : Learning Globalization, Postmodernity and a Changing China Education System

Under the setting of globalization, in the late 1970s, China began to carry out ’the reform and opening-up policy’. During 30 years reform process, Chinese economy has a great growth. The ’market mechanism’ and its effectiveness were adopted by Chinese people. With the deep reform of health system, Chinese government delegates more decision-making power to the hospitals, thus ’in employment terms, as two of largest industries (health and education) in every country’ (Meadmore P. 1999 p.91), the reform of education has become a hot topic in social debate. In other words, in the field of education in China today, marketization of education is highly focused, causing concerns of various social classes: What are the reforms? What are the results reforms bring about? On exploring the effects of globalization on Chinese education in modernity and presenting advantages and disadvantages in the process of the ’market mechanism’ working in and through education to reconsider a market education system creates an external competition for public schools.     

Language Education in English Education: Grammar instruction,grammar plus,or critical social analysis?

I consider the difficulty of deciding what to include in a one-semester course on language education in English education for preservice teachers. While it is imperative to prepare teachers to talk about language in written texts, other concerns of the English classroom, from classroom talk to reflections on self, can be illuminated by knowledge about language. I describe different representations of the language system: one proposed in a scope and sequence document prepared by a group of linguists and educators in the United States; and the other Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which, while relatively unknown and unsupported in the United States, has influenced education in Australia. While I admire the advances in language education being made in the United States, in my view, SFG offers a conceptual advantage to those who want to make the link between grammar and broader concerns. I believe it is possible to use SFG conceptually in the design of classroom activities, while also relying on non-SFG methods to make visible, for instance, the operations of talk in the classroom. In the end, I advocate linking language to issues that matter, focusing above the language system to meaning-making more broadly, and using knowledge about language in the service of social analysis as well as the interpretation of texts.     

Competition in Physical Education: Avoid,Ask, Adapt or Accept?

Competition is an essential part of youth sport. But should it also be part of the curriculum in physical education? Or are competitive activities incompatible with the educational context? While some researchers have argued that physical education should embrace the sporting logic of competition, others have criticized the negative experiences it can create for some students in school. In this article, we draw on insights from the philosophy of sport as well as educational philosophy, with the aim of questioning and critically examining the integration of competitive activities in physical education. We present and discuss four normative arguments (AVOID, ASK, ADAPT, and ACCEPT) that can each in their own way inform and guide future talks on the topic.     

Dominant Discourses and Teacher Education: Current curriculum or curriculum remembered?

Research findings from a longitudinal, classroom‐based study of Bachelor of Education students in Tasmania suggest that three dominant discourses of schooling are powerful shapers of pre‐service teachers' pedagogical decisions in relation to the teaching of SOSE (studies of society and environment). These discourses appear to inform teaching practices and contribute to uncritical SOSE learning experiences for children. The findings from this naturalistic research grounded in teacher education suggest that teacher preparation programs should encourage far greater critical reflection on curriculum documents. In particular, the findings highlight tensions for teacher educators in selecting between experiential and/or interdisciplinary, critical approaches to teacher education. These issues are illustrated in the teaching of SOSE as locality focused knowledge. What this means for the selection of fieldwork sites for children's learning and teacher education pedagogies is explored in this paper.     

Education: a discipline or a field?

Historically, scholars have made unfailing efforts to position education as a standard science, but no solid success has been achieved regardless of the positivistic paradigm, quantitative approaches, or value-free neutral stances they adopted. In China, scholars have set up a so-called “three independency” standard for the scientific study of education, but it has been finally proved invalid in practice. As interdisciplines permeate the field of education, education experiences a crisis of being colonized. After serious rethinking, interdisciplines were widely believed to do more good than harm to education. Therefore, education is beginning to transform from a “colony” to an “empire”. In this transformation, education finds it necessary to break the traditional disciplinary boundaries and make it a field in which interdisciplinary communication is contributory to the enrichment of scholarship. Translated from Xiamen Daxue Xuebao (Zhexue Shehui Kexue Ban) 厦门大学学报 (哲学社会科学版) (Journal of Xiamen University (Arts & Social Sciences)), 2006, (1): 72–78