Nudging the public sphere: a Habermasian perspective on public deliberation as an aim of moral education

This article offers an account of the understanding citizens need in order to justify moral principles in the public sphere and it identifies an important role for moral education in the promotion of that civic understanding. I develop this account through a contrastive analysis of Phillip Kitcher’s conception of public knowledge and Jurgen Habermas’ Discourse Ethics. Kitcher is focused on the social conditions necessary for the circulation of scientific knowledge in advanced democracies; the analysis offered in this article expands on what Habermas and other deliberative democrats claim are epistemic conditions necessary for the construction and circulation of moral understanding. I use this account to critically assess public policy that aims to ‘get around’ public deliberation by using strategies derived from behavioral economics in order to shift civic behavior in specific (moral) directions. Finally, I specify how such strategies have the potential to undermine moral understanding in the public sphere and I argue for a central role for moral education in mitigating such effects.     

The school-level standardized testing policy and math achievement in primary grades: The mediational role of math instructional approach

This study investigates how school-level standardized testing policy at Grade 1 is directly and indirectly linked to math achievement in primary grades. Using nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort data drawn from the U.S., the sample consists of 6774 children nested in 925 elementary schools. Findings from a multilevel full structural mediation analysis indicate that despite children’s short-term gains at Grade 1, the positive effects of frequent testing policy at Grade 1 do not persist in Grade 3. In contrast, school-level standardized testing policies were negatively associated with math achievement at Grade 3 mediated by procedural instructional approaches (e.g., drills). The findings provide empirical evidence on the validity of standardized testing in primary-grade mathematics and offer implications for teachers, educational policymakers, and researchers.     

New public management as a global education policy: its adoption and re-contextualization in a Southern European setting

In the education sector, new public management (NPM) has crystallized in policies such as school autonomy, professionalization of school principals, standardized evaluation and teachers’ accountability, and it has been widely disseminated by international organizations, such as the OECD, which enjoy a great prestige when it comes to frame education reforms in European countries.

This article analyses the way NPM has been constructed as a global education policy, and its adoption and re-contextualization into the Spanish education context. This article shows that the reasons for adopting NPM are not so different from those prevailing in other countries where these policies have been implemented before. Counter-intuitively, although NPM is a reform programme traditionally initiated by conservative governments, in the Spanish education field, as also happened in other Central and Northern European countries, it has been adopted and regulated with social democratic governments. In all these countries, social democrats have tended to embrace NPM as an attempt to address the legitimacy crisis of the welfare state and of public services in particular.

Nonetheless, in Spain, the NPM reforms have been re-contextualized and regulated in very uneven and paradoxical ways. For a combination of political, institutional and economic reasons, the final form adopted by the NPM approach is far from the model advocated by the international community and is deeply contradictory.

Our arguments are based on intensive fieldwork that include, on the one hand, interviews with key education policy-makers and stakeholders and, on the other, document analysis of policy briefings, press releases and legal documents.     

The key factors affecting Grade 5 achievement in Laos: emerging policy issues

In this study, the authors employed a multilevel analysis procedure to examine the key pupil- and school-level factors that influenced reading and mathematics achievement among Grade 5 primary school pupils in Laos. The data for this study were collected in 2007 as part of a major project (known as Laos Grade 5 Survey) that sought to examine the quality of education offered in primary schools in Laos. Results show that pupil’s age, school resources and learning materials such as pencils, erasers and exercise books are important factors in the prediction of achievement in reading and mathematics at Grade 5 level in Laos. From the results of the analyses, several policy suggestions have been made to improve the facets of education that seem to be worthy of action.     

Policy borrowing,policy learning: testing times in Australian schooling

This article aims to contribute to current debates about political power and agency relationships in education and other public sectors. In a recent clarion call for a major redirection of political principal–agent theories (PAT), Terry Moe has argued that standard information asymmetries ought no longer to be regarded as the sole foundation of bureaucrat power. According to Moe, current theories largely overlook the direct electoral power of agents and their unions (EPA) in voting for their own bureaucratic principals. Therefore, they are biased systematically towards underestimating agent power. We critically address both Moe's theoretical arguments, and his empirical applications to Californian school board elections. We conclude that Moe overestimates the power consequences of EPA on both counts. We outline a more balanced version of ‘multiple‐role’ PAT and of its potential implications for our understanding of the political power of public school teachers and bureaucrats more generally.     

The twenty-first century counsellor: An emerging role in changing times

A significant number of personal, social, cultural, and economic forces are encountering each other in our global environment. In order to maintain professional responses which reflect changing times, counsellors and counsellor education programs must attend to international, sociopolitical trends in an interdisciplinary context. In this article, the authors identify trends and recommendations relevant to the future of counselling.     

Assessment of Disabled Students in Higher Education: Current public policy issues

Although there are over 68,000 disabled students in higher education programmes in the UK, a laissez-faire policy has been adapted regarding the provision of assessment services for these students, with a result that there have been no statutory duties for these programmes not to discriminate against them. With the introduction of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (2001) amending Part IV of the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), it would be timely to consider assessment related issues and benefits from the experiences of the US higher education programmes and educational testing agencies in this area since the mid-1970s. This paper argues that it is the academic achievement of disabled students that should be measured by the assessment services, not their disabilities. Without the provision of reasonable assessment adjustments, as the research shows, it is inevitable that disabilities of disabled students would be measured not their academic achievements, contrary to the main argument put forward by Sharp and Earle (2000) among others. The paper argues for a historical role for the educators and administrators of higher education programmes in eliminating discrimination against disabled students in provision of assessment services at every stage of their studies in the long run.     

Technology-based assessment in science: Issues underlying teacher advocacy of testing policy

The theme of this article is that the development of informed teacher advocacy for new advancements in technology-based assessment is an essential requirement if such advancements are to contribute toward the systemic improvement of the quality of school science instruction. The potential for advocacy involvement by teachers is considered a natural reaction toward the increasing tendency for classroom practices to be affected by local, state, or national assessment policy initiatives. In support of such an advocacy process, this article provides an awareness of the principles of good measurement practices in conjunction with the qualitative characteristics of technology-based assessment that together are sufficient to serve as a foundation for teachers whose concerns may motivate them to raise relevant questions regarding assessment policy. Based upon such implied standards of testing practice, the article suggests key evaluative questions for teachers to ask about any forms of science assessment that would have the effect of amplifying the potential value of new technology-based forms of assessment applications to enhance ongoing classroom processes of science teaching.     

Teaching portfolios: their role in teaching and learning policy

Teaching Portfolios are now common in higher education. They are used both developmentally and summatively in spite of the fact that many academics find them generically quite unfamiliar. This paper explores, primarily conceptually, the experience of one institution as to the ways in which portfolios have functioned in its processes and its practice. The paper introduces a small empirical sample of portfolios in an attempt to give concrete meaning to some of the points made. Ultimately, it questions whether portfolios can have a mixed developmental/summative mode of existence and still meet the purposes the institution intends. This raises the issue of the extent to which a summative mechanism can become an end in itself and can actively limit progressive potential.

Les dossiers d'enseignement (teaching portfolios) font maintenant partie de la vie courante en enseignement supérieur. Ils sont utilisés dans une double optique de développement et d'évaluation sommative en dépit du fait que de nombreux universitaires les jugent généralement assez étranges. Cet article explore, d'un point de vue conceptuel, l'expérience d'une institution en ce qui a trait à l'utilisation des dossiers d'enseignement dans le cadre de ses processus et de sa pratique. L'article présente un échantillon empirique limité de dossiers d'enseignement dans le but d'illustrer, de façon concrète, l'argument présenté. Ultimement, l'article remet en question l'idée que les dossiers d'enseignement peuvent à la fois avoir une existence mixte de développement/d'évaluation sommative et atteindre les objectifs visés par une institution. Ceci soulève la question de savoir dans quelle mesure un mécanisme sommatif peut devenir une fin en soi et ainsi limiter activement le potentiel progressif.     

Australian universities in the post-Williams period: The impact of public policy on the small universities

This paper examines the impact of the Williams Committee Report on Education and Training on the Australian universities since its publication in February, 1979. In it we discuss the influence of public policy on tertiary education as it has been implemented by the Federal and State Governments of the Commonwealth following the release of the Report.The Federal Government's stated policy in response to the Report was to continue the process of monitoring and adjusting the education system in accord with the Williams Committee proposals for evolutionary change to improve the quality of education. How-ever, because Australian education is experiencing a period of tight economic restraint, it is not surprising that the first tangible reactions to the sections of the Report about universities were to those recommendations about cost, efficiency and availability of tertiary education as well as to those about integration and rationalisation of resources.These outcomes are examined in the context of three Universities, namely, Murdoch University (the Western Australian State Government established a Committee of Inquiry to make recommendations about the future of Murdoch as a result of proposals made by the Williams Committee about it integrating with the University of Western Australia), The University of Tasmania (the Tasmanian State Government took action to follow-up the submission made by the Tasmanian Treasury to the Williams Committee about the rationalisation of resources in tertiary education) and The University of Wollongong (chief executive officers of institutions from the three sectors of higher education in the Illawarra region have reformed an informal advisory group which had operated before the Williams Committee Report was released, into an Advisory Council with a more formal status to explore areas of possible collaboration and cooperation).These reactions have had the aim of broadening the scope of university activities in three of the smallest universities in Australia. In each case, a number of fundamentally important educational and resource issues have been raised and the reactions of the universities have been shaped by public policies. We believe that universities as social institutions should take into account the needs of societies in making decisions about their interests and welfare. It is therefore of paramount importance for universities to be fully aware of relevant public policies and be able and willing to respond constructively.     

The impact of school choice and public policy on segregation: Evidence from Chile

Advocates argue that vouchers can make improved educational opportunity available to disadvantaged students. Critics contend that vouchers increase the risk of stratification. Researchers have found that Chile's voucher program has lead to increased socioeconomic school segregation. What has been overlooked, however, is segregation between schools within a sector and variation within private for-profit and non-profit school sectors. I find that public schools are more likely to serve disadvantaged students than private voucher schools. I also find that disadvantaged students are more segregated among private voucher schools than among public schools. While between and within sector segregation levels vary across private voucher school types, the differences are not always consistent with theory. The data also suggest that policies can either mitigate or exacerbate the stratifying effects of educational vouchers.     

Strengthening discipline in state schools: constructions of discipline in a public policy moment

This article uses critical discourse analysis to interrogate government documents associated with the passing of the Education (Strengthening Discipline in State Schools) Act 2013 in Queensland, Australia. It uses these documents to demonstrate the way in which the discourse of discipline has been constructed in order to legitimate the removal of legislative safeguards intended to curtail the disciplinary power of school officials.     

Navigating fluid epistemic spaces: emerging challenges for student knowing and learning in public international law

ABSTRACT

This article explores challenges for knowing and learning in evolving knowledge fields. Legal education is chosen as a particularly interesting case as the knowledge field of law is expanding to international law with a multitude of actors, obligations, conventions and interpreters. In the current study, students’ group work with case assignments was observed and interviews with students and teachers conducted within a course in public international law. The following question was examined: What learning challenges do the students face when solving cases in international law? By employing sociomaterial perspectives on navigation as finding ways to interpretational possibilities in evolving and complex constellations of procedures, texts, and various actors in the knowledge field, the study pursued an analytical interest in how professional resources were assembled in the students’ work, and how such assemblages served to order practice and justify their decisions. The analysis showed that the students’ previously learned strategies for linking authoritative texts and questions in defining and solving legal problems were challenged by less stabilised constellations of textual sources and interpreters of law. The analysis also revealed tensions in the course setting between demands of navigating more open knowledge landscapes and expectations about student behaviour in current educational practices.     

The coordination role in research education: emerging understandings and dilemmas for leadership

Changes in expectations of research education worldwide have seen the rise of new demands beyond supervision and have highlighted the need for academic leadership in research education at a local level. Based on an interview study of those who have taken up local leadership roles in four Australian universities, this paper maps and analyses different dimensions of the emerging leadership role of research education coordination. It argues that while there is increasing clarity of what is required, there are considerable tensions in the nature of the coordination role and how coordination is to be executed. In particular, what leadership roles are appropriate and how can they be positioned effectively within universities? The paper draws on the Integrated Competing Values Framework to focus on the activities of coordination and on ideas of distributed leadership to discuss the leadership that characterises coordination. It is argued that without acknowledgement of the influences that coordinators need to exert and the positioning and support needed to achieve this, the contemporary agenda for research education will not be realised.     

数字技术赋能乡村治理的制度分析与理论启示

分析数字技术赋能返贫风险治理问题,对巩固拓展脱贫攻坚成果、守住不发生规模性返贫底线十分重要。基于返贫风险分析,可探索建立一个数字技术赋能返贫风险治理的分析框架。在返贫风险暴露阶段,数字技术可从排查风险来源、识别风险类型、评估风险程度、确定风险警示等方面赋能异质性和协同性返贫风险预警机制的构建。在返贫风险应对阶段,数字技术可赋能政府、脆弱人口、社区、企业、公益组织等主体,形成多元协同共治的合力。在抗逆力提升阶段,数字技术可通过素质技能提升、交互权利发展、外部资源获取等方面赋能个体抗逆力;通过优化政策制度、管理服务和治理结构等方面赋能组织抗逆力。为提升数字技术赋能返贫风险治理的效果,需要建立返贫风险数据的标准和规范、破除返贫风险信息的“数据孤岛”、提高返贫风险数据的自动化采集程度、关注基层管理与数字化赋能的协同、提高脆弱人口与管理人员的数字素养与数字技能。