Feminist methodologies and engineering education research

This paper introduces feminist methodologies in the context of engineering education research. It builds upon other recent methodology articles in engineering education journals and presents feminist research methodologies as a concrete engineering education setting in which to explore the connections between epistemology, methodology and theory. The paper begins with a literature review that covers a broad range of topics featured in the literature on feminist methodologies. Next, data from interviews with engineering educators and researchers who have engaged with feminist methodologies are presented. The ways in which feminist methodologies shape their research topics, questions, frameworks of analysis, methods, practices and reporting are each discussed. The challenges and barriers they have faced are then discussed. Finally, the benefits of further and broader engagement with feminist methodologies within the engineering education community are identified.     

Reducing the distance: equity issues in distance learning in public education

Distance learning and educational equity both began with an emphasis on access, on providing underserved students with an increased access to education. Today definitions of equity have gone beyond simple access to include equal or equivalent treatment and outcomes while definitions of underserved students have expanded to include girls, children of color, children with limited English proficiency and children with disabilities. At the same time the definition of distance learning has expanded to include new technologies, new audiences and new roles. Based on these new definitions and roles, the article raises a number of equity challenges for distance learning educators centering around who is taught, what is taught and how the teaching is done. To answer these challenges, a series of recommendations are suggested that educators can implement to make distance learning a leader in increasing educational equity for all students. The time to act is now.     

论性别差异及其教育策略

性别差异指男女两性在心理学方面的不同特点。男女两性不仅存在着生理方面的差异,在心理发展的许多方面也同样客观地存在着一些差异,尤其在性格和行为方式及情感表达等方面差异较为明显。性别差异的形成在更大程度上取决于社会文化因素而非生理因素,必须采取有效的教育措施,使个体的发展既具有男女之共性,也具有男女之个性;既要摆脱性别角色标志的束缚,又不失性别本色。     

公共管理教育中国化分析

在我国社会经济体制不断改革的背景下,我国的公共事业得到了长足的发展,同时也开创了公共管理专业这一个新兴的专业。在公共管理教育中,实现中国化的公共管理教育是时代发展的需要,是我国公共事业发展的客观需求。本文首先对公共管理教育中国化的必要性进行分析,然后提出公共管理教育中国化的有效途径,供有关人员参考。     

Participatory research in support of quality public education in New Orleans

In 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, several education and child advocacy groups began discussing the depleted conditions of the New Orleans public school district. These groups came together to discuss how to create a sustainable education reform movement post Katrina. New Orleans-based community groups and outside university researchers joined together to implement a multi-year participatory action research project to engage historically marginalized, black communities in a dialog about quality public education. We found that, in order to create a collective vision for what quality public education looks like for black children, the New Orleans community needs to resolve perceived challenges with inequitable access to quality public schools, with who has a say in governing these schools, with inconsistent quality of teachers, with inequitable distribution of resources, and with strategies for serving challenging students. The results of this pilot participatory action research project led to a sustained community engagement campaign addressing these issues.     

The place of religion in public education

There is a legitimate place for genuine religious education within publicly supported schools in western pluralist democracies. The idea of the single common school is dead or dying in the densely populated parts of the western, English-speaking democracies. Once choice of school is conceded, then the religious school should be a central offering.Religion has a traditional place in most western democracies, eitherde jure orde facto. Further, there is evidence that religious adolescents make at least as good, and probably better, citizens than do those without religion.Finally, the idea of a consensually acceptable secular alternative based on high moral values is no longer tenable. Anything approaching a common school must be bound by minimal values not a high-level set, because there is simply no large set that is universally acceptable and agreed upon. In practice, urban, public schools serving heterogeneous clients rely heavily on exactly such a minimal set.     

The transformation of education: By design

Over the past two centuries, public education has gone through wave after wave of reform. Each succeeding wave was in response to changing social and technological conditions. We are now poised on the edge of another major reform effort. Whether this effort continues down the path of refining and fixing the existing educational system or results in genuine renewal depends on the perspectives we choose to guide the process. This chapter discusses needed perspectives and presents an organizational inquiry model that emphasizes systems design as the “missing” domain that can bring about the kind of human growth and development systems our society needs. A framework for exploring educational redesign options is presented.     

中国基础教育性别公平存在的问题和对策

性别公平是当今国际世界基础教育研究中的一项重要任务，本文首先介绍了20世纪90年代中国基础教育在实现性别公平方面取得的成就，然后指出了中国基础教育中仍然存在性别不公平的一些问题，最后探讨了21世纪前15年中国基础教育全面实现性别公平应该采取的政策措施。     

Learning from commercial entertainment producers in order to create entertainment sex education

The Girlfriend Guide to Life was a commercial entertainment product co-edited by an entertainment producer and an academic researcher to reach 14–17-year olds with information they wanted to know about sexual health, in language, genres and designs that they wanted. Entertainment–Education is a familiar approach to distributing information, including information about sexual health, in non-formal learning contexts. However, previous accounts of Entertainment–Education have highlighted a tension between the audience-centred approach of entertainment production and the message-centred approach of education. Using a practice-led methodology and drawing on reflective practice, this article suggests that if educators go deeper than asking entertainment producers to simply make cosmetic changes to content, and accept that entertainment producers have a vital understanding of what target audiences need to know about sexual health, a reciprocal working relationship can be developed that overcomes some of the differences in habitus between entertainment producers and educators that have been identified by previous researchers.     

The interrelation of twenty-first-century education and work from a gender perspective

This paper analyses the interrelation of twenty-first-century education and work from a gender perspective. The analysis is carried out theoretically by asking whether human capital theory and Bourdieu’s reproduction theory are adequate instruments for such an endeavour. It is argued that the explanatory power of the human capital concept of the interrelation between education and work is extremely weak, because the human capital concept conceals costs necessary to create human capital. In contrast, reproduction theory comprehends investments in education through reproductive work. But, reproduction theory fails short to explain ongoing gender hierarchies within employment. Therefore, analysis of social and societal structure needs to go beyond the focus on education and work to explain the maintenance of gender hierarchies.     

90后高职学生人格特征性别差异分析与教育对策研究

采用16PF人格问卷对河北省部分高职院校14级90后新生进行调查,并进行文理科男女生对比分析,数据结果显示:在全部人格因素得分指标当中理科女生各项得分均在中段水平及以上,呈现出"自high"的外显人格特征。理科男生除成长能力因素低于平均分,其余均处于中段水平及以上,整体呈现出女性化的性格特质。文科男生和文科女生比较各项指标基本均衡,性别角度上的人格特征差异不明显,心理健康因素、专业成就因素和成长能力因素都在平均分一下。针对这种状况,应采取因材施教有侧重的生涯教育课程引导,并加强性别特征教育。整体增加人文精神、人性文化和共情能力的培养。     

对终身体育与公共体育课的思考

对高校体育课存在的问题进行了剖析,指出了课程的设置应从学生的需要和发展出发,以终身体育为主线最终实现素质教育.     

论思想教育与公共关系的结合

当今良性思想教育的缺失已经相当严重,公众的物质概念正日益提高,但人们往往忽视了＂社会价值＂的存在。现今公共关系正日益盛行,各个社会团体、组织、单位、企业等,都争先利用社会关系提高自身的影响力和社会地位,我们正好可以借用这一时机,以提高公众的思想水平,并借此良机进行思想教育。     

The impact of supranational organizations on public education

The growth of supranational organizations reduces the sovereignty of nation-states, weakening their willingness and ability to provide high quality public education. Expanded mass media controlled by trans-national corporations compete directly with schools for attention, and offer content that often contradicts the values and knowledge taught by schools. Supranational organizations have changed patterns of dispersion and employment of educated persons, reducing the capacity of education systems to anticipate what they should teach. Supranational organizations have directly encouraged decentralization and privatization of education, and have competed with national, public organizations for control of public education. Efforts to defend endogenous national development seem unlikely to succeed. A call for improving education to enhance the global competitiveness of national economies is feasible only for economically powerful states. A more helpful alternative to re-design education to contribute to integration at a trans-national level, overcoming problems of conflict and injustice endemic in a system of nation-states.     

Transformative change in higher education through participatory action research: a capabilities analysis

As a methodological approach, participatory action research (PAR), and its variant of critical action research in education, aims to further social justice and generate transformative change. Although this understanding of PAR is well rehearsed, there is still a gap in detailed explorations of the transformative impact of PAR projects in higher education settings beyond the classroom: how do we then know whether transformative change through PAR has taken place, in which ways, through which processes, and for whom. This article aims to address these questions through proposing the use of a participatory action research cube (PARC) as a human capabilities evaluative framework for personal and structural transformative change enabled by PAR projects. Evaluating transformative change from this perspective rests on both the normative nature of the capabilities approach in its justice concerns, as well as consideration for individual well-being, understood as the expansion of freedoms people have to live the lives they value. Evaluating change both includes personal well-being as well as broader social or structural impact in the direction of more social justice. To demonstrate this empirically, we report on an eight-month PAR project on one rural South African university campus, where 13 undergraduate students were involved in researching gender inequalities on their campus. The PARC analysis highlights the development of capabilities and agency through axes of participation, knowledge development, and public deliberation, as well as identifying the developmental impact of these axes on transformative change for the participants, as well as the university.