The public-private division of responsibility for education

In this chapter “private” schools are defined as those that were privately founded and are privately managed; they usually have some private funding, although in some cases considerable funding and control come from the government. The size and nature of the private sector is viewed as stemming from excess demand for education due to limited public spending (i.e., these are students who would prefer to use the public schools but are involuntarily excluded and pushed into the private sector); differentiated demand due primarily to cultural heterogeneity (i.e., these are students whose differentiated tastes along religious, linguistic or ethnic lines lead them voluntarily to choose the private sector even if a public school place is available); and the supply of non-profit educational entrepreneurship (e.g., founders who start schools to maximize religious faith or believers, rather than profits) by competing religious organizations. The impact of public policies, including public educational spending and private subsidies, is also considered.     

Model of affective learning for nonformal science education facilities

Objective setting and evaluation for learning in the affective domain are often neglected in educational programs, largely because affective learning is a poorly understood phenomenon. This is particularly problematic in nonformal science education facilities, which are uniquely suited to facilitate affective learning. To address this problem, a heuristic model of affective learning in nonformal educational facilities was developed. The model, referred to as the Meredith Model, displays a sequence of events occurring in the affective responses of learners in nonformal educational experiences and identifies factors which may influence individual events within this sequence. The model is proposed as a conceptual framework for gaining an increased understanding of affective learning and for making recommendations for practice of nonformal science education and for further research. J Res Sci Teach 34: 805–818, 1997.     

Representations of teaching and standards-based reform: are we closing the debate about teacher education?

Since the mid-eighties, national organizations have been working together in an effort to reform schools and, more specifically, to reform teaching. Paralleling the movement toward developing curriculum standards for students, professional standards for teachers have also been developed for the purpose of teacher education program accreditation. The objective of this national coalition is to strengthen the teaching profession and raise its standards—eventually enhancing the quality of student learning—by redesigning teacher licensing and accountability requirements for teacher education programs, and engaging teachers in on-going professional development. In this study we address three specific questions: (1) what representations of teaching and teachers are portrayed in the professional teaching standards, their related policies and assessment? (2) how are standards-based reform policies affecting teacher education programs? (3) what representations or conceptions of teaching and teachers are currently reflected in teacher education programs in the context of this reform? To address these questions two states were selected as test cases. Reform documents, policies and practices, as well as interviews with key participants in the reform (e.g., teacher educators, state-level administrators) are described and analyzed, and constitute the evidential basis for this study. The patterns emerging from the data indicate that teacher educators’ degrees of resistance or cooperation with externally imposed frameworks is influenced by their conception of teaching, education and its purpose. Further, as teacher educators uncritically participate in the standards-based movement it becomes impossible for them to entertain alternative perspectives on teaching and education outside of the framework provided to them by the standards.     

Reading-growth estimates for elementary-school students using curriculum-based measurement

In this study, we examine grade-level growth rates for general education students and students with learning disabilities in grades two to six. In conducting the study, we demonstrate how schools, districts, and state educational agencies can use a combination of Curriculum-Based Measurement and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) methods to develop growth-rate norms in reading. The participants were made up of 273 general education students and 430 students with learning disabilities. The growth rates for these two groups of students in each grade were estimated using HLM. Within each grade, separate growth rates for subgroups of general education students (i.e., high, average, and low achievers) were estimated. The uses of estimated growth rates for setting year-end goals, monitoring student progress, and evaluating the effectiveness of instructional programs are also discussed.     

Competitive Incentives and the Education Market: How Charter Schools Define Themselves in Metropolitan Detroit

Policymakers often advance charter schools as an education reform model that can offer more diverse educational alternatives for families. Yet, as these schools compete for students, questions arise about how they respond to the competitive incentives in differentiating themselves through marketing distinct options for learners. The way these schools promote themselves to their anticipated clientele—as opposed to how they are defined by their competitors—speaks to how schools engage and thus arrange themselves in the local education market. In that regard, school mission statements can offer critical information on the intended organizational purposes that differentiate each organization. Yet there is little empirical research on what these statements contain, and thus how schools respond to incentives in engaging local markets. This study looks at the content of mission statements—which are largely consistent with the schools’ charters themselves—developed by each charter school in one of the most competitive charter school markets in the country: the Detroit metropolitan area. This study finds a notable level of isomorphism in charter school mission statements, indicating a tendency to replicate rather than innovate. This uniformity of mission statements suggests that charter schools are not fulfilling their potential in diversifying school markets.     

“肯定多样性”——美国族群政治与民族高等教育的新发展

“肯定多样性”是“肯定性行动”与“多元文化主义”相结合的产物,是美国族群政治与民族高等教育发展的第三阶段.它既是美国少数族群与主体族群之间政治和法律博弈的结果,也有着深刻的文化、教育和经济意蕴.其核心观点是:多样性不是问题,而是资源.这对于我们理解和处理民族及其文化多样性问题、发展民族教育都具有一定的启示意义.对于内地高等教育民族班(校)教育而言,我们应努力促进各民族大学生在教室内外的正式与非正式互动和交流.     

Be a Chinese "Cat" and Catch Chinese "Mice"

Ethnic minority education is an integral part of education in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Educational policies for ethnic minority regions provide for the development of their own educational programs, as well for the establishment of schools according to the characteristics of the ethnic minorities and the regions.     

保山市青少年民族团结教育现状调查报告

中小学民族团结教育是实现各民族团结、和睦相处的重要基础。对保山市12所少数民族聚居地学校和民族学校,10所汉族聚居地学校开展民族团结教育的现状进行了调查,结果发现,少数民族聚居地学校和民族学校在民族团结教育目标设置、课程、活动等方面开展了较多的工作,而汉族聚居地学校基本上缺乏明确而具体的民族团结教育。     

Educational Research, Policy and Practice: National Report on Secondary Education in Lao PDR

Following the adoption of a new education law in 2000, the government of Laos has initiated a series of reforms aimed at realizing the national strategy for human resource development for the year 2020. In implementing government policy, the Statistics and Planning Division and the National Research Institute for Educational Sciences have provided basic statistics to analyze the current situation, develop new curricula and teaching materials, monitor the reform process and undertake action research. The paper outlines the main achievements of the Lao education reform (e.g., quantitative growth of secondary education, curriculum and pedagogical reforms), concerns regarding difficulties in achieving key goals (e.g., low participation in mountainous areas serving ethnic groups), and strategies being adopted within the educational development plan for 2001–2005. Key Words: curriculum, educational goals, education law, educational reform, educational research and policy, ethnic minority, Lao PDR, secondary education, technical and vocational education     

瑞典择校改革及其实效述评

瑞典1992年正式推行择校改革,家长和学生可以在本地区和地区以外的所有公立学校和独立学校中自由选择学校就读。实践表明,家长选择学校时更关心学校质量而非种族等其他与质量无关的因素,但择校客观上造成了学校学生种族构成的变化。瑞典择校激发了学校间的竞争,提高了整体的教育质量,鼓励了学校创新,但是也造成了学生和学校的分化。     

Creating a multicultural curriculum in Han-dominant schools: The policy and practice of ethnic solidarity education in China

In response to the recent heightened interethnic conflicts that were regarded as threatening national unity and stability, the Chinese government issued ‘ethnic solidarity education’ as a top-down, centrally administered mandate to be implemented ‘correctly’ and in a standardised way by schools throughout China. This paper examines the policy and practice of ethnic solidarity education against the broader, historical context of ethnic relations in China. Based on empirical data obtained through extensive fieldwork in selective Beijing public schools, this study concludes that ethnic solidarity education bears resemblance to multicultural education in the western educational discourse, yet retains special characteristics as an indigenous form of education in the unique Chinese context. Although various teaching and extracurricular activities involving ethnic elements are added to the school curriculum and applauded by the Chinese educators and policymakers as important signs of ethnic integration and cultural pluralism, they tend to focus on static cultural artefacts without touching upon the deeper levels of understandings on ethnicity and the majority–minority relations, and therefore cannot create a truly multicultural learning environment.     

Toward a Pedagogy of Transformation

An on-going challenge in teacher education programs is how best to support new teachers in connecting their university coursework with their professional identity development and pedagogical practice in the schools. The reading and writing of case studies is one promising strategy teacher educators have explored as a means of assisting teachers in developing and cultivating a self-reflective, theory and practice reflexive, style of learning in the teacher education classroom and beyond. In the present paper, I present a case study of my own journey as a developmental and educational psychologist responsible for co-teaching a secondary teacher education course called "Adolescent Development for Teachers", in which having student-teachers research and write-up a case study of a single adolescent became the focus of the course and our pedagogy. I describe events that brought about the use of the case study in the course, the influence the use of the case study had on myself as an instructor as well as the students, and what students say are the educational benefits and difficulties of completing the adolescent case study. Implications for infusing a developmental focus into teacher education programs are discussed.     

On the Inevitability of the Two-Track Educational System (1979)

… Soon after the founding of the People's Republic, we carried out a step-by-step and judicious reform of the old schools, with emphasis on education serving production and construction, as well as on opening the doors of education to workers and peasants. After 1952, colleges and departments at the tertiary level were reorganized and teaching reformed at all school levels in line with the needs of national construction. After 1957, while summing up the experience and lessons of the First Five-Year Plan and working out a path for China's economic construction, the party's Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong, in their concern for the problems of education, proposed a plan for education during the socialist era and conducted a number of reforms of the educational system and structure, as well as experiments to explore new paths for developing education. In September 1958, the party Central Committee and the State Council pointed out in their "Directive Concerning Education Work" that, under the unified objective of cultivating educated working people with socialist awareness, three major categories of schools would exist throughout the country, i.e., full-time schools, part-work/part-study schools, and various types of spare-time schools. The directive emphasized that "rapid universalization of education requires the development of large numbers of spare-time and part-work/part-study schools, since such schools are able to provide all or most of their funding, require little or no assistance from the government, and can obtain teaching staff according to the principle of ‘let those who can, teach.’" In line with this directive, many agricultural secondary schools and part-work/part-study schools were set up throughout the country after 1958. Thus, two educational systems actually emerged in China: the full-time schools, and the part-work/part-study or part-agriculture/part-study schools. The implementation of these two educational systems resulted in greater variety in the types of schools, rapid development of schools at all levels and of all categories, and a new situation in education as a whole.     

A national profile of school-based transition programs for deaf adolescents.

In this study, the transition programs of 326 secondary educational programs for deaf and severely hearing-impaired adolescents were surveyed. Three types of programs were surveyed: residential, mainstream, and "other" (a combination of the first two programs). Sixty-four items depicting desirable transition characteristics were included in the survey, and each item was rated by the programs on a value scale and an implementation scale. Analyses of variance were calculated to determine if there were statistically significant differences among the three program types for each individual survey item on the two rating scales. Based on the data, it appears that the residential schools had higher implementation rates than the mainstream and other programs. All three respondent groups valued the transition items more than they had implemented them (i.e., the value scores were higher than the implementation scores). The data point out the need for researchers and educators to develop and implement more effective transition programs for deaf and severely hearing-impaired students.     

西部民族教育必须走跨越式发展的道路

西部民族教育必须走跨越式发展的道路，这是我国教育事业整体发展和民族教育自身发展的需要，也是民族地区实现小康的基础。实现跨越式发展必须有强有力的保障措施：要加大经费投入，切实改善办学条件；加大改革力度，优化教育资源配置；加大对口支援力度，缩小与发达地区的差距；加快教育信息化设施建设，大力推进民族教育现代化进程；加快立法步伐，依法保障民族教育的健康发展。     

裕固族教育研究述评

裕固族教育是一个重要的学术研究领域。文章从裕固族教育史,中小学地方课程开发,裕固族语言使用与教学,裕固族学生教育心理,裕固族文化与学校教育等五个方面对裕固族教育研究文献进行了梳理,肯定了裕固族教育研究领域取得的成就,并指出了存在的问题及今后可能的研究取向。     

Massive Open Online Change? Exploring the Discursive Construction of the ‘MOOC’ in Newspapers

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a prominent topic of recent educational discussion and debate. MOOCs are, in essence, university‐affiliated courses offered to large groups of online learners for little or no cost and are seen by many as a bellwether for change and reform across higher education systems. This study uses content and discourse analysis methods to examine how understandings of MOOC‐related ‘change’ were presented in US, UK and Australian newspapers. Drawing on detailed analysis of 457 newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2013, the findings point to a predominant portrayal of MOOCs in relation to the massification, marketization and monetization of higher education, rather than engaging in debate of either ‘technological’ or ‘educational’ issues such as online learning and pedagogy, instructional design or student experience. The article then considers the reasons underpinning this restricted framing of what many commentators have touted as a radical educational form—not least the apparently close association between MOOCs and the economics of higher education.     

Refugee education in Croatia: ethnic conflict and ethnic identity

This chapter focuses on the attempt by Croatian leaders to use educational policies to incorporate ethnic minorities into the societal mainstream and create an ideal contemporary Croatian citizen. Unfortunately, progress toward these goals is difficult in light of the serious emotional consequences of Yugoslavian Civil War. The case of Marina, a Croatian adolescent, is used to highlight the differences between the stated curriculum and what actually transpires during conversations in schools and classrooms. The chapter reminds us that the politics of education cannot be understated. Refugees and displaced students are particularly vulnerable to the political whims of many groups.     

Ethnic, gender, and age preferences among deaf and hearing preschool peers

The present study concerns ethnic, age, and gender playmate preferences of deaf and hearing preschoolers who were observed during outdoor free play at their respective schools over a 7-month period. Hispanic, black, and white children were included. It was hypothesized that peer preferences would be less apparent among deaf children than among hearing children if these preferences were based on (a) language differences between ethnic groups (e.g., Spanish-English differences), age groups (e.g., verbal fluency differences), or gender groups; or (b) cultural values communicated by speech. Both deaf and hearing children preferred to play with children of the same ethnicity, gender, and age as themselves. In addition, play among children of the same ethnicity, gender, and age was qualitatively different from play among children of different ethnicity, gender, and age. The only effect of deafness was to decrease the amount of gender segregation that occurred. The results suggest that the development of ethnic, gender, and age playmate preferences is not dependent on intergroup language differences or spoken cultural messages. Several nonlinguistic factors that might contribute to early peer preferences are discussed.     

Teacher Perceptions of South Asians in Birmingham Schools and Colleges

The views of a range of teachers towards South Asians in schools and colleges in Birmingham are explored in this paper. Based on 23 teachers, often senior in nature, from 11 educational institutions (9 schools [1 independent, 2 selective, 6 comprehensive] and 2 further education colleges), analysis of attitudes is in relation to gender and religion; socialisation and language differences between South Asian groups; and teacher ethnicity and antiracist multicultural education policy. It was broadly found that teachers viewed the education of South Asians based on the modus operandi of the educational institution they represented as well as the way in which differing South Asians based on socio-economic status, ethnicity and gender were thought to act and behave. There are implications for how South Asians are perceived as individuals as well as groups by teachers, as well as how schools can make a real attempt to improve existing home-school relations.