What can ‘social practice’ theory and ‘socio-cultural’ theory contribute to our understanding of the processes of module design?

This article discusses the data obtained from an online survey of academic staff who are involved in module design and who are employed within one university. The survey was used as a baselining tool to explore the nature of current module design practice within the survey sample. Do academics consistently employ the pragmatic approaches recommended by educational developers and theorists or is module and curriculum development a more informally constructed process? By comparing the initial findings of this project with survey and interview data produced by evidence-based projects, this article suggests that module design practice is not set in stone and that we need a deeper analysis of the process of module and curriculum design in terms of social practice and socio-cultural theory in order to gain a deeper understanding of it.     

Whither Teacher-Directed Learning? Freirean and Confucian Insights

Teacher-directed learning is often perceived to be detrimental to student learning and incompatible with learner-centered approaches. This essay challenges this perception by referring to Freirean and Confucian insights. It is argued that Freire, Confucius, and Xunzi advocated the active involvement of the teacher in student learning through necessary intervention and guidance towards self-directed learning. This article proposes a flexible application and combination of teacher-directed and learner-/self-directed learning that caters to the learner’s needs.     

What about social value?

We focus on three aspects of the articles of Reyna, of Perry, Stupnisky, Daniels and Haynes, and of Murdock, Beauchamp and Hinton. The first aspect is the logic of causal chain, a logic that we differentiate from a more deterministic approach. The second one is the mode of corrective action (attribution retraining) that is planned for students, whether cheaters or lower achievers. We differentiate this mode of action from the one that is based on the idea of normative awareness (or “clear-sightedness”): normative awareness does not imply that the speaker believes in what he says. Finally, we discuss the concept of social value (of a person) which seems to underlie the empirical results but which does not appear in the authors’ formulations. But this concept stems from a “sociologizing” meta-theory that these authors probably do not share and which makes the norm of enternality theory difficult to integrate within Weiner’s attribution theory.     

Factorial equivalence of social cognitive theory: educational levels × time differences

The study of social cognitive theory has involved a number of inquiries, notably one of which concerns the formation and development of self-efficacy beliefs. Social cognitive theory indicates that we form our self-efficacy beliefs from four major sources of information: enactive performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and emotional and physiological states. We advance this tenet by exploring across four occasions, and the four sources of information in the context of elementary school learning. Two cohorts of participants, at level 2 (N?=?352 3rd–4th grade students) and level 3 (N?=?264 5th–6th grade students), answered a Likert’s-scale inventory that we developed and used in a previous study. We proposed and tested a number of a priori models using LISREL 8.80. Furthermore, factorial invariance analyses of the inventory were performed, a posteriori, to determine the stability/instability of the four sources of information.     

Reconciliation of natural and social: Rethinking Rousseau’s educational theory

This article intends to re-examine Rousseau’s educational theory in the context of the nature/culture opposition. In contemporary discussions on the nature/culture dualism, it has been often stated that his educational theory is based on the assumption that a child is a natural being. However, the author demonstrates that Rousseau was instead committed to a duality of human nature; this influences his educational theory. In his model, human nature consists of a natural and a social side; these two parts are in conflict which seems unsolvable due to the present state of society. A child is regarded as a figure which is open to the future reconciliation of nature and culture. Thus, Rousseau’s model of education is presented not from the standpoint of the present state of society, but from the standpoint of an ideal state which might be built in the future. In addition, the examination of human duality allows one to show that Rousseau’s ideas on civil and private education are closely interrelated.     

Whither the Common Good? A Critique of Home Schooling

This analysis shows home schooling to be part of a general trend of elevating private goods over public goods. The discourse around home schooling centers on issues of individual rights and private benefits, rather than the public good. Yet, the public has an interest in education because there are unavoidable aspects of education that make it a public good. However, home schooling denies this public interest. It undermines the common good in two ways. First, it withdraws not only children but also social capital from public schools, to the detriment of the students remaining behind. Second, as an exit strategy, home schooling undermines the ability of public education to improve and become more responsive as a democratic institution. Thus, home schooling is not only a reaction to, but also a cause of, declining public schools. Therefore, it diminishes the potential of public education to serve the common good in a vibrant democracy.     

Does educational privatisation promote social justice?

Social justice in education refers to the expectation that the education system provides fairness in its access to opportunities and results. Proponents of educational privatisation believe this would not only open up opportunities for those that otherwise are restricted from attending good schools, but that it would also improve overall efficiency in the education system through pressures of market competition. This article first provides a framework for analysing a quasi-market in education and for considering the potential effects of privatisation. It then applies this framework to the Netherlands, a school system premised completely on choice where two thirds of the schools are privately sponsored. We conclude that the Dutch system, thanks to a series of policies and regulations in place, performs relatively well on social justice, when looking at freedom of choice and overall productive efficiency. However, for equity and social cohesion, despite clear policy efforts, the privatised system seems to undermine social justice for certain groups in the population. The dilemma observed here is that some private benefits of education must be compromised to achieve greater equity and social cohesion. It is an open question whether policy makers are willing to make such tradeoffs.     

Education,democracy and social change: Venezuela’s education missions in theory and practice

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela is conceptualised as a pedagogical project that aims to develop ‘twenty-first century Socialism’ through state-grassroots collaboration in the reorganisation of political space in order to develop participatory, democratic institutions and processes. The cornerstones of this project to deepen and expand democracy in and through education are the adult Education Missions, set up in parallel to existing educational structures, and with an explicit focus on socio-political education and community projects aimed at promoting a new hegemony based on active grassroots citizenship. While the struggle to extend democracy in and through education is not unique to Venezuela, the conceptualisation of democracy as protagonist and participatory, and the explicit links made between education and democratic social change within the broader framework of twenty-first century socialism, makes Venezuela a dynamic site to revisit and reinvigorate classical debates as to the role of education in promoting democratic social change. Based on 15 months of empirical research, this paper examines the extent to which adult education in Venezuela is contributing to the development of a counter-hegemonic movement to build socialism for the twenty-first century.