Examining the influence of international large-scale assessments on national education policies

This paper examines whether, to what extent, and how international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) have influenced education policy-making at the national level. Based on an exploratory review of the research and policy literature on ILSAs and two surveys administered to educational policy experts, researchers, policymakers, and educators, our research found that ILSAs, with their multiple and ambiguous uses, increasingly function as solutions in search for the right problem – that is, they appear to be used as tools to legitimize educational reforms. The survey results pointed to a growing perception among stakeholders that ILSAs are having an effect on national educational policies, with 38% of respondents stating that ILSAs were generally misused in national policy contexts. However, while the ILSA literature indicates that these assessments are having some influence, there is little evidence that any positive or negative causal relationship exists between ILSA participation and the implementation of education reforms. Perhaps the most significant change associated with the use of ILSAs in the literature reviewed is the way in which new conditions for educational comparison have been made possible at the national, regional, and global levels.     

From the Washington to the Post-Washington Consensus: The influence of international agendas on education policy and practice in Malawi

Education is receiving ever-increasing priority in the post-Washington consensus era, which views education as both a means to and end of development. However, justification for the attention given to education continues to be centrally focused on the notion of human capital. By consequence, marketisation and privatisation of education are becoming increasingly significant. With the World Bank and WTO joining forces to create a vision for a 'global education industry', emphasis is placed on free trade in educational goods and services. The paper examines critically the implications of this international education agenda for developing countries, focusing on the experience of Malawi.     

Issues relating to curriculum,policy and gender raised by national and international surveys of achievement in mathematics

Scottish schools have provided performance data for five international surveys of attainment in mathematics since 1990. Performance measured against national targets and progression over time and between age‐stages have been monitored nationally, on a regular basis, for 20 years, within the Assessment of Achievement Programme (AAP) (Scotland). The 1994 AAP mathematics survey findings facilitated interpretation of the age 9 and 13 TIMSS results for Scotland. Both studies were influential in formulation of national policies to improve learning and teaching of mathematics, at ages 5–14. Research available to support policies recommended in 1997 is examined. Concerns about validity and reliability of findings from international studies are discussed in the context of a collaboration undertaken between Scotland and France in 1994. It is concluded that simplistic comparisons ignore important cultural and curricular differences. Outcomes of more recent national and international surveys are reported and performance findings from 1988–2000 that relate to gender are reviewed.     

The influence of policy and context on teachers’ social media use

Research on teachers’ use of social media has typically assumed that it is a) driven by a need for professional learning and b) best understood in terms of individual motivations. In this study, we use a dataset of nearly 600,000 tweets posted to one or more of 48 Regional Educational Twitter Hashtags associated with 44 U.S. states. To explore the influence of local contextual factors on hashtag- and account-level activity in these hashtags, we use an analytic approach heretofore uncommon in social media-focussed education research: generalised linear and multilevel modelling. At the hashtag level, higher numbers of teachers within a state, proportions of students receiving subsidised meals, student-to-teacher ratios, and amounts of state spending per child are associated with more activity within a regional hashtag; by contrast, more left-leaning state governments and citizenries are associated with less activity. At the account level, more experienced accounts and accounts in more right-leaning states contribute more tweets to these hashtags. These findings reinforce established understandings of Twitter as a site for teacher learning; however, they also underline the importance of acknowledging other important purposes of teachers’ Twitter use, including receiving emotional support and engaging in activism. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic

• Many teachers use Twitter (and other social media platforms) for professional purposes.
• Teachers have identified professional learning—among other purposes—as motivating their use of Twitter.
• Regional Educational Twitter Hashtags are diverse learning spaces for teachers and other education stakeholders.

What this paper adds

• Local context and policy factors help influence teachers’ use of Twitter.
• Teachers may turn to Twitter because of a lack of emotional or political support—not just a lack of material support or professional development opportunities.
• Individual and idiosyncratic factors remain important in explaining teachers’ engagement with social media.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Informal spaces like social media may supplement formal support mechanisms for teachers.
• Teachers’ use of social media may help administrators and policymakers identify existing gaps to be repaired in those formal support mechanisms.
• Support for teachers should be conceived holistically and include emotional and political support.

     

Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards,tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n?=?158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.     

大众传媒对我国群众性排球运动普及推广的影响

通过应用访谈法、问卷调查法和文献法对大众传媒对我国群众性排球普及推广的影响进行调查，初步了解媒体对排球运动的宣传现状；提出媒体的宣传导向对群众性排球普及推广的帮助和支持：形成一个“大众传播——辅导员宣传指导——活动参与者”的一个“二级传播”结构。促使形成由“二级”扩张至“N级”的传播机制，达到宣传、普及群众性排球运动的目的。     

Analysing the differential impact of the Bologna Process: Theoretical considerations on national conditions for international policy convergence

Although there is a growing interest of policy makers in higher education issues (especially on an international scale), there is still a lack of theoretically well-grounded comparative analyses of higher education policy. Even broadly discussed topics in higher education research like the potential convergence of European higher education systems in the course of the Bologna Process suffer from a thin empirical and comparative basis. This paper aims to deal with these problems by addressing theoretical questions concerning the domestic impact of the Bologna Process and the role national factors play in determining its effects on cross-national policy convergence. It develops a distinct theoretical approach for the systematic and comparative analysis of cross-national policy convergence. In doing so, it relies upon insights from related research areas—namely literature on Europeanization as well as studies dealing with cross-national policy convergence.

试论改革开放后中国与国际组织关系的变化

新中国与国际组织的关系是一个变化的过程，以改革开放为界，中国对国际组织的认识由浅入深，实践上由被动转为主动。这种变化是国际、国内诸多因素共同作用的结果。随着中国综合国力的稳步提高，国内制度、政策、观念的进一步完善和发展，未来中国与国际组织的合作将更加富有成效。     

浅谈信息化时代中如何加强形势政策课教育

在信息化时代的今天,形势政策课作为高校思想政治教育中的组成部分之一,其重要性是多方面的,但是仍要认真地深入分析当前高校中普遍存在的学生消极抵触的现象,并提出行之有效的解决办法。     

Mathematics teacher change in a collaborative environment: to what extent and how

This article reports on a study into how collaborative contexts influence the professional development of an early-career primary teacher, Julia. We describe the process of change by which Julia manages to make her planning to teach mathematics more flexible so as to adapt to student difficulties, and we analyse the role that joint reflection plays in promoting this change. In order to understand the how of this influence, we carried out an analysis of the interactions within the group from Julia’s point of view, following a dialogical approach to discourse. We believe that it is in and through the interactions that Julia constructs her interpretation of the opinions, critiques and suggestions expressed. This interpretation conditions the extent of her involvement and moulds the influence of the context on her professional development. The presence of skilled collaborators proved decisive in promoting this development.     

实事求是地看待新形势下台湾问题特点与大陆对台政策构想

解放思想,实事求是,使我们党能够以一种开放的心态,辩证地看待台湾岛内政局和社会的变化,能够自觉地站在新的历史起点上来思考中华民族的伟大复兴.在当今日益复杂的国内外形势下,台湾问题出现了新的特点,对大陆对台工作提出了新的时代任务.本文浅析实事求是的思想路线和新形势下的台湾问题特点,提出大陆对台工作的几点意见和建议,以期在“一个中国”的前提下,逐步地实现祖国的统一大业.     

Conceptions of good teaching and how they influence the way adults and school leavers are taught

Seventeen lecturers in three departments in a university were interviewed about their conceptions of good teaching, their perceptions of the differences between adult and full-time students, and the actual strategies and methods they employed in their practice of teaching the two student groups. Results showed that there were common perceptions of the way adult students differed from their full-time adolescent counterparts. However, they reacted differently to those perceived differences. Three major types of accommodation were found: catering for weakness, treating both groups in the same way, and remediating weaknesses. The lecturers' conceptions of good teaching could be categorized into two main categories: transmissive and facilitative. Cross-tabulation of the teaching conception of the individual lecturers with their orientation to accommodation showed that those holding a transmissive conception tended to cater for the weakness of their students or make no distinction between teaching adult and full-time students. Those perceiving teaching as facilitating learning were more likely to try to remediate the weaknesses of their students.     

Teacher agency in the Canadian context: linking the how and the what

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate how to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be agents of change, few scholars have examined in detail what teacher agency might mean in the Canadian context. This paper reviews the conceptualisation of agency from five theoretical perspectives (psychology, sociology, critical theory, historical studies, and post-structuralism) and examines how empirical studies in the Canadian contexts align with these perspectives. This paper makes explicit the connections between the how and the what of agency, and as such informs current approaches to preparing pre- and in-service teachers and their potential role as agents of change, and maps out how the notion of agency is taken up in a particular jurisdiction.     

浅谈如何发挥民族高校图书馆馆藏优势

高校图书馆是各种教育资源的汇集点,它是高校的文献情报中心,担负着为教学和科研服务的双重任务,是培养人才和开展科学研究的重要基地之一。而对于民族高校来说,其图书馆拥有的不仅仅是教育、教学资源,更拥有着对于民族文化传承、民族文化学习等有着重要意义的资源,如何让民族高校图书馆可持续发展,切实发挥出其馆藏优势成为了民族高校图书馆眼下亟待解决的首要任务。     

Teaching children how to include the inversion principle in their reasoning about quantitative relations

The basis of this intervention study is a distinction between numerical calculus and relational calculus. The former refers to numerical calculations and the latter to the analysis of the quantitative relations in mathematical problems. The inverse relation between addition and subtraction is relevant to both kinds of calculus, but so far research on improving children’s understanding and use of the principle of inversion through interventions has only been applied to the solving of a + b − b = ? sums. The main aim of the intervention described in this article was to study the effects of teaching children about the explicit use of inversion as part of the relational calculus needed to solve inverse addition and subtraction problems using a calculator. The study showed that children taught about relational calculus differed significantly from those who were taught numerical procedures, and also that effects of the intervention were stronger when children were taught about relational calculus with mixtures of indirect and direct word problems than when these two types of problem were given to them in separate blocks.     

How to lose friends and turn people against you. Organisational development tools: what they are and how we use them in higher education

This paper is based on a keynote speech delivered to the AUA Annual Conference, Belfast, April 2006     

对土地政策参与宏观调控的若干思考

阐述了土地政策参与宏观调控的必要性及主要内容，认为土地政策参与宏观调控，还应注意与“国家财政货币政策”、“国家产业政策”、“国家区域发展政策”等宏观调控政策有效配合。