Return of the ghost – to discipline or/and to teach?

This paper is a situated biographical reflection on the author's Hong Kong teaching experience written using a narrative inquiry approach, describing attempts to generate innovative pedagogical practices. The journey explores how autocratic, traditional Chinese cultural expectations in Hong Kong education have nurtured a commonsense belief in “discipline first and then teach”. This teacher/researcher adopted alternative approaches to authority through the use of developmental drama which made teacher image and teacher–student power relationships an object of talk and study. The aim of this paper is to bring together theories and pedagogical models based on the sociology of education, social psychology and drama pedagogy in an effort to change how we teach marginalized students in one distinctive Chinese cultural context.     

What Are They Thinking? Findings for Educators and Practitioners on Youths’ Experience and Knowledge of the HPV Vaccine

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the HPV vaccination for boys and girls starting at age 11, yet adoption rates are low. We use eight focus groups to explore the decision making process, experiences, and social influences, including media and sex education classes, shaping attitudes of male and female college students. We find many students who have misinformation or no knowledge of the vaccination yet are eager to learn more. Due to youths’ range of knowledge about the vaccination and varied preparedness for making their own medical decisions, practitioners are in a challenging position to inform and encourage responsible decision making without appearing coercive.     

What Can Institutional Research do to Help Colleges Meet the Workforce Needs of States and Nations?

Institutions of higher education are looked to by society as the training grounds and gatekeepers for college-trained workers. However, despite a long history of being viewed by many as unresponsive to labor force needs, the academy has not found ways of effectively meeting these demands, nor articulating why it is that they have difficulty doing so. This paper discusses how institutional researchers can help explain to campus administrators and others the role that institutions play in training individuals for the workplace, and why they cannot always quickly respond to and solve shortages of college-trained workers. The first section outlines what economic theory and research has to say regarding labor markets, how labor market shortages arise, and how students make decisions about which major to pursue. The last section describes problems institutional researchers face when using their skills with data to identify solutions to this problem. Using data from the state of New Hampshire, it will be shown that the data available to institutional decisionmakers can be out of date, inaccurate, and not particularly useful for designing policies that would enable an institution to respond to the labor needs of the economy.     

What Are Schools For? Crossing Institutional Boundaries for the Sake of Learning

In this article we provide an analysis of the way in which we have designed and implemented an interdisciplinary service-learning course that overcomes the institutional barriers that often hinder creative collaboration in postsecondary environments.     

Motivation and Commitment to Volunteering in a Sample of Argentinian Adults: What is the Role of Generativity?

This study explores the motivations and commitment to volunteering in a sample of Argentinian adults, and it analyzes the role of generativity. The sample consisted of 200 volunteers who were purposively selected from five volunteer organizations in the city of Córdoba (Argentina). Participants were assigned to three age groups: young volunteers (18–39 years old), middle-aged volunteers (40–59 years old), and older volunteers (60 or plus years old). The motivations of “values” and “understanding” obtained the highest scores. No relevant differences were found between age groups in the motivations and commitment to volunteering. Generative concern showed more predictive value for motivations and commitment to volunteering than any of the sociodemographic variables considered in the study. The results are discussed at the light of considering volunteering as an expression of generativity in different stages of the life cycle.     

Competences for Learning to Learn and Active Citizenship: different currencies or two sides of the same coin?

In the context of the European Union Framework of Key Competences and the need to develop indicators for European Union member states to measure progress made towards the 'knowledge economy' and 'greater social cohesion' both the learning to learn and the active citizenship competences have been highlighted. However, what have yet to be discussed are the links and the overlaps between these two competences. Based on the development of research projects on these two fields, this article will compare the two sets of competences, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It will describe how the values and dispositions that motivate and inform active citizenship and learning to learn are related to each other, both empirically and theoretically. Both these competences are tools for empowering individuals and giving them the motivation and autonomy to control their own lives beyond the social circumstances in which they find themselves. In the case of active citizenship, the ability to be able to participate in society and voice their concerns, ensure their rights and the rights of others. In the case of learning to learn to be able to participate in work and everyday life by being empowered to learn and update the constantly changing competences required to successfully manage your life plans. When measuring both these competences then certain values relating positively towards democracy and human rights are common in their development.     

Who Gets Unemployed, Employed, or Admitted to the Graduate School?——An Investigation of the Employment Situation of College Graduates in China between 2003 and 2009

本研究利用2003年- 2009年北京大学实施的全国高校毕业生调查数据,考察高校学生毕业后发展路径选择的变化趋势及其影响因素.研究发现:(1)随着就业竞争加剧和金融危机所带来的冲击效应,高校学生的毕业后发展路径选择呈现多元化格局,其中继续升学和非传统型就业群体比例增加;(2)高校毕业生中有超过四分之一的群体在毕业后陷入失业困境,其中女性,来自农村地区、家庭社经地位和文化资本积累不足等先致性因素导致毕业生陷入失业困境的概率增高;(3)高校学生毕业后发展路径受到个体特征、所属高等院校特征、劳动力市场发展状况以及宏观社会经济发展环境等多层面因素的影响.     

Prosection or Dissection: Which is Best for Teaching the Anatomy of the Hand and Foot?

Due to the current trend of decreasing contact hours and less emphasis being given to the basic science courses in the pre-clinical years of medical education, it is essential that new approaches to teaching gross anatomy are investigated to ensure medical students are being adequately exposed to anatomical content. This study retrospectively analyzed practical examination data from four medical gross anatomy classes (N = 569) to ascertain which pedagogical approach, student participation in the dissection process, or interaction with prosected specimens is best for teaching the anatomy of the hand and foot. Data analysis involved the use of propensity score matching, a nonparametric preprocessing statistical approach which ensures accurate representation of the true treatment effect by balancing cohorts prior to statistical analysis. Statistical analysis indicated that those students who were exposed to the anatomy of the hand through interactions with prosected specimens performed 5.6% better (P = 0.012) while for the foot, students who interacted with prosections performed 13.0% better (P < 0.001). Although limited, data from this study suggest that utilizing prosections of the hand and foot seems to be a more advantageous pedagogical approach for teaching these regions than requiring students to dissect them.     

Who Needs Critical Agency?: Educational research and the rhetorical economy of globalization

Current critical pedagogical scholarship has theorized the epistemological and social intersection between globalization and educational technology according to two distinct positions. For some, this intersection offers new liberatory knowledges and opportunities that can subvert social homogenization and economic disparity. For others, this relationship is just another phase of neoimperialism that should be politically and ideologically resisted. In contrast, we argue that the intersection between globalization and educational technologies is rather a manifestation of larger economic and logical forces, and that resistance to such circumstances can neither be purely ideological or social. Instead, we contend that such a theoretical and pedagogical foreclosure dialectically actualizes conditions for real change—particularly when it complicates educational research technologies and their impact on epistemological multiplicity.     

Why the Computer is not Dominating Schools: a failure of policy or a failure of practice?

Despite the hyperbole that has continually surrounded the area of educational computing, for the last 20 years the computer has noticeably failed to permeate the school setting. This has traditionally been attributed to a failure of educational practice to adapt to, and provide for, the educational ‘IT revolution’. However, this article argues that a wider critique of educational computing should be adopted if‐we are to really understand the apparent failure of computers to be integrated into the compulsory educational setting. By examining how educational computing has been, and continues to be, constructed in both educational policy and discourse, the article considers how this ‘writing’ of educational computing is fundamentally at odds with the structure of the school organisation it is meant to merge with     

The Economic Benefits of Adult Learning to Low-Qualified Young Adults: Do Participation and Qualification Decrease the Risk of Unemployment?

Policymakers worldwide consider participation in adult learning beneficial for employability, in particular for specific target groups. However, still little is known about the effect of adult learning pursued by low-qualified young adults on their employment prospects. On the basis of a Flemish longitudinal database, we study the determinants and effects of work-related adult learning and adult learning not related to work. We make a distinction between formal learning and informal learning and between enrolment duration and qualification attainment. We control for background characteristics, human capital, school leaving age and entry into the labor market and run two path models. The analysis results contradict the general observation that adult learning is primarily a matter of high-qualified people. Among the low-qualified, lack of human capital does not hamper but encourages participation in adult learning. In addition, gender differences exist in participation in adult learning with men participating more often in work-related adult learning and women being more likely to attain a qualification in adult learning not related to work. Finally, our results indicate that participation but not qualification attainment in adult learning has an impact on employment prospects for low-qualified young adults.     

Inside Out or Outside In? On Criteria for Selecting Teachers of Religion,and the Case of the Druze

Abstract

This essay explores the issue of dress of teachers of Druze heritage. The Druze, among whom the rules of religious dress are rather specific, do not teach religion in schools, since the Druze religion is secret. The teacher acts as a gatekeeper and model. At the same time, Druze young people are becoming increasingly secular and may relate better to teachers who appear to be part of the modern world. This discussion examines the role of dress in teacher modeling, and the part Druze teachers may have to play in sustaining a small religion in rapidly changing times.     

Raising the quality and image of TVET: Lower-level training or motor for inclusive and sustainable growth?

Though viewed as second-class until fairly recently, Canada’s system for providing technical and vocational education and training (TVET) now provides relevant post-secondary education that meets the needs of highly skilled professionals in all job categories. As the system evolved, it changed the public view of skills education. This article analyses four lessons from that experience: on the importance of decentralised authority, close partnership with employers, attention to the needs of learners, and innovative leadership and language. It also reflects on the interests and needs of international partners with respect to the decentralized Canadian TVET system.     

Is career guidance for the individual or for the market? Implications of EU policy for career guidance

This paper explores the essential understanding and underlying perspectives of career implicit in EU career guidance policy in the twenty-first century, as well as the possible implications of these for the future mission of guidance. Career theories, models and concepts that serve career guidance are shaped on the twentieth-century industrial division of labour and now face a crisis due to the influence of globalization on working life. The transition to a knowledge-based society also challenges the traditional view of career: vocational and educational paths are no longer linear, predictable or stable. The analyses of EU policy documents and ethical declarations discussed here indicate that meanings of career are under reconstruction and that these documents fail to clarify the underlying meanings or perspectives on career contained therein. The essential meaning of career, as communicated through characterizations and dominating underlying perspectives in EU policy, puts greater emphasis on career guidance as being conducted on behalf of society, rather than the individual. Ethical tensions within the career guidance profession appear to have increased, and the profession is also challenged in its professionalization by contradictions and broadened areas, activities and functions.     

Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and the Brokering of Learning Provision for Young Adults

This paper argues that Amartya Sen’s (Development as freedom, New York: Random House, 1999) concept of “capabilities” provides a useful framework for interpreting the brokering of learning provisions that emerged as a key feature of reforms to education and training in Queensland (Australia) for young people. Sen’s capability approach is presented as a way of understanding the place of vocational learning in capability deprivation and enhancement. Methodologically, this account comes from a case study of the reforms’ birthing and trial phases (2000–2006) (Harreveld and Singh 2007, Queensland’s education and training reforms for the future: the journey so far in senior phase learning. Brisbane, Qld: Department of Education, Training and the Arts). Evidence about the brokering of learning provision for young people comes from Queensland’s youth support coordinators, community mentoring scheme, flexible learning services and a work readiness program.

Can Schools Achieve Both Quality and Equity? Investigating the Two Dimensions of Educational Effectiveness

This article investigates the extent to which schools can achieve both equity and quality. Data emerged from two effectiveness studies in teaching mathematics and Greek language, which were conducted to test the validity of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness. Separate multilevel analyses for each subject were conducted and it was found that the effectiveness status of schools does not change significantly when the two dimensions (equity and quality) are used to measure their effectiveness status in each subject. Changes in their effectiveness status in terms of each dimension of measuring effectiveness were also examined. In each subject, schools that were found to improve their effectiveness status in terms of the equity dimension were also found to improve their effectiveness status in terms of the quality dimension. Moreover, no school that was found to improve its effectiveness status in terms of one dimension had declining effectiveness in terms of the other dimension of effectiveness. Implications of these findings for the development of educational effectiveness research are drawn.     

Reflexivity for what? A response to Gewirtz and Cribb on the role of values in the sociology of education

This article is a reply to Gewirtz and Cribb's argument for ethical reflexivity, presented in a previous issue of this journal. These authors compared their views with mine, suggesting a way in which the differences between our positions could be overcome. I argue that, while there is certainly substantial agreement, there are also some fundamental differences between us, notably about the goal of research. Indeed, in my view, what they recommend involves a greatly increased danger of bias and a version of scientism. At issue here is, in large part, the kind of ethical reflexivity that is appropriate in sociological work.