Widening participation to doctoral education and research degrees: a research agenda for an emerging policy issue

Widening participation is on the political agenda but, to date, policy, practice and research has focused on undergraduate education. This article identifies an emerging widening participation focus on doctoral education. Using England as a case study, the article examines this development within the context of the long-standing concern with equity in education, before reviewing the relatively small literature addressing who participates (and why) in doctoral and more general postgraduate education. An analysis of Widening Participation Strategic Assessments produced in 2009 by 129 English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) reveals an emergent institutional awareness of this new development. Finally, a research agenda for widening participation to research degrees, focusing on research students, HEIs and policy-makers, is outlined. The conclusion calls for this agenda to be pursued at institutional, national and cross-national levels so that future policy can be made and implemented on the basis of a robust evidence base.     

"国际逻辑会议LOGIC2009"会议综述

由贵州大学计算机科学与信息学院主办的"国际逻辑会议LOGIC2009"于2009年9月22日在贵州大学南校区南园接待中心隆重召开.20多位逻辑学家、数学家和计算机科学家参加了会议,他们分别来自贵州大学、贵州民族学院、新加坡国立大学、中国科学院、北京师范大学、四川大学、南开大学、南京大学、中山大学等国内外著名高校或研究机构.来自贵州高校的多名研究生旁听了会议.     

Educating students with FASD: linking policy,research and practice

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD ) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disability with significant implications for learning and behaviour. International research suggests that the prevalence of FASD in school‐aged children is 2.3–6.3%. In this paper, we address the questions: (1) what is FASD ; (2) what is the prevalence of FASD in schools; (3) what is the impact of FASD ; and (4) why develop special FASD education strategies and programmes? We summarise the 18‐year history of W innipeg S chool D ivision's development of its FASD P rogramme of services, describe the specialised FASD classrooms and then present the results from a consensus‐generating workshop comprised of 36 FASD education professionals, with over 209 years of collective FASD education programme experience, who were asked to identify and reach consensus on best strategies and lessons learned in FASD education programmes. We then suggest that effectively educating children with FASD is critical to get right if positive educational outcomes are to be realised.     

Advancing global capacity for engineering education research: relating research to practice,policy and industry

Findings are presented from a series of moderated interactive sessions held at international engineering education conferences between July 2007 and December 2008, where attendees discussed the current state and future trajectory of engineering education research. More specifically, this study examines how session attendees described: (1) the relationship between engineering education research and educational practice, policy considerations and industry; (2) important stakeholders, mechanisms/strategies and challenges for relating research to practice, policy and industry. Thematic analysis and open coding procedures were used to analyse the data collected at each session. In summary, frequent discussion and widespread consensus was observed about the need to relate engineering education research to the practice of engineering teaching. Discussions about relating research to policy and industry remain formative, but appear to be gaining traction. The paper concludes by proposing a cyclic model to better conceptualise how engineering education research can be strategically related to practice, profession and industry across diverse local and global contexts.     

9th International Conference of Association for Language Awareness, HKU, 2008

The 9th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness(ALA)with the theme of"Engaging with Language"will be held from 26-29 June 2008 at the Univer- sity of Hung Kong.The Conference is organized by the Associ- ation for Language Awareness with the support of the HKU Constituent Theme"Languages,Media and Communication: Language in Education and Assessment"(www.hku.hk/clear) and the British Council.     

Educational research, policy and practice in an era of globalisation

Globalisation includes not only the changes brought about by the opening up of markets and communication technology, but also those set in motion by shifts in policy relating to the responsibilities of government and the role of research and innovation in development. This paper examines the impact of globalisation on education research, policy and practice, and the ways in which reforms and priorities in the education systems of the Asia-Pacific region are being shaped by the interaction between the global and the local. It is argued that educational reforms should not be left to global forces or powerful global organizations to decide for us, but should stem from deliberate and considered choices based on the best-available research. Closing the gaps between research, policy and practice demands that we rethink our research priorities and practices, as well as the ways in which we develop and implement policy. The paper examines some of the rethinking underway, and how organizations like APERA, UNESCO and Eidos promote the sharing of knowledge and experience and collaboration between educational researchers, policy makers and practioners in the Asia-Pacific region.     

Brain Research,Learning and Emotions: implications for education research,policy and practice1

Recent advancements in neuroscience heighten its relevance to education. Newly developed imaging technologies enable scientists to peer into the working brain for the first time, providing powerful insights into how we learn. Research reveals that the brain is not a stable and isolated entity, but a dynamic system that is keenly responsive to experience. This work underscores the crucial role of education in shaping the brain's abilities. Brain research provides scientific evidence that emotion is fundamental to learning. Neuroscience also gives insights into how we learn language, literacy and mathematics that can inform the design of the national/state curriculum and teacher training.     

Widening participation,the instrumentalization of knowledge and the reproduction of inequality

According to Michel Foucault, modernity is predicated on the emergence of an instrumental idea of knowledge, which does not affect the constitution of the individual as a subject. This article aims to explore this thesis in the context of British Higher Education through a problematization of widening participation policies, and how they have been increasingly constructed in economic-instrumental terms. This approach suggests two main considerations within the framework of Foucault's argument. First, widening participation initiatives have contributed to reinforce an idea of knowledge as an instrumental set of notions external to the subject rather than a process of transformation of the self. Second, widening participation initiatives have been dominated by a neoliberal approach to the problem of inequality which has turned students into seemingly equal consumers of knowledge. However, it will be argued, this approach contributes to reproduce in different ways the inequality gap between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.     

From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: overcoming individualism in research,policy and practice

In this article we argue for a shift in educational research, policy and practice away from teaching citizenship to an understanding of the ways young people learn democracy. In the first part of the article we identify the ways in which the discussion about citizenship in Britain has developed since the Second World War and show how a comprehensive understanding of citizenship, which has underpinned much recent thinking about citizenship education, has been replaced by a more overtly individualistic approach. In the second part of the article we delineate the key problems of this individualistic approach and make a case for an approach to citizenship education that takes as its point of departure the actual learning that occurs in the real lives of young people. In the concluding section, we outline the implications of our view for research, policy and practice.     

Towards a theory and practice of policy engagement: Higher education research policy in the making

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by “what is policy” (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been “coerced into an era of cooperation”. Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself “against” policy. In this paper I attempt an assessment of where we are theoretically and politically with regard to education policy and where we need to look to find new forms of policy engagement. By way of illustration, I draw on examples from AARE (the Australian Association for Research in Education) and the Australian RQF (Research Quality Framework) although the analysis is by no means restricted to these.     

Using evaluation research for policy and practice in Botswana

Former National Research Co-ordinator for the IEA Reading Literacy Study; is currently working on the Criterion Referenced Testing programme in Botswana.     

Transpositions from research into policy and practice: Possibilities for foreign researchers

The general stereotyped view of the relationship between researchers and policy makers is that there is a generation gap which is either very hard or almost impossible to bridge. The best remedy for research on education in developing countries in particular is to bring the researchers and the policy makers together in one institution. The dangers, of which bias and over-generalisation are the most acute, are probably smaller than the difficulty of trying to improve communication generally. This paper seeks to discuss the difficulties of relating research, often in one small part of an education system, into policy implications. Because of the pressures for there to be a close link the difficulties facing researchers in developing countries are more acute than those facing researchers in the developed world. Only occasionally do the policy makers draw upon the researchers in order to justify the policy being pursued.     

Fourth way in action: translation of research into policy and practice

This article discusses the relationship between policy, research and practice in the Singapore education landscape in response to Hargreaves and Shirley’s arguments of Fourth Way principles of educational change. Examples of recent policy developments in Singapore are used to illustrate the interaction between judicial uses of research data and pragmatic knowledge of classroom practices and stakeholders’ interest in policy formulation in Singapore. It is advocated that a key ingredient of the success of Singapore’s education system is the unity of vision and mission of the people behind policy, research and practice.