Sensitive educational research in small states and territories: the case of Macau

This paper explores the sensitivities of conducting educational research in small states and territories, where the very act of conducting research, aside from its purposes or focuses, is itself a sensitive matter. The paper takes a ‘critical case study’ of Macau and examines cultural, educational, political, micro‐political, interpersonal and practical issues, overlaid by characteristics of Chinese culture, that must be factored into the planning and conduct of research in the territory. It suggests that compromises and trade‐offs have to be made in educational research in small states and territories, and argues that researchers must anticipate a range of problems in advance, and, through ingenuity, networking and sensitivity, overcome them. The magnification of sensitivities in small states and territories contributes to their special educational ecology; investigating these is frequently an interpersonal as well as a research matter.     

Higher education in small territories : Political transition and development in Macau

Scholars and practitioners have argued with increasing force that small states are not simply small-scale versions of large states. Rather, they have suggested, small states have distinctive generic features and require distinctive policies. This paper focuses on Macau, which is an autonomous Special Administrative Region within China, and which has features which are comparable to those of small sovereign states. The paper shows ways in which Macau’s small size has shaped higher education in the territory. Small size is of course not the only determinant of the shape and scale of higher education in Macau, but it is nevertheless shown to be a significant determinant. Through this case study, the paper contributes to the broader literature on education in small states.     

Human resource management strategies for small territories: an alternative proposition

This paper tackles the issue of educational development from a somewhat different, and still under-explored, perspective: that of human resource management (HRM). This paper argues that small territories have, often blindly, accepted an ‘industrial relations’ (IR) framework that is much more at home in the formalistic, mass production and mass employment based, manufacturing economies of the industrialised world. While the future of ‘IR’ in these settings is also being called into question today, small territories have been hard put all along to apply their labour relations practice to the strictures of this theory. An inductive analysis of the human resource condition in small territories reveals rather a contextual disposition for empowerment and entrepreneurship — a critical component for successful HRM practice — which is often unacknowledged, let alone addressed in public policy. The paper identifies aspects of current industrial relations as well as educational practice that could be addressed in order to better tap the benefits of this different understanding of human resourcefulness.     

Demonstrating the impact of educational development: The case of a course design collaborative

While universities hold expectations that new colleagues demonstrate high levels of expertise, many recently graduated PhDs are under-prepared for their teaching roles. This case study assessed the impact of an institutionally sponsored, collaborative course design initiative on the professional learning of early-career academics in a research-intensive university in Canada. The initiative was framed as educational development: the integration of faculty, instructional, curriculum, and organizational development in a holistic approach to professional learning. The case documents the impact of a 5-day workshop on course design and teaching complemented with three cycles of classroom observation and feedback, and a monthly discussion group on teaching. Across 10 participants, three strong patterns of results emerged with respect to teaching beliefs, practices and confidence about teaching.     

Teachers' biographies and educational development: a Kenyan case study

Over the last decade there has been a growing interest among academics in the lives and work of teachers in industrialised countries. Many of these studies have sought to understand how teachers perceive their work and how they develop their particular professional identities. There is a growing recognition of the impact of teachers' own biographies on their training and on curriculum development and implementation. This paper examines the perspectives of a group of Kenyan educators, advisors and inspectors, from different regions, who have taken part in a national project designed to strengthen primary education through the in-service training of teachers. The aim is to examine the potential of biographical research to provide new insights into the processes of educational development. The participants in the research reflect on their own career development and life histories; on their identities, both professional and personal; and on the impact of these on their work. Drawing on an issue which divided the group, that of gender equality, the paper considers some of the biographical and cultural factors which permit and restrict development.     

The implications of family size and birth order for test scores and behavioral development

This article, using longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study, presents new evidence on the effects of family size and birth order on test scores and behavioral development at age 7, 11 and 16. Sibling size is shown to have an adverse causal effect on test scores and behavioral development. For any given family size, first-borns ultimately obtain higher test scores than middle-born or last-born children. First-borns and last-borns tend to be better behaved at school than middle-borns, though last-borns have no test score advantage.     

The role of values in educational research: the case for reflexivity

Abstract This article explores the meanings involved in the development and implementation of learning and teaching policies in higher education through a single institution case study in an English university. It draws on interview data collected from middle manager‐academics, located in Schools, who are charged with implementing learning and teaching policies. Tensions and contradictions of practice emerged from a detailed analysis of the data identified through three closely related themes: centre/periphery, time and temporality, and disciplinary locations. The central theme, which frames the discussion of the other two, concerns relations between centre and periphery. The manager‐academics identify themselves with the interests of their colleagues within Schools and use their position to mediate between central pressures and practice on the ground. Rather than identifying with managerialist practices, they rely on projected ideals of collegiality in their relationships with School colleagues. At the core of these experiences are differing conceptions of time in the centre/periphery relationship. Different experiences of temporality, tempo, and timing are explored from the manager‐academics' perspective. There is considerable tension between time understood on the ground and the time‐scales of central learning and teaching initiatives. The final theme concerns the organising role of disciplinary identities in articulating meaning at the periphery. Innovations appear rooted in disciplinary practice and some tensions exist between these and perceptions of educational theory and development. The article suggests that these contradictions and tensions might be a source of strength to the institution rather than having negative effects. It concludes with some reflections on the importance of time to the development of educational theory.     

Ethically scaling up interventions in educational development: a case for collaborative multi-sited ethnographic research

Educational interventions are often administered at scale in diverse settings as part of international development programmes. Their implementation is subject to a linear process that begins with finding out ‘what works’ at a local level, frequently through the use of randomised controlled trials, and continues with rolling out the intervention to the whole population at a national or even transnational level. This process often fails to consider the role cultural, political, and historical factors play in the perceived success of the local intervention, which can compromise both the impact and the ethics of at-scale implementation. To help address this issue, this paper argues for a definition of scalability that incorporates the ethics of the practice of scaling. It points to the potential of collaborative multi-sited ethnographic research to identify nuanced understandings of the different ethics systems endogenous to individual sites of implementation, in lieu of the universalising notions of ethics that are embedded in mainstream, linear notions of scalability. In so doing, it makes the case for multi-sited critical ethnography as a methodology of choice in researching the scalability of interventions in the context of development projects in the ‘Global South’.     

The politics of mourning in Cyprus and Israel: educational implications

This paper suggests the need for a critical analysis of the nationalization of mourning and its educational implications, especially in conflict‐ridden areas. Our thoughts are grounded in a comparative study on mourning that has been conducted as part of our long‐standing ethnographic research in schools in Cyprus and Israel during the last 10 years. Through this study on mourning, we highlight two ideas. First, we want to show how a comparison of our studies in Cyprus and Israel highlights the difficulties for alternative interpretations to be translated into educational policies and teacher practices in the absence of changes in political structures. Second, we want to show that despite the forces that nationalize mourning, there are educational openings for alternative interpretations about mourning and the encouragement of reconciliation pedagogies. To this end, the education literature on teaching controversial issues and examples of pedagogies for reconciliation might be relevant to provide concrete ideas for education theory, policy and practice on issues of mourning.     

The changing American college student: implications for educational policy and practice

New students entering higher education institutions in the United States have undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This paper summarizes some of the major trends observed in these surveys and discusses possible implications of the findings for educational policy and practice.Each fall since 1966 the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has been conducting a national survey of new college freshmen. A typical survey involves 250,000 students and a nationally representative sample of 550 higher education institutions of all types. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s American college students became much more focussed on material goals and less concerned with altruism and social problems. These value changes were accompanied by dramatically increased student interest in business careers and a sharp decline of interest in school teaching, social work, nursing, the clergy, and other service careers. These changes are perhaps best illustrated in the contrasting trends in two values: being very well off financially, which doubled in popularity during the period of survey and developing a meaningful philosophy of life which was the top student value in the early 1970s but was endorsed by fewer than half as many students by the late 1980s.During just the past two or three years most of these trends seem to have ended or, in certain cases, shown signs of reversing direction. At the same time, there is growing evidence that students are increasingly oriented toward social activism. Protecting the environment appears to be the single greatest concern among American college students at the turn of the decade.Portions of this talk were given at the January 6, 1989 meeting of the Commission on the University of the 21st Century, Council of Higher Education, Richmond, Virginia: portions have also been adopted from an earlier article in Change magazine (Astin, A. W. Competition or Cooperation, September/October 1987).     

Sustainable development as a driver for educational innovation in engineering school: the case of UniLaSalle

ABSTRACT

The potential relationships between innovation and sustainability processes, in engineering education, is neither obvious nor simple, especially when innovation, generally speaking, is promoted regardless of sustainability. We used UniLaSalle (In January 2016, the ‘Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais’, a French engineering school, merged with another higher education engineering school (ESITPA, Rouen). Both campuses (Beauvais and Rouen) have a common name: UniLaSalle (www.unilasalle.fr). As the interview began during 2015, this article only describes the situation of the Beauvais campus.) as a ‘living Lab’ to identify and analyse the reasons for the integration of innovation and Sustainable Development (SD) in training programmes. The aim is to explore, in a perception and reflective approach, how SD can be understood as a driver for specific innovation attitudes in higher education engineering school. This paper adopts an empirical approach based on a qualitative study, using NVivo 9 software to analyse non-numerical data. Our research suggests that SD can be a structural driver for innovation if it is integrated in a transdisciplinarity approach and not just as a discipline per se.     

Social interaction development among behaviorally handicapped preschool children: Research and educational implications

Literature is reviewed that documents the effectiveness of a behavioral approach for increasing the social behaviors of behaviorally handicapped preschool children. However, this literature also suggests that reciprocal interaction between target subjects and significant others seldom generalized beyond treatment settings. The importance of developing positive, reciprocal interaction has been well documented. The results of observational studies suggest that with respect to both quantity and quality of interaction, the child creates his own social environment. For example, the passive, withdrawn child is the more frequent recipient of social rejection than is the more socially active child; the physically aggressive child receives more hostile social bids from peers than less aggressive youngsters; and, of course, the child who initiates positive interaction with peers tends to receive more positive social attention than less socially adept youngsters. Thus, children's behavior patterns tend to set the occasion for that kind of social approach by peers that validates, in a sense, their own approach to peers. If affective education for young handicapped children is to become a reality, additional research is necessary to identify those response patterns that set the occasion for positive reciprocal interaction.