The EU Memorandum on lifelong learning. Old wine in new bottles?

This paper provides a critical analysis of the EU’s Memorandum on lifelong learning in light of the evolution of the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning from the late sixties onward. It also analyses this document in light of the forces of globalisation that impinge on educational policy‐making in Europe as well as the all‐pervasive neo‐liberal ideology. The paper moves from theory to practice to provide critical considerations concerning certain ‘on the ground’ projects being presented as ‘best practice’ in EU documents. It brings out the neo‐liberal tenets that underlie much of the thinking and rationale for these projects, and indicates, in the process, how much of the old UNESCO discourse of lifelong education has been distorted to accommodate capitalism’s contemporary needs. An alternative conception of lifelong learning is called for.     

Transitions: old wine in new bottles.

The transition movement of the 1980s was preceded by two similar movements: (a) the career education movement in the 1970s and (b) the work/study movement in the 1960s. These three movements are described and compared to provide an historical context for understanding current problems and issues regarding transition. Some broad social issues, such as educational reform, are then examined to illustrate the potential influence of such issues on the future developments of policy that will affect the transition movement.     

Metaphysics and methods in moral enquiry and education: Some old philosophical wine for new theoretical bottles

If we reject sentimentalist accounts of the nature of moral motivation and education, then we may regard some form of reason as intrinsic to any genuine moral response. The large question for moral education is therefore that of the nature of such reason—perhaps more especially of its status as knowledge. In this regard, there is evidence of some recent drift in both ethics and theory of moral educational theory towards more instrumental pro-social skill acquisition conceptions of moral reason as more methodologically amenable to the empirical research methods of contemporary social science. This article sets out to show that the work of three great philosophers—all of whom have continued to exercise significant influence on modern and contemporary moral educational theorising and research—points in various ways to more epistemically robust conceptions of moral reason as meaningful personally formative knowledge that is not so readily amenable to natural or social scientific understanding and explanation.     

Structuration theory,habitus and complexity theory: elective affinities or old wine in new bottles?

This paper examines similarities and differences between structuration theory, habitus and complexity theory, as theories of social change. The paper suggests that structuration theory and habitus can theorize change, but that complexity theory offers a more complete theory of change because it focuses on social production rather than reproduction. Although there are elective affinities between structuration theory, habitus and complexity theory, nevertheless there are important differences between them. Complexity theory, being at heart a theory of change and development, differentiation and open systems, is more than merely a reformulation of structuration theory and habitus, and offers a more complete theory of social change than these two. Implications and agendas are drawn for the sociology of education from a complexity perspective.     

新时期重庆儿童诗苑一瞥

在新时期的重庆诗歌创作营垒里,产生了不少专门或兼为孩子写诗的作家。这之中有善于表现母爱主题的傅天琳,有乐于进行散文韵味探索的柯愈勋、徐国志、钟代华,有运用拟人手法和明快简洁句法,或描摹孩提游戏,或对校园和幼儿生活予以诗化表现的蒲华清、成再耕、杜虹和王光池等人。他们的诗正在走向成熟,已得到文坛认可和全国学界的好评。     

民族精神视角下的新诗——对20世纪中国诗歌的一种解读

中国20世纪诗歌与民族精神交织得十分紧密。它的萌发、发展与成熟直接导源于民族精神现代化的发生、发展与完成。与民族精神的这种特殊关系,便促成了中国新诗的“四性”特征：工具性、现代性、创新性和民间性。四性特征标识了20世纪诗歌的个性,同时又是对民族精神现代化的绝好印证。这是它区别于两千年古诗的本质所在。从民族精神视角解读新诗,能够更加准确地把握它的发展历程,总结出其独特的文化意义和艺术价值。     

A poetic journey: the transfer and transformation of German strategies for moral education in late eighteenth-century Dutch poetry for children

One of the most popular Dutch educational enlightenment authors was Hieronymus van Alphen. His three volumes of Little Poems for Children published in 1778 and 1782 were extremely successful, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Inspired by the German poets Christian Felix Weisse and Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann, Van Alphen brought about an expansion of educational space based on the integration of moral education in the spirit of the educational ideas of Locke, Rousseau and the Philanthropinists with poetical ideas and the nature of the child in both the content and the form of his poems. His poems were translated almost immediately into English, French and, surprisingly, as many of his poems were more or less adaptations of poems by Weisse and Burmann, into German too. Van Alphen’s trump card was a reversal of former strategies of education: instead of pressing moral ideas upon the children from an adult point of view, he aimed at identification by (1) writing from the perspective of children, (2) situating the poems in the world of experience of children, (3) using a childlike style with a frolicking metre, rhyme scheme and prosody, and (4) combining text and images, so putting the moral message across visually and textually at the same time. In this paper, we follow the journey of poems for children as media for the cultural transmission of moral educational ideas from Germany to the Netherlands from the perspective of cultural transmission, moral literacy and educational space. We conclude that Van Alphen, with the combined power of text and image, successfully adopted and adapted former educational strategies, such as the moral poetics developed by his German predecessors Christian Felix Weisse and Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann. Taking their strategies on a poetic journey from Germany to the Netherlands, he not only transferred them, but transformed them as well. Van Alphen did so in a specific Dutch utilitarian way. His poems could be read for fun but were intended for learning. They were useful and entertaining at the same time, because he took the life and living environment of children into account, and particularly accounted for the concept of development as a distinguishing characteristic of the specific nature of the child with which child readers could identify.     

A ripple that ruffled feathers: an appreciation of 30 years of Michael Rosen's poetry for children

This article is a personal appreciation and analysis of the poetry of Michael Rosen. Drawing on his work over 30 years, the article argues that at the heart of Rosen's work is a passionate belief in aesthetic, political and personal emancipation. Included in the pleasure that his work evokes, is a challenge to a number of preconceived notions about childhood, literature, relationships and living. He questions how children see adults and how adults see children, and with a breathtaking honesty, the whole world of children's literature and its impact on conceptualisations of children is put in the foreground. The article examines Rosen's use of autobiography in his poems, his groundbreaking use of free verse in children's literature and his relation to modernity.     

The hypothetical: a new training resource for adult educators

The “hypothetical”, a panel game developed and popularised by Geoffrey Robertson on Granada Television in the U.K. and on Channel 9 (initially) and ABC Television (finally) in Australia, has proved to be readily adaptable into a technique for the training of adult educators.

In the television version, participants play themselves in an imaginary scenario invoked by a compere whose role is to provoke them into making decisions about key social dilemmas of contemporary public concern, such as drug trafficking, marriage breakdown, AIDS, police corruption.

In the training adaptation described here, the dilemmas are constructed around issues of concern in daily professional practice. The primary goal changes to the professional development of participants and (if present) of an audience who are also professionals, rather than the goal of mass entertainment or general audience edification as in the television version.

This paper describes the adaptation of this popular 1980's television production into a training tool of considerable power, and gives an account of how it has been developed and used in one institution. It argues that, whereas the hypothetical is clearly a close relative of a number of familiar experiential training techniques, it makes its own unique contribution to the catalogue of training strategies available.     

引入多元智慧理论 探索古诗教学新模式

小学课本中的古诗 ,字字珠玑 ,意境深远 ,其中不乏古今传诵的名篇佳作。但是我们在教学过程中发现 :由于古诗所描述的内容远离学生的生活实际 ,学生对古诗深刻的意境难以理解 ,学习效果往往不太理想。如何利用古诗的音韵美与形象美 ,从而激发学生的多元智慧来提高古诗教学的课堂效果 ,业已成为广大教师研究的新课题。《尚书·尧典》曰 :“诗言志 ,歌永 (通“咏”)言 ,声依永 ,律和声 ,八音克谐 ,无相本伦 ,神人以和。”《毛诗序》道 :“情动于中而形于言 ,言之不足故嗟叹之 ,嗟叹之不足故永歌之 ,永歌之不足 ,不知手之舞之 ,足之道之。”南…     

Staff development: Old dogs can learn new tricks

Abstract

Peer coaching, study groups, and mentoring are all valuable methods for staff development. When all three can occur during the same year with a group of veteran teachers, the result is a learning community that enhances shared professionalism. This article describes such a year in which four veteran teachers came to teach in a residential high school for gifted and talented adolescents. This article reports that the focus from the perspective of the staff developer, as well as the focus from the perspective of three of the four teachers, emphasizes the power of these formats for professional development.     

苏东坡“诗中词”新证考辨系列

根据“史有表态,入乐可歌,又属长短句”的原则,经过长期的考辨,补定苏东坡诗中词40首。这些诗中词早已存在,大都有词牌可依,而且历代学者（包括东坡本人）及其编印的“东坡集”都将它们作为“词”收录进去。有人持有异议。一言难辩,只好就东坡“诗中词”争鸣的具体篇目,一一考辨,提供新证以答复之。     

Teaching and testing culture: Old questions,new dimensions

This chapter deals with the teaching and testing of culture in the foreign/second language classroom. An overview of three decades of discussions on the inclusion of culture in language teaching is presented and of the need for redefinition of the term “culture” in this context. Then, there follows a review of the documented techniques used by teachers. Techniques for teaching culture are discussed in terms of their effectiveness for developing cultural literacy. Finally, testing and assessment procedures, including traditionally used formats, are presented for their strengths and weaknesses in measuring cultural skills. A recommendation is made for the use of portfolios that provide a better fit between instruction and measurement.     

浅析佛教思想在宫体诗新变中的作用

宫体诗创作之所以能够自成一体,是有其特定原因的。学者们对宫体诗之义界多有研究,倘以"新变"二字为着眼点,则可从宫体诗的内容、形式、功用三方面进一步审视佛教在其新变中产生的作用。     

五四新诗革命中的“散文诗”

五四文学革命从形式和内容上逐渐开启了现代意义上的“新诗”观念.所谓“新诗”,在诞生之初,便与“散文诗”的概念有着极为密切的关联.五四时期的诗人在探讨“新诗”的特征时,虽然有偏重于韵律或文法的差异,却往往借用“散文诗”一词作为“新诗”的另一个命名.之所以如此,因为“散文诗”一词表达了当时人“新诗”观念两方面的图景:语言的散文化和诗体的散文化.“散文诗”的这个概念内涵是五四文学革命的需要塑造出来的.后来的研究者往往把此时的“散文诗”误读为现在的散文诗概念.不过,在杂志栏目从“诗”、“新诗”到“散文诗”的设置变化中,不难发现“散文诗”的文体意识正在当时潜在成长.但也正是在这同一过程中,“散文诗”这一本身似乎蕴含着矛盾的概念,正促使人们进一步赋予其特殊的诗体内涵.     

Repeated reading to enhance fluency: Old approaches and new directions

As phoneme awareness deficits and resulting decoding weaknesses are increasingly addressed, there is heightened awareness of the role of fluency in reading. This paper reviews the history of fluency training, discusses the theoretical bases of such training, and summarizes the current knowledge about the efficacy of training procedures. We focus on Repeated Reading (RR), the most familiar and researched approach to fluency training. Outcome data on Repeated Reading, presented in the form of questions, is meant to answer practitioners’ questions about implementation and efficacy and to provide a starting point for researchers interested in the topic. Although some answers are straightforward, others indicate the subtleties involved in answering the broad question, “Does Repeated Reading work?” In addition to a list of practical suggestions based on Repeated Readings findings, three new approaches to fluency training are introduced.