Curriculum and Society: Rethinking the Link

This article argues that the link between educational curricula and society as a whole has become critically uncertain. This crisis is linked to a number of factors related to the post-modern world view, including: the disappearance of grand utopian social visions of the kind that used to underpin educational policy; the lack of adequate theoretical tools; and the way in which academics are exposed to a multitude of different cultural norms. The author argues that this situation calls for a fundamental re-thinking of the link between curriculum and society, based on a more flexible and pluralistic approach.     

School failure and cultural mismatch: Another view

Recently, the school failure of minority students has been explained in terms of incompatibilities in the ways that language is used at home and in school. This theory has stimulated numerous studies. The research shows in detail how teachers and minority students often misinterpret each other due to different assumptions about the appropriate ways of using language in the classroom. This paper reviews the literature dealing with home-school disjunctures in language use, and examines the theory critically. It argues that the approach to school failure prevalent throughout the research in this area is seriously flawed. By narrowing the focus of analysis to home-school connections, this line of investigation diverts attention away from existing social inequalities that sustain the widespread academic failure of minority students. Attention is given to the relationship between school and society—a missing link in much of the sociolinguistic literature. The paper further argues that culturally sensitive solutions to the school problems of minority students that ignore the political link between school and society are doomed to failure.     

Reflections on modern China and the progressive power of educational studies

The turn towards using domestic experience in contemporary Chinese educational studies has led to the development of theoretical frames rooted in the reality of Chinese society. This article identifies four ways of understanding and reforming Chinese society that have been developed by 20th century Chinese educators. By reflecting on these four approaches, and on the modern value oriented reactions to social transformation expressed by contemporary Western educational scholars, this article argues that Chinese educational scholars face two essential tasks when developing theories based on domestic experience so as to make positive contributions to China’s unfinished project of modernity. The first is to study the phenomena of imbalance, alienation, and backwardness caused by all kinds of economic and cultural movements and forces in the huge space of Chinese society, and the second is to develop progressive educational ideas that are robust enough to counter these phenomena.     

走向主体间性教育

传统认识论认为在教育过程中师生关系是一种主客体关系.伴随着社会的进步和教育的发展,这种传统的认识论已日益显示出其局限性.如何重新理解教育?如何重新界定师生关系?如何实现教育方式的理性转变?本文认为,从主体性教育向主体间性教育的转向是解决当前教育所面临危机的一剂良药.     

Interest groups and the State in contemporary Spanish education policy

This paper analyses the role of educational interest groups in the context of current educational policy in Spain. The paper focuses on the historical and structural factors that are the basis for understanding the constitution of educational interests. It argues that the historical educational dualism and the political opposition between public and private education explains not only the emergence and political position of each educational actor, but also the dynamics of interaction between them and their strategies to influence policy making and implementation. The final section of the paper analyses the relationship between interest groups and the State. It argues that the diverse and heterogeneous educational demands lead to a specific form of educational politics and explain the conditioned relative autonomy of the Spanish State in education policy making.     

Levelling the reading gap: a socio‐spatial study of school libraries and reading in Singapore

This article takes a comparative socio‐spatial approach at the intersection of social class and reading politics to provide a fresh way of examining school reading policies and practices, unearthing previously hidden spaces of inequity for reading intervention. The juxtaposition of two nested case studies in Singapore, one of an elite all‐boys' school and another of a co‐educational government school with students in different academic tracks, revealed inequitable practices, specifically in the designs and uses of school library spaces between schools serving different social classes. The study argues that attempts to design reading interventions should move away from the view of student‐as‐problem to structure‐as‐problem in order to discover new perspectives for reading intervention. Additionally, this study demonstrates how foregrounding social class in educational research is necessary for effective design of educational strategies that aim to transform education and society by narrowing the gap between students from different social classes.     

RECONSIDERING EMANCIPATORY EDUCATION: STAGING A CONVERSATION BETWEEN PAULO FREIRE AND JACQUES RANCIÈRE

In this essay Sarah Galloway considers emancipation as a purpose for education through examining the theories of Paulo Freire and Jacques Rancière. Both theorists are concerned with the prospect of distinguishing between education that might socialize people into what is taken to be an inherently oppressive society and education with emancipation as its purpose. Galloway reconstructs the theories in parallel, examining the assumptions made, the processes of oppression described, and the movements to emancipation depicted. In so doing, she argues that that the two theorists hold a common model for theorizing oppression and emancipation as educational processes, distinguished by the differing assumptions they each make about humanity, but that their theories ultimately have opposing implications for educational practices. Galloway further maintains that Freire and Rancière raise similar educational problems and concerns, both theorizing that the character of the relations among teachers, students, and educational materials is crucial to an emancipatory education. Galloway's approach allows discussion of some of the criticisms that have been raised historically about Freire's theory and how these might be addressed to some degree by Rancière's work. Taking the two theories together, she argues that the possibility for an emancipatory education cannot be ignored if education is to be considered as more than merely a process of passing down the skills and knowledge necessary in order to socialize people into current society.     

Models of Micro‐Organisms: Children’s knowledge and understanding of micro‐organisms from 7 to 14 years old

Current approaches to science‐technology‐society (STS) education focus primarily on the controversial socio‐scientific issues that arise from the application of science in modern technology. This paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to STS education that embraces science, technology, history, and social and cultural studies. By employing a case study of traditional papermaking technology, it investigates how the interactions between technology and science can be explored in an authentic societal and cultural context across a historical time span. The term technology‐society‐science (TSS) is used to represent an alternative approach to linking technology, society, and science that aims to redress the imbalance between science and technology, and to resolve the tension between two diverging goals of STS education. The educational implications of this alternative approach to STS education are discussed.     

A history of the right: The battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.     

Rethinking accountability in a knowledge society

Competition between schools combined with test-based accountability to hold schools accountable for predetermined knowledge standards have become a common solution in educational change efforts to improve the performance of educational systems around the world. This is happening as family and community social capital declines in most parts of developed world. Increased competition and individualism are not necessarily beneficial to creating social capital in schools and their communities. This article argues that: (1) the evidence remains controversial that test-based accountability policies improve the quality and efficiency of public education; (2) the current practice of determining educational performance by using primarily standardized knowledge tests as the main means of accountability is not a necessary condition for much needed educational improvement; and (3) there is growing evidence that increased high-stakes testing is restricting students’ conceptual learning, engaging in creative action and understanding innovation, all of which are essential elements of contemporary schooling in a knowledge society. Finland is used as an example to suggest that educational change should rather contribute to increasing networking and social capital in schools and in their communities through building trust and strengthening collective responsibilities within and between schools. This would create better prospects of worthwhile lifelong learning in and out of schools. Based on this analysis, the article concludes that education policies should be directed at promoting more intelligent forms of accountability to meet external accountability demands and to encourage cooperation rather than competition among students, teachers and schools.     

Education and the State: Malaysia after the NEP

This article examines the relationship between educational development and the role of the State in Malaysia. The focus is on the major shift in educational policies towards democratisation, decentralisation and privatisation of the Malaysian education system in the post-NEP (New Economic Policy) era. The article argues that the nature of the State has changed over historical periods depending on the condensation of power among the competing groups in this multi-ethnic society. The recent political developments in Malaysia show the emergence in the 1990s of a “developmental State” which perceives education as a means of human resource development as it strives towards rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and globalisation of the Malaysian economy.     

Green inclusion: biophilia as a necessity

This article argues that there is a strong link between the pedagogy for inclusion and the pedagogy of environmental education and tries to identify any benefits that could be acquired by pupils when the school system tries to use environmental educational programmes to promote inclusion. The idea of promoting a school yard into a school garden is given as an example. The article suggests that outdoor education experiences can facilitate positive development of self‐esteem, peer to peer socialisation as well as teacher–student relationships and a positive attitude towards school. One might conclude that the rationale behind environmental education has much to offer to all of our pupils.     

论陶行知创造教育的思想体系

创造教育是陶行知教育思想的重要组成部分,有其自身的逻辑构成。它是教育促进社会改造以及个人改造的必然选择;究其内容而言,它须来自于生活;教学做合一是其实施的手段与方法;而民主教育则是其实施的保障,他们共同构成了创造教育的思想体系。     

Policy intervention and power shifts: an evaluation of South Africa's education restructuring policies

This paper argues that the South African educational restructuring policy proposals are unlikely to become interventions that help bringing about greater development, equity, participation and redress. The reasons for this are manifold. It is contended that the policy proposals are flawed in their conceptualization of the problems and misjudge the educational context and dynamics on the ground. These interventions favour the interests of the more organized and privileged sections of society and only indirectly address the needs of the excluded and disadvantaged. The policy proposals are also based on problematic assumptions about policy and the policy process, and the relationship between policy and practice. Finally, these proposals do not have an appropriate understanding of the change process and are unable to develop strategies to influence the reform process and empower the disadvantaged to struggle for a fairer, more equitable and effective education and training system.     

Minima Pedagogica: Education,Thinking and Experience in Adorno

This article attempts to think of thinking as the essence of critical education. While contemporary education tends to stress the conveying of knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the present‐day information society, the present article turns to the work of Theodor W. Adorno to develop alternative thinking about education, thinking and the political significance of education for thinking. Adorno touched upon educational questions throughout his writings, with growing interest in the last ten years of his life. Education, he argues following Kant, must enable students to think for themselves and to break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults. Nevertheless, in his discussions of education Adorno says little about the nature of thinking, and the secondary literature on his educational theory addresses this question only cursorily. Important claims on the nature of thinking do appear elsewhere in Adorno's work. From his early writings up to Negative Dialectics, Adorno is preoccupied with thinking, sketching the outlines of critical‐dialectical thought. Still, these reflections rarely touch upon educational questions, and the Adorno scholarship has yet to establish this link. Unlike studies which read Adorno's educational thought against the backdrop of the history of education and the German Bildung tradition, or in relation to art and aesthetics, the present article brings together Adorno's ideas on education and thinking in an attempt to contribute both to the Adorno scholarship and to the growing field of education for thinking.     

ALAIN ET LES INSTITUTEURS (1)

In the past decade, US==A reforms discourses link strategies of professionalizing teaching with pedagogical research practices. This article explores the different reform practices as the effects of power. It focuses on educational policy and research as governing through the reasoning inscribed in the knowledge generated for action and participation. Political rationalities are inscribed in pedagogy as “a culture of redemption. Pedagogy is to save the child for society and to rescue society through the child. The saving of the child embodies norms about social/cultural progress that makes the science/scientist as the prophet.

The first section examines turn of the 20th century USA practices to professionalize the teacher and redefine pedagogy. Pedagogy embodies a concept of progress that revisions the child from a religious entity beholden to God to one that embodies certain collective social norms related to political rationalities. The child is to be a self‐motivated participant in a liberal democracy. The teacher is also revisioned as a redemptive agent but now in the worldly name of progress and a populism. Professional knowledge is interpellated in service of a liberal democratic ideal.

The second section focuses on the revisioning of the redemptive culture in contemporary USA educational science and reform discourses. Examining two seemingly different ideological discursive practices ‐‐ a state‐sponsored discourse of “systemic school reform” and a “post‐modern” critical pedagogy ‐‐ the author argues that similar redemptive images of progress, expert‐knowledge and populism are utilized. The redemptive discourses focus on the teacher fand child) who participates, collaborates, and constructs (makes) knowledge within a “community” rather than as a participant in social, collective norms. As with the redemption at the turn of the century, contemporary educational sciences inscribe principles of order that relate to changes in the governing systems for constructing individuality, but these systems are different from those produced at the end of the century.     

Exploding the Ivory Tower: Systemic Change for Higher Education

Higher education faces increasing pressures to change to better meet the needs of modern society. Systemic change applies systems thinking and systems theory to change a complex system to a new paradigm. This paper argues for the need for the systemic change of higher education and presents educational technologists as particularly well placed to lead this change.     

Scolarisation,cultures et pratiques scolaires au Brésil: Éléments théoriques et méthodologiques d'un programme de recherche

This article concentrates on some considerations concerning the schooling process in Brazil during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taking as reference the research carried out in the state of Minas Gerais, it particularly focuses on elementary/primary education there. First, it looks at the different schooling models in Brazil during that period of time and argues that educational statistics are one of the most interesting ways to study the representations about this phenomenon. It then looks at the sociocultural consequences of schooling and stresses the importance of educational institutions as a socialisation model for children, young people and society as a whole.     

Recognising and questioning the epistemological basis of educational psychology practice

This paper considers the need for the profession of educational psychology to critically consider the theoretical foundations of expert practice in the wake of the complexities and changes of contemporary society within the UK. It argues that the a priori assumptions of conventional educational psychology practice have led to practice being understood in narrow, instrumental and often asocial ways. The paper concludes that it is now time for educational psychology practice to be primarily viewed as a social and ethical endeavour with a central concern for social relationships and that we need consequently to critically scrutinise the ontological and epistemological basis of our practice and the associated methodological implications. It suggests that a social constructionist epistemology of practice, embracing postmodern themes, may offer a new and useful conceptual constellation for guiding the professional work of educational psychologists.     

黑格尔法哲学中的自由教育思想简析

黑格尔教育思想的核心是精神的培养。他认为自由是人的本质,但人不是天生就是自由的,要完成自在的自由向自为的自由的飞跃,需要教育对主体的解放,教育是人的精神发展的绝对环节。黑格尔这种侧重精神培养的教育的性质决定了这种教育在内容上强调国家法律和社会伦理规范的灌输,实施这种教育则需要家庭、市民社会以及国家的共同努力。