Religious education in Russia: a comparative and critical analysis

RE in Russia has been recently introduced as a compulsory regular school subject during the last year of elementary school. The present study offers a critical analysis of the current practice of Russian RE by comparing it with RE in Sweden, Denmark and Britain. This analysis shows that Russian RE is ambivalent. Although it is based on a non-confessional religious studies approach, Russian RE also serves the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church, which aims to educate students into Orthodox Christianity, as well as the interests of the Russian state itself, which turns RE in a kind of citizenship education focusing on the patriotic upbringing of students.     

Critical citizenship education in England and France: a comparative analysis

The promotion of ‘critical citizenship’ has become a key objective of official school curricula around the world. Using an analytic framework developed by the authors, this paper identifies the diverse conceptions of critical citizenship that are promoted, by comparing the official school curricula for citizenship in England and France. The analysis goes beyond the dichotomous distinctions prevalent in comparisons of education in the two countries, especially those that focus on the contrasting degrees of centralisation–decentralisation, and suggests that there were significant differences in the goals promoted in their curricula with regard to four key dimensions: ideology, the collective, the individual and action. While these differences reflect historical, political, social, economic and cultural differences between the two nations, the analysis indicates a lack of symmetry across the levels of the curriculum, which contributed to the significant spaces that were found to exist which have the potential for teachers and students to creatively interpret how critical citizenship can be understood and implemented in the classroom.     

Mobile technology,learning, and achievement: Advances in understanding and measuring the role of mobile technology in education

Studying mobile learning – the use of personal electronic devices to engage in learning across multiple contexts via connections to media, educators, peers, experts, and the larger world – is a relatively new academic enterprise. In this special issue, we interrogated the promise and unexamined expectations of mobile learning, the theories and ideas developing around it, and the devices that afford it. The articles introduce mobile and wearable technologies as key components of empirical research and demonstrate ways that learning conducted with such devices (1) affects the process and products of learning via interactions with other psychological constructs; (2) affords new opportunities to directly influence learning process or outcomes; and (3) provides opportunities to collect previously unobtainable data that improve understanding and modeling of the learning process. In this introduction, we overview the emergence of mobile learning theory and its contemporary conceptualization. Then we highlight ways that mobile technologies can be used to enhance learning processes and an understanding of them. All special issue contributors conceptualize and align their work with both psychological theories of learning and instruction as well as emerging theories of mobile learning. The commentary authors appraise mobile learning research critically and analytically, and recommend ways mobile learning theory might build upon research methodology and knowledge grounded empirically in psychological and sociocultural theories of learning. Overall, we believe this special issue achieved our goal to produce a balanced consideration that highlights the advancements in learning and learning theory mobile devices might afford, and to temper any premature enthusiasm about these potential benefits.     

Sociological analysis and comparative education

It is argued that comparative education is essentially a derivative field of study, in that it borrows theories and methods from academic disciplines. After a brief humanistic phase, in which history and philosophy were central for comparative education, sociology became an important source. In the mid-50's and 60's, sociology in the United States was characterised by Structural Functionalism as a theory, and Social Survey as a dominant methodology. Both were incorporated into the development of comparative education.Increasingly in the 70's, and certainly today, the new developments in sociology are characterised by an attack on Positivism, which is seen as the philosophical position underlying both functionalism and survey methods. New or re-discovered theories with their attendant methodologies included Marxism, Phenomenological Sociology, Critical Theory, and Historical Social Science. The current relationship between comparative education and social science is one of uncertainty, but since social science is seen to be returning to its European roots, the hope is held out for the development of an integrated social theory and method which will provide a much stronger basis for developments in comparative education.

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Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird ausgeführt, daß die Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft im wesentlichen ein derivates Studienfeld darstellt, weil sie Theorien und Methoden anderen akademischen Fachgebieten entleiht. Nach einer kurzen humanistischen Phase, während deren Geschichte und Philosophie im Mittelpunkt der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft standen, wurde die Soziologie zu einer bedeutenden Quelle. Mitte der 50er und in den 60er Jahren kennzeichneten struktureller Funktionalismus als Theorie und soziologische Untersuchung als vorherrschende Methodologie die Soziologie in den Vereinigten Staaten. Beide gingen in die Entwicklung der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft ein.In wachsendem Masse in den 70er Jahren, und ganz gewiß heute, sind die neuen Entwicklungen von einem Angriff auf den Positivismus geprägt, der als die sowohl dem Funktionalismus als auch den Untersuchungsmethoden zugrundeliegende philosophische Position angesehen wird. Neue oder wiederentdeckte Theorien mit ihren zugehörigen Methodologien schlossen den Marxismus, phänomenologische Soziologie, die Kritik-Theorie sowie die historische Sozialwissenschaft ein. Das gegenwärtige Verhältnis der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft zur Sozialwissenschaft beruht auf Ungewißheit. Da aber die Sozialwissenschaft offenbar zu ihren europäischen Wurzeln zurückkehrt, besteht die Hoffnung, daß die Entwicklung einer integrierten Sozialtheorie und -methodik eine stärkere Grundlage für Entwicklungen in der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft bieten wird.

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Résumé On prétend que l'éducation comparée est essentiellement un champ d'étude dérivé en ce qu'elle emprunte des théories et des méthodes de disciplines académiques. Après une brève phase humaniste, où l'histoire et la philosophie ont occupé une place primordiale dans l'éducation comparée, la sociologie est devenue une source importante. En mi- 50 et les années 60 la sociologie s'est caractérisée, aux Etats-Unis, par la théorie du Fonctionalisme Structurel et par la méthodologie dominante de l'Enquête Sociale, qui furent toutes deux incorporées dans le développement de l'éducation comparée.Les nouveaux développements de la sociologie ont été caractérisés de façon croissante dans les années 70, et le sont certainement encore aujourd'hui, par une attaque contre le Positivisme regardé comme la position philosophique sous-jacente au fonctionalisme ainsi qu'aux méthodes d'enquête. De nouvelles théories, ou des théories redécouvertes, avec les méthodologies qui les accompagnaient, ont inclu le Marxisme, la Sociologie Phénoménologique, la Théorie Critique et la Science Sociale Historique. Les relations actuelles entre l'éducation comparée et les sciences sociales demeurent incertaines mais puisque les sciences sociales retournent visiblement à leurs racines européennes, on peut espérer que l'évolution d'une théorie et d'une méthode sociales intégrées fourniront une base plus solide pour un développement ultérieur de l'éducation comparée.

     

移动教育的理念与关键技术研究

移动教育是随着移动通信技术和计算机技术的不断发展演变而来的一种教育方式,其目标是实现任何时间、任何地点、任何方式的教学活动.本文主要讨论了移动教育的理念和技术环境.其中移动教育的环境包括统一的教学平台、设备自适应的资源组织、统一的消息传递系统等.作者对移动教育环境的基本结构及其关键技术进行了讨论,最后通过试验给出结论,并对移动教育的前景进行了展望.     

Curriculum capacity and citizenship education: a comparative analysis of four democracies

Governments, international organizations and academics have, in recent decades, expressed a sense of crisis in the practice of democracy based largely upon increasing levels of disengagement by citizens from even the most basic elements of civic life. One response has been to devise civics and citizenship education curricula for schools with the concomitant expectations of enhanced civic practice. Our examination of citizenship education programs has revealed considerable variation from country to country in the degree of success achieved in the design, development and implementation of programs. This paper examines recent developments in citizenship education in four leading Western democracies – Australia, Canada, England and the USA; each one with its own particular successes and shortcomings. It identifies several factors associated with the successful building of curriculum capacity for citizenship education and argues that these are fundamental for countries wishing to move beyond rhetoric and toward substance in citizenship education.     

Understanding the higher education student in Europe: a comparative analysis

Higher education is of considerable importance to policymakers across Europe. Indeed, it is viewed as a key mechanism for achieving a range of economic, social and political goals. Nevertheless, despite this prominence within policy, we have no clear understanding of the extent to which conceptualisations of ‘the student’ are shared across the continent. To start to redress this gap, this article explores four key aspects of contemporary higher education students’ lives, considering the extent to which they can be considered as, variously, consumers, workers, family members and political actors. On the basis of this evidence, it argues that, despite assumptions on the part of European policymakers that there are now large commonalities in the experiences of students across Europe – evident in pronouncements about Erasmus mobility and the operations of the European Higher Education Area – significant differences exist both between and within individual nation-states.     

Socioeconomic background,education, and labor force outcomes: evidence from a regional US sample

This paper examines the long-term association of family socioeconomic status (SES), educational, and labor force outcomes in a regional US longitudinal sample (N = 2264). The results offer insights into the mechanisms underlying the role of family SES in transitions from secondary schooling to early work experiences. It was found that the academic achievement gap associated with SES widens during secondary schooling due in part to course-level tracking. Family SES relates to college enrollment mainly via its association with academic gains in school, but also through family income and father’s occupational status. Family SES is weakly but significantly related to adult offspring’s earnings but more strongly related to occupational status. Educational qualifications and cognitive skills make independent contributions to the explanation of labor force outcomes.     

Symbolic resources and marketing strategies in Ontario higher education: a comparative analysis

Existing research on marketing within PSE tends to focus on homogeneous groups of high-status organisations. This study ameliorates this gap in the literature, conducting a comparative analysis of promotional materials produced by public universities and community colleges in Ontario, Canada. We find that these two groups draw on unique strategies to communicate their quality to external constituents. Public universities emphasise faculty and institutional-level accomplishments, such as research grants and rankings. Meanwhile, community colleges, lacking access to these symbolic resources, employ corporate-like strategies, such as taglines and non-traditional logos.     

Conceptualising education quality in Zambia: a comparative analysis across the local,national and global discourses

Building on the Education for All movement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development re-emphasises quality education as a discrete goal. Contextualising the discussion surrounding this goal in Zambia, this study examines how education quality is conceptualised by educational stakeholders at local, national, and global levels. Triangulating teacher survey and interview data with policy documents from the government of Zambia and UNESCO, we found simultaneous convergence and divergence regarding the concepts of education quality espoused at each level. Convergence was shown in the critical influence of the economic tradition within education and the perceived role of schools in fostering resilient individuals and communities. Divergence was observed through the varying meanings assigned to similar concepts and the dissimilar influences of the humanistic and organisational management traditions at different levels. We discuss the implications of our findings for fostering collective efforts among key partners toward the achievement of quality education in Zambia.     

Socioeconomic status, self-efficacy, and mathematics achievement in Australia: a secondary analysis

Previous studies have shown that both student and school socioeconomic status (SES) are strongly associated with student outcomes, but less is known about how these relationships may vary for different students, schools and nations. In this study we use a large international dataset to examine how student SES, school SES and self-efficacy are associated with mathematics performance among 15-year-old students in Australia. We found that increases in school SES are consistently associated with substantial increases in achievement in mathematics and this phenomenon holds for all groups, regardless of their individual SES. Furthermore, our findings show that the association of school SES with maths achievement persists even when subject-specific self-efficacy is taken into account. However, our findings also suggest modest differences among student groups disaggregated by these factors. In particular, the association between maths achievement and school SES appears moderately stronger for students with higher levels of self-efficacy compared with their peers with lower self-efficacy. Furthermore, among students with similar levels of self-efficacy, the association between maths achievement and school SES tends to be stronger for lower SES students than for their more privileged peers. From these findings, we highlight the importance of the Australian case for comparable systems of education, and provide a discussion of policy implications and strategies for mitigating the influence of school socioeconomic composition on academic achievement more generally.     

Leadership and performance in higher education: a comparative analysis in Portugal and Spain

In the last decade, many changes have taken place in the field of university education. Professional practice demands that future graduates design and market products, preserve the interests of their clients, take responsibilities in public administration or participate in politics. Universities must educate professionals so that they become social leaders, consultants, advisers, entrepreneurs; in short, people with the capacity to solve problems. Professors recognise this situation; however, they do not always apply participatory teaching styles to develop these capacities in the students. This paper offers a tool to evaluate the implementation of a transformational teaching style in the classroom, developing joint work between professors and students. Its main contribution is that it assessed several teaching techniques based on this transformational style. This research was carried out in Portugal and Spain.     

Sociological analysis and comparative education: A brief bibliographical background

The bibliography cites English language material at the intersection of two fields of study: sociology of education and comparative education. The collection of material is biased (a) toward the general reader rather than the specialist already working in the area, and (b) toward the identification of overlap between the two fields of study.

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Zusammenfassung Diese Bibliographie umfaßt englischsprachiges Material am Schnittpunkt von zwei Studienfeldern: der Erziehungssoziologie und der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft. Das gesammelte Material ist (a) mehr auf den allgemeinen Leser als auf bereits in diesem Bereich tätige Wissenschaftler ausgerichtet, und (b) bezieht sich vorzugsweise auf die Feststellung von Überschneidungen zwischen den beiden Studiengebieten.

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Résumé La bibliographie cite le matériel en langue anglaise à l'intersection de deux domaines d'étude: la sociologie de l'éducation et l'éducation comparée. Le matériel rassemblé s'adresse davantage au lecteur ordinaire qu'au spécialiste travaillant déjà dans ce domaine et vise surtout l'identification de la partie commune aux deux champs d'étude.

     

Modelling blended solutions for higher education: teaching,learning, and assessment in the network and mobile technology era

The article addresses the role of network and mobile technologies in enhancing blended solutions with a view to (a) enriching the teaching/learning processes, (b) exploiting the opportunities it offers for their observability, and hence for their monitoring and formative/summative assessment. It will also discuss how such potential can only be captured by solidly integrating the process of instructional design with that of monitoring and assessment. First, the article presents the proposed conception of blended solutions, giving examples. In the second part, the article discusses a possible breakdown of blended solutions into its various components and how these can enrich both the teaching/learning and the assessment processes. Finally, it addresses the question of how to combine and/or use singly the various components of blended solutions. To conclude, implications for the implementation of blended solutions are discussed, also in relation to emerging contexts such as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).     

Towards comprehensive sexuality education: a comparative analysis of the policy environment surrounding school-based sexuality education in Ghana,Peru, Kenya and Guatemala

The successful implementation of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programmes in schools depends on the development and implementation of strong policy in support of CSE. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the policy environment governing school-based CSE in four low- and middle-income countries at different stages of programme implementation: Ghana, Peru, Kenya and Guatemala. Based on an analysis of current policy and legal frameworks, key informant interviews and recent regional reviews, the analysis focuses on seven policy-related levers that contribute to successful school-based sexuality education programmes. The levers cover policy development trends; current policy and legal frameworks for sexuality education; international commitments affecting CSE policies; the various actors involved in shaping CSE; and the partnerships and coalitions of actors that influence CSE policy. Our analysis shows that all four countries benefit from a policy environment that, if properly leveraged, could lead to a stronger implementation of CSE in schools. However, each faces several key challenges that must be addressed to ensure the health and wellbeing of their young people. Latin American and African countries show notable differences in the development and evolution of their CSE policy environments, providing valuable insights for programme development and implementation.