The Changing Debate on Internationalisation of Higher Education

Internationalisation, the growing border-crossing activities between national systems of higher education is losing ground to globalisation, increasing border-crossing activities of blurred national systems which is often employed to depict world-wide trends and growing global competition. This article addresses recent issues of knowledge transfer. It points out tensions between increasing diversity in higher education and efforts to facilitate recognition of prior studies on student mobility. It shows the diversity of steering and management policies with respect to internationalisation and globalisation. Finally, it asks whether globalisation of higher education has to be viewed as a manifestation of turbo-capitalism or could be viewed instead as a move towards global understanding.     

Choosing competency-based,humanistic and self-directed programs: The contribution of personality and reasoning

Fifty-five college women enrolled in competency-based, humanistic or self-directed education programs completed their California Personality Inventory and listed five reasons for selecting their program. CPI results indicated that self-directed students scored lower than other students on the Femininity Scale (p.001). Using Chickering's seven vectors of change as a framework, the study found competency-based students identifying purpose and competence, humanistic students identifying inter-personal relationships and integrity, and self-directed student identifying autonomy and purpose as reasons for enrolling in their nontraditional programs. The study used these results to question the mythology that adherents to different programs are of different personality types and to argue that differences in perceptions of purpose in education distinguish students in the three programs.     

Math activities for young children

Children use mathematical terminology throughout their daily play. While observing a group of children during play, one is likely to hear comments such as: He has more, These are my numbers, Jane has the biggest half, I'm bigger than you 'cause I'm five years old, Give me the round one, I gave each child one cupcake, and so on.Diane M. Kohl is Assistant Professor of Child and Family Development, The University of Georgia.     

Science, Society, and Technology—Three Cultures and Multiple Visions

The article reviews the strikingly divergent viewpoints of intellectuals—scientists and non-scientists—about Science and Technology. It shows that while scientists implicitly accept the difference between Science and Technology, to non-scientists that difference is irrelevant. The most important differences between Science and Technology that lie in their relative scales, outputs and accuracy of predictions are highlighted. The complexity of and difficulty in trying to quantify the contribution of science and technology to economic growth are discussed. Views of science and technology that include their societal perceptions are recommended.     

Three-dimensional art and sculpture

I am making it BIG (Evan). A secret slide with gold in there (Sydni). Look even a little car could fit in it (Joshua). This is a circle! Round, a tiger jumps through this hoop (Emily). Excitement runs high when children experiment with three-dimensional art projects using paper, boxes and styrofoam.Liz Seelhoff Byrum teaches four- and five-year-olds at a private school in New York City.     

Critical thinking and the Spock Fallacy

Conventional instruction in critical thinking technique tends to conflate logical thinking with rational or good thinking. But in doing so, it ignores the creative and intuitive functions of rationality, thereby encouraging a mechanically rote approach to textual analysis, problem solving and problem construction. This overemphasis upon straightforwardly logical calculus of justification functions, and its concomitant deemphasis of intuitive pattern of discovery ones, constitute the Spock Fallacy. Its epistemological weakness and pedagogical hazards are explored.The author of two books and numerous articles, one of his specialties is philosophy of education and critical thinking.     

Ghosts as rhetorical devices in children's fiction

The relationship of past and present and the linking of characters through time and place are themes that underlie the work of many writers for children. This article considers the use of the Ghost as a literary device to allow the exploration of what is, what has been, and what might have been, particularly in the 1973 Carnegie Medal Winner,The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, by Penelope Lively.Judith Armstrong was brought up in Lancashire. She has travelled widely, and taught young children in England and Ethiopia. She is currently working on themes associated with the supernatural in children's books.     

Towards a process theory of learning: Feeling the beauty of the world

Alfred North Whitehead's theory of learning is best understood in the overall context of his process philosophy. The rhythmic cycles of growth forming the basis of human learning (romance, precision, and generalisation) are organically connected to the characteristics of life typifying all entities in the universe (self-enjoyment, creative activity, and aim).The kind of balanced education which best enhances growth and connectedness is one in which art and aesthetic appreciation in the broadest sense are dominant. By experiencing the beauty of the sunset, for example, children and adults have access to feelings that flow through them from the world and connect them to distant events taking place in space and time. These bodily feelings at the base of all experience provide concrete ways in which human beings can appreciate the intrinsic value of the world around them.By way of contrast, the methods of 17th century science replace our concrete experience of the sunset with abstract categories that are used to measure the phenomena in question and deny the importance of that experience in understanding the world. Schools' and universities' emphasis upon this methodology produces an imbalanced education with minds in a groove.A renewal of balance in education helps us to understand the false dichotomy between child-centered and and curriculum-centered education. Education for Whitehead must pay attention to both. Moreover, he understands that the academic freedom enjoyed by bands of imaginative scholars in universities is not an article of commerce to be sold to the highest corporate bidder but something to be valued for its intrinsic worth.     

Higher education as a political issue area: A comparative view of France,Sweden and the United Kingdom

The common view in the literature on higher education in Western Europe is that the issue area has increasingly become enmeshed with national politics in recent decades. This article examines the extent to which this is true of France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Six indicators of issueness, corresponding to important political actors/arenas, are used to identify temporal and cross-national patterns. It is argued that although it is evidently true that a politicization has occurred it may easily be overstated. Higher education remains a relatively minor concern in the national politics of the three countries. Only in exceptional circumstances, such as in France in 1968, is this pattern of subsystem politics replaced by a pattern of macropolitics. The analysis furthermore suggests the considerable variation in patterns of issueness which may exist between different national contexts.This article was written while the author was visiting with the Higher Education Research Group, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University. He is indebted to the members of the Group for their helpful comments on an earlier version.     

Some theories of college instruction

On the assumption that colleges need a theory which specifies what they should be trying to do and how they should do it, two popular theories of this sort are described. Bundle of knowledge theory rests on the idea that education should impart pieces of knowledge which can be assessed by behavioral criteria with methods based on established principles of learning. Developmental stage theory holds that education should help students move through a sequence of general stages towards maturity. A third theory called component theory, is then sketched, in which the idea of general stages is disputed and the idea of component abilities of intellectual processes substituted. This theory has implications which are similar to those of stage theory if it is combined with certain moral assumptions about the goals of college education, namely that its purpose is to help students form and pursue life plans which are both rational and just.     

Whitehead and a new look at teaching elementary science

If Whitehead is right, science teachers who try to increase student interest by making the science they teach more pure and by covering more material are going about their work in just the wrong way. Science, for purposes of precision in measurement, translates the dynamic world of feeling and force, of causal efficacy (for example, the San Francisco earthquake), into a static representation spatialized and given presentational immediacy (for example, the Richter scale). But notice that the Richter scale isn't very interesting (even as abstract art) apart from its connection, via symbolic reference, to the earthquake. Such reference is essential to give both a sense of reality and a feeling of interes to the subject, but it makes the science less pure, and it takes more time to cover the material. An example of teaching pure and impure formal logic is given as a case study.     

Reforming urban education: A review of recent reports and legislation

Following the National Commission on Excellence Report, A Nation at Risk, a number of additional reports were issued calling for major changes in American public education. Because advocates for poor and minority groups saw a class bias in the recommendations of these reports, there quickly followed a subset of reports arguing that the disadvantaged should not be overlooked in the education reform movement. Not surprisingly, these reports have received less attention than the mainstream ones. This article reviews recent urban education reform reports and legislation, paralleling them to determine whether the reformers have been able to influence policy and whether the reforms they advocate would be likely to benefit the disadvantaged.     

Critical incidents and critical requirements in mentoring

Many traditional faculty now find themselves working with nontraditional students. New faculty models such as mentoring have emerged in response to the new student. The purpose of this study was to examine the mentoring role at Empire State College, State University of New York, on the basis of mentors' behavior responses to mentor-defined problems. The Critical Incident Technique was the method used to elicit reported and recalled incidents which either facilitated or impeded mentoring. Significant problems cited in the findings included communications gap in mentor/student relationship and the student's incompletion of academic work. Typical corresponding responses to such problems included providing support, demythologizing the learning process, setting behavior limits, and assessing and reassessing student performance. On the other hand, the critical requirements which were inductively derived from the critical incidents, as well as the practical implications which were gleaned from the study, revealed a definite extension of the traditional faculty role.The original document from which this article was adapted, including an extensive bibliography is on file with University of Microfilms International, Ann Arbor Michigan, 48108.     

Paranoia: A few final remarks

Paranoid is given a tolerably clear meaning. It is suggested that conceptual understanding must be the first step before seeing how far unconscious or other pressures distract teachers and others from retaining a firm grasp of concepts. Concepts are not relative.     

Exploring the Concept of ‘Habitus’ with Preservice Teachers Through the Use of Popular School Films

The thesis of this paper is that it is a productive venture to introduce preservice students to social theories that are typically not a part of teacher preparation programs. Examples of these theories are those associated with terms such as habitus, the carnivalesque, power / knowledge, seduction, detournement, the spectacle,la perruque, (the wig), and the art of making do,as well as others. In this paper, I describe a project that involved exploring the theory of habitus to problematize the tendency of preservice students to not think in terms of relations between what goes on in the classroom and what goes on in society. I introduced habitus by having preservice students read selected print materials and by having them view, analyze, and respond in writing to popular school films. Students also analyzed their experiences in classrooms in terms of habitus, making a connection between theory and practice.     

University and community: Evolving perceptions of the African university

For the past two decades universities in Africa have been engaged in a re-examination of their relationship with society. In the light of this, the popular characterization of the African university as reflecting colonial, international, stages of development, or levels of integration models, appears inadequate to describe the challenge involved in creating an African identity for the university. Similarly, conceptions of the university as an instrument for creating an educated, planned or changed society or to think of it in terms of preserving and reflecting the dominant features of society, seem inadequate to describe fully the demands of contemporary and future society upon the university. A new framework of thought is urgently required; such a framework would encompass the desired aims of both the university and society and the relationships - dynamic and organic - between them. This article attempts to formulate such a framework and indicates its implications for the structure, content and operation of the university in Africa.     

A Textbook Case of the Nature of Science: Laws and Theories in the Science of Biology

The two concepts law and theory are among the most important elements of the nature of science. They represent both the tools and products of science itself. Unfortunately, the variable meanings and use of these terms in general discourse and in other school disciplines results in much confusion with respect to their proper application in a science context. The project included the design of a six-part model definition for law and theory based on a review of the literature of the philosophy of science with special reference to biology. These model definitions were then compared with those provided in a range of U.S. secondary school biology textbooks. The majority of all current major U.S. secondary school biology texts were reviewed and analyzed with respect to how the concepts of law and theory were defined and applied, in an attempt to determine whether students and teachers using such texts would gain an accurate impression of these terms and the distinction between them. This study focuses on biology instruction since a life science course is completed as a graduation requirement by virtually all U.S. high school students and as such serves as a widely shared educational experience across the nation. The term law is rarely defined in any text but various laws such as those found in genetics are frequently included as examples. The term theory is frequently defined but with a wide range of completeness of the definitions. Only rarely are theories in biology included as examples.     

The structure of subject matter content and its instructional design implications

This paper discusses the analysis of subject matter structure for purposes of designing instruction. The underlying assumption is that subject matter structures provide an important basis for deciding how to sequence and synthesize the modules of a subject matter area. Four types of fundamental structures are briefly described and illustrated: the learning hierarchy, the procedural hierarchy, the taxonomy, and the model. Then a theoretical framework is presented for classifying types of subject mater content — both modules and structures. Finally, some implications of these content classifications are discussed. The classification of modules is hypothesized to be valuable for prescribing strategies for the presentation of single modules, and the classification of structures is hypothesized to be valuable for prescribing strategies for selecting, sequencing, synthesizing, and summarizing related modules. The need to take into account more than one kind of structure in the process of instructional design is emphasized.     

Special handling for special packages: Infant massage

There is a sigh of relief expressed when the notion of infant massage or, as it is sometimes called baby rub, is discussed among parents and professionals. The sigh of relief represents such feelings as, It's about time, or It makes so much sense, or I've been wondering about the very same ideas.illustrations by Barb DunnPhilip G. Rose is a special education teacher at the Early Learning Center in Oneida, NY.     

The applicability of democratic principles and the mission of the university

The university's mission of serving as a fortress for freedom of speech, inquiry, and criticism of established truths is inextricably connected with democracy. Such a mission can be pursued only in a climate of genuine political and academic freedom. Three other aspects of democracy in the university are discussed: equality of access, university governance, and the public utility of the university. It is argued that equal representation or one man one vote cannot be applied in university governance because it comes into conflict with the notion of competence—a conflict that cannot be resolved by taking votes. Interest groups inside and outside of the university cannot be allowed to interfere with the free pursuit of knowledge. The internal audit, that is, peer review (by, ultimately, the international community of scholars) has to take precedence over vertical review by government bureaucracy.