School as a structuring force in interethnic hybridism

Hybridism occurs on two levels. The first is the interethnic context in which the pupil is situated; the second is the personal life of the pupil himself or herself. A governmental authority first feels called upon to act within the interethnic societal context because this almost inevitably generates vertical stratification and leads to greater or lesser forms of ethnic segregation. This in turn generates anxiety, especially if it impacts too negatively on the advancement of pupils from lower rated schools to further educational opportunities or to the labor market, or if it helps maintain or promote an ethnic–racial society. The second level, hybridism versus ethnic belongingness in the personal lives of pupils, generally remains underappreciated as a theme. However, it is at this level that enormous opportunities remain unexploited.     

Portuguese,French and British discourses on colonial education: Church–State relations,school expansion and missionary competition in Africa, 1890–1930

This article draws a comparison between the Portuguese in relation to British and French discourses on overseas educational policies at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century until the 1930s. It focuses on three main colonial educational dynamics: school expansion (comparing the public and private sectors); State–Church relations (comparing these relationships at the European and colonial levels); and missionary competition (comparing Catholic with Protestant strategies towards educational incorporation). Colonial discourse is seen here as a power‐knowledge discourse aimed at constructing the colonial subjects as individuals, enabling them to imagine themselves as belonging to a particular cultural polity. The article intends to show how cross‐national discourses on education affect the principles on which theories of schooling are built and the ways in which they influence the first attempts to systematize pedagogical and school models in the colonial peripheries. On the other hand, it tries to understand, within government technologies of domination, the conflicting views, negotiations and ambiguities between global policy formulation and local school system implementation. In this sense, the author sought to analyse the different ways in which concepts such as ‘assimilation’, ‘civilizing mission’, ‘adapted education’, and ‘learning by doing’ were mobilized and appropriated into the colonial education discourses in order to legitimize particular governmental strategies. Two main ideas run through the text: the first attempts to demonstrate the existence of discontinuities between official educational ideologies at home and local system and school expansion strategies in the colonies. The second claims that educational borrowing from other colonies at the Empires' peripheries was, more often that is thought, a crucial feature of colonial educational discourse.     

Student teachers’ indirect complaining in learning groups

This article focuses on indirect complaining in teacher education. The phenomenon of complaining in educational situations has not been examined as a process before. In this study complaining was examined in naturally occurring learning group sessions, which were videotaped and analysed through Conversation Analysis (CA). The purpose of this study is to describe the beginning of complaints and find ways to handle situations including complaining. The data comprise 26 pedagogically focused discussions that included indirect complaining. These were categorized into four classes: discussions which produced accounts, advice‐giving discussions, discussions expressing different viewpoints, and discussions mainly expressing affiliation. Discussions in the first three categories can be seen as investigative: in these discussions student teachers produced explanations or new interpretations of complained situations, or gave advice to correct the complained situation. Hence, although complaining is defined as having at least two negative elements (there must be something wrong in the complained‐of situation, and the stance of the complainer towards it must be negative), there was also something positive in the processes of the discussions that included complaining, namely investigation. When the second turns of the discussions including indirect complaining were studied, it was observed that invitations to define the complained‐of situation seemed to engender investigative discussions, whereas like‐mindedness or further complaint as the second turn seemed to engender discussions expressing affiliation. An invitation to define the complained‐of situation is suggested as a tool for developing complaints into investigative discussions.     

The Professional Status of Educational Research: Professionalism and Developmentalism in Twenty-First-Century Working Life

‘How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?’ asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to focus its development, this question is revisited through examination of whether or not educational research is a profession. Located within a sociological framework, the paper first examines some of the earliest work that established the sociology of professions as a field of study. It then compares this with recent work in the field, before considering whether or not – against the various criteria for professional status that these studies identify – educational research(ing) may be categorised as a profession. Using Noordegraaf’s three categories, the case is examined for considering educational research(ing) as a ‘pure’, a ‘hybrid’ or a ‘situated’ profession. The conclusion is that it represents none of these, but that, within the context of twenty-first-century working life, this is less important than the need for educational research to embrace a culture of developmentalism.     

用复杂的思维方式研究学校教育活动——兼从方法论角度反思二十余年中小学整体改革研究

从关注教育活动的整体性到关注其复杂性,是教育改革与发展研究的一个趋势。为此,需要反思曾经用过的整体主义思维方式。具体来说,至少应考虑:(1)探寻一般性理论,还需要结合具体时空条件的、具有特殊性的深入研究;(2)超越还原式的研究思路、放弃根据预定计划演绎确定活动结果的做法;(3)关注教师、学生在教育活动中的主体作用和研究者在教育研究中的主体作用。     

高校推进个性化教育的制约因素与实施策略选择

个性化教育作为一种教育理念和教育思潮,兴起于二战后的西方国家。至今,个性化教育已走过漫长的从理论研究到实验试点的过程。但由于受诸多因素制约,个性化教育的推进没有达到预想的成果。高校在推进个性化教育的过程中受到了哪些因素的制约,今后还有哪些策略可以实施和选择,这依然是值得探究的热点问题。     

论以新的视角研究与宣传徐特立

为了充分展示并拓宽徐特立教育思想的时空广延性，提升其价值，真正确立这位“孔子不足高，墨翟差可比”的大师为20世纪中国杰出教育家的崇高地位，必须努力开创研究徐特立、宣传徐特立的新局面。一是研究基点更新，由“立足中国”研究徐特立，改为“放眼世界”研究徐特立；二是研究内容更新，着重研究徐特立教育思想中的那些“放之四海而皆准”的内容；三是研究思路更新，按照其著作中的思想脉络，深入探讨其丰富教育思想的内在逻辑联系，从而建构具有独创性的徐特立教育思想的理论体系。     

Education as the Cultivation of Second Nature: Two Senses of the Given

In philosophy, it is almost a platitude to argue that fact and value intertwine. However, in empirically oriented educational research, it is not. Hence, there is some affinity between logical positivism, which is no longer tenable in philosophy, and empirically based contemporary educational research in terms of assumptions each makes about “the given.” In this essay, Koichiro Misawa casts light on how fact and value intertwine by invoking the notion of “second nature” that John McDowell has reanimated. This will in turn prompt us to see the relation between nature and nurture, as well as between mind and world, quite differently and to discern two senses of “the given”: one is illusory; the other educational. Misawa concludes that the philosophy of education should and can take the lead in forming rigorous interdisciplinary studies of the human future with a certain sensitivity to the tight and complex interweaving between the empirical and the conceptual, or between the factual and the normative.     

Towards a theory of school leadership practice: a Bourdieusian perspective

Despite the ‘practice’ turn in the broader management literature, very little work in educational administration has engaged in a theoretical discussion about what constitutes leadership practice. Theoretically informed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this paper contributes to the long-established critical tradition in the educational administration literature, to argue that: (i) ‘leadership’ is a label of the managerialist project of the state; (ii) leadership should be thought of as a disruptive practice; and (iii) Bourdieusian theory can enable this thinking, but not as it is frequently mobilised in the educational administration literature. The alternative put forth in this paper is not merely replacing one external narrative (managerialism) with another (Bourdieusian), but rather advancing a theoretical position on what is leadership that paves a way forward for a research programme.     

Integrating Art Education Models: Contemporary Controversies in Spain

In this article, a basic controversy for art education in Spain is analysed, and its antecedents in thought and social and artistic practices are reviewed. The controversy refers to the question whether school art education should be oriented towards the fine arts or towards the manual arts. Consequently, which should be the cultural model of reference in contemporary art education? These two controversies are considered as two dimensions whose poles have, to a certain extent, the capacity to articulate various educational trends. The values associated with each pole of each dimension are discussed: for the first dimension, creativity, originality, self‐efficacy and the value of accomplished work; for the second, increase of cultural capital and intercultural solidarity. Finally, the possibility is considered of elaborating educational models that would integrate the various mentioned educative values. The question is raised of the compatibility of these educational values, and it is pointed out that art education has the capacity to generate educational spaces of interchange and dialogue in which to combine languages and perspectives that can contribute to human development and to the mutual coexistence of social groups.     

Revisiting the Analects for a modern reading of the Confucian dialogical spirit in education

Abstract

This study investigates the educational thought of Confucius with focus on the educational relationship in the Analects, which is a historical text that defines the foundations of Confucianism. The first part of the investigation examines Confucius’ concept of the educational relationship and how it is characterized with a dialogical spirit, which consists of worldly and secular human-orientedness, co-existentiality as a fundamental principle for educational practice, and dialogue to become an ideal ruler through self-discipline. The second stage of this study further examines the spirit of dialogue in the Analects with consideration of its historical–cultural context. Through this process, the study unravels the historical and cultural limitations of original Confucian educational thought for modern society and proposes a possible way to reengage Confucius’ educational value in today’s modern educational context.     

Educational research in educational practice [1]

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), notably through its Teaching and Learning Research Programme, has laid strong claims to the benefits of research which leads to an enhancement of research capability. What it has not done is to make explicit what those benefits might be or how they might be achieved. The authors, with three others [2], are the directors of the ESRC-funded project Transforming Learn ing Cultures in Further Education (FE) (the TLCFE project). Among the aims of that project is the development of a lasting capacity among practitioners for enquiry into FE practice. To achieve this, the project team will first have to formulate a clear understanding of what educational practice is and, second, a view of the place of research in the support of that practice. This paper briefly describes the TLCFE project and then addresses three specific issues. Firstly, it distinguishes notions of educational practice. Secondly, it examines opportunities afforded by different approaches to researching educational practice. Thirdly, it returns to the central question concerning relationships between educational research, educational practice and professional, as distinct from technical, development. The paper argues that educational interests are best served by research in rather than simply on educational practice. Research in practice, properly construed and accomplished, offers practitioners a means of developing understandings of their practices and it is such understandings which are central to processes of achievement, enhancement and change in educational practice.     

Revisiting the Wittgensteinian legacy: perspectives on representational and non-representational language-games for educational history and theory

Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. Language works in more complex ways, even in work that purports to be purely scientific. This article investigates the scope and limitations of language-games in educational history and theory. The study addresses concepts and pictures as examples of how language can work in theoretical, philosophical and historiographical interpretation. Attention is drawn to the legacy of Wittgensteinian insights, which highlights the “pictorial form”; thus the article deals with the problems that occur when our “picturing” of reality is forgotten, which led to the particular turn educational research has taken nowadays. This forgetting distracts the attention from the kind of research that is required to do justice to the educational field. From his stance, it is argued that though some kind of correspondence theory will always be part of the objectivity to which educational research aspires, there is no need to limit such a theory to a naive form of it. Instead, a broadened notion of correspondence theory can be offered where the various levels and language-games that are involved can be taken into account.     

Educational administration and history Part 1: debating the agenda

In this first editorial paper we scope the terrain on which the JEAH is located and consider the knowledge production process that will shape the journal and, in turn, enable the journal to shape what is known and what is worth knowing. We begin by making a case for productive pluralism where we assert that the JEAH is not directly connected to a particular society or epistemic group, and so the opportunity exists for a range of work that focuses on historical understandings of educational administration to be published. We make the argument that educational administration is a field of study and practice, and that it can draw on historical perspectives and research designs to enable new insights and theoretical explanations to be developed.     

WHY "WHAT WORKS" WON'T WORK: EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE AND THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

A bstract .  In this essay, Gert Biesta provides a critical analysis of the idea of evidence-based practice and the ways in which it has been promoted and implemented in the field of education, focusing on the tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. Biesta examines three key assumptions of evidence-based education: first, the extent to which educational practice can be compared to the practice of medicine, the field in which evidence-based practice was first developed; second, the role of knowledge in professional actions, with special attention to what kind of epistemology is appropriate for professional practices that wish to be informed by the outcomes of research; and third, the expectations about the practical role of research implicit in the idea of evidence-based education. Biesta concludes that evidence-based practice provides a framework for understanding the role of research in educational practice that not only restricts the scope of decision making to questions about effectivity and effectiveness, but that also restricts the opportunities for participation in educational decision making. He argues that we must expand our views about the interrelations among research, policy, and practice to keep in view education as a thoroughly moral and political practice that requires continuous democratic contestation and deliberation.     

Defending the logic of significance testing: a response to Gorard

Recently, Stephen Gorard has outlined strong objections to the use of significance testing in social research. He has argued, first, that as the samples used in social research are almost always non-random it is not possible to use inferential statistical techniques and, second, that even if a truly random sample were achieved, the logic behind the calculation and interpretation of p-values is fundamentally flawed. Arguments against Gorard's position have focused almost exclusively on the first point (the non-random nature of samples) despite the fact that it is the second point which is the more important: if the logic of significance testing is indeed flawed, then whether non-random samples are a problem or not becomes irrelevant. This article aims to show that the logic of significance testing is not flawed in the ways which Gorard claims because: 1) samples do contain real information about the population from which they are derived; and 2) under certain assumptions the p-value can reflect—or at least be a reasonable proxy for—the probability of the null hypothesis being true given the data.     

Exemplarity and education: Retuning educational research

This article explores the idea of exemplarity in relation to educational research and teacher education. Exemplarity is introduced as an alternative to the paradigm of evidence and ‘what works’, which seems to be omnipresent in educational research at present. The idea of exemplarity relates to the particularity of educational practice. The claim of this article is that we need to skew the dominance of functionalistic studies of education, which focus on skills and solutions to problems, or on providing quick fixes and methods to be applied in practice. I will argue that this tactic shuts down interpretive spaces and gives the teacher an illusion of simplicity and efficacy that connects poorly with the complexities of pedagogical practice. Exemplarity provides a different way of answering the question of ‘what works’, since it does not claim generalisability, but instead offers a path to reflective engagement with the complexities of educational processes. The idea of exemplarity highlights how educators can be invited to lend an ear to practical experience and pedagogical theorising, and through these develop their tact and reflective abilities through exemplars that display pedagogical principles. This, in turn, offers the possibility of retuning one’s practice, and in the scope of this article, retuning educational research itself.     

How to identify and clarify educational tasks in the Caribbean: An example with implications for developing countries

The study had five objectives: first, to determine what Virgin Islanders believe the tasks of their public schools are; second, to determine what Virgin Islanders believe the tasks of their public schools should be; third, to determine if the existing task of public education theory, as it is used in several countries, applies in whole or in part to a Caribbean society; fourth, to identify educational goals or tasks which may have relevance for the entire Caribbean region; and fifth, to demonstrate a research procedure for identifying and clarifying educational goals, objectives and tasks in West Indian countries. The significance of the study lies in the information it provides for (1) specifying educational goals, objectives, and tasks; (2) synchronizing perceptions and beliefs of educational tasks; (3) planning and formulating educational policy; and (4) evaluating education programs. The design of the study was developed around the task of public education theory developed by Downey. four research questions, and two hypotheses which interrelated the beliefs of the Virgin Islands Legislature, the Virgin Islands Board of Education, Department of Education, principals, teachers, students, and administrators and professors of the College of the Virgin Islands.Among other findings, the study revealed that (1) Virgin Islanders' beliefs about educational tasks were not that different from beliefs other people hold about educational tasks; (2) the task of education is interpreted and applied in the Virgin Islands as it is in other countries; and (3) schools in the Virgin Islands do have a set of viable education goals and tasks which can focus curriculum development, instruction practices, and learning outcomes.     

Changing Patterns of Thinking: Individuals and organisations

The promises and hopes of the 'reconstructing' movement in educational psychology post-Summerfield 1968 (Gillham, 1978) have not had a major impact on the ability of the profession of applied educational psychologists to effect change across systems. Despite innovative ideas generated by individuals over the past few decades that have promoted opportunities to apply psychology more widely, there is little evidence that the profession has been able to expand on these initiatives and incorporate them into their existing practice. Ideas drawn from a variety of psychological sources enable applied educational psychologists to review their thinking and practice, and to develop different models that can promote and influence useful change at an institutional and/or individual level. This paper considers, in particular, the impact of new models of language and thought on organisational behaviour and, in turn, identifies the manner in which change at an individual and organisational level can be promoted.