International students’ linguistic transitions into disciplinary studies: a rhizomatic perspective

Higher Education - This paper offers a reconceptualisation of international students’ transitions into and through UK higher education. We present two case studies of students which explore...     

Child care research: a clinical perspective

Two new studies on day care suggest that young children demonstrate increased aggressive behavior in relationship to time spent in day care and increases in cortisol levels in relationship to full-time, group-oriented, out-of-home care. These observations can be more fully understood in a clinical context that looks at individual differences in children, families, and child care environments. Factors likely to increase risk include sensory processing and modulation challenges; family stress; and lack of sensitive, nurturing interactions associated with less high-quality child care. Because 85% to 90% of current day care is not considered to be of high quality, individual families that can provide high-quality care need to explore carefully their options to see if it is possible to provide direct nurturing care for their infants and young children for at least half of the day.     

比较视野下的我国研究生教育学科结构分析

1996年至2006年,我国11个学科门类授予硕士、博士学位数量的比例变化不大,基本上是"存量决定增量";各学科发展过于均衡,未能出现结构性变化,授予的硕士学位与博士学位的学科结构很接近。这种结构雷同表明我国研究生教育没有体现出不同学科专业对于不同层次人才需求的差异性。我国硕士研究生教育应在保证基础性、理论性学科专业基本需求的前提下,大力发展应用型学科专业,培养高层次应用性人才;博士研究生教育则需在稳定规模的基础上,着力优化结构,积极发展博士专业学位教育。     

Stronger disciplinary identities in multidisciplinary research schools

In this study, two multidisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities research schools in Sweden have been investigated regarding disciplinary identity-making. This study investigates the meetings between different disciplines around a common thematic area of study for Ph.D. students. The Ph.D. students navigate through a complex social and organisational landscape with obligations and loyalties towards the discipline and the research school, which may be in conflict with each other. The main finding is that a multidisciplinary environment in fact creates strong disciplinary identities, partly in contrast to the purpose with the multidisciplinary research school. Encounters with Ph.D. students from other disciplines give the Ph.D. student something to relate to and to discuss e.g. with the supervisor. Another finding is that multidisciplinary research schools extend the perspectives of students. For some, new methods and theories from neighbouring disciplines were integrated and used, while for others the empirical scope of research was affected.     

高校学生纪律处分制度研究——中英比较的视角

学生纪律处分是高等教育法制的重要问题,与学生权利保护及学校管理都具有密切的关系.牛津大学是英国历史最为悠久、枝内立法较为健全的高校,在此以牛津大学为个案,研究英国高等学校学生纪律处分制度.在对其纪律规范的对象和范围、纪律处分的类型和条件以及纪律处分的程序进行分析后,从学生纪律处分的规范对象、学术与非学术行为的区分、校内纪律处分与校外法律责任的竞合以及纪律处分的程序等四个方面与我国的高校学生纪律处分制度进行比较,并据此提出了完善我国高校学生纪律处分制度的若干建议.     

Revisiting emancipatory teacher research: a psychoanalytic perspective

This paper addresses the issue of how human beings construct themselves as subjects and the parameters within which this is achieved. We question models in which idealism shapes the trajectory of identity formation and consider how identity might be seen alternatively as a somewhat awkward amalgam of identifications with diverse discursive domains. The particular focus is on teachers conducting ‘emancipatory’ practitioner research and on how the researcher understands his/her interface with the situation he/she is researching. We survey a range of theoretical models as offered by some leading writers, with particular reference to Jacques Lacan, and consider each in relation to how the teacher researcher might be understood. We provide as an example an account of one teacher researcher examining issues of ethnicity and gender in her secondary school French classes.     

A disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: Achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes

In this theoretical article we use an interpretative study with physics undergraduates to exemplify a proposed characterization of student learning in university science in terms of fluency in disciplinary discourse. Drawing on ideas from a number of different sources in the literature, we characterize what we call “disciplinary discourse” as the complex of representations, tools and activities of a discipline, describing how it can be seen as being made up of various “modes”. For university science, examples of these modes are: spoken and written language, mathematics, gesture, images (including pictures, graphs and diagrams), tools (such as experimental apparatus and measurement equipment), and activities (such as ways of working—both practice and praxis, analytical routines, actions, etc.). Using physics as an illustrative example, we discuss the relationship between the ways of knowing that constitute a discipline and the modes of disciplinary discourse used to represent this knowing. The data comes from stimulated recall interviews where physics undergraduates discuss their learning experiences during lectures. These interviews are used to anecdotally illustrate our proposed characterization of learning and its associated theoretical constructs. Students describe a repetitive practice aspect to their learning, which we suggest is necessary for achieving fluency in the various modes of disciplinary discourse. Here we found instances of discourse imitation, where students are seemingly fluent in one or more modes of disciplinary discourse without having related this to a teacher‐intended disciplinary way of knowing. The examples lead to the suggestion that fluency in a critical constellation of modes of disciplinary discourse may be a necessary (though not always sufficient) condition for gaining meaningful holistic access to disciplinary ways of knowing. One implication is that in order to be effective, science teachers need to know which modes are critical for an understanding of the material they wish to teach. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 27–49, 2009     

多学科研究与高等教育学学科建设

学科是高等教育研究领域的重要范畴 ,但高等教育学本身却不是一门成熟的学科。在这种情况下 ,高等教育研究面临着学科建设的重任。在整个社会科学界大声疾呼“开放社会科学”、“重建社会科学”的今天 ,高等教育学学科建设的取向至关重要。展望未来 ,将高等教育学建设成为一个真正的多学科研究领域 ,将是高等教育学学科建设走向成熟的第一步     

Gendered childhoods: a cross disciplinary overview

The last three decades have seen the emergence of a new discipline of childhood studies, made up of contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, challenging previous studies of children based on paradigms from psychology and education. This new discipline has revolutionized the study of children and demanded that they be looked as important subjects in their own right. Tensions remain, however, between studies of gender and those of generation, and the importance of the latter has sometimes been overlooked as researchers concentrate on childhood as an age related experience and not a gendered one. This article looks at how this has come about and the ways in which the study of these two aspects of children’s lives needs to be better integrated.

Children are pygmies among giants, ignorant among the knowledgeable, wordless among the articulate. … And to the adults, children everywhere represent something weak and helpless, in need of protection, supervision, training, models, skills, beliefs, education. (Mead & Wolfenstein, 1955 Mead, M. and Wolfenstein, M. 1955. Childhood in contemporary cultures, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  [Google Scholar], p. 7)     

The school disciplinary system from the perspective of rule by law

Discipline affects students’ rights and interests greatly. If there is no scientific and efficient system to standardize it, the disciplinary rights of students will be easily abused, which will not only infringe on students’ rights and interests but also give rise to campus disputes. The problems of the disciplinary system in Chinese primary and middle schools are as follows: disciplinary actions lack a legal basis; the disciplinary system is not standardized; disciplinary enforcement infringes on students’ other legal rights; and the mechanism for the supervision of discipline is imperfect. The status and modes of discipline should be made clear in the legislation to make the school disciplinary system detailed and specific, the disciplinary enforcement equitable and reasonable, and the procedure of the disciplinary enforcement justifiable, and also ensure that students’ other legal rights are protected. __________ Translated from Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, 2005 (10)     

Action research: A situated perspective

Rigoberta Menchú has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of lying made against Ms. Menchú by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of "truthmaking" and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms. Menchú, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the Rigoberta Menchú case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the women's movement to mobilize against America's War on Terrorism. The highly personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S. foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color as a treacherous "enemy" within the nation's geographical borders, against whom "Canadians" had to be mobilized.     

The diversity of university disciplinary profiles in research and teaching

Is the ideal of a one-size-fits-all university model—where universities are capable of successfully performing all competencies simultaneously—ever achievable? Has the balance between teaching and research activities grown even more fragile or is such a balance unfeasible? In this paper, we review studies of institutional diversity in higher education and bibliometric analyses. We prose a two-dimensional typology based on diversity in teaching and research by scientific fields. We investigate the diversity in teaching and research, respectively, at the disciplinary level and address whether these primary activities mirror each other. As a measure of mismatch between the two activities, we assess the distribution of students and publications by scientific fields through a clustering analysis. Our study of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Russia reveals that private universities are less diverse both in research and teaching and have high teaching intensity compared to state universities. Expectedly, universities in the rankings have more diverse profiles and they have a higher research intensity.     

Boredom and schooling: a cross‐disciplinary exploration

This paper undertakes a wide‐ranging exploration of the concept of boredom from contrasting perspectives across different disciplines with a view to informing the pedagogy of schooling. It notes the rise of the concept in recent times, and juxtaposes diverse views on the perceived forms, causes, effects and responses to boredom, along the way referring to implications for schooling. Based on this examination, the paper puts forward the idea that boredom needs to be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity. At the same time, it also points out that there is room to reimagine a pedagogy that can engage in a more informed manner with the complexity of the experience and concludes with an exploration of some concepts—autonomy and control, struggle and flow—which can help in this endeavour.     

Religious education as a research discipline: an activity theoretical perspective

This article raises the question of how to conceive of religious education as a research discipline. The theory of activity systems is used in an analysis of the relationship between theory and practice, the systems of research and the systems of school. The author argues for a dialectical relationship between research and school practice, where understandings of school practice may enable theoretical expansion and where the language used in the field of research may give renewed understanding to the field of practice.     

Perceived research environment,motivation, and academic interest in research: a social-cognitive perspective

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Using social-cognitive career theory as a framework, we investigated whether research self-efficacy and outcome expectations mediated...     

Child care research: an editorial perspective

The goals of Child Development's new From Another Perspective format are discussed, and an overview of the content of the inaugural From Another Perspective collection on child care effects is provided. The two lead articles suggest, respectively, that long hours in child care are related to children's later behavior problems and that child care may be physiologically challenging for young children. Commentaries focus on the need to examine a range of additional factors before drawing definitive conclusions about cause and effect. Among the issues discussed in the commentaries are the need to account for context, individual differences among children, and methodological challenges. The introductory editorial also overviews policy implications and directions for future research.     

高等教育多学科研究之反思——从学科性视角到方法论视角的转向

我国的高等教育研究具有鲜明的学科指向性,多学科研究方法引入高等教育研究也未改变其学科指向性。近30年的高等教育研究表明,高等教育学学科建设只是在某种程度上完成了学科的外部建制,内部建制还任重道远。其原因主要在于多学科研究的引入还停留在学科性视角层面,方法论视角在高等教育多学科研究中还未受到足够重视。欲达臻学科建设之目的,既要重视多学科研究的学科性视角,更要重视立足高等教育实践,从方法论视角开展高等教育多学科研究,最终实现从学科性视角到方法论视角的转向。