Reflections on quality education in African higher education

Abstract

Worldwide the diverse ills in society are often seen as a manifestation of the weaknesses and poor quality of the education systems practiced, especially those founded on traditional approaches – highly disciplined patriotic regimens, with a great deal of memorisation and not much room for reflecting and questioning, in contrast to the contemporary education mission which seeks to produce free citizens, citizens who are free not because of wealth or birth, but because they can call their minds their own (Nussbaum, 1998). This paper critically explores both the basics of traditional education regimens, and the contemporary education mission as espoused by some renowned intellectuals, and concludes that a sound education system ought to cultivate humanity – a citizenry that can think critically, solve problems and apply new skills and techniques in diverse contexts, a citizenry that is knowledgeable about the care and wise use of the environment.     

高职院校学生素质教育刍议

在经济飞速发展的当今,高职院校学生教育管理过程中出现了专业教育与素质教育失衡、学生信仰理念不成熟、传统教育与时尚热点摩擦等方面的问题。高职院校学生工作管理应切实关注素质教育。做出适应社会需求、学生发展的切实可行的解决办法。     

推进异地高考——中国高等教育改革的突破口

推进异地高考成为今年的热门话题,它涉及大量流动人口随迁子女升学这一现实性问题。本文分析了推进异地高考面临的三点阻力因素和相应的解决对策;同时推导出三条实现异地高考的方法,它们可能带来更为公平的高考招生录取结果。     

论高等教育大众化跨越式发展中的数字化素质教育

“数字化素质教育”是高等教育大众化跨越式发展中的最重要的发展现象。“学会数字化生存”的理念、“学会数字化学习”的目标和“学会数字化协作”的模式是“数字化素质教育”的三大要务,也是信息社会“最适应变化者”的“生存教育”要务。“数字化素质教育”既是高等教育大众化跨越式发展的标志,又是新一轮发展的基础,谁占领“数字化素质教育”的制高点,谁就是下一轮高等教育大众化跨越式发展的旗手。对“数字化素质教育”的研究和探索,为实践新一轮高等教育大众化从“规模、质量、效益”——发展型的“发展创新”模式向“比较、创新、统筹”——可持续发展型的“概念创新”模式转变,必将展现更为广阔的前景。     

Benchmarks and quality assurance for online course development in higher education

As online education has entered the main stream of the U.S. higher education, quality assurance in online course development has become a critical topic in distance education. This short article summarizes the major benchmarks related to online course development, listing and comparing the benchmarks of the National Education Association （NEA）, the benchmarks of the American Distance Education Consortium （ADEC）, the benchmarks of the American Federation of Teachers, and the benchmarks of the Quality Matters project. In doing so the author hopes to promote awareness of and commitment to quality assurance in online education.     

高职高专院校医学生人文素质培养模式探究

人文素质泛指人们在人文方面所具有的综合素质和所达到的程度,是人最基本的素质。当前,我国高职高专生,尤其是医学生的人文素质培养让人担忧,很难适应现代社会对人全面素质的要求。从医学生的特点出发,做好人文素质培养工作要与当今的时代要求相结合,要与校园文化建设相结合,要与专业教育相结合,这就要求我们对医学生人文素质培养的模式进行研究,进一步明确目标、提出要求、优化方法,全面提高专科学生的人文素质。     

浅谈现代礼仪课程在大学生素质教育中的应用

素质教育的理念是随着我国改革开放而提出来的一种教育模式,从某种意义上来说,素质教育是传统应试教育的一种延伸,在当前经济发展的背景下,应试教育由于主要培养学生的理论知识水平,具有很大的局限性,要想从本质上改变这种情况,必须培养学生的综合素质,本文通过研究素质教育的理念和特点等,对现代礼仪课程在大学生素质教育中的应用进行了具体的分析。     

Institutional lifecycles in British higher education

Summary The twentieth century has witnessed exponential growth in the provision of higher education and this growth accelerates the dynamic of institutional change. The change structures discussed in the present paper can be summarized in a cyclical model of development as presented in Figure 8. Long-term development along familiar, accustomed lines is no longer the universal or ‘normal’ expectation — if indeed it ever was. Morphological change is probable, though the direction of that change may take time to clarify. One thing seems clear: the political and economic pressures on universities are much more intense now than they have ever been and these pressures can be expected to cause metamorphoses, mutations, births and deaths amongst our ‘population’ of higher education institutions.     

Survey research in higher education

Although textbooks on educational research give only scant attention to survey research methodology, its extensive use in education provides a strong rationale for improving the preparation of educational researchers in effectively applying survey methods. This study reviews methods for dealing with nonresponse bias, the primary problem presented by survey methods. It also provides an updated review of the literature of studies investigating the effectiveness of incentives to increase survey response rates. We hypothesized that a reanalysis of reviewed studies, using a linear trend test, would resolve the inconsistencies found regarding the effectiveness of incentives to increase response rates. The results of the reanalysis and guidelines for educational researchers in systematically selecting and applying incentives to increase response rates are discussed.     

高等教育质量管理的新趋势及我国的选择

质量管理是高等教育质量保障的重要组成部分.近年来在普遍建立专门的质量评估机构、实施内部评估与外部认证相结合的基础上,高等教育质量管理又呈现出"绩效化"、"元评估"、"从技术到文化"以及"从监控到管理"四个新的发展趋势.目前我国高等教育质量管理还处在发展中,专门的质量评估机构缺乏应有的独立自治性,高校内部质量管理体系又严重缺乏,与此同时我国高等教育质量却又危机重重.在此背景下,唯有顺应高等教育质量管理的新趋势,借鉴发达国家的成功经验,才能获得"后发优势",从而实现我国高等教育从精英到大众的成功转型.     

提高高校德育课教学质量的思考

德育课是高校课程的重要组成部分，德育是培养“四有”新人不可或缺的环节。长期以来，高校德育课成效不够理想。如何提高德育课教学质量，是德育教育工作所面临和必须解决的问题。当前德育课教学难度大的原因主要来自学生、教师、学校和课程等四个方面。拙仅从学校和教师两方面提出高校管理要从意识、体制、内容和方法上给予德育课以足够的重视；高校德育工作在进行德育教育过程中要始终坚持正确的思想导向，不断改进和完善教学的方式方法，不断提高理论水平和加强自身修养。     

Measuring teaching quality in higher education: assessing selection bias in course evaluations

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are widely used to measure teaching quality in higher education and compare it across different courses, teachers, departments and institutions. Indeed, SETs are of increasing importance for teacher promotion decisions, student course selection, as well as for auditing practices demonstrating institutional performance. However, survey response is typically low, rendering these uses unwarranted if students who respond to the evaluation are not randomly selected along observed and unobserved dimensions. This paper is the first to fully quantify this problem by analyzing the direction and size of selection bias resulting from both observed and unobserved characteristics for over 3000 courses taught in a large European university. We find that course evaluations are upward biased, and that correcting for selection bias has non-negligible effects on the average evaluation score and on the evaluation-based ranking of courses. Moreover, this bias mostly derives from selection on unobserved characteristics, implying that correcting evaluation scores for observed factors such as student grades does not solve the problem. However, we find that adjusting for selection only has small impacts on the measured effects of observables on SETs, validating a large related literature which considers the observable determinants of evaluation scores without correcting for selection bias.     

英国私立高等教育机构类型及其质量保障体系探析

近年来,英国私立高等教育迅速发展,为英国高等教育规模扩张做出了巨大贡献.通过对英国私立高等教育机构类型的梳理和对其质量保障体系的分析,挖掘英国私立高等教育发展的优缺点,为我国私立高等教育发展提供有益借鉴.     

Special needs students in higher education

The topic in this paper is how former special needs students with academic competence from upper secondary school succeed in education on a higher level. The study concentrates on students who at their start in upper secondary education were registered with problems of concentration, difficulties in reading, writing or mathematics. The main part of this paper will base on qualitative interviews with nine former special needs students. Seven out of the nine informants were registered with reading and writing difficulties. However, it is also possible to compare these informants with longitudinal data from a larger group of students who have been followed prospectively since spring 1996. Theoretically the study is based on life course research with special emphasis on social transitions. In transitional processes between different educational arenas gatekeepers＇often play important roles. This study will examine how such gatekeepers, e.g. teachers, may facilitate or obstruct these transitions for a vulnerable group like former special needs students.     

创业教育在中国高等教育中的发展走向

在大学生创业活动发展的同时,有关创业教育的研究越来越受到社会各方面的重视与关注,各高校也开始着手进行创业教育的尝试.创业教育必将成为今后高校教育的重中之重.     

论金融危机背景下我国高等教育的规模与质量

在规模经济理论的影响下,我国的高等教育规模近年来快速扩张。范围经济理论的优点在于能够制约单纯依靠规模扩张带来的负面影响。在金融危机的影响下,我国的高等教育规模发展将受到限制,同时也迎来了由注重规模向注重质量转变的良好契机。当前我国的高等教育应在稳定规模的同时,通过优化高等学校结构、合理配置资源等措施,努力提高高等教育质量。     

Transfer students in institutions of higher education

The primary purpose of this study is to describe the extent of college transfers over two years since initial matriculation and to examine differences in background characteristics between transfers and nontransfers (i.e., persisters, withdrawals, and graduates). Data involved a national probability sample of the 1972 entering class. Major findings include the following: 25% of the 2-year college students transferred to a 4-year institution, and 16% of 4-year college students moved to another 4-year institution. This later group of students tended to hold higher socioeconomic status and college grades but lower ability test scores than persisters. Implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Effect on students from attending a university degree programme run in partnership with further and higher education institutions

This paper considers the effect on students from attending a university foundation degree programme delivered in partnership with six further education teaching institutions in England. The programme is situated within the early childhood education sector using an instructional design which promotes higher-level learning within the teaching institution and the workplace. Learning in one environment is aligned to the other. The research process actively involved students and was conducted within ethical parameters approved by a university ethics committee. A qualitative methodology examined data drawn from focus groups, an online survey and content analysis. Programme effect was seen as enhancing personal and professional capability and promoting higher-order learning. The findings go some way towards theorisation and documentation of programme effect by identifying the influence of instructional design and extend knowledge about aligning the pace of teaching and learning with professional practice.     

Identifying students with dyslexia in higher education

An increasing number of students with dyslexia enter higher education. As a result, there is a growing need for standardized diagnosis. Previous research has suggested that a small number of tests may suffice to reliably assess students with dyslexia, but these studies were based on post hoc discriminant analysis, which tends to overestimate the percentage of systematic variance, and were limited to the English language (and the Anglo-Saxon education system). Therefore, we repeated the research in a non-English language (Dutch) and we selected variables on the basis of a prediction analysis. The results of our study confirm that it is not necessary to administer a wide range of tests to diagnose dyslexia in (young) adults. Three tests sufficed: word reading, word spelling and phonological awareness, in line with the proposal that higher education students with dyslexia continue to have specific problems with reading and writing. We also show that a traditional postdiction analysis selects more variables of importance than the prediction analysis. However, these extra variables explain study-specific variance and do not result in more predictive power of the model.     

Coping experience among students in higher education

The study examines the coping strategies among 130 undergraduate college and university students with learning disabilities (LD) and 146 students without learning disabilities (NLD). Students completed self‐reported instruments designed to measure stress, support and strategies. The findings revealed that students without LD reported higher work stress, higher combined stress and more social support than did students with LD. Students without LD were more task orientated and perceived more support than students with LD, while students with LD used more emotional coping strategies than NLD students. Differences were also obtained regarding age and gender. The study highlights the importance of further investigations with a larger sample and the support sources of students with LD, and suggests developing task‐oriented coping strategies designed especially for students with LD.

Coping experience among students in higher education

All authors

Tali Heiman Corresponding author: Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University, 108 Ravutski Street, Raanana, 43107, Israel. Email: talihe@openu.ac.il View all notes & Dafna Kariv

https://doi.org/10.1080/0305569042000310354

Published online:

07 October 2010

Background variables of participants

CSVDisplay Table