Religion and the global middle class: towards a new research agenda

ABSTRACT

This essay discusses the role of religion as a central facet when researching the emerging social group – the global middle class (GMC). It is argued here that religion is a particularly relevant feature for the constitution of this social group because of the GMC’s transnational and cosmopolitan character. In this essay, I will draw on several examples focused on Islamic education provision in Western, pre-dominantly Christian societies to illustrate why and how religion should become critical to our study of the GMC. The essay’s central argument is that there remains a gap in research related to the role of religion in the making and practising of the GMC as a social group. I conclude by proposing a future research agenda that addresses the intersections of religion, education, and the GMC on an individual, national, and global level.     

Spiralling towards transformational action research: philosophical and practical journeys

The two‐stranded spiral shown in Figure 1 represents two aspects of the authors’ journey in becoming critical. The journey, conveyed through discussion, reflexive accounts and illustrations of particular and summary achievements, shows how Carr and Kemmis’s work has influenced the authors as action researchers, both individually and together, in nursing, over 16 years. The first strand unfurls their journey as they learned to develop their philosophical and theoretical understandings of action research as collaborative, emancipatory and transformational. They show how they now use innovative and creative methodologies to transform practice and, simultaneously, develop critical practice theory that draw on assumptions from different worldviews in the same study. Their second strand is concerned with the creation of critical communities of healthcare practitioners who undertake action research to transform themselves, practices and organisations. This strand shares the practicalities of an action research team genuinely involving stakeholders in the collaborative, democratic design of projects, their implementation and evaluation. Both strands are concerned with preparing practitioners as researchers of their own practice and with human flourishing as both the end and means of action research. Seven insights are presented.     

Adult education and critical identity development: from a deficiency orientation towards a competency orientation

The translation of this paper has been made possible with the financial help of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences)

In this paper the authors criticise the growing tendency to conceive of adult education as a qualification oriented field of practice. Especially with respect to disadvantaged groups in society this orientation could have a stigmatizing effect. Various agents of education consider them as deficient and hence describe their identity in negative terms. Contrary to this, the authors develop a more positive orientation towards identity development and outline a new understanding of adult education. Their approach is inspired by insights developed in an area of cultural studies.     

Relationality as a response to challenges of participatory action research in indigenous contexts: reflections from the field

ABSTRACT

Three researchers share their reflections on the challenges and goodness of fit of using participatory action research (PAR) in studies with indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Three central challenges of participatory methodologies are identified: (1) defining what constitutes participation; (2) the extended time required for a PAR study; and (3) researcher positionality. The authors discuss tensions inherent in the western academy when shifting final decision-making authority over research processes away from the academic institution to the indigenous community. A model situating the principles of PAR alongside perspectives and values congruent with the indigenous concept of relationality is presented as a means of mitigating these challenges. This approach aligns PAR principles within culturally-congruent definitions of relationship and encourages researchers to re-imagine participation as a form of relationship, allowing them to engage more deeply and genuinely with indigenous participants.     

Partnerships in action: towards a common goal

As part of their coursework, our Post Graduate Certificate in Education [PGCE] Technology students were required to spend four weeks developing education‐business partnerships [EBPs], liaising with schools and local businesses to develop resource materials for use in the classroom. The emphasis was on education about business and through business rather than education for business, and on the development of personal and professional skills. The programme attracted considerable interest and was expanded to include non‐Technology students. In 1996/97, a total of 49 students from 8 subject areas worked with 13 business organisations to produce a variety of teaching and learning resources, including some on the World Wide Web.

The paper looks at the rationale for EBPs, describes the development and implementation of our programme, and hints at the difficulties it now faces under pressures from the Teacher Training Agency and Ofsted.     

指挥棒:还仅指向知识和知识再现吗?——对高校现行考试模式的检讨

带有浓厚传统模式的现行高校考试制度,在很大程度上制约了或正在阻碍着大学的教育教学改革进程,严重影响着对教与学的质量的检测和提高。分析高校现行考试模式的弊端和高校考试模式改革的必要性,并对现行考试模式的改革提出了几点设想。     

Educational Enquiry and Professional Knowledge: towards a Copernican revolution

Current conceptions of the nature of education and teaching would appear to be dominated by a generally technicist interpretation of educational enquiry and conduct which has also influenced recent perspectives on professionalism in education. This technicist view, which rests initially on a misreading of the logical character of educational discourse, is further reinforced by certain theories of schooling and pedagogy hailing from the social sciences. It is argued here, however, that since it is the morally normative language of ethical principles and dispositions rather than the instrumentally normative language of techniques which lies at the heart of discourse about education and teaching, the idea of a virtue provides a better model for understanding professional competence than that of a skill.     

Research as knowledge democratization,mobilization and social action: pushing back on casteism in contexts of caste humiliation and social reproduction in schools in India

ABSTRACT

Dalit (the ‘downtrodden’) students continue to experience caste-based discrimination, humiliation and dehumanization; illegal practices that are being reproduced in the school system in the state of Odisha, India. Based on a research study organized by the Center for Research and Development Solidarity, an adivasi (original dweller/Scheduled Tribe)-dalit (Scheduled Caste) research organization and 401 dalit students in grades 6–10 attending 16 government schools in a 25-village zone, this paper elaborates on this research initiative. It demonstrates how knowledge democratization, both, as research undertaken with and for dalit students as producers of (caste-resistance) knowledge and as knowledge sharing as mobilization, can simultaneously mobilize wider circles of organized collective action with parents, Village Education Committees (VECs) and local dalit NGOs and movements to address casteism and untouchability in state schools. The paper concludes with some brief insights pertaining to academic and funded research as knowledge democracy and mobilization for social action that are emergent from this caste research and related research and social action addressing land-forest-labour assertions in South Odisha.