Comparative Research in Education: a mode of governance or a historical journey?

This text is not a research paper, nor an epistemological reflection about the field of comparative education. It is an essay in the literal meaning of the word—‘an attempt, trial, that needs to be put to test in order to understand if it is able to fulfil the expectations’—in which we introduce an interpretation of the current condition of the field of comparative education. In the introduction to this essay we discuss the current phenomenon of a regained popularity of comparative educational research. We believe that this situation has both positive and negative consequences: it can contribute to the renewal of the field or it may be no more than a brief fashion. Our reflections focus on the uses of comparative research in education, not on any precise research question. Even so, only for illustrative purposes, we present some examples related to the European Union. We then go on to discuss current comparative practices, arguing that comparative educational studies are used as a political tool creating educational policy, rather than a research method or an intellectual inquiry. In the two main sections of this text we define two extreme positions: comparison as a mode of governance and comparison as a historical journey. We do recognise that between these two extremes there is room enough to imagine different positions and dispositions. But our intention is to separate very different traditions of the comparative field analytically. Throughout the article we build a case in favour of a comparative-historical approach. Nevertheless, we argue that the reconciliation between ‘history’ and ‘comparison’ will only be possible if we adopt new conceptions of space and time, and of space-time relationship. This is a condition required for the understanding of comparative research in education as a historical journey.     

The Politics of Emotions in ELT: Structure of Feeling and Anxiety of Korean English Teachers

ABSTRACT

Using the notion of structure of feeling by Raymond Williams, this article seeks to illuminate an ideological understanding of Korean English teachers’ anxiety and deep sense of insecurity in English language teaching (ELT). Through a discussion of how their anxiety is grounded deeply within unequal social relations and how they reframe their anxiety through critical reflection on the cultural and ideological bias of their own anxiety, it points out the intricate relationship between ideology and emotion; teachers’ emotions are shaped by dominant ideologies that constitute the social structures constraining their position as teachers, while their engagement with those emotions also enables their self-transformation towards gaining confidence as teachers. The results of the study emphasise the tension between social structure and agency in teachers’ emotional experiences and discuss implications for teacher education and development.     

The Development of Justice Conceptions and the Unavoidability of the Normative

This article spells out the way in which normative concerns unavoidably enter into the design and interpretation of empirical research on children's development of justice conceptions, with special emphasis on Damon's well-known stage theory of such development. Normative considerations provide assumptions not only about what counts as a conception of justice in the first place but also what counts as a better or a worse conception. Damon, for one, relies on the questionable normative premise that all distributive choices are choices about justice. An alternative research programme is suggested, based on piecemeal mutual adjustments between the normative and the empirical, a programme which would focus on children's desert-based emotions.     

Trauma,justice and the politics of emotion: the violence of sentimentality in education

This article interrogates the sentimentality, resentment or desensitization in education as a result of the politics of emotion in the circulation of trauma narratives. Such an interrogation advises a different analysis of trauma narratives, one that acknowledges the politics of trauma and the dangers from its rhetoric. Sentimental education takes its strength by framing normative emotional responses to all traumas; it is grounded on empty empathy and unfounded optimism while giving the illusion of a just response. The tension between claims for universality or particularity of trauma requires a different pedagogical treatment of trauma narratives – one that moves beyond such a duality. It is argued that this tension needs to be critically interrogated in schools, and educators and students need to consider what it would mean to subvert sentimental responses to trauma narratives.     

Searching for the Norm in a System of Absolutes: A Case Study of Standards-Based Accountability Reform in Pre-Kindergarten

Research Findings: The emergence of standards-based accountability reforms in early childhood education has created new challenges for the field. This article presents findings from a case study that explored how stakeholders in a large urban pre-kindergarten program struggled to implement an assessment tool that aligned the normative academic achievement expectations found among their teachers and administrators with the absolute measures of this construct found in their state policymakers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms. Analyzing the tension that emerged in this process of alignment highlights the challenges early educators face as they fold their child-centered programs into these larger high-stakes standards-based kindergarten through grade 12 education systems. Practice and Policy: The findings from this study illuminate the need for early childhood education programs to understand how high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms define student achievement. Furthermore, as early childhood programs and personnel address these reforms, their responses need to be explicit about how their assessment measures are connected to their normative conceptualizations of student achievement and what this means for the education of children in their programs.     

The emotional turn in higher education: a psychoanalytic contribution

This article contributes to contemporary debates about the significance of emotions within Higher Education. Using a psychoanalytic lens we analyse the ways in which experiences of anxiety and tension are essential for learning. The anxiety associated with learning can stimulate meaningful and reflexive outcomes but ‘learning inaction’ [Vince, R. 2014. ‘What Do HRD Scholars and Practitioners Need to Know About Power, Emotion, and HRD?’ Human Resource Development Quarterly 25: 409–420] is also possible. In adopting a psychoanalytical lens we assert the agency of both learners and teachers in scholarly relationships and we draw attention to the emotions of educators as well as students. This has important implications for teacher education and academic formation activities.     

In search of phronesis: recognizing practical wisdom in the Recognition (Assessment) of Prior Learning

This article argues that greater understanding of the Aristotelian concept of phronesis or practical wisdom would make an important contribution to the conceptualization and implementation of Recognition (Assessment) of Prior Learning (RPL/APL) in formal education contexts. However, there is a need to identify phronesis empirically so that RPL assessors can identify it and RPL candidates can articulate it. Extracts from the qualitative data of two separate research projects are presented to show examples of phronesis. These extracts also show the difficulties associated with its articulation and identification. It is argued that even if phronesis cannot be accredited for RPL purposes, it should be taught and discussed in the curricula of adult education and RPL portfolio development courses to show the importance of this form of knowledge and reasoning and the different forms it might assume in formal education and life contexts.     

Enabling the classroom and the curriculum: higher education,literary studies and disability

In this article the tripartite model of disability is applied to the lived experience of twenty-first-century higher education. The tripartite model facilitates a complex understanding of disability that recognises assumptions and discrimination but not at the cost of valued identity. This being so, not only the normative positivisms and non-normative negativisms but also the non-normative positivisms of the classroom and the curriculum are explored. Inclusion is taken as the starting point and the argument progresses to a profound and innovational appreciation of disability. The problem addressed is that inclusion, as shown in The Biopolitics of Disability, constitutes little more than inclusion-ism until disability is recognised in the context of alternative lives and values that neither enforce nor reify normalcy. Informed by this understanding, the article adopts the disciplinary example of literary studies and refers to Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney as a primary text. The conclusion is that, despite passive and active resistance, disability enters higher education in many ways, most of which are beneficial to students and educators alike.     

An Investigation into Staff and Pupils' Knowledge,Attitudes and Beliefs about Bullying in an Inner City School

In this article the writer explores the importance of and difficulty surrounding dialogue between students and teachers. This discussion is set within the wider context of a debate about the education of the emotions in our society and the argument is that this dialogue has a part to play in the education of the emotions. Thinking in the field of psychotherapy is drawn on as well as the writer’s experience as an educator, counsellor and trainer. She is currently working in higher education and concerned with teacher education and research. This background is relevant in that this experience is drawn on and it also shows up the focus of much of the work. This is concerned with personal, social and emotional development in education and with making this integral to education and organizations.     

The power of anticipated feedback: Effects on students' achievement goals and achievement emotions

In an experimental study (N = 153 high school students), we tested a theoretical model positing that anticipated achievement feedback influences achievement goals and achievement emotions, and that achievement goals mediate the link between anticipated feedback and emotions. Participants were informed that they would receive self-referential feedback, normative feedback, or no feedback for their performance on a test. Subsequently, achievement goals and discrete achievement emotions regarding the test were assessed. Self-referential feedback had a positive influence on mastery goal adoption, whereas normative feedback had a positive influence on performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal adoption. Furthermore, feedback condition and achievement goals predicted test-related emotions (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, and shame). Achievement goals were documented as significant mediators of the influence of feedback instruction on emotions, and mediation was observed for seven of the eight focal emotions. Implications for educational research and practice are discussed.     

Apprenticeship and Applied Theoretical Knowledge

Abstract

Nel Noddings claims that there is an important normative element in happiness. For support, she points to the Aristotelian idea of the eudaimonic life, a concept that is often translated into English as ‘the happy life’. However, in light of the wide divergence between the Aristotelian view of eudaimonia as a life of virtuous activity and most contemporary psychologists’ and lay people’s view of happiness as subjective wellbeing, the authors of this article believe that Noddings’s merging of the two has several shortcomings. Aside from ambiguity and confusion, it encourages us to deny that, given the human condition, we must sometimes choose between happiness as pursuit of positive emotion and personal satisfaction and happiness as pursuit of the common good and the virtuous life.     

Teaching,Teacher Education,and the Humanities: Reconsidering Education as a Geisteswissenschaft

In this essay Gert Biesta asks what the humanities can contribute to the field of teacher education. In addressing this question he turns to the idea of education as a Geisteswissenschaft as it was developed in the German‐speaking context in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this conception, education is configured as an interested academic discipline that engages with normative questions concerning the telos of education and does so with a focus on meaningful human action rather than human behavior. Viewing education this way highlights the role of value judgments in teaching. The values that are at stake in such judgments, Biesta argues, are not to be understood as moral values but as educational values, a view that raises some important questions about the specific nature of educational normativity. In a final step Biesta discusses how the idea of education as a Geisteswissenschaft makes a difference for the field of teacher education.     

Placing Students at the Centre of the Decolonizing Education Imperative: Engaging the (Mis)Recognition Struggles of Students at the Postapartheid University

Misrecognition of South African university students is at the heart of this article. Misrecognition refers in this article to the exclusionary institutional discourses and practices of this country’s universities, which continue to prevent the majority of their (Black) students’ from achieving a successful education. It is a conceptual account of the ways in which these misrecognized students develop a complex educational life in their quest for a university education. The article argues that at the heart of students’ university experiences is an essential misrecognition of who they are, and how they access and encounter their university studies. I suggest that gaining greater purchase on their (mis)recognition struggles may place the university in a position to establish an engaging recognition platform to facilitate their educational success. Divided into four sections, the article starts with a rationale for bringing the institutional misrecognition of students into view. This is followed by a theoretical consideration of the notion of recognition, which opens space for what I call the recognitive agency of the education subject, who remains largely unknown to the university. The third section provides an account of the nature and extent of Black students’ survivalist educational navigations and practices in their family, community, school, and university contexts. The final and concluding section of the article presents a normative argument for developing an education platform for facilitating a productive encounter aimed at animating students’ educational becoming. This, I argue, should proceed on the basis of a decolonizing knowledge approach, involving curriculum recognition, which would accord students the conceptual tools for developing the epistemic virtues necessary for complex decolonized living.     

Ubuntu,ukama, environment and moral education

This article outlines a moral education guided by African traditional values such as ubuntu and ukama. It argues that ubuntu is not by definition speciesist, as some have claimed, but that it has strong ecocentric leanings, that is, if ubuntu is understood as a concrete expression of ukama. In fact, ubuntu deconstructs the anthropocentric–ecocentric distinction which has characterised and continues to characterise debates in environmental theory/philosophy. To become more fully human does not mean caring only for the self and other human beings but also for the entire biophysical world. Some implications that this discussion has for moral education are explored, as well as some opportunities that post-apartheid curriculum frameworks offer for implementing a moral education guided by ubuntu.     

Exploring the relevance of Holocaust education for human rights education

Can Holocaust education be considered a tool for human rights education? If so, to what extent? These questions elicit discussions among a wide range of educators, and interest among politicians, educational planners, and ministries in charge of memorials. At first glance the obvious answer seems to be yes; both educators and students have strong expectations in this regard. But educators in both fields can find it difficult to include both topics in one programme. The article clarifies some basic concepts regarding the traditions of Holocaust education and human rights education, and then makes a distinction among learning about, learning for, and learning within a framework of human rights. This distinction makes it possible to differentiate the possible contributions, and the limits, of Holocaust education as a human rights tool in these three areas. Also, as these two fields evolved in very separate ways, common projects could bring together concepts and experiences from both fields to develop further possibilities.     

Navigating the neoliberal university: reflecting on teaching practice as a teacher-researcher-trade unionist

Abstract

This article reflects upon the neoliberalisation of higher education and its effects on teaching practice. It is argued that a neoliberal discourse of teaching excellence has the effect of working against, and potentially undermining, the emancipatory potential of higher education. The article reflects upon attempts to navigate disciplinary power in the neoliberal university and considers whether critical, emancipatory praxis is possible or if complicity in, and co-option by, neoliberalism is inevitable. Ultimately, it is concluded that individual teachers have some scope to pursue approaches which counter neoliberal dominance but that this is heavily constrained. A broader, collective, project will therefore be necessary if alternative (critical, emancipatory) visions of teaching and learning in higher education are to successfully challenge neoliberal hegemony and the negative effects of this in the academy.     

The influence of situational emotions on the intention for sustainable consumer behaviour in a student-centred intervention

Within the curriculum guidelines for Bavaria, we designed a hands-on educational programme for teaching sustainability with regard to agriculture, food and consumerism, partly implemented on a farm as an out-of-school learning setting. The participants were fifth graders (N?=?176). The research followed a quasi-experimental design and used the subscale consumerism of the General Ecological Behaviour Scale and situational emotions (interest, well-being, boredom) to focus data collection activities. The study monitored the students’ knowledge increase and their Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scores as possible influencing factors on environmental behaviour. After participation in the programme, while we found that the students intended to consume in more environmentally friendlier ways, this intention did not persistent over a seven-week time span, nor did it relate to the INS or knowledge scores. There was, however, a high correlation with positive situational emotions like interest (r?=?.46, p???.001) and well-being (r?=?.39, p???.001), and a negative correlation with boredom (r?=??.42, p???.001). We conclude that the ‘effect’ of the programme immediately measured after the intervention was strongly linked to situational (short-term) emotions, and should be considered in educational planning as well as the evaluation of sustainability teaching and learning.     

The AQ scores of school-age children referred to educational psychologists

The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scale was designed to detect the level and distribution of autistic-like traits across both the general population and those diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Condition. Scores in the large normative samples were consistent with previous research in showing a continuous distribution of traits, implying that the Autism Spectrum might be viewed as one pole of an endless continuum rather than a distinct categorical condition. The preliminary research reported in this article looked at AQ levels in 75 random referrals to educational psychologists and identified a significantly elevated mean score with a large effect size (d = 1.46). The possible implications for practice and for further research are discussed.     

Should Science Teaching Involve the History of Science? An Assessment of Kuhn’s View

Thomas Kuhn draws the distinction between textbook history of science and history of science proper. The question addressed in the paper is whether Kuhn recommends the inclusion of distortive textbook history in science education. It is argued, pace Fuller, that Kuhn does not make normative suggestions. He does not urge the teaching of bad history and he does not aim to deceive the scientists. He highlights the significance of the retrospective history of the textbooks as a condition for the practice of science. If science is to be seen as a practice and not as a set of propositions, then textbook history is instrumental in establishing and expanding the new paradigm. The other kind of history, the history of science proper, can only be taught as part of the students’ general education and not as part of science education.