Turnaround as Reform: Opportunity for Meaningful Change or Neoliberal Posturing?

This study explores the neoliberal agenda of turnaround school reform efforts in America by examining the application and transformation of a Midwest State Turnaround Schools Project for the public school system. Perceptions of administrators and state-level policy actors are considered. Data were collected from 13 participants during the implementation of the statewide turnaround program and the analysis focused on the neoliberal ideology during the implementation of the State Turnaround Schools Project. Corporate infiltration and funding leverage reflect the sticky web of policymakers and private corporations and their influence. District communication, support, and shared accountability underscore important lessons in leadership for turnaround school programs. Successful schools transformed the turnaround policy implementation by involving communities and restructuring their school district. However, the neoliberal agenda revealed the impact of government labeling, restructuring, and reallocating resources for under-performing schools and unveiling the infiltration of private corporations behind turnaround policy and student achievement. This alarming finding points to how turnaround school policy implementation weakens control of democratically elected authorities and stagnates critical thinking that challenges the interests behind turnaround school policy.     

Bigger Pie,Bigger Slice? The Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Educational Opportunity in China

Research in Higher Education - China’s higher education system has expanded rapidly since 1999. Exploiting variation in the density of university expansion across provinces and high school...     

Students’ Experiences of Meaningful Situations in School

This paper focuses on school situations students experienced as meaningful and how these experiences can guide educational improvement. Participants included 15 students in grade 3 from a Swedish school. In this qualitative study, the data consisted of drawings, multimodal productions, interviews, and field notes. The analysis resulted in four themes: Having the opportunity to learn in different spaces; Being free and able to participate; Experiencing caring and sharing, and Recognizing one’s own growth and achievement. The findings suggest that situations students find meaningful involve aspects of both learning and wellbeing. The practical implication for these results is that student-generated qualitative data can help indicate needs for educational improvement.     

Between a “ROC” and a School Place: The Role of Racial Opportunity Cost in the Educational Experiences of Academically Successful Students of Color

Despite numerous reform efforts, schools have not achieved equitable academic outcomes for all students. To better identify where schools have failed, research has sought to understand the complex role the school environment plays in mediating academic success, particularly for students of color. In this article, we forward the concept of racial opportunity cost and then use it as a lens to encapsulate the price academically successful students of color pay in their pursuit of school success. Through individual and focus group interviews, 18 African American and Latina/o students revealed nuances of the costs their academic achievement brought in the racialized, White-normed spaces that often permeated their school cultures. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical support for the racial opportunity cost concept using existing interdisciplinary scholarship and to describe the racial opportunity costs that emerged from our analysis of student interviews.     

Educational technology: a presupposition of equality?

The work of philosopher Jacques Rancière is used conceptually and methodologically to frame an exploration of the driving interests in educational technology policy and the sanctioning of particular discursive constructions of pedagogy that result. In line with Rancière’s thinking, the starting point for this analysis is that of equality – that people are legally, morally, intellectually, and in their everyday practices discursively equal. The use of Rancière’s concepts, demos, police, and politics, to analyse three educational technology policies internationally shows that teachers are positioned within these policies as discursively unequal, and as intellectually inferior, not only in terms of technology expertise, but crucially as pedagogues. This positioning has important implications for teachers and teacher education. Teachers are capable of recognising and critiquing inequality, and this article makes a case for an act of politics that aims to reconfigure allocated identities and power imbalances in the educational technology order.     

Thinking Over of the Orientation for Educational Technology

This paper tries to address the reference point for orientation of Educational Technology and starts to draw an orientation for the synthesis and applies subject-Educational Technology, which belongs to the education and remains the features of Technological layer. We take a further look and find that this subject is existing at the cross part of education and technology by which we can draw the boundary of the subject as Educational Technology. Then we discuss the significance of how and why we have to correct the orientation for Educational Technology, and by doing that we can do good things to construct the concept of Educational Technology and cultivate more qualified technological personnel in this area so that we can get more benefits from the practice of Educational Technology.     

The Educational Journeys of Students of Color Across the Educational Pipeline: A Pedagogy of Storytelling or a Struggle for Freedom?

Social inequality as evident through poverty, racism, and irrelevant social and educational policies and practices have created consistent disparities on most educational achievement and attainment outcomes for historically marginalized students, and students of color specifically. These ongoing inequalities and injustices require policy, practical, and pedagogical changes across the educational pipeline. The work of the people on the ground needs to be intentional when exploring ways to creatively and courageously engage with students of color inside and outside the classroom. This paper describes, conceptualizes, and applies a pedagogical practice called Educational Journeys/Caminos Educativos, which is built on a grounded, context-specific, and culturally relevant set of processes that helps students, educators, leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders to co-create a series of pedagogical approaches that facilitate opportunities for educators to heal, build, and thrive with historically marginalized students, particularly minoritized, immigrant, and undocumented youth. The goal of this paper is to propose pedagogical processes that allow these populations, and the educators who serve them, to imagine a new social condition for and with students of color across the educational pipeline as a gesture toward equity and social justice. The author suggests that the pedagogy of Educational Journeys is more than storytelling; it’s about a struggle for freedom—past, present, and future.     

Old Educational Ideas,New American Schools: Progressivism and the Rhetoric of Educational Revolution∗

Drawing on books and essays of prominent progressive educators, this essay seeks to identify key elements that should be included in a working definition of progressive education. Such a definition is crucial for determining the degree of influence progressive ideas have had on American schools. The essay looks at how these ideas appear to have influenced the designs of a number of highly visible "whole-school reform" programs in the United States, programs that are perhaps the leading educational reform effort in the United States today. The essay then assesses how effective these programs have been in boosting student achievement. The essay concludes by speculating that the oft-used rhetoric of educational revolution, which was employed by early progressive educators and by later whole-school reformers, is a serious obstacle to genuine improvement in educational policy and practice.     

Introduction to “The Politics of Educational Reforms”

Abstract

It has become increasingly clear that education is a site of conflict. This essay examines the ideological positions that now dominate educational reforms and suggests a number of roles that critically democratic educators should play in -confronting these reforms. It then details the contributions that the authors -included in this special issue make toward understanding both the limits of current reforms and the possibilities of interrupting them.     

The Educational Value of Nasreddin Hodja’s Anecdotes

The anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja, who lived in Anatolia in the 13th century, have always attracted people due to the humour they contain, but this discussion also focuses on exploring the educational value of the anecdotes. According to teachers who contributed to this study, the anecdotes stimulate students’ interest in language work, create a relaxed learning atmosphere and help students think positively through Nasreddin Hodja’s humour. The anecdotes, which relate to social life and society, cover a rich diversity of topics with both positive and negative examples of behaviour; and they also may provoke positive effects in the personality development of children.     

Modelling Student Progress in Studies of Educational Effectiveness∗

It is argued that a crucial requirement in studies of educational effectiveness is the modelling of change or growth in student learning. To illustrate one approach to achieving this end, results are presented from multivariate multilevel analyses of three‐waves of data for three Grade level cohorts of students from a longitudinal study designed to explain variation in elementary school students' progress in literacy achievement. The article provides estimates of the influence of prior achievement and social background factors including ‘critical events’, on students’ progress, examines the extent to which progress can be accounted for by the grouping effects of students within classes and schools over successive years, and provides estimates of the effects of explanatory variables at the student‐and class/teacher‐levels.

     

Aspects of Educational Delivery within Sino-Foreign Educational Alliances: Is This the Real Key to Success?

The topic of educational alliances undertaken between Sino-foreign universities remains a contentious and much debated matter. This is an area of considerable and often very busy activity with a high rate of failure and frustration—yet, also one of reward, mutual satisfaction, and achievement. This paper evaluates a key aspect of these alliances often overlooked in research: educational delivery activities and projects that form the heart and core of alliances. The paper notes that the development and delivery of a range of programs beyond just degree or part degree courses but of research, seminar, and ancillary activities, lies at the very core of a successful alliances, particularly if these activities can be undertaken in a manner that melds two very different cultural and educational worlds, and in a way that can contribute to the Chinese students' sense of well-being and ability to take part in the globalization of the emerging Chinese market economy.     

The Application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Educational Settings

Hierarchy of Needs,one of the most influential motivation theories,was developed by Abraham Maslow in 1940-50’s USA.Hi erarchy of Needs theory has great significance in understanding human motivation,management training and personal development.The purpose of this paper is to investigate briefly the application of the theory to educational settings so as to guide a more effective education.     

Strategic Management of Educational Technology—The Importance of Leadership and Management

Through case study research critical leadership and management tasks are identified regarding the integration of educational technology in teaching at research universities. The institutions studied, regardless their different characteristics and approaches, face common difficulties in engaging ‘second‐wave’ faculty. Furthermore, the coordination of different support units such as edtech centres, IT support, teaching and learning labs or the libraries to offer well‐rehearsed educational technology services is challenging. Strong leadership is critical to motivate faculty and to assist support units to overcome sub‐cultural differences. Similarly, solid management practice is indispensable. Incentive, reward and support structures need to be adjusted to new realities and a well coordinated workflow needs to be designed.     

A Study about Our Educational Resource Deployment of Compulsory Education

In the base of utility and marginal utility, the article put forward the concept of utility and marginal utility of educational outlay and the theory of them, and analyzed the actuality of educational resource deployment in our country, gave some advice about how to improve our educational resource deployment of compulsory education.     

The Comparison and Analysis of Sino-American Family Educational Ways—from the Case of American Chinese “Tiger Mother” Family Educational Way

Amy Lynn Chua is a daughter of Chinese immigrants, a lifetime professor of Law school of Yale university, she became popular and controversial since she published her child-rearing memoir《Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother》, in which Amy Chua wrote down how to teach her two daughters in a harsh and strict way, especially a discussion about Chinese and American family educational ways. This paper use this case as an example to compare differences between Chinese and American family educational ways and try to analyze reasons.     

What If? The Educational Possibilities of the Earth Charter

Evoking a concern for intergenerational equity and claiming that the bounty and beauty of Earth have become diminishing prospects, I introduce the Earth Charter as an expression of the hopes of diverse communities around the globe. I argue that the Charter deserves educators' attention as an integrated vision of social justice, peace, and ecological sustainability. I believe the Earth Charter can help transform our conception of what is foundational to include solutions to the deepening anthropogenic ecological crisis. Attention is given to the rationale and methodology for teaching with the Earth Charter. I argue that those in educational studies must deeply engage the problems of our time and that the Earth Charter offers hopeful possibilities for examining and addressing our mutual interconnections.