Literacy as social reproduction and social transformation: The challenge of diasporic communities in the contemporary period

This article reviews literature on social reproduction in education, discusses the decline of the paradigm, and argues for its continuing relevance. It examines reproductive and transformative aspects of cross-linguistic literacy practices involving young people from three diasporic communities in the United States, presenting multi-leveled analyses that investigate what is reproduced or transformed by situated literacy practices and how institution-level processes shape such practices. It argues that such scale-sensitive analysis provides insight into new reproductive processes, involving conflicts over language in education, that are themselves rooted in new forms of class conflict rooted in global system dynamics of social polarization.     

University as regional development agent: a counterfactual analysis of an African university

ABSTRACT

The contribution of universities to regional development has in the last few decades gained significant currency. Inter alia, this contribution has been through steered national, regional, and institutional policies aimed at enhancing national development, good governance, human capital creation and innovation in an increasing knowledge-dependent economy, and through the universities’ core technologies of teaching and research. Based on empirical findings from an African case study, this article argues that other forms of contributions to regional development exist, which are neither from deliberate efforts nor steered by direct policies. This article proposes new forms of contributions termed ‘unintended contributions’, in which universities become growth poles by virtue of being located in a particular region. Using the counterfactual and ‘export and import substitution’ methods of analysis, this study shows the various ways in which a rural university in Cameroon has ‘contributed to regional development as a ‘growth pole’.     

教学服务型大学:独立学院转型发展的战略选择

独立学院作为高等教育体制改革的重要组成部分,面临高等教育市场结构的转型,教学服务型大学的定位成为独立学院增强核心竞争力,实现可持续发展的战略选择。厘定教学服务型大学的内涵,建立科学高效的教学服务体系成为当前研究的首要课题。     

The learning society: postmodern politics

The notion of a ‘learning society’ is one that crops up increasingly today in the ongoing debate about the future of education in the postmodern world, together with its twin notion, ‘lifelong learning’. This article discusses the contemporary discourse within which this debate tends to be contextualized and finds several worrying factors about it: namely that it has a vocationalist, managerialist, thrust, is oriented towards the requirements of the market and the global economy and the needs of employers, and subjected to the principle of peformativity. The article concurrently examines recent trends in adult and continuing education that confirm this agenda, and asks how it can be resisted. The possibility of creating a counter-utopia or counter-discourse to it which replaces performativity with justice is proposed, but this runs into the objections of postmodernists against the employment of master narratives. The article then examines whether there are alternative resources within ‘postmodernism’ itself which do not fall foul of these objections within which an oppositional discourse could be constructed.     

Jack in two boxes: A postmodern perspective on the transformation of persons into portraits

The paper explores issues surrounding portrayal in educational research and interrogates the notion of a life as a textual product, via an analysis of two short biographical narratives which happen to portray the same person — a British primary school head teacher nearing the end of his career. The discrepancies between these two texts point to the problematic nature of the relationship between person and portrait, and make visible some of the textual devices that writers/researchers use in order to achieve coherence and authenticity in biographical narratives.     

后现代高校课程:回到人类活动的“原点”

现代知识观指导下的高等学校课程建设,过于强调科学逻辑,割裂学科之间的联系,肢解整体世界,把丰富多彩的世界变成了一系列毫无生命的抽象符号,给高等学校人才培养带来种种弊端。后现代高校课程观力图使高等学校课程回到人类活动的出发点或"原点",为学生建构个性化的世界图景提供更加开放的探究空间,通过更为合理的高等学校课程群或课程体系,寻求科学精神与人文精神的平衡。     

Art-informed pedagogy: tools for social transformation

How might an arts-informed pedagogy in a leadership development programme work to inspire, create and educate the leaders needed for creating more socially just and inclusive communities? This self-study explores how a post-secondary educator has integrated arts-informed approaches to teaching and learning in a leadership development programme at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. Theories of arts-informed learning, pedagogical ambiguity and productive practices inform and situate my approach to engaging adult learners in aesthetic processes of reflexivity, emphasising the situated, inter-subjective and contextual nature of socially just knowledge construction. The article outlines five arts-informed pedagogical strategies described as ‘designs for provocation’ to explore how these aesthetic approaches support the development of creative and emergent leaders and commitments to social justice. It concludes by exploring the promise and limitations of the approaches discussed.     

Ethnicity as social capital: an examination of first-generation,ethnic-minority students at a Canadian university

In this article, we use interview data collected in a four-year longitudinal study of first-generation university students to answer the question: how might the ethnicity of first-generation students impact their university experiences? After briefly examining previous literature written on the educational achievement levels of ethnic-minority Canadians, specifically Asian-Canadians, and on first-generation students, we explain the concept of social capital and how it relates to ethnicity. The findings extracted from the interviews in this paper suggest that, although first-generation students lack general knowledge about university, their ethnic identities serve to ease their disadvantaged positions in university by serving as both bonding and bridging social capital in the form of relationships, peer groups and ethnic clubs.     

高校图书馆社会科学普及作用发挥机制研究--基于高校图书馆公共文化服务体系建设视角

在倡导全民阅读、建设书香社会时代背景下,必须创新高校图书馆服务理念,完善管理体制机制,加快文化法制建设,让拥有丰富优势文献信息资源的高校图书馆在社会科学普及中发挥应有作用,以弥补公共图书馆在公共文化服务中资源不足的问题。     

促进大学生全面发展的社会互动策略

运用丰富化的社会互动策略，促进大学生的全面发展，是高校育人的新课题，特别是校外社会互动策略的应用，对促进大学生全面发展更具新意。该就此提出了STS社会互动策略、实地考察社会互动策略、合作性社会互动策略、竞争性社会互动策略和冲动性社会互动策略，在高校育人中具有一定的现实指导意义。     

The university president as pragmatist: An investigation of priorities

Presidents of leading American universities were surveyed to determine the priority they place upon university programs of research, instruction, and service. The study examines the priorities they place upon methods of delivering university service programs to various constituent groups and the varying priority that the presidents place upon business and professional groups; general public groups; state or local government officials; federal government officials; labor groups; and agriculture groups. The study also compares the priorities of private, public non-land-grant, and public land grant university presidents on these items. Highest priority was given to research, followed by instruction and service. The rating for research was six times higher than for service. The service priority was further analyzed to reveal a client orientation by presidents linked to the basis of university support.     

理事会:大学治理社会参与的有益探索

社会是大学重要的外部利益相关者,是参与大学治理的重要力量;社会参与大学治理有利于大学完善外部治理结构、完成高等教育使命、维护利益相关者的利益;理事会的职能定位与社会参与大学治理机制的要求、社会参与大学治理的内容相契合,理应成为大学治理社会参与的平台与途径;理事会成员承担规定的义务并应当享有合理的权利。     

The involvement of university faculty members in social planning: motivating and hindering factors

The research examines factors that affect the involvement of university faculty members in social planning activities. It examines the impact of philanthropic views compared with the exchange relations approach, both on personal and organizational levels, as well as the contribution of several characteristics of the relationship between faculty members and institutions.