Media and adult learning: A forum: The role of the faculty member in distance education

Abstract

This article argues for understanding distance education as a community of practice that must acknowledge and accommodate diversity in the context of increasing economic globalization. It asserts that any community of practice is embedded in a larger social context that influences values and practice. It also examines the historic and contemporary social, economic, and political forces that inform and influence distance education practice. This is followed by reflections on the implications for distance education practice and its current capacity to be sensitive to diversity and to meet the needs of culturally diverse learners.     

Developing Networked Learning within Higher Education: a case study of an electronic forum for university staff

Abstract

This paper presents a case study on an electronic forum to enable university staff to discuss networked learning. The paper begins by describing networked learning and argues that its implementation will require rethinking approaches to teaching and new relationships between staff carrying out different roles within higher education institutions. The paper goes on to describe how an electronic forum was set up to enable staff to share their understanding and experiences of networked learning at a local university. This forum was valued by participants as it gave them the opportunity to contribute to a discussion and reflect on different approaches. However, the level of sharing was less than many would have liked due in the main to the high threshold to the discussion and time pressures on the participants.     

Food leadership: Leadership and adult learning for global food systems transformation

International Review of Education -     

The electronic campus: The collaboratory: A new model for teaching and learning in the electronic environment

The “collaboratory librarian” in the Bartle Library at Binghamton University describes an innovative use of electronic networks to support traditional teaching and learning. However, the collaboratory concept also offers all educators exciting opportunities to promote learning in both the extracurricular and cocurricular dimensions of campus life.     

The university and democracy: Interlocking learning and governing

This paper examines the relationship between learning and governing. It does so by positing that systems of social organization become reflective of theories of mind. It argues that, as systems of higher education are institutions most reflective of mind, the organization of higher education becomes a critical factor in determining and securing the strength of democratic systems of governance. The paper presents this theory in terms of philosophical argument, historical analyses, and present political practices. It sets out specific recommendations for designing systems of higher education that might reflect the comprehensive mental operations and thereby enhance democratic rule. And it builds upon such discoveries to suggest new forms of governance that might enfranchise rather than alienate diverse population groups.     

Local and global in the formation of a learning theorist: Peter Jarvis and adult education

Abstract

Peter Jarvis is a towering figure in the study of adult and lifelong education and a leading and original theorist of learning. This paper sets out his intellectual and professional biography, maps the main contours of his work and introduces fourteen papers by leading scholars devoted to his work. Five broad phases in Jarvis’ life are identified: (a) youth, self-education, Methodist ministry and early teaching and research; (b) founding of the International Journal of Lifelong Education, authorship of important textbooks on adult and professional education and linking of academic communities in different countries; (c) early research on and theorisation of learning; (d) engagement from the early 1990s with debates on lifelong learning and the learning society; and (e) return to theorisation of learning, particularly from the perspective of globalisation, from around 2000. Recurring themes include ethics and responsibility, the essentially social nature of learning, democracy, and authenticity in human relationships.     

Eliminating global learning poverty: The importance of equalities and equity

This paper explores the quantitative relationships between average levels of learning achievement across countries, changes in average levels of learning achievement, the inequality of distribution of achievement (akin to income or wealth inequality in general development analysis), and the proportion of students learning at or below an absolute minimum (akin to poverty in general development analysis). The paper uses a variety of data from cross-national and national assessments: aggregate data, micro (student-level) data, school-level data, and time-series data. The paper shows how various factors such as gender or wealth impact learning levels, but also shows that ‘systems-related’ inequality, not directly related to such factors, is typically much larger than inequality associated with any of those factors. The paper shows that countries progress from very low average levels of achievement to middle levels more by reducing the percentage of students with very low scores (that is, by paying attention to the ‘bulging’ left-hand tail of the distribution) than by increasing the percentage of high performing students. The availability of micro data from a particular case allows exploration of the relationship between inequality measures and measures of the percentage of students below a low level of achievement and shows that, at least in that case, the reduction in inequality that accompanies improvements in the average levels takes place mostly through a reduction in the percentage below a low level. Unlike in the case of income, where vast reductions in income poverty seem possible without reducing income inequality, the evidence presented here suggests that this typically does not happen with learning levels: inequality reduction, reductions in percentages below a low level, and improvements in the averages are all empirically connected. More work is needed to show whether that connection is also causal.     

The spectrum of school–university partnerships: A typology of organizational learning systems

School–university partnerships are not uni-dimensional projects. Success in these partnerships can be found in loosely-coupled systems such as client–server partnerships and in more tightly-coupled systems such as collaborative development centers. Using a comparative case study approach, we explore two school–university partnership case studies and propose a framework for identifying and evaluating partnerships as learning systems. The structure of the partnership has implications for the focus of organizational learning initiatives that can form the foundation of sustained, systemic internal evaluation.     

Students learning orientations and adult work: The SLOG project

Over the past few years a collaborative research network known as the Students Learning Orientations Group (SLOG) has been developing new measures of learning orientation among secondary school students in England, India, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. The research is part of a long-term project examining the links between student learning orientations and subsequent work orientations and behaviour. This paper describes briefly the research problem, the objectives of the international study, the organisation of the collaborative research network, the annual research workshops, problems of funding and research design, methods and preliminary results.     

大学英语专业学生合作协调学习探究

通过对大学校园英语合作协调协调学习的问题及其原因的剖析与思考,发现在大学英语教学中开展合作协调协调学习,首先考虑到在具体的实践过程中所遇到的困难,并且,还要考虑到有些学生特别积极参与各种形式的合作协调学习,然后结合大学生在英语合作协调学习中被动消极参与的原因,充分调动大学生学习的主动性、积极性和创造性。最后,教师应把握学生的参与程度,因势利导,努力使每位学生参与合作协调学习,以提高他们整体的英语学习水平。     

The flexible university: higher education and the global production of migrant labor

This article demonstrates how neoliberal higher education has come to play a distinct role in the global market for migrant labor, where a growing number of developing nations educate its citizens for overseas work in order to maximize future monetary remittances. Located in the Philippines, this study shows how local colleges and universities attempt to impose an ideal notion of flexibility, quickly shifting academic manpower and resources to programs that would produce the ‘right’ types of workers to address foreign labor demands. Based on qualitative interviews with Filipino college educators and students, the article then discusses how such ‘flexible’ strategies undermine the job security of college faculty and lead to the constant restructuring of physical space within university campuses. Such changes negatively affect both students and teachers.     

知识·创新·未来——吴兆颐博士谈首届全球学习型组织论坛

吴兆颐,美国麻省大学教育管理学博士,国际SOL(组织学习学会)中国区协作者,近年来一直从事学习型组织的研究、调查和方案设计工作,他审编了彼得·圣吉的《第五项修炼--实践篇》、《变革之舞》等著作。 吴兆颐博士曾在八十年代在美国麻省大学任教并任亚洲事务顾问,与当时同在麻省大学的彼得·圣吉博士结下了深厚的友谊。1993年回国以后,     

成人自我导向学习能力及其培养

时代呼唤自主性学习，成人的特点及信息社会的发展决定了自我导向学习是成人学习的主要主要，本梳理了自我导向学习的内涵，阐发了成人自我导向学习的客观依据及其培养途径。