Making moral migrants? Exploring the educational aspirations of Black African and Caribbean boys in a New York City public school

ABSTRACT

Drawing on 48 in-depth interviews with Black immigrant and second-generation boys at Bridgewood secondary school in New York City, this article points out how the high educational aspirations expressed by Black African and Caribbean boys are strategically deployed as features of an ethnic project to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-Black racism in US society. The findings indicate that in a context of rising xenophobia along with the historical and continual stereotypes of Black people in the US, participants’ aspirations for elite higher education function as strategies to enhance their individual and ethnic reputations. High educational aspirations were also used to justify emigration to and worth within the US. At its core, this article illustrates how participants mobilized aspirations to represent themselves as moral migrants and ‘worthy’ ethnic minorities. Moral claims and ethnicity-based campaigns associated with aspirations are problematized because they reinforce the hierarchical racial order that informs US society.     

Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology

ABSTRACT

In Australia, like many western countries, there has been a convergence of education policy around a set of utilitarian and economistic approaches to vocational education and training in schools. Such approaches are based on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between national economic growth, productivity and human capital development resulting in the persuasive political argument that schools should be more closely aligned to the needs of the economy to better prepare ‘job ready’ workers. These common sense views resonate strongly in school communities where the problem of youth unemployment is most acute and students are deemed to be ‘at risk’, ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘disengaged’. This article starts from a different place by rejecting the fatalism and determinism of neoliberal ideology based on the assumption that students must simply ‘adapt’ to a precarious labour market. Whilst schools have a responsibility to prepare students for the world of work there is also a moral and political obligation to educate them extraordinarily well as democratic citizens. In conclusion, we draw on the experiences of young people themselves to identify a range of pedagogical conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to support their career aspirations and life chances.     

Reasons and resources: understanding pupils’ aspirations in lower vocational Dutch education

Much research has already been done on the aspirations of young people in lower (vocational) education. As a result, we have learnt more about why students may have high or low aspirations, and to what end their aspirations may lead them. However, there are still some crucial elements missing from the existing academic framework around pupils’ aspirations, which deals with the realisation of pupils’ ambitions. Through the study of ethnographic cases of native Dutch white girls in a lower vocational school, voicing their aspirations, two new concepts will be introduced: reasons and resources. With these two additions, it is hoped that this article will contribute to the existing academic literature on pupils’ ambitions, and it also endeavours to provide useful input for school staff to help them deal with the complexity of the formation and realisation of pupils’ aspirations in vocational schools.     

关于高职学生德育评价及考核研究

基于我国高等教育规模、结构的现状,高等职业教育的发展迅速,招生规模不断扩大.高等职业教育作为高等教育和职业技术教育有机结合的复合教育,对此类学生的思想品德教育及如何进行行之有效的考核、评价,成为了高职教育的一项重要课题.通过研究和实践,笔者认为:对高职学生的德育教育需要完整的评价体系,并需要在老师引导的前提下给他们充分发挥才能的空间,才能实现高职德育工作的目标.     

高职德育研究综述

当代高职德育既面临机遇又面临挑战。如何破解德育困境、增强德育实效已成为高职德育工作者面临的现实课题。已有部分学者对高职学生思想道德现状,高职德育存在的问题,高职德育的特殊性、内容及对策等问题进行了研究,提出了一些有价值的观点,为做好高职德育工作进行了积极的理论尝试。     

Schooling experiences and career aspirations of indigenous vocational high school students: a case study in Taiwan

In Taiwan, substantial resources have been invested in upper-secondary vocational education for Aborigines as a solution to their lack of career development opportunities. This study examined the schooling experiences and career aspirations of Taiwanese indigenous vocational high school students. A case study was designed to collect data through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 24 aboriginal students in twelfth grade at a Major Indigenous Vocational High School (MIVHS). The findings indicated that aboriginal students experienced mainstream-centric schooling that focused on preparing students for college education with additional support. The schooling contributed to their solid educational aspirations to attend non-prestigious technological colleges and vague occupational aspirations with low occupational self-efficacy. It also enforced their strong cultural aspirations of living in their homelands and benefiting their people. The findings suggest that the MIVHS could provide the culturally responsive schooling for aboriginal students' diversity to facilitate their career development.     

The history of education in the 1980s

ABSTRACT

This paper uses Basil Bernstein’s work on pedagogic discourses to examine a largely neglected facet of the history of vocational education – the liberal studies movement in English further education colleges. Initially, the paper discusses some of the competing conceptions of education, work and society which underpinned the rise and fall of the liberal studies movement – if indeed it can be described as such. The paper then draws on data from interviews with former liberal and general studies lecturers to focus on the ways in which different variants of liberal studies were, over time, implicated in inculcating certain forms of knowledge in vocational learners. Whilst it is acknowledged that liberal and general studies always represented contested territory and that it was highly variable both in terms of content and quality, the paper argues that, at least under certain circumstances, liberal studies provided young working-class people with the opportunity to locate their experiences of vocational learning within a critical framework that is largely absent from further education today. This, it is argued, can be conceptualised as an engagement with what Bernstein described as ‘powerful knowledge’.     

浅析高职大学生思想道德问题及教育对策

近年来,随着我国经济的发展和政治、经济、教育领域的深化改革,我国的高职教育有了长足的发展,其规模已是我国高等教育的半壁江山。但是,高职大学生在思想道德方面存在诸多问题,思想觉悟和职业道德层次不齐、总体水平偏低。现就高职大学生思想道德方面存在的问题以及教育对策,结合工作实践,略作阐述。     

高职学生德育现状分析及其对策

通过对高职学生的德育问卷调查,在分析高职学生德育现状的基础上,提出高职德育应以职业素质培养为核心,深化高职德育教育改革;以工学结合为平台,构建高职德育实践模式,以期增强高职德育工作的成效。     

高职教育就业导向的德育功能

高职教育竖持以就业为导向的办学方向，已成为高职教育界的共识，将对高职教育德育产生深刻影响。分析高职教育就业导向对德育的影响，研究就业导向具有的德育功能及其实现途径，有助于高职教育德育目标的实现。     

Vocational teachers' gendered reflections on education,teaching and care

In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we then analyse teachers' ambivalence about care work in the context of teaching, placing special emphasis on care as a gendered task, and then discuss the ‘moral panic’ or ‘worry speech’ about young people in vocational education from the perspective of caring about. The findings are reflected through earlier studies in lower secondary schools. We argue that even if teachers in vocational education, especially male teachers, tend to feel awkward about caring work, they cannot avoid it, and they do care about their students and regard care as a general responsibility.     

当前高职德育改革问题的思考

我国高等职业教育迅猛发展,高职院校德育工作面临许多新的情况,德育改革亟待加强。通过分析当前高职院校学生思想、行为和心理特点,明确高等职业教育的德育目标,加强职业道德教育,并提出高职学生德育的重要措施。     

A longitudinal study on boys’ and girls’ career aspirations and interest in technology

Background: More young people, boys and girls, are needed in technical studies and professions, as the relative number of students in technology-related studies has been decreasing in most industrialised countries. To overcome this decrease several countries implemented mandatory technology classes in the curriculum of secondary education.

Purpose: This study has two goals: exploring the evolution of pupils’ interest during the year(s) they attend the mandatory technology classes and exploring determining characteristics for differences in boys’ and girls’ attitude change over time.

Sample: This study focuses on data gathered in the first and second grade of the first cycle in general secondary education in the North region of Belgium, Flanders. In a first stage we selected a good representation of geographically spread schools (n = 20), from which over 1300 students participated.

Design and methods: A longitudinal study with eight measurement occasions spread over the course of two years is presented in order to capture the evolution of students’ attitudes, making use of a multilevel growth model analysis.

Results: The results show that students’ interest in technology decreases over time, although at the end of each grade interest is increasing again. Boys’ and girls’ interest in technology also evolves a little different in the first cycle of secondary education. For career aspirations we didn’t see any significant difference between boys and girls. Boys’ and girls’ aspirations decrease over time with a little increase by the end of the second grade. Students with a more technological curriculum also have more career aspirations in the field of technology than their peers with other curricula. Although students’ perceptions about technology as a subject for boys and girls are largely stable.

Conclusions: The evolution of students’ attitude is far from linear, this strengthens us in the choice for a more complex analysis model and the choice for more measuring points than only at the beginning and the end when analysing students’ attitudes towards technology. With this research we found that students interest and aspirations in the field of technology are not stable and do change in the first cycle of secondary education. Overall, we can conclude that if the goal of technology education at school maintains to promote ‘a larger number of students in technological oriented studies and professions’, there is still much to do.     

加强学生网络思想教育是德育工作的新课题

网络在使大学生获得信息快捷、方便同时，也给学生的学业，身心健康等方面带来许多消极影响。为此，笔提出加强学生网络思想教育这一高职院校德育工作的新课题，并探讨了高职院校开展网络教育的思路。     

高职院校特色德育模式的构建

高职院校德育工作要结合高职学生的思想实际与认知特征,充分利用高职教育实践性强的优势,通过德育课程精品化、德育过程科学化、德育手段多元化等途径,克服高职德育工作滞后、低效的现状,为培养德才兼备的技能型人才服务。     

论德育教育在高职院校保卫组织中的功能性作用

在高职院校的各项工作中,德育教育始终居于首位。高职院校保卫组织既是维护学校稳定、搞好校园综合治理的职能部门,同时也是学校实施德育教育系统工程中的一个重要组成部分。在高职德育教育工作中,保卫组织的功能可通过以下几方面来实现：1．坚持管理育人,保障德育教育的顺利进行;2．坚持服务育人,保障德育教育的健康发展;3．坚持实践育人,保障德育教育的深入开展;4．坚持安全教育育人,保障德育教育的持续发展;5．坚持环境育人,保障德育教育的年口谐发展。     

Girls’ educational aspirations and agency: imagining alternative futures through schooling in a low-resourced Tanzanian community

The chance of a secondary education for young girls who might have otherwise been among many out-of-school youth cultivates aspirations for their future. While aspirations to be educated expand the possibilities of opportunities, they also go unfulfilled in an environment of low achievement rates, high unemployment and constraining gender norms that can leave many secondary graduates disempowered. This study examines how aspirations, agency and future well-being are linked through 4 years of longitudinal data from interviews with girls in a technical and vocational school in rural Tanzania. Conceptually, the paper puts forward a framework within a capability approach to consider how aspirations and agency are oriented toward valued well-being. It also draws inspiration from Appadurai’s use of aspirations as a cultural concept that is future and change oriented and socially embedded. Finally, the body of scholarship that frames Bourdieu’s notion of agency as productive is drawn upon to illuminate whether and how girls are agentic in acting toward their aspirations. Bringing these conceptualizations together, the empirical analysis shows how aspirations and agency are dialectically related and socially situated, allowing for openings in agency to occur even when faced with gendered constraints to aspirations.     

整体构建学校德育体系落实立德树人根本任务

德,是思想政治和道德品质的总称。立德树人,就是要培养青少年学生具有思想政治素质和道德品质。落实立德树人根本任务,需要整体构建大中小学德育体系。整体构建学校德育体系的基本框架是以德育目标、德育内容、德育途径、德育方法、德育管理、德育评价等要素系统为纬,以小学德育、中学德育(中职德育)、大学德育(高职德育)等层次系统为经,进行横向贯通,纵向衔接,分层递进,螺旋上升。新时代落实立德树人根本任务,需要重点做好三方面工作:一是构建全程、全面、全员可操作的学校德育体系;二是加强德育实践活动课程建设;三是重视学校文化和中国德育馆建设。     

Nostalgia in the narratives of vocational teachers as a way of understanding responses to change

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on nostalgia in the narratives of vocational teachers. The aim is to understand the role of nostalgia as a mechanism for adapting to or resisting educational change. The paper is based on the secondary analysis of semi-structured interviews with 30 Estonian vocational teachers. In the teachers’ narratives, the nostalgia for the former vocational education system, which provided more autonomy and empowerment for teachers in their work, was overlaid with the nostalgia for a society with more stable family and work-life patterns and trusting attitudes towards vocational teachers. Although there were examples where the nostalgic narratives were strategically used to legitimize resistance to change, in most cases, nostalgia tends to serve as the mechanism for making sense of the educational changes teachers have been faced with. Nostalgia also contributes to making sense of oneself as a teacher in a new situation and collective identity building. It is argued in the paper that we should acknowledge the positive functions of nostalgia and create support mechanisms to facilitate sense-making and critical reflection upon the changes for teachers. Nostalgia should be recognized as a productive force indicating the contradictions in present reforms and practices and opening up new directions.     

The vocational turn of adult education in Denmark – an analysis of adult education policy from the late 1990s

ABSTRACT

Denmark has a strong and versatile tradition of adult education. Over a long historical period, adult education for public enlightenment and leisure, for continuing study and for vocational and professional competence have been developed, been made part of state policy and been used by citizens. But in recent years the public and political presence of Danish adult education has changed. While education policy issues generally abound in public and political debates, adult education is given much less attention than earlier. In this article, we trace the causes of this and conclude that it reflects a turn towards focusing on vocational types of adult education and a relocation of adult education policy to networks linking the state and the social partners. Drawing on theories of policy streams, policy networks and the competition state, we provide a historical analysis of Danish adult education reforms during the past two decades and document how the vocational turn has manifested itself.