Partnership as cultural practice in the face of neoliberal reform

This article examines the nature of an on-going educational partnership between a Higher Education institution and a number of Further Education (FE) colleges in the West Midlands region of England, forged against the backdrop of sectoral marketisation and neoliberal reform. The partnership originates in the organisation and administration of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses for FE student-teachers across a range of sites. These collaborative ITE programmes prepare students to teach in FE settings and conceptualise the FE teacher as a critically informed practitioner, equipped to engage with research and knowledge production practices in the sector. The permeable grouping of teacher educators that has emerged identifies itself as a ‘community of practice’ and uses this concept in the development of a pattern of cultural interaction that scaffolds the continuing professional development of practitioners across the region. This article outlines the underpinning values of the Higher Education (HE)/FE partnership and explores how the partnership has responded to the neoliberal policyscape. Through a number of examples, the authors illustrate how this community seeks to translate shared beliefs into everyday practice, not least through a critical and participatory approach to practitioner research activities which challenges the performative practices that have come to dominate FE in England.     

Educational development for responsible graduate students in the neoliberal university

In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate student training, enacts the logic of neoliberalism in higher education in Canada. We approach this examination through a collaborative autoethnographic consideration of and reflection on our practices and experiences as educational developers, the design and delivery of a graduate student survey and our own experiences of and identification with ‘self-actualizing graduate students’. Further, we illustrate how neoliberalism shapes the work of teaching and learning centres resulting in offering programming, which compels graduate students to act in ways that can be read as responsible and capable of navigating an increasingly bleak academic labour market. Throughout the article we call attention to the ways in which our role as educational developers may either reinforce or disrupt neoliberal discourses. While we urge a critical approach, we also reflect on constraints to such criticism.     

Views from the blackboard: neoliberal education reforms and the practice of teaching in Ontario,Canada

This article discusses findings from two case studies examining the impact of neoliberal education reform on the classroom practice of teachers and adult educators in Ontario, Canada. We asked educators to comment on the impacts of 20 years of policy shifts in their classrooms. Teachers in public schools and adult literacy programmes echoed each other on issues of managerialism, privatisation and punitive accountability mechanisms. Both schoolteachers and adult educators made references to a reduction in autonomy and to an emerging ‘culture of fear’ in educational institutions and programmes. The experience of teachers highlights contradictions between the promises of neoliberalism and the ground-level impact of policy.     

高校实践教学师资队伍建设探讨

实践教学是高等教育的一个重要环节,实践教学师资水平对高等教育教学质量,对培养大学生实践动手能力有重要影响。实践教学师资队伍建设应目标明确,人才引进与培养及继续教育并重,实践教学师资引进要注重第一学历专业及教育背景、注重实践应用能力考核,使整个实践教学团队的年龄、职称、学历结构合理。实践教学师资建设可伴随实验室建设同步进行。     

高校实践教学管理信息化理论与实践

当今,随着我国经济的快速发展,我国的高校教育发展事业进程也在快速前进,21世纪,是信息技术高速发展的时代,信息技术已被运用到生活中的各个角落,在高校实施教学管理信息化也是顺应了信息化时代的要求。     

试析海淀走读大学实训基地的建设与管理

本文对高等职业院校在实践教学与实训基地建设及管理方面进行了探讨。分析了海大在实践教学与实训基地建设方面的构建模式 ,并对海大实训基地建设及管理等诸方面所采取的方式及其特点进行了介绍。     

Love acts and revolutionary praxis: challenging the neoliberal university through a teaching scholars development program

ABSTRACT

There has been significant interest in developing academics through Teaching Scholar Development Programs across the USA, Canada, the UK, and more recently in Australia. At their core, such programs develop academics across teaching scholarship, leadership, promotion, and award opportunities, where universities reap the benefits of developing such a cadre of leaders. This paper pays witness to one such a program in an Australian university to highlight enactments of caring passionately. We use qualitative survey evaluation data, metaphor analysis and reflective practice to nuance the pleasures, passions and challenges of the lived experiences using phenomenological and metaphor lenses to describe our experiences. Metaphors provide powerful insights into the dimensions of experience as they open up how programs are perceived and experienced. Our paper disrupts traditional linear writing through rhizomatic, multivocal and multitextual encounters to challenge dominant authorial voicing. The academic identity work and emotional work required in the program is unfolded through evolving, experiencing and reflecting on the program to inform design and highlight what we have come to (re)value in our academic work when we come together to learn, share, and lead. We forge ways to be and become with and against neoliberal agendas that have choked the soul of ‘the university’ to evolve rich spaces and practices of/for reciprocity and kindness where not only learning can thrive, but where love acts – a much needed revolutionary praxis for our time.     

顶岗实习:基础教育与高等教育的有效链接——兼议顶岗实习对高等教育的反拨与促进作用

高等教育应具备三项基本职能:培养专门人才、科学研究和服务社会。顶岗实习支教是培养专门人才不可或缺的实践环节,它的实施将高等教育和基础教育紧密链接在一起,不仅是对农村基础教育的有力支持,还对高等教育的人才培养、教育体制改革、教育科学研究、理论联系实际和服务社会等方面起着促进作用,也能对高等教育起到反馈与反拨作用,顶岗实习支教是一条价值多元的正确道路。     

高校实践教学质量监控的探索与实践

实践教学是与理论教学紧密联系又相对独立的一种非常重要的教学环节,在高校人才培养方案中起着理论教学不可替代的作用。在实践教学中,要完善实践教学管理与评价制度,构建实践教学内容体系,建立实践教学质量监控的组织管理机构,加强实践教学常规管理信息工作。只有如此,才能从根本上使实践教学取得良好的实效。     

The diversity of university disciplinary profiles in research and teaching

Is the ideal of a one-size-fits-all university model—where universities are capable of successfully performing all competencies simultaneously—ever achievable? Has the balance between teaching and research activities grown even more fragile or is such a balance unfeasible? In this paper, we review studies of institutional diversity in higher education and bibliometric analyses. We prose a two-dimensional typology based on diversity in teaching and research by scientific fields. We investigate the diversity in teaching and research, respectively, at the disciplinary level and address whether these primary activities mirror each other. As a measure of mismatch between the two activities, we assess the distribution of students and publications by scientific fields through a clustering analysis. Our study of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Russia reveals that private universities are less diverse both in research and teaching and have high teaching intensity compared to state universities. Expectedly, universities in the rankings have more diverse profiles and they have a higher research intensity.     

多媒体教学,过犹不及

近年来,多媒体教学逐渐成为一种教学时尚,充斥于课堂之上.这大大地减轻了教学负担,在一定程度上提高了课堂利用效果.且在某些课程中,使用多媒体教学更生动具体,让学生对课程的感性认识更深刻.但有时多媒体教学的生动花哨对学生的教学效果却适得其反.另一方面,由于多媒体教学的简单,可重复利用性高,导致许多老师不考虑其教学的课程是否适合多媒体教学就用上了或整个课程的教学中根本就不使用板书.这样就在很大程度上降低了教学质量.文章对在教学中使用多媒体的度的把握进行了探索,指出了多媒体教学与板书教学的相互搭配对平衡教学的质与量的重要性.     

Bias hypotheses under scrutiny: investigating the validity of student assessment of university teaching by means of external observer ratings

To advance the discussion on the validity of student evaluations of university teaching, student ratings of two teaching dimensions – student involvement and rapport – were compared with corresponding observer ratings. Seven potential bias variables were tested with regard to their impact on the students’ teaching assessment: three teacher characteristics (first impression, enthusiasm, humour) and four student characteristics (prior interest, expected grades, study experience, class attendance). Bias was defined as an impediment of the students’ assessment of teaching on course level. By means of bivariate correlations with course averages and two-level latent moderated structural equations, data of 1,716 students in 80 courses were analysed. Results showed that all three teacher characteristics were genuinely connected to rapport, and even explained variance of the student-rated variable when controlling for observer-rated rapport. The assessment of student involvement was not modified by the teacher characteristics except for teacher enthusiasm, which affected the student evaluation when controlling for observed involvement and, moreover, moderated the relation between the observed and the student-rated variable. For the examined student characteristics, no biasing effects were found – neither on rapport nor on student involvement.     

高职国际贸易实务课程教学方法的探讨

根据高职学生的特点,对国际贸易实务课程的教学方法,提出分模块任务、案例分析以及情境模拟三种教学方法,阐述了如何通过不同的教学方法,提高教学成效的思考。     

Making sense of a teaching programme for university academics: Exploring the longer-term effects

To professionalise teaching in universities, certificated teaching programmes for academics are increasingly widespread and often mandatory for new lecturers. Evaluations of impact have escalated in the past decade. Existing studies show mixed results but few consider the differential effects on individuals over the longer term. This study examines narratives of course participants a number of years following completion to understand how lecturers made sense of formal teaching development. Powerful outcomes materialise for some individuals, highly focused by personal reference frames and career experiences. Findings are related to wider studies of teacher growth and individual orientations to teaching professional development.     

The great neoliberal hijack of collaboration: a critical history of group-based learning in tertiary education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the teaching of collaboration within tertiary education, critiquing the hegemony of a neoliberal mandate. This review of academic literature first identifies the significance of social capital and an intrinsic motivation to collaborate, to theorize how an important and complex graduate attribute (termed here ‘collaborative dexterity’) might be approached by pedagogy. This leads into a historical analysis of research into higher education, revealing how the instrumentalization of collaboration to enhance the private advantage of learners continues to pervade academia’s understanding of collaboration. As higher education transitioned from learning ‘through’ collaboration to learning ‘to’ collaborate, extrinsic motivations for collaboration were promoted further through assessment procedures, maintaining a narrow economic-exchange approach to collaboration. These educational practices inhibit the development of collaborative dispositions, foster self-interest and ultimately limit graduates’ preparation for the needs of collaborative work environments. Moreover, while educational scholarship has extensively explored why collaboration is important and how it may be assessed, much less consideration has been given to how collaboration might actually be taught within diverse disciplinary areas in tertiary education. This suggests an urgent need for further research into how collaboration is taught within tertiary education, in ways that extend beyond a neoliberal conceptualization of collaboration.     

Producing neoliberal citizens: critical reflections on human rights education in Pakistan

This paper challenges the celebratory uptake of human rights education (HRE) in postcolonial contexts by making visible the ideological and political entanglements of the discourse with neoliberal assumptions of citizenship. I draw evidence from, and critically reflect on, a specific HRE programme – a series of summer camps for girls entitled, Women Leaders of Tomorrow (WLT) – that a colleague and I implemented in Pakistan. Using narrative inquiry methodology, I examine the kinds of citizens imagined in and through its curriculum, and the norms of leadership and community promoted by it, to argue that the programme can be interpreted as a technology of neoliberalism in that it was productive of neoliberal rationalities. Individuals, however, are not simply objects of knowledges; they co-opt, resist, negotiate, and compromise. I, thus, disturb my own linear reading of the unfolding of WLT by reflecting on moments of resistances where participants not only interrogated its assumptions but also engaged in self-stylisations that produced new mutations of HRE. This unfolding of a globalist discourse in a local setting directs me to call for a re-conceptualisation of HRE in postcolonial contexts that is multiple, contingent, and fluid.     

大学物理教学的改革与实践

从提高大学物理教学质量入手,分析了大学物理教学现状,对大学物理教学的改革与实践进行了探讨．研究内容包括三个方面：教师综合素质的提高、立体化教学资源的建设、教学模式的实践和教学评价体系的改进．     

Collaborative scholarship as a means of improving both university teaching practice and research capability

The literature suggests generic workshops on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) rarely have a lasting impact on teaching. Seeking an alternative approach, academic developers designed a four-stage Collaborative Scholarship Model where they provided individualised SoTL mentoring to academics implementing a teaching innovation. Project outcomes included sustained change to teaching, openness to new ideas, scholarly contributions and peer recognition (through awards, publications or invited presentations). This model had a sustained impact on participants’ teaching and increased research productivity. Although few individuals can be mentored at one time in this labour-intensive model, long-term benefits may still outweigh limitations in scalability.     

Process implementation perspective on neoliberal regulation: a comparative analysis of national curricula and standards-based reforms in the USA and Australia

ABSTRACT

This comparative case study adopts a process implementation perspective on neoliberal regulation to explore developments in national curricula and standard-based reforms in the USA and Australia. Date sources include research reports, books, OECD data, and local survey data. The comparison of the dynamic of two countries reveals that whereas policymakers in the USA adopted a transforming regulatory strategy (targeting the ambiguity and conflict levels in local policy) to implement, Australian policymakers adopted a congruence regulatory strategy (ratifying ambiguity and conflict levels). As a result of this dynamic, the education system in the USA displays a relatively tighter structure, which is related to the tighter professional teaching culture. The analysis suggests that the effect of global ideas and policies adopted locally depends on policymakers’ regulatory strategy, and that local system change drastically only when policymakers adopt the neoliberal default preference for active transformative implementation. Hence, a specific implementation dynamic is a key factor in the global neoliberal agenda, and its presence or absence indicates convergence or divergence between countries adopting similar policies.     

Effects from audit culture and neoliberalism on university teaching: an autoethnographic perspective

Spanish university culture revolves mainly around the evaluation of professionals on the basis of the amount of work published in high-impact journals (weight assessments). The paper is shaped as an autoethnography, focusing mainly on the author’s life at university. Data collection and analysis set off from 2011, during the lecturer’s first year of working at university. The research aims principally at reflecting upon the highly demanding processes undergone by a lecturer, which might have a negative impact on other personal and professional domains. However, we also seek to show the weaknesses of the accreditation system as well as to consider the need to design a system that is able to put the emphasis back on the value of real academic work.