Equalizing educational opportunities and its problems

The Editors are glad to be able to open the third year of theInternational Review of Education with an article by Isaac Leon Kandel. They offer him. their respectful greetings and best wishes on the occasion of his 75th birthday, celebrated in 1956, and on his entry into the fourth quartercentury of his life.They admire him as one of the grand old men of Comparative Education and hope that he will continue to bring an unbroken freshness and further stimulus to education in general and especially to his favourite subject.

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Das Problem der Schaffung Gleicher Bildungs-Möglichkeiten Für Alle

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La Démocratisation de L'enseignement et Ses Problémes

     

Growing confidence in educational research: Threats and opportunities

We live in difficult times—socially, economically and politically—and it is right that learned societies, such as the British Educational Research Association, reflect on their purpose and direction. We cannot take for granted the social contract that supports the funding of social science and educational research. This paper reflects on enduring themes and new pressures and argues for special attention to: collaboration within and beyond the community of university‐based educational researchers; support for, and recognition of, the importance of reviews of research; the development of accessible forms of communication of findings and their implications, to guide sound decision making; more direct engagement with practitioners, policy makers and the public. It argues that it is time for communities of educational researchers to have confidence to become outward looking and strengthen alliances with other groups of researchers at home and abroad, across disciplines, with different types of research institutions and also with practitioners and policy makers. What drives this should be our principal aim to pursue educational research and its application for the improvement of education and the public benefit.     

Expanding schooling opportunities for 4-year-olds

We use a novel quasi-experimental strategy to estimate the effect of expanding early schooling enrollment possibilities on early achievement. It exploits two features of the school system in The Netherlands. The first is rolling admissions; children are allowed to start school immediately after their 4th birthday instead of at the beginning of the school year. The second is that children having their birthday before, during and after the summer holiday are placed in the same class. These features generate sufficient exogenous variation in children’s enrollment opportunities to identify its effects on test scores. Making available one additional month of time in school increases language scores of disadvantaged pupils by 6 percent of a standard deviation and their math scores by 5 percent of a standard deviation. For non-disadvantaged pupils we find no effect.     

Conceptualization and measurement of digital citizenship across disciplines

A corollary to the exponential growth of digital technology is the increase in research interest in the construct of digital citizenship (DC) in diverse disciplinary areas. Although the term DC is used widely in research, scholars do not commit to a common definition. This integrative review investigates the conceptualizations and measurements of DC, across disciplines, in the extant literature. A systematic search of 11 databases identified a total of 350 unique items that contain “digital citizenship” in the title or keywords published by December 2018, with the majority published after 2010. Of these, 114 were peer-reviewed journal articles published in a wide range of discipline-specific venues, more than half of which were education-related. In-depth analyses show that each of the dominant conceptualizations of DC has been adopted by different disciplines, albeit with different popularities in adoption. Findings also revealed widely shared stakeholder concerns and research foci in DC research across the disciplines. However, there is a stark lack of empirical research on the young children, and an absence of commonly deployed research instruments in DC-related research. The present integrative review implicates the need for interdisciplinary collaboration for significant advances in DC research to address issues in policy and practice.     

Participatory pedagogy in an open educational course: challenges and opportunities

This article presents an empirical study of an open educational course in an online peer-to-peer university (P2PU). P2PU is a nonprofit organization offering free educational opportunities. Focus is on how peers are part of creating course content in a Web 2.0 environment. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have evolved into two different pedagogical directions: content-based xMOOCs and connectivist cMOOCs. cMOOCs emphasizing learning in networks developed informally, where learners are part of creating course content, resemble P2PU`s vision. We investigated processes of interaction in co-creation of tasks in an open educational course and what opportunities and challenges emerge. We employed template analysis for coding data. We report two different processes of interaction between users and organizers: problem identification and co-creation of tasks. This study contributes to understanding a new model of teaching and learning through scrutinizing participation in an open educational course and explores implications for the learning experience.     

Expanding educational access in Eastern Turkey: A new initiative

The Eastern Anatolian project extends opportunity and access to quality education. The study examines the selection and learning systems adopted within the framework of gender equity, family background and higher order skills. Performance data on a range of selection measures and the initial programme are analysed. Results show that selection was successful in choosing high achievers and establishing equitable occupational and gender access. Girls out-performed boys in skills-based selection measures, showed greater relative gains in language learning, and evinced better higher order skills, reversing the trend in state examinations.     

Expanding and sustaining arts-based educational research as practitioner inquiry

ABSTRACT

As practitioner inquiry is now established as a widely-recognized research tradition and flourishing movement for educational change, we might consider ways that practitioner inquiry could be conceptualized and executed to broaden implementation, deepen understanding, and sustain inquiry within teacher education. Arts-based research may be an ideal methodology for the extension and sustainment of such inquiry as its visual, performative orientation lends itself to participant engagement and provides access in the representation and dissemination of results. This article will put forth models for advancing arts-based practitioner inquiry within the field of teacher education, by drawing from multiple cycles of a dual-layered, ABER study. This vision of arts-based practitioner inquiry is that of inclusion, increasing the number of those who conduct and interact with research; collaboration, blurring boundaries between the inquiries of teacher educators and pre-service teachers; accessibility, tapping into the power of the arts to engage and communicate in ways that scientific language cannot; and continued engagement, using learning from one cycle to inform inquiry in the next.     

Monoculturalism in transition: The educational implications and opportunities of finnish internationalization

A lecturer in English language at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyv?skyl? (Finland). His fields of interest include the use of computers in language teaching, Canadian studies, global education and citizenship. He has published several articles and textbooks, includingA handbook of classroom English.     

Lifelong education in Japan,a highly school-centred society: educational opportunities and practical educational activities for adults

In Japan the use of the term lifelong education has become widespread throughout the 1990s and is central to educational policies, which actively tackle crucial subjects that take place in a wide area of education in a drastically changing contemporary society. This paper examines in detail the present situation of the development of lifelong education, in particular concerning adults, relating to the traditional ideas and systems on education called a highly school-centred society. These traditional ideas and systems, even today in Japan, have still functioned to greatly value school credentials and disturb the widening of the participation of adults in lifelong education, nevertheless adults have stood in need of continuously studying up-to-date knowledge and skills in a wide range of areas and at a different level throughout their working lives.     

扩大差异不宜成为教育目标

教育以差异为起点与终点,但扩大差异不宜成为教育目标。人与人存在差异是不争的事实。尽管新生儿之间遗传差异并不显著,但由于每个人生活环境不同,成长条件有异,加上逐渐形成的“自我”的选择方向与努力程度的区别,类似的小孩子会成长为相去甚远的成人:有一心向善的志士仁人,也有怙恶不悛的恶魔坏蛋;有德高望重的学者,也有碌碌无为的闲汉……凡此种种变化,都是各种先后天因素作用的结果,其中也有教育的作用在内,应是肯定无疑的。但是,尽管各种外在条件,也包括教育,都会对人的发展起着重要的影响作用,有时这种影响甚至带有某种绝对意味,而最…     

The Claims of Documentary: Expanding the educational significance of documentary film

Abstract

The documentary film is a popular curriculum tool, and the goal of this paper is to expand the educational significance of the documentary genre I argue that current understandings of this genre are limited and limiting, and offer an alternative perspective on the genre. This alternative will be built from Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of education, in particular, his understanding of the role that ‘representativeness’ plays in teaching and learning.     

Expanding notions of social reproduction: Grandparents’ educational attainment and grandchildren's cognitive skills

Inherited privilege and status remain powerful factors in the distribution of opportunity in American life. These transfers of socioeconomic resources across generations are facilitated by the links between adult educational attainment and children's cognitive skills. Our current study expands the notion of social reproduction beyond this narrow two-generation approach to investigate the links between grandparents’ educational attainment and their grandchildren's academic abilities. Using a nationally representative sample of over 13,000 children who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), we find that familial advantages in human capital persist over time and that these advantages are associated with improved cognitive outcomes among later generations. Even after controlling for a wide array of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, young children with college-educated grandparents possess stronger literacy and mathematics skills at the start of formal schooling. Propensity score approaches, which address concerns regarding the endogeneity inherent in the topic, yield similar results, suggesting the robustness of our findings.     

Promoting a culture of scholarship among educational developers: exploring institutional opportunities

Educational developers tend to be located in centres and units of teaching and learning outside the academic mainstream. They have little opportunity to engage in scholarship. Through an overview of the literature on educational development and educational professional roles and responsibilities, the author suggests that promoting a culture of scholarship among educational developers will contribute significantly towards their pedagogical professional development. It will enhance the quality of professional consultation between educational developers and academic staff in the faculties. The discussion concludes with suggestions for implementing innovative strategies to promote a culture of scholarship within the higher education academic mainstream.     

Gendered barriers to educational opportunities: resettlement of Sudanese refugees in Australia

This paper argues that whilst equitable educational pathways are integrated into educational policy discourses in Australia, there are significant gendered barriers to educational participation among members of the Sudanese refugee groups. The specific conditions of forced migration reinforce disadvantage and further limit opportunities. Cultural factors play a key role in this, as the data from this study demonstrate. Participants in this study are Sudanese refugees who arrived in Australia as part of the humanitarian programme. The paper draws upon interviews and focus group data that were collected for a larger study on the broader issue of resettlement of Sudanese refugees in Australia. This paper argues that women from refugee backgrounds are particularly at risk and face cultural and linguistic barriers in accessing educational opportunities.     

Situated Learning: Conceptualization and Measurement

A focus on the interaction between cognitive schemas and context in situ has been suggested as fundamental in organizational decision making and information interpretation. Past research suggests that the situation and the social interaction that occur during learning at the cognitive level consist of factors that affect the process, but the research lacks a coherent explanation for how those factors affect it. We propose a conceptualization of learning, termed situated learning, which accounts for these factors. By drawing on situated cognition theory, social learning theory, and the theory of mental models, we identify and measure four components of situated learning, that is, thematic focus, cognitive absorption, social structure, and participation. Among the most important lessons for researchers and practitioners is the need to consider learning as a constellation of the four components instead of an indivisible phenomenon. This perspective can enhance our understanding of cognitive processes, such as information interpretation and decision making.     

Social Presence: Conceptualization and Measurement

Educational Psychology Review - Social presence is an important construct in online group learning. It influences the way how social interaction unfolds online and affects learning and social...