Disinterested,disengaged, useless: Conservative or progressive idea of the university?

There is evidence aplenty of academics' increasing incorporation into the life and fate of their university's brand, just as it is clear that university structures and incentives generally are dependent upon increasingly competitive resource capture under tightened managerial ideologies of institutional commitment (albeit by way of innumerable “consultation” and “responsibilisation” mechanisms). In that context, it becomes important to re‐think and re‐imagine the very “idea of the university”, especially now that images and imperatives around the Engaged University are a) omnipresent and b) convene a whole range of entirely disparate activities, governed by very different intellectual rationales. While hardly wishing to be “against” university involvement in the “wider world”, this article critically questions the new metaphysic of Engagement, and the discursive framings and traps that sustain it. In an age when perhaps only paradox and counter‐intuitive gesturing seem to work as prompts towards thinking otherwise, I make the case that some “traditionalist” ideas of higher education can be part of a reasserted “progressivist” social ethics.     

On the Problems of Asking for a Definition of Quality in Education

In this article we discuss the problems of asking for a definition of quality in education from a philosophy of language perspective. We take the concept of quality as it appears in higher education discourse as our example. More specifically we discuss the possibility of obtaining a precise, unified definition of quality by addressing the problem of asking “what is” questions. We use definition theory and theory pertaining to linguistic vagueness, including Wittgenstein and the idea of family resemblance. We suggest that quality is an inherently vague concept, which runs us into boundary problems and forces us to operate in grey zones. This means that if your “what is” question is a question for the essence of quality, you make demands that the concept cannot fulfil. Recognition of this fact implies that our expectations concerning concept precision and unity should be modified. Our discussion illuminates why it is so difficult to find a definition of the concept of quality.     

Universities,the Social Sciences,and Civil Society

Both the ambiguity of the term, civil society, and its protean meanings are presented as well as the ambiguous and contradictory links between higher education and civil society. For depending upon who is doing the defining, civil society can have a number of definitions, both positive and negative. The term can designate a market economy as distinct from a planned (socialist) economy, a democratic society as distinct from an undemocratic society. It can also designate a society that while “civil” at home is not so beyond its borders. Civil society should stand for participatory democracy and tolerance at personal, national, and international levels. Universities, however, as national entities have frequently contributed to lack of civility in society and to chauvinism, intolerance, racism, and to eventual ethnic cleansing. Examples, drawn from the post‐1990 history of Yugoslavia, are cited. Yet with a proper attitude towards teaching and learning based on three fundamental approaches, knowledge and understanding of the “other”, moral education in a broad sense, and what the author qualifies as “education sentimentale”, the university can develop as an engine for tolerance and peace, the true essence of a true civil society.     

新建地方本科院校教学团队建设研究

本科教育的质量是本科院校生存和发展的基础,是新建地方本科院校的生命。随着1999年以来高校不断扩招,提高教育教学质量是本科院校急需解决的问题。教师团队的教科研水平直接关系到人才培养的质量,如何加强师资队伍建设,促进新建地方本科院校的教学改革,使本科教育的质量和人才培养质量再上一个台阶成了新建地方本科院校直面问题。文章沿着"什么是新建地方本科院校教学团队-教学团队有哪些类型-为什么要建设教学团队-如何建设教学团队-在建设过程中存在哪些问题"的研究思路,探讨新建地方本科院校在教育教学改革过程中所面临的一些现实问题。     

脱贫攻坚启示下高校资助工作提升路径探索

近年来,我国脱贫攻坚成就显著,形成了中国特色的脱贫智慧,其中高校资助是教育扶贫的重要手段,脱贫攻坚的成功经验对开展资助工作有重要的指导与借鉴意义。从脱贫攻坚队伍建设、精准理念、扶志立志入手,结合目前资助工作短板展开分析,提出实施高校资助工作队伍“三提升”、聚焦精准资助“三精准”、构建立志教育长效体系等,以期推动高校资助工作进一步提质增效,充分发挥资助育人长效作用,助力巩固脱贫攻坚成果。     

The unfading power of collegiality? University governance in Poland in a European comparative and quantitative perspective

This paper studies the applicability of theoretical models of university governance from the international research literature to the Polish system. In particular, it is to test the applicability of a collegial model in the Polish case. The research question was ‘to what extent is a collegial model reflected in actual governance patterns found in the Polish university sector’. This is based on large-scale internationally comparable quantitative material. The empirical evidence for it comes from 3700 returned surveys in Poland (and more than 17,000 in eleven European countries) produced for two international research projects focused on the academic profession (CAP: “Changing Academic Profession” and EUROAC: “The Academic Profession in Europe”). This paper concludes that Polish universities are operating according to the traditional collegial model of the university as a “community of scholars” to an extent that is unparalleled in Western Europe. A detailed study of selected variables and specifically constructed indexes indicates that the defining feature of Polish academia today is the power of academic collegial bodies. The influence of collegial bodies on academic decision-making in Poland is the highest in Europe; and, in contrast, the power of the government and external stakeholders is the lowest. However, academics, sharing the “republic of scholars” institutional vision of the university, and still highly influential in university decision-making, are currently confronted with higher education reforms grounded in an instrumental vision of the university (in which it is a tool for national political agendas). Consequently, powerful value-driven clashes between the academic community and the community of policymakers and reformers are to be expected to intensify. The major theoretical concepts used in this paper come from Johan P. Olsen’s, Ian McNay’s and Robert Birnbaum’s studies of university governance, and its findings are presented from a European comparative and quantitative perspective.     

我国高等教育的发展趋势与应对策略

目前,我国高等教育已进入新的发展阶段,出现了把大学做强、竞争日趋激烈和国际化三大趋势,同时也面临着三大发展机遇.我国高等教育总体上还处于爬坡阶段,但未来十年将是其以内涵发展为特征、发展速度最快、发展成果最突出的时期.我国由高等教育大国走向高等教育强国必须准确把握时代大势,始终遵循高等教育发展规律,坚定不移走内涵发展之路,把提高质量作为关键与核心指标,不断打造“国字号”品牌,把学校做强、做优、做特,实现可持续发展.     

International rankings and the contest for university hegemony

In just a decade, the international university rankings have become dominant measures of institutional performance for policy-makers worldwide. Bolstered by the façade of scientific neutrality, these classification systems have reinforced the hegemonic model of higher education – that of the elite, Anglo-Saxon research university – on a global scale. The process is a manifestation of what Bourdieu and Wacquant have termed US “cultural imperialism.” However, the rankings paradigm is facing growing criticism and resistance, particularly in regions such as Latin America, where the systems are seen as forcing institutions into a costly and high-stakes “academic arms race” at the expense of more pressing development priorities. That position, expressed at the recent UNESCO conferences in Buenos Aires, Paris, and Mexico City, shows the degree to which the rankings have become a fundamental element in the contest for cultural hegemony, waged through the prism of higher education.     

观念 改革 投入——对师范院校加强本科教学质量的思考

目前 ,我国的高等教育正在从“精英型高等教育”向“大众化高等教育”阶段迈进。伴随高等教育大众化时代的来临 ,教育教学质量问题开始浮出水面 ,如何在“大众化高等教育”与保持教育教学质量不断提高间找到最佳平衡点 ,已成为我国教育界的热点问题。因此 ,以总结天水师范学院扩招后努力提高教学质量的实践经验为基础 ,以院校加强自身建设为切入点 ,对师范院校如何应对“大众化高等教育”与提高教学质量这一局势进行了深入剖析 ,并提出了应对策略     

Factors,issues and interdependencies in the incorporation of a Web 2.0 based learning environment in higher education

This work investigates the effect a Web 2.0 learning environment may have in higher education in adding value to the students’ existing competencies. The major issues that this work examines are whether the incorporation of a Web 2.0 environment in higher education has an effect on the students’ performance and what are the significant factors that should be taken into account in the deployment of these technologies to achieve the maximum possible benefits and whether and how they correlate to each other. These factors are derived from the students’ views on the use of technology in a university course deployment and from the students’ personal opinions about a pilot course in a Web 2.0 learning environment. Although the results indicate no direct effect on the students’ performance, significant factors have been revealed via a thorough assessment, which has been performed in the context of a semester–long course, utilizing statistical process control techniques. The derived factors are namely: “Technology as an educational reinforcement”, “Technology as a tool to enhance comprehension” and “Enhancement of student interest and experience”, while in the second one “Completeness of the educational approach”, “Satisfaction from the educational approach” and “Course demands”. These factors can then form the basis for a feedback processes and a monitoring mechanism for a continuously updated educational process.     

The challenges of the faculty members’ commitment: The role of university brand

Commitment in the knowledge‐intensive sectors has today become a key organisational dilemma as well as a serious managerial concern. In the university setting, faculty members’ commitment to various stakeholder bases and the subsequent implications have hitherto been studied only to a limited extent. Through a quantitative survey, this paper studies university professors’ various modes of commitment and investigates the role of university brand in the context of Iranian universities. The findings reveal that university professors with higher level of professional commitment tend to be more organisationally committed. Furthermore, it is shown that university brand can increase the impact of professional commitment on organisational commitment.     

Towards the Idea of a World University

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.     

On Change and Diversity: The Role of Governmental Policy and Environmental Influences

This article addresses the issue of change in the government‐university relationship. As has become increasingly clear for both analysts of higher education policy and for administrators in higher education institutions, a fundamental shift in the relationship between national governments and higher education institutions is taking place in many western European countries. In some countries, these changes are occurring at greater speed than in others, but the movement to what has been labelled “state supervision” is quite dominant. The first part of the article analyzes the rationale for this change at system level by tracing its historical imperatives; after which it discusses the concept of the supervisory governance model. The second part focuses in particular on one of the key objectives of higher education policy, namely diversity, and addresses the question of the extent to which a supervisory governance strategy can contribute to the attainment of this objective and what doing so implies for the role and function of higher education institutions. By focussing on the specific issue of diversity, the authors intend to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between governments and higher education institutions that is implied in the supervisory model.     

Internationalization of Higher Education: A South African Perspective

The evolution of South African universities continues to be shaped by both apartheid and more recent post-apartheid policies. Yet the South African university system is mainly an elite, low participation and high attrition system, offering a medium quality education. Moreover, there is uneven attention to the opportunities that internationalization might bring to South Africa. The paper explores South Africa’s position in a global, African and regional perspective, and looks at post-apartheid trends in the internationalization of higher education. Finally, it provides an analysis, looking forward, of the essential conditions for more beneficial internationalization. This will include addressing “brain drain” and “brain gain,” global dialogue and mutual learning, and collaborative partnerships, marked by a common commitment to sound academic values, scientific integrity, ethics and social responsibility.     

From the editor

It is argued that much of the ineffectiveness of schools in producing change is due to the educational psychologists’ moral relativity, identified with an “industrial psychologist”; model. Such relativity can result in defining educational aims in terms of “social adjustment,”; an approach that is said to have no empirical basis, or in terms of a “bag of virtues,”; an approach that is said to suffer from lack of agreement on what the virtues should be. A developmental‐philosophic strategy for defining aims of education is proposed as a solution. In this approach, the assumption is made that each later stage of moral development reflects a more adequate equilibration with the environment, and it therefore follows that what is at later stages is what ought to be. The universality of moral stages is documented and the stimulation of moral development in school and prison settings through a cognitive conflict procedure is illustrated.     

Hochschule und Arbeitsmarkt im Bologna-Prozess

In the Bologna process, “employability” has become an important objective of higher education, shaping the current discussion on the relationship between higher education and the labor market. The popularity of the term “employability”, however, seems to be negatively correlated with its precision. Therefore, the article first discusses the meaning of this concept and its usefulness for higher education. We come to the conclusion that employability is not an appropriate guiding principle for higher education reform. Key competencies are central to the concept of employability. However, the significance of key competencies is independent of the role they play in the concept of employability; they are also central to the necessarily flexible relationship between higher education and work. Therefore, this paper also addresses the question of whether the restructuring of the German higher education system was accompanied by curricular and didactic reforms, which facilitate the acquisition of key competencies. According to the results of the German Higher Education Information System HIS graduate survey 2005, the answer to this question is a cautious “yes”. In view of the limited empirical basis and the early date of the survey, however, we advise against premature generalizations.     

文化存在论教育学论纲——文化存在论教育学产生的时代背景与基本主张

文化存在论教育学理论是在教育学这门学科究竟主要是一门以哲学运思为主的精神科学,还是一门方法至上的实证科学这一历史性交锋中应运而生的。文化存在论教育学的提出是对实证主义范式在教育学领域过度宣扬的匡正。教育学是一门有着浓郁的强烈的丰富的人文性、艺术性、审美性、价值性和伦理性的学科。从学科嬗变史、学科本质、学科研究方法借鉴路线图等来考察,我们可以得出这样的结论,教育学作为一门“成人”的学科所具有的境遇性、生命性、个殊性、复杂性等特质无法被完全数据化的定量研究所把握。文化存在论教育学分别从教育本质、教育目的及教育方法出发,聚焦三个根本性问题:儿童“是”什么?儿童会成“为”什么?儿童之所以会成“为”社会与文化所期望的那个样子,需“要”什么?针对这三个根本问题,文化存在论教育学提出了理想的教育应确立的四项重要原则:首先,教育要关注儿童的“精神”或者“生命”成长,关注儿童的心灵世界、精神世界、生命世界;其次,教育是“相遇”的历程,是一场充满“境遇”的人生旅程,多元、丰富、奇幻的教育孕育着儿童各种生长的可能性,教育既关怀当下,又指向未来的生活;再次,教育要注重“关系”的营建,魅力在于生活世界中诸般“关系”的和谐与共融,儿童与教师在美好的教育“关系”中相濡以沫,砥砺前行;最后,儿童是“文化”的存在,教育要关注文化在陶冶滋养儿童的向善、求真、育美中的重要作用。     

Hallway Conferencing: Achieving Teacher Buy-In to the Writing Center

Technology education, not to be confused with educational technology, has an “official curriculum.” This article explores this “official curriculum” and answers the following questions; what are the goals of technology education, what should technology education look like in classrooms, and why technology education is important. This article provides a primer on technology education that would be helpful to educational professionals interested in helping students become more technological literate.     

“鸠帮菜”老字号品牌视觉形象研究

“鸠帮菜”,作为芜湖的传统佳肴,正在没落中寻求发展。许多芜湖本地“鸠帮菜”老字号已经在传统菜品的基础上推出新型的菜品。然而很多芜湖本地人都不知何为“鸠帮菜”,一是因为“鸠帮菜”名词的推广力度太低;二是由于“鸠帮菜”老字号没有体现其特色的品牌视觉形象。文章主要分析了当前“鸠帮菜”老字号品牌视觉形象的现状,并运用平面设计手段对提升其品牌视觉形象做出建议,使芜湖本地地域文化内涵与“鸠帮菜”品牌相结合,推动“鸠帮菜”的发展。     

The research agenda setting of higher education researchers

Research agenda setting is a critical dimension in the creation of knowledge since it represents the starting point of a process that embeds individual researchers’ (and the communities that they identify themselves with) interest for shedding light on topical unknowns, intrinsic and extrinsic factors underpinning that motivation, and the ambition and scope of what a research endeavor can bring. This article aims to better understand the setting of individual research agendas in the field of higher education. It does so by means of a recently developed framework on research agenda setting that uses cluster analysis and linear modeling. The findings identify two main clusters defining individual research agenda setting—cohesive and trailblazing—each with a different set of determining characteristics. Further analysis by cross-validation through means of sub-sampling shows that these clusters are consistent for both new and established researchers, and for frequent and “part-time” contributors to the field of higher education. Implications for the field of higher education research are discussed, including the relevance that each research agendas cluster has for the advancement of knowledge in the field.