“Fixing” the “Facts”: flexible learning as policy invention

This article examines the contemporary move within the Australian university context towards flexible learning. Drawing on the notions of policy as text and discourse, it is suggested that policies seek to provide authoritative meanings for practices they promote — to fix the facts about which they speak. The article explores the emergence of discourses of flexible learning as effects of policy texts and changes within the social formation. These discourses resonate with those already operating within the social formation, and in this may have effects other than those immediately apparent. An initial analysis of Australian higher education policy texts indicates a contemporary diversification of the use of the metaphor of flexibility as a discursive strategy through which mechanisms of governance can be intensified.     

Policy writers' conceptions of language and communication within one higher education institution

Ball argues that ‘policy authors do make concerted efforts to assert control [of readings] by the means at their disposal … [and that] we need to understand those efforts’ (Ball, 1994, p. 16). Efforts by policy authors to control readings are influenced by their own assumptions about the nature of language, texts and communication. This paper explores the models of language and communication held by policy writers within one HEI and how these influence the strategies they use to try to control interpretations of policy texts. The dominant conceptions of language and communication that emerge underestimate the active work of the ‘receivers’ of policy texts and the need for shared understanding of the social situation in constructing meanings. This leads to a misguided attempt to reduce the ‘implementation gap’ by modifying formal features of policy texts.     

On Translation of Animal Metaphors

Metaphors have been described as a central role of our cognitive apparatus. It is central to our understanding of how language, thought and discourse are structured. Animal metaphors as an important part of metaphors take advantage of the animals’ characteristics to describe a person or a thing vividly and chiefly. Sometimes animal metaphors will give people a humorous and novel picture. In linguistics, it can fill in the vacancy in languages, and make the expression exact and visually. Metaphor is kind of figure of speech. The thesis analyzes the function and style of metaphor and discusses the metaphors’ structure in grammar. How we understand the animal’s meaning is the key to translate the animal metaphors. All the animal words have both denotative meanings and connotative meanings. In most cases, the animals connotative meanings are the same or similar. People usually have the same idea about the animals; therefore, even the people who do not know English can understand some animal metaphors However, due to his tory, religion, phonetics, geography, life style, aesthetics and social psychology, the animals’ connotative meanings are different or even con trary. Facing these problems, how we translate the animal metaphors. I find four methods: adaptation, simile with explanation, paraphrase, and annotation. Adaptation is very efficient for the animal metaphors, which have counterpart in Chinese. Simile-with-explanation is the commonest method to translate animal metaphors, which are similar across the cultures easy to comprehend. Paraphrase is the last method to translate animal metaphors, and especially it can deal with any case that the animal metaphors are profound. Annotation is used to trans late animal metaphors in context, particularly in written English. Using the four methods, we can translate animal metaphors successfully. And while we are doing translation, we should understand English animals’ name very well, and pay attention to the Chinese animals’ meaning to make sure our readers understand the author’s in tended meanings. The thesis consists of five parts. The first part of the thesis states the significance and necessity of topic, problems to be solved in the thesis, and the framework of the thesis. The second part is literature review. The third part analyzes the animal vocabulary’s meanings. The fourth part gives four methods to do the animal metaphors translation. The conclusion part reviews the whole thesis and points out the weakness to be improved.     

'Quality' in the Bologna Process: from 'competitive edge' to quality assurance techniques

The theoretical premise of this article is that policy is constructed and presented discursively. The Bologna process presents us with an example of such a policy construction process where the quality policy goals are set jointly in transnational settings, requiring different kinds of negotiations and discursive strategies. Discourse analysis of policy texts can be useful in tracing policy changes and describing them, but also in explaining and understanding some of the developments that lead up to the implementation of the policies and the (political) views which are embedded in the debates. In this article, some discourse analytical methods are used to analyse the potential meanings of ‘quality’ at the European and national level of the Bologna process. The linguistic analysis focuses on the different meanings of ‘quality’ and the value assumptions attached to it from the point of view of word choice, metaphors and argumentation strategies. The data used are the official declarations and communiqués of the Bologna process; the central background reports of the process; and brief national follow‐up reports prepared for the Berlin meeting of 2003 from Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.     

Breaking the Line: New Literacies,Postmodernism and the Teaching of Printed Texts

In many contemporary texts boundaries are broken down. Words and image convey multiple meanings, lending themselves to postmodern readings, in the sense that they encourage readings that reject a single interpretation and instead hold in suspense the possibility of multiple readings co‐existing. This article explores how these texts allow the consumer/reader the opportunity to actively engage, and in a sense therefore to produce, the cultural event rather than being merely the passive receiver of it. It raises implications for the way that such texts are considered in schools.     

To nail a pudding: metaphorical analysis of the social studies education discourse community on globalization

Despite the abundance of studies on globalization in educational research, globalization is often approached as a monolithic and standardized concept. Focusing on the social studies education in the USA, this study explores how the various metaphors through which globalization is framed embrace particular perspectives on how to conceive and educate about globalization. Specifically, this study discusses seven conceptual metaphors: the global as a place, time, container, spectacle, person, threat, and as a force of nature. In doing so, it illustrates how globalization is predominately rendered as an inclusive structure, a disembedded process, and as a permanent threat. The different metaphors, this paper argues, fulfill a twofold role. First, they define a domain of their own, the global domain, creating a distinctive global viewpoint on human agency and social change. Second, these metaphors also release a political imagination structured around particular expectations of what exactly the global means and does.     

Cultural agents creating texts: a collaborative space adventure

This paper discusses the ways in which young children collaboratively use narrative play and the available space and materials around them in order to exert cultural agency. The collaborative creation of texts is asserted as central to this expression of agency. By presenting an illustrative vignette of a group of 5‐year‐old boys as they engage in literacy practices and create a range of meaningful texts within an early years compulsory education setting, the ways in which agency is expressed through the collaborative venture of text creation is explored. The vignette follows an episode of self‐initiated dramatic play, fuelled by the children's desire to engage in peer culture and make meanings collaboratively. This play episode spurs the creation of a range of hybridised texts, which culminate in the production of a written narrative. Observations from this study are then used to add to a broader discussion, which raises concerns about the current policy in England, which views early writing development as a set of individual and predefined set of skills to be acquired, a view which could undervalue the experiences that children bring to early educational settings.     

Is career guidance for the individual or for the market? Implications of EU policy for career guidance

This paper explores the essential understanding and underlying perspectives of career implicit in EU career guidance policy in the twenty-first century, as well as the possible implications of these for the future mission of guidance. Career theories, models and concepts that serve career guidance are shaped on the twentieth-century industrial division of labour and now face a crisis due to the influence of globalization on working life. The transition to a knowledge-based society also challenges the traditional view of career: vocational and educational paths are no longer linear, predictable or stable. The analyses of EU policy documents and ethical declarations discussed here indicate that meanings of career are under reconstruction and that these documents fail to clarify the underlying meanings or perspectives on career contained therein. The essential meaning of career, as communicated through characterizations and dominating underlying perspectives in EU policy, puts greater emphasis on career guidance as being conducted on behalf of society, rather than the individual. Ethical tensions within the career guidance profession appear to have increased, and the profession is also challenged in its professionalization by contradictions and broadened areas, activities and functions.     

From Pipelines to Tasting Lemonade: Reconceptualizing College Access

Pipeline metaphors are ubiquitous in theorizing and interpreting college access processes. In this conceptual article, we explore how a lemonade metaphor can open new possibilities to reimagining higher education access and going processes. We argue that using food metaphors, particularly the processes of mixing, tasting, and digesting lemonade, may help constitute new meanings of college going. Rather than focus on production, mechanization, and ignoring social justice, a lemonade metaphor emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of college-going processes, foregrounds power relations within these processes, and humanizes educational purposes and journeys. We encourage educational researchers to take up taste as a heuristic device to reveal something different about educational phenomena that will, in turn, have material consequences.     

欧洲化国际化全球化 -高等学校何处去?

在欧洲高等教育的讨论中 ,欧洲化、国际化和全球化的概念看似接近 ,但各有所侧重 ,这些概念背后的观念甚至有很大的不同。本文透过令人眼花缭乱的讨论 ,对这些概念的内涵及其潜在的追求 ,以及相互之间的差别进行了分析 ,指出全球化的说法在很大程度上没有反映出高等教育发展的真实走向     

Challenges to Academic Values and the Organization of Academic Work in a Time of Globalization

With the ongoing Bologna Process in mind, the author analyzes the effects of globalization on the academic world. In so doing, he traces the origins of globalization, arguing that it is not as new a phenomenon as one might think. He then analyzes the interactions of academic work and globalization and of academic values and globalization. Focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, the author proposes that the negative effects of the communist period on higher education in the region have stimulated a greater awareness of the fragility of traditional academic values than may be the case elsewhere, and a heightened desire to protect them. At the same time, the experience of communism (and now of transition) seems to have imparted great flexibility and pragmatism to higher education in the region as it responds to the challenges of globalization. Still, globalization is highly challenging to European higher education, East and West.     

Turning others' leaves: snapshots of reading in London classrooms

What happens when London secondary school students read literary texts in the classroom? Is the model of literacy, and of development in literacy, that is offered in official policy documents adequate to encompass the ways in which students read? If not, what gets left out of such policy‐derived accounts? And what part is played in such readings by students' knowledge of other texts, and of the world beyond the classroom? This paper seeks to address these questions through a series of snapshots of reading within different classrooms across London.     

Education policy: explaining,framing and forming

This paper presents a new heuristic device for the analysis of educational policy. Through an examination of the Evaluative State and the work of Brian Fay, the paper considers the way in which educational policy is subject to rational and linear forms of policy action and implementation. To counter this, positioning theory is deployed to consider the way in which we are produced both by discourse and the language of the ‘moment’ in discursive acts. Using the work of Gee, the paper contends that policy texts and policy Discourse ‘themselves form policy, that is, they position policy-explanation and policy-framing within the bounds of the institution and so give policy form’. Problematically, such mechanisms may succumb to the ‘death of subject’ and accordingly I offer a third method by which we might conceive of education policy: the discursively produced position call. Subsequently, I propose a tri-partite theory for the examination and understanding of policy: policy-explaining, the production of policy texts; policy-framing, the ways in which all can be positioned by texts and Discourse to produce the meanings imbued upon policy; and, policy-forming, the impact of moment-by-moment conversational acts for their production of the policy text itself, that is, the ways in which policy is locally formed rather than locally mediated.     

Psychological processes behind the comprehension of a poetic text

In addition to the psychological operations which are typical of the reading processes of most regular texts, such as recall of memory schemes, developing hypotheses and tests of relevance, I suggest that in the reading of poetic texts there would be at least two additional kinds of processes; namely the process by which the reader discovers analogies, and compares them, and the process of drawing conclusions from this comparison. The predisposition of a poetry reader is characterized by (a) the tendency to process a maximum of information from memory schemes that are evoked during reading; and (b) the reader's readiness to process information expressed similarly to metaphors. That is, to process pieces of information whose meanings would not be considered consistent if taken literally.     

Divine Intervention

This paper focuses on teacher education policy in Portugal and Brazil over the last decade, and it discusses its implications for teacher professionalisation and professionalism. It identifies the emergence of competing discourses arising from policy texts and other formal documents related to teacher education, both initial and in-service, issued in both countries. It is argued that the intertwined concepts of professionalisation and professionalism, which play a central role in most recent policy documents, entail different meanings in different contexts. Although similar orientations can be identified, particularly in regard to a new rhetoric emerging in the educational field, it is also evident that different ways of operationalising the concepts of professionalisation and professionalism have been put into place.     

体育新闻语篇的隐喻及功能探析

隐喻是新闻文体的一个重要特征.通过分析汉语和英语的体育新闻语篇,发现新闻语言中使用了大量的隐喻,首先,从宏观上看,概念隐喻普遍存在于竞技性的运动项目的赛事报道之中;其次,从微观上看,体育竞赛中的技术动作描写也采用了隐喻,体现了新闻语言的艺术特色和审美价值.最后,分析了体育新闻语篇中隐喻的三大功能：语篇功能、审美功能和社会功能.     

The internationalization of Canadian university research: a global higher education matrix analysis of multi-level governance

To date, much of the research on internationalization and globalization of higher education has focused on the institution or higher education system as the unit of analysis. Institution based studies have focused on the analysis of institutional practices and policies designed to further internationalization. System-level studies focus on state policy initiatives or approaches. In this paper we explore the inter-relationships among multiple levels of authority within a higher education system through an analysis of research policies and activities related to internationalization. While we are interested in the internationalization of university research, our primary objective is to explore the relationships between policy initiatives and approaches at different levels. Using the “Global Higher Education Matrix” as a framework, we discuss the policy emphasis on the internationalization of research at the federal, provincial (Ontario), and institutional levels of authority, as well as the international research activities associated with two large professional schools operating at the understructure level. By focusing on the inter-relationships among initiatives at different levels of authority, this study explores the complexity of policy perspectives within the internationalization of research in the context of multi-level governance.     

Bringing universities to account? Exploring some global and local policy tensions

Increased accountability is at the centre of widespread educational reforms which feature the rhetoric of deregulation in many countries across the globe. Not only have educational systems, institutions and practitioners been required to be more accountable, but arguably the nature of accountability has also changed from professional and democratic to managerial and market forms. In particular, within the hegemonic discourses of the market ideology associated with globalization, market accountability to paying customers (both within a nation-state and internationally) has been foregrounded. However, the hegemony is not complete. Governments have often positioned themselves as ‘market managers’, creating a complex and often contradictory relationship between new forms of market and managerial accountability, layered on top of more traditional notions of professional and democratic accountability. This paper explores the changing nature of accountability in Australian and English higher education, and makes comparisons between them. As we enter the twenty-first century, central higher education authorities in both countries are conducting major reviews and revisionings of mechanisms to enhance the accountability of universities in the new global knowledge-based economy. While the analysis finds convergence of policy objectives and discourses, it also finds divergences in the particular structures and processes employed. Further, it finds a disjunction between macro-level policy intent and institutional-level reactions and practices in both countries. We argue that with globalization ‘talk’, it is important not to gloss over policy differences between individual nation-states, and to problematize potentially globalizing concepts such as accountability within policy debates at both national and global levels.     

The uses of the national PISA results by Finnish officials in central government

In this article we attempt to analyse how OECD knowledge production is integrated with the process in which Finnish education policy takes shape. This is done by analysing the uses of the OECD PISA Study by Finnish central government officials. The main question posed is: How do these officials interpret the PISA results so as to justify the decisions made in Finnish education policy in the past or to point out new areas of development concerning basic education? The analysis shows that the interpretations of the PISA results tend to favour those responsible for actions within the central government. In the texts analysed, the scientificity of the PISA programme is presented as beyond question, while the direct usefulness of the research results for the further development of national education is also proclaimed. As to the specific results of PISA, the excellent learning outcomes of Finnish students are claimed to be due to educational reforms conducted and decisions made by the central government, whereas shortcomings and areas in which the officials see a need for improvement are argued to be dependent on the actions of other agents. Thus, the analysis shows that the conclusions drawn from the PISA results in texts representing the views of central government are biased and serve to justify its policy agenda.     

ASPIRATIONS AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONSTRUCTIONS OF THEIR FUTURES: INVESTIGATING SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

The United Kingdom’s Coalition government has introduced an education policy that is focused on increasing the opportunities to promote and advance social mobility for all children within state education. Raising young people’s aspirations through school-based initiatives is a prominent theme within recent policy texts, which are focused on improving educational outcomes and thus advancing social mobility. This article draws on qualitative data from paired interviews with 32 students in two academies to first investigate if our participants’ aspirations indicate a desire for intragenerational social mobility and second, to explore our participants’ perceptions of the influences of their family background on their aspirations for the future. Analysis of our data highlights the mismatch between our participants’ aspirations for the future and the government’s constructions of what they should aspire to, as articulated in policy texts. By investigating aspirations, as part of a wider project to understand social mobility qualitatively, our data shows the important role of family in shaping our participants’ varied and diverse aspirations that are frequently at variance with government policy.