If Not Absolute Objectivity,Then What? A Reply to Kauffman and Sasso

Because researchers cannot achieve theory-free observation, it is therefore impossible to attain absolute objectivity. This realization has led to issues of major consequence concerning our understanding of educational research and of ourselves as educational researchers. Specifically, serious questions have been raised about the nature of knowledge, truth, reality, and relativism. In my response to Kauffman and Sasso (2006, this issue), I discuss these issues and make the case that the questions confronting us must be engaged directly if we hope to resolve disagreements about the worthiness of various educational practices.     

高校现代教育技术中心建设与教学改革

文章从现代教育技术的发展角度．阐述现代教育技术在高校教育教学改革中的作用，并对现代教育技术中心的建设、原则、保障措施等进行论述。     

Research Methods and Types of Evidence for Research in Educational Technology

Recent concern about lack of scientific rigor in educational research has led to a reexamination of educational research methods. Methodology requires particular attention when researchers study learning in complex learning environments such as classrooms or computer-driven environments that simulate complex processes. This article reaffirms the importance of experimental research for answering some research questions. It argues that nonexperimental methods, such as design experiments and methods applied to the study of large-scale educational programs, such as randomized field trials, are useful for answering other kinds of research questions about learning in complex settings. This article discusses the validity of evidence gathered using these nonexperimental methods. Finally, it suggests that the study of the dynamics of learning can help integrate data from experiments that reveal details about learning and data from nonexperimental research that reveal how learning occurs in complex settings.     

It's All Very Well,in Theory: Theoretical Perspectives and Their Applications in Contemporary Pedagogical Research

Current debates about educational theory are concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power and thereby issues such as who possesses a “truth” and how have they arrived at it, what questions are important to ask, and how should they best be answered. As such, these debates revolve around questions of preferred, appropriate, and useful theoretical perspectives. This paper overviews the key theoretical perspectives that are currently used in physical education pedagogy research and considers how these inform the questions we ask and shapes the conduct of research. It also addresses what is contested with respect to these perspectives. The paper concludes with some “cautions” about allegiances to and use of theories in line with concerns for the applicability of educational research to pressing social issues.     

Michael Pressley's Contributions to the History and Future of Strategies Research

The recently fashionable theories of positive psychology have educational ramifications at virtually every level of engagement, culminating in the model of positive education. In this critical review, I scrutinize positive education as a potential theory in educational psychology. Special attention is given to conceptual controversies and suggested educational interventions. Positive psychologists have yet to explore in detail the school as a positive institution. They have written at length, however, about such positive personal traits as moral virtue and resiliency, and about positive emotions both as embodied in experiences of classroom “flow” and as facilitators of students’ personal resources. Because the empirical evidence concerning these positive factors remains partly mixed or tentative, and because most of them had a home in other theoretical frameworks before the advent of positive psychology, searching questions remain about the effectiveness and originality of positive education. This article addresses some of those questions.     

The standards agenda: reflections of a special educational needs co‐ordinator

This study is a life history account of Bev, a special educational needs co‐ordinator who works in a primary school in England. The research examines how, within Bev's experiences, the discourses of integration and inclusion have affected learners with special educational needs. Additionally, the study examines the impact of the ‘performativity’ agenda on a mainstream school with a high proportion of learners with special educational needs. The account illustrates how, in Bev's experiences, inclusion operates within a powerful othering framework which marginalises children with special educational needs and their teachers. Additionally, the account raises questions about the risks of choosing to work in schools with high proportions of children with special educational needs within a discourse of performativity. It raises questions about whether the inclusion agenda has resulted in limited forms of inclusion and whether it was easier to meet children's holistic needs under the integration agenda.     

教师教育信息化建设的几点建议

为适应信息化社会的发展要求,以信息化带动教育现代化,促进教师教育跨越式的发展,积极推进教师教育信息化建设是一项紧迫的重要任务。本文就教师教育信息化建设过程碰到的几个问题展开讨论,并提出几点相关建议。     

What Is Educational about Education? The Distinctiveness of Education

This article explores two questions: (1) Is education a unique and distinct discipline? (2) Is education anything other than the achievement of noneducational aims or objectives? In it, Trevor Norris examines how these two questions are interconnected, specifically analyzing how what we think about education as a distinct field of study informs what we ask of it as a practice. When we study education, we should be educational about it, because if we render education as the object of study, it is never endowed with agency or distinctiveness. Norris inquires into the distinctiveness of education as a way of thinking and a way of impacting the world, asking what are the conditions that make it possible for us to identify something as “educational”? To investigate this question, Norris draws from Hannah Arendt's account of politics, and he concludes by describing a case study assignment that requires educational foundations students to draw from philosophy of education in order to show what exactly is educational about education by contrasting education with business and psychology.     

教育投资问题及其改革路径分析

教育资源的投入关系到教育事业的发展，本从当前教育经费投入存在的主要问题入手，分析了造成教育投入短缺的原因，并提出了解决教育投资问题的改革路径。     

数字教育电视节目的传播渠道应用情况调查研究

通过文献研究发现当前对数字教育电视节目的传播渠道及其在不同渠道的应用和创新推广问题研究比较缺乏,本研究就此问题对教育电视节目的专业制作人员开展调研。     

Studying teachers’ interests and the questions they pose about their educational practice

It is well known that most teachers appear to take little or no interest in the activities and findings of educational researchers. In two successive studies, experienced senior high-school teachers’ interest and the questions they pose about their educational practice were studied to establish insights for teacher education and teacher-educator researchers. In the first study, 81 teachers’ research reports for obtaining a master’s degree were analysed and the results were validated by questioning another 39 teachers and having them pose questions about their practice. The results showed that students’ cognitive learning was the teachers’ main priority. In the second study, 22 teachers completed a questionnaire about themes from educational research related to cognitive learning. The results showed that the teachers were interested in the topics of cognitive growth and insightful and engaged learning. How to practise these topics regularly was important to the teachers regardless of their teaching discipline. Implications for teacher-educator researchers are discussed.     

关于地方高校教务员工作的几点思考

高校教务员作为教学信息的收集者和反馈者,在日常的教学活动中在协调师生、领导和教师之间的工作关系等方面起着重要的作用,需要具备良好政治思想觉悟和理论水平、良好的业务技能和身心素质。目前地方高校教务员工作中存在的缺乏必要的岗前培训和激励机制以及继续教育方向狭窄等问题,需加强教务员队伍建设、制定相关的教务员岗位激励措施、制定新教务员的岗前培训及工作指导制度等解决问题的相应措施。     

Definitions of the ‘Subject’: The relations between the discourses of educational assessment and the psychology of motivation and their constructions of personal reality

This article engages critically in a study of two areas of academic discourse, educational assessment and the psychology of motivation, in order to examine the dialectical relationships between their modes of classification, ordering and defining, and the construction of personal realities. Its approach draws on post‐structuralist thinking associated with critical discourse analysis and Foucault's genealogical method. The first section raises questions about the use of metaphor and its function; the second provides ‘readings’ of three research texts on children's attributions for their different ideological assumptions; the third brings together issues about the ‘subject’ and ‘emancipation’. The text raises questions about educational assessment's positioning within a paradigm associated with the social construction of knowledge.     

E—Leaming数据挖掘：模式与应用

随着教育信息化的快速发展特别是数字化校园和网络高等教育的日益普及,教育领域中部署了众多的软件系统．在这些软件系统中存储着海量的教育数据。如何利用这些教育数据,使这些数据转变为信息、知识,并为教育决策、教学优化服务。可从E-Learning数据挖掘中找到一些答案。文章系统梳理了国内外E—Learning数据挖掘的研究进展．并采用格语法分析方法对“E—Leaming”的关键要素和过程进行分析,提出可以“谁在学、学什么、怎么学、学得如何”这一系列问题为主线。开展E—Learning数据挖掘工作,从而获得对E—Learning现状的更加完整的认识。在尝试回答“谁在学、学什么、怎么学、学得如何”的过程中,分解出三类挖掘任务情境即用于回答“谁在学”的学习者特征挖掘。用于回答“学什么、怎么学”的学习过程挖掘以及用于回答“学得如何”的学习结果挖掘．并对应地构建出三种数据挖掘模式。对模式的应用结果表明,这三种数据挖掘模式在E—Learning要素和过程分析中是有效的．较好地拓展了对E—Learning关键要素认识的完整性。包括对“谁在学”有了更全面的认识、对“学什么、怎么学”有了更准确的认识和对“学习的结果如何”有了更深入的认识。     

政府购买教育服务何以可能

我国政府购买教育服务的试行和有效实践,需要在理论上对教育服务何以可"购买"、政府何以要"购买"、政府在何处"购买"以及如何购买等问题进行深入思考,并形成科学的认识与判断,以帮助我们更清晰地认识政府购买教育服务所需的理论环境、政策环境和市场环境,为政府购买教育服务实践提供相应的理论支持与实践指导.     

Special Education in Parliament

In the first three months of 1990, up to the Easter recess, the House of Commons briefly debated the shortage of speech therapists which affects children with special educational needs while individual Members of Parliament asked questions about numbers of children with statements of special educational needs, spending on books and equipment and other themes.     

The Development of Multiple Domains of Child and Adolescent Self-Concept: A Cohort Sequential Longitudinal Design

The development of child and adolescent self-concept was examined as a function of the self-concept domain, social/developmental/educational transitions, and gender. In two overlapping age cohorts of public school students (Ns = 936 and 984), five dimensions of self-concept were evaluated every 6 months in a manner that spanned grades 3 through 11 (representing the elementary, middle, and high school years). Domains of self-concept included academic competence, physical appearance, behavioral conduct, social acceptance, and sports competence. Structural equation modeling addressed questions about the stability of individual differences over time. Multilevel modeling addressed questions about mean-level changes in self-concept over time. Significant effects emerged with regard to gender, age, dimension of self-concept, and educational transition.     

Philosophy and Method in Educational Research

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the idea of method now shapes the self‐understanding in terms of which many educational researchers make sense of their work. It does so by comparing the modem ‘methodical’ approach to educational research with the premodern style of philosophical theorising it has largely replaced. On the basis of this comparison it shows how some important questions about the future of educational research begin to emerge.     

“My Heart Is in the East and I Am in the West”: Enduring Questions of Israel Education in North America

By examining writing about Israel education since the founding of the State, this paper highlights three questions that have surfaced repeatedly in Jewish educational discourse: What is the purpose of teaching American Jews about Israel? Who is best equipped to teach American Jews about Israel? How can Israel education foster positive identification with Israel without whitewashing over the imperfections of the Jewish State? By exploring how each question has manifested in Jewish education, it examines why—for very different reasons—these questions have endured over time, and considers what it might take to arrive at lasting conclusions about them.     

Mix and match? Further and higher education links in post-devolution Scotland

This article examines the links between Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) at the time when the power to determine Scottish educational policy was being devolved to the new Scottish Parliament. It examines the educational context in which elections to the new Parliament took place especially questions of access and provision. Events following the elections, where educational policy became a key issue, are then outlined. We conclude by speculating about the future of FE-HE links in post-devolution Scotland.