Points of Vulnerability and Presence: Knowing and learning in globally networked communities

This is a paper about knowledge, learning and the idea of community in what we call “hybrid workspaces”. Hybrid workspaces “bring together physical place and cyber place” in communication networks (Castells, 2001, p. 131). Many people work in various kinds of hybrid workspaces. A person working on a production line might have real-time co-workers in their own town, just as a colleague might work in a hybrid workspace and rely upon others who communicate asynchronously via a website to help them solve problems. Hybrid workspaces, like most workspaces, are centrally concerned with the global production and diffusion of certain kinds of routine and innovative working knowledge. In this paper we think about knowledge as social action that is generated, mediated, negotiated and traded among people in the politically charged dynamic of hybrid workspace communities. We consider the ways people adopt, modify and are changed by the technologies they implement in these workspaces. We are especially interested in what people have to learn to know, and to be, to operate effectively in these hybrid communities, and what role formal, informal and non-formal education has to play in negotiating what counts as knowledge, and who can say so, in virtual workspaces.     

Signature Pedagogies for Social Foundations: Negotiating Social Foundations Teaching Practices in the Field of Education

The conflicts arising between the pedagogical preferences of the fields of instructional design and technology (IDT) and social foundations of education are substantial. This conflict is primarily one of pedagogical values separating the Social Foundations with its emphasis on critical and creative thinking and the presumption of value and theory neutrality inherent in IDT. This is a serious issue because, increasingly, educators use IDT models to translate Social Foundations courses with social justice and equity outcomes into online formats. Much is lost. This article offers a discussion of the theoretical grounding of IDT (task-analysis) versus social foundations in regards to implications for the instructional social organization of online social foundations classrooms. This article uses the notion of signature pedagogy to describe sociocultural literacies as a basic tenet in social foundations of education. By doing so, it is demonstrated how these important theoretical positions are currently playing out in online instruction and space, to extend their relevance by introducing newer concepts such as Digital Cartesianism and copresence, and to provide a concrete example of what these concerns look like in the current push towards digital formats. In the current context of the use of electronic, social, communication, and mobile technologies in education, we find a new site to continue challenging the assumed neutrality of the technological model for education.     

Implications of Internet Technologies for Higher Education: North American perspectives

Internet-based technologies are triggering significant changes in higher education. While in some cases the applications are limited to enhancing face-to-face instruction (Level I applications) or to enhancing existing distance education provision (Level II), in other cases instruction is taking place entirely online (Level III). As higher education institutions seek to exploit these different levels of application of emerging information technologies to deliver education courses and programmes at a distance, they are encountering a number of difficulties. This article presents what a number of higher and distance education observers in North America consider the most pertinent issues related to Internet technologies. The relevance of those issues for an existing distance teaching university, Athabasca University - Canada's Open University, is also discussed.     

On disruption and integration: two views of digital media technologies in K-12 schools

In this review essay, Earl Aguilera compares two recent contributions to the growing body of literature on technology in education, Christo Sims’ Disruptive Fixation and Antero Garcia’s Good Reception, to examine the conceptual and practical contributions of each text, along with points of divergence through which readers might glean additional insights. Sims and Garcia both address efforts rooted in a growing area of work around integrating digital media technologies into K-12 schools, but present contrasting perspectives and differing notions of technological disruption and integration. While Sims’ ethnographic work on the “school for digital kids” is rich in conceptual tools that help readers understand what he calls cycles of disruptive fixation that have occurred throughout the history of public education in the United States, Garcia’s embedded perspectives as high school teacher provide practical guidance for integrating new media technologies with responsive and critical pedagogical practices. Taken together, these texts highlight both the promises and the pitfalls of integrating new media technologies into existing models and contexts of education often labeled as outmoded for life and work in the 21st century.     

Which do students prefer to evaluate their essays: Peers or computer program

The purpose of this study was to investigate problems and potentials of new technologies in English writing education. The effectiveness of automated writing evaluation (AWE) (MY Access) and of peer evaluation (PE) was compared. Twenty‐two English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Taiwan participated in this study. They submitted their draft to MY Access, received feedback from this automated grading system and then made some revision. In addition to the AWE, they also had peer revision in writing class. Three issues, including how writers used the feedback from these two kinds of evaluation, what progress they made in writing and how they perceived these two kinds of evaluation, are discussed. Results showed that EFL learners in Taiwan generally opted for PE over AWE. These findings raise several relevant issues, including social learning, feedback strategies, computer anxiety and cultural impact.     

Some economic and ideological aspects of the reform of education and training in England and Wales in the last ten years

This paper reviews the changes, which have been introduced to public education in Australia, particularly over the last decade. These changes are analysed against the background of the free, compulsory and secular Education Acts that were implemented in every Australian colony during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This legislation has formed the cornerstone of public education in Australia since that time. The principles of free, compulsory and secular public education and the underlying social values which underpinned the legislation are re-examined, together with the factors leading to the development of the centralized state education bureaucracies which were set up to administer the Acts. In considering current changes to public education policy in Australia, the paper argues that the principles underlying the establishment of public education have been significantly eroded. In the space of little more than a decade, the social values underpinning the Education Acts have been dramatically changed, leading to a re-invention of what public education means in this country.     

Learning through Meaning Making: Applying Job Crafting in Field Learning

Job crafting makes people’s work rewarding through meaning making. This article discusses the ways in which a field director may use job crafting to address a common challenge in field education. Field placements are based on various institutional expectations; however, many students have preconceived notions of what social work and social work education should be, and they complain that their placements are “not clinical ” enough. Through the application of job crafting, students can reframe their field learning experiences in a meaningful way. Using the case study method, this article demonstrates one way to support MSW students, highlighting common challenges and practices at a large public northeastern university.     

Network ethnography and the cyberflâneur: evolving policy sociology in education

This paper makes the argument that new global spatialities and new governance structures in education have important implications for how we think about education policy and do education policy analysis. This context necessitates that researchers engage in new methodologies to ensure that there is a suitable link between their research problem and the methods utilised for its investigation. To this end, I suggest that network ethnography can be conceived as a ‘threshold’ methodology; a new way of looking at social relations in changing times with attendant methodological benefits and shortcomings. Here I constitute the network ethnographer as cyberflâneur, who, like the nineteenth-century flâneur is lured by and attentive to the ‘new’, where they embrace the convergence of space and new technologies to become a well-positioned observer of contemporary policy processes. In focusing on the cyberflâneur, this paper aims to provoke debate amongst policy sociology researchers about how we can reflect on and modify our practice to ensure we are contributing to meaningful research in the twenty-first century.     

A case study of women instructors and their education in the reign of Abdulhamid II

Abstract

This study demonstrates how the cultural role of Ottoman women began to change during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as considering emerging conflicts due to their altering roles in society as they were educated in the Darulmuallimat (teachers’ college for women) and acquired social positions as woman instructors. The first phase of the study is about schooling for women in the late Ottoman Empire and how women became teachers. The work mentions an interesting historical document which shows the relationship between a female instructor and a director of education (maarif müdürü) in Trabzon. This document also points to the disturbances aroused by these changes in women’s social status which needed to be reconstructed. It indicates how the government took measures to preserve the existing norms as women became more visible in the community and reminded them that their first responsibility was always about preserving their chastity and esteem. The first woman teachers to commence participating in the public sphere were effective at shaping and structuring culture in the Ottoman Empire; thus they should be investigated in terms of their social roles and their effects on cultural transformation as well. The case of Macide Han?m is considered in the cultural, economic, and political contexts of late Ottoman history with an emphasis on women’s education and modifying social roles. The study was carried out by scrutinising historical documents in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, especially documents in the maarif mektubi kalemi section.     

The challenge to professionals of using social media: teachers in England negotiating personal-professional identities

Social media are a group of technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn which offer people chances to interact with one another in new ways. Teachers, like other members of society, do not all use social media. Some avoid, some experiment with and others embrace social media enthusiastically. As a means of communication available to everyone in modern society, social media is challenging teachers, as other professionals in society, to decide whether to engage with these tools and, if so, on what basis – as an individual (personally), or as a teacher (professionally). Although teachers are guided by schools and codes of practice, teachers as individuals are left to decide whether and how to explore social media for either their own or their students' learning. This paper analyses evidence from interviews with 12 teachers from England about their use of social media as to the challenges they experience in relation to using the media as professional teachers.. Teachers are in society’s spotlight in terms of examples of inappropriate use of social media but also under peer pressure to connect. This paper explores their agency in responding. The paper focuses on how teachers deal with tensions between their personal and professional use of social media. These tensions are not always perceived as negative and some teachers' accounts revealed a unity in their identities when using social media. The paper reflects on the implications of such teachers' identities in relation to the future of social media use in education.     

‘Radically different learning’: implementing sustainability pedagogy in a university peer mentor program

Framed in Michele Foucault's theories of discipline and technologies of the self, this paper explores the possibilities for teaching and researching across disciplinary boundaries within the academy. In Foucault's studies of systems of thought, he conceptualized practices – like sexuality – to be instances of what is possible to be, think, and do within a historical moment. In the ethnographic study reported on in this paper, we examined perceptions and practices of discipline-based academics seeking to work across traditional scholarly boundaries as instances of what was possible to be, think, and do in transdisciplinary teaching and research in higher education. Connecting transdisciplinary knowledge production with possibilities for critically engaging with sustainability as a social movement and imperative, we identify questions about and the promise of higher education as a place where this work can be done.     

‘Make money,get money’: how two autonomous schools have commercialised their services

ABSTRACT

Using the stories of two autonomous public schools in Australia, this paper demonstrates how commercialisation can simultaneously position schools as both consumer and for-profit producer. Drawing on Foucault's articulation of discourse as that which constitutes and makes available what is possible to be said, done and imagined, the paper illustrates how the current marketised articulation of education is allowing for new possibilities of commercialisation in schools. Together these stories demonstrate that there are creative ways that these schools have embraced their autonomy, while relying on market solutions to acquire the resources they deem necessary for their students and their communities. However, it also shows how these resources and the attainment for them are inextricably constituted by the market orientation of education more broadly and how this presents potential dangers for what schools may be and become as a result.     

Teacher Dissent in Neoliberal Times: Counter-Publics and Alternative-Publics in Teacher Activism

In this essay, Terrenda White examines distinct forms of activism by two influential organizations: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Teach for America (TFA). Despite differences between these groups, both have created new discourses and alliances among teachers in the public sphere — what White calls “teacher publics.” These new alliances, White argues, can be conceptualized as counter-publics and alternative-publics. CTU is a counter-public because its activities counter the tradition of top-down insular unionism and embrace “social movement unionism” where teachers are part of an expansive coalition for social transformation, including contesting city and state bureaucracies for adequate resources and equitable practices on behalf of minoritized communities. TFA has also created expansive coalitions for change, embracing a “new professionalism” that rejects public contestations with state leaders for resources. As an alternative-public, TFA engages a network of private philanthropists and business leaders to generate change in public education through market-based initiatives that challenge bureaucratic control of teachers and schools and that incentivize competition, audit culture, and data-driven decision-making. These two cases, because their approaches to educational change are so different, provide fertile ground for White's evaluation of what new forms of activism mean for the democratic goals of public schools.     

Earth Juts into World: An Earth Ethics for Ecologizing Philosophy of Education

Philosophers of education often focus their critique on issues such as neoliberalism, consumerism, pluralism, and so on, and they typically turn for solutions to what we might call the political: democracy, the public, cosmopolitanism, dissent. These critiques and solutions remain firmly connected to what Heidegger calls “the world,” and this worldly analysis seemingly hovers above earthly issues of the environment and ecology. In this article, Clarence Joldersma employs Martin Heidegger's distinction between earth and world, drawing on Kelly Oliver's interpretation of it, to “ecologize” philosophy of education by arguing that that earth “juts” into the world. Philosophy of education needs a Derridean supplement, something that makes up for a lack, but that, in filling the lack, simultaneously supplants it. Joldersma invites philosophy of education to supplement its worldly principles (dissent, democracy, and the like) with an “earth ethics” that is characterized by three features. First, this ethics lets the earth and earthlings be, recognizing their continuing mystery as beings. Second, it acknowledges gratefulness toward the earth, an indebtedness to the earth for the reliable support it provides to our worldly projects and concerns. Third, it recognizes earth's fundamental fragility, that its seeming worldly dependability conceals an earthly vulnerability. Joldersma concludes that these three features, in tandem, give rise to an earthly ethics of responsibility. Philosophy of education needs an earth ethics to supplement, if not supplant, its worldly principles.     

Social justice and education in the public and private spheres

This paper explores the complex relationship between social justice and education in the public and private spheres. The politics of education is often presented as a battle between left and right, the state and the market. In this representation, the public and the private spheres are neatly aligned on either side of the line of battle, and social justice is commonly seen as the prerogative of the public sphere. This paper challenges this representation. It shows how the language of what counts as public and private in education is historically specific, culturally contingent and ideologically loaded. Through drawing on a range of education policies and practices, the paper demonstrates that ‘public’ and ‘private’ are not simple opposites. Moreover, it argues that social justice can be conceptualised in ways that have complex and multi-faceted implications for public and private sphere involvement. The paper concludes that if we are to enhance our understanding of the relationship between social justice and education we need to recognise the multi-faceted nature of what counts as private, what counts as public and what counts as justice.     

Canadian and US adult learning (1945–1970) and the cultural politics and place of lifelong learning

This essay examines adult learning in Canada and the USA (1945–1970). It explores this emergence in relation to moves to establish academic adult education as a cultural force that could help citizen learners to negotiate a way forward amid the collision of instrumental, social, and cultural change forces altering life, learning, and work in the emerging postindustrial society. In this regard, it focuses centrally on lifelong learning as an idea designed to have broad appeal in rapid-change postindustrial culture. In particular, it attempts to explicate a cultural politics of lifelong learning, which academic adult educators hoped would give the field a higher profile within what they perceived to be an emerging change culture of crisis and challenge. Two key factors are considered in these deliberations. First, this essay explores the relationship between public education (understood as schooling for children) and adult education. It takes up how this problematic relationship interfered with a post-war turn to lifelong learning. Second, it examines the shift in the meaning of the social in understanding adult education as social education in postindustrial society. It argues that the post-war discourse of democracy delimited this meaning, locating the social predominantly within a concern with preserving the dominant culture and society.     

Leaving Safe Harbors: Toward a New Progressivism in American Education and Public Life. Dennis Carlson. New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002. Pp. x, 200. $ 125.00 (hardcover).

The third edition of the Standards for Academic and Professional Instruction in Foundations of Education, Educational Studies, and Educational Policy Studies (Standards) challenge us to envision what “a more holistic, inclusive and intellectually challenging approach to preparing educators” might look like. This article discusses how the operating principles of a teacher education program parallel the commitments for educators found in the Standards and explores why collaborative relationships between teacher education and social foundations matter. Given the current political and social climate surrounding the field of education, it is important for those of us in the field of social foundations to think outside the box.     

Engaging in the Struggle of Educating for a Democracy

This article, based on an interpretive study, examines what happens when a team of teaching fellows and their supervisor attempt to address what they have identified as a “pedagogical crisis” in a social foundations of education course. Student proclivities had resulted in extreme polarization regarding contested social issues. By using a pedagogical trope and electronic discussion boards to invite students to imagine what educating for a democracy might look like in the academy, encouraging yet disturbing engagements among students and teachers ensued. A repertoire of various texts were collected systematically during the semester, which allowed the authors to create a portrayal of the experience of reconceptualizing their pedagogy to reflect principles of deliberative and cultural democracy.     

A Delphi investigation into future trends in e-learning in Israel

The purpose of this study is to investigate the views and opinions of e-learning experts regarding future trends in the e-learning arena. The Delphi technique was chosen as a method of study. This technique is an efficient and effective group communication process designed to systematically elicit judgments from experts in their selected area of expertise. The 35 experts who participated in this study were asked to rate 16 statements according to what they think will probably happen (probability) and what they would like to see happen (desirability). Findings show that participants believe that the use of new technologies will change current educational theories and methodologies and will have impact on instructor skills, effort, feedback, and interaction as well as on the process of learning assessment. Concerning the future of e-learning, participants view a future tendency toward the provision of full online degrees, yet they are skeptical, stating that the e-learning setting will not completely replace the frontal educational setting. Regarding the impact of social and mobile technologies on e-learning, experts seem to view the role of social and mobile technologies as facilitators in the transfer and sharing of information in e-learning settings.     

B Is For Burqa,C Is For Censorship: The Miseducative Effects of Censoring Muslim Girls and Women's Sartorial Discourse

In this article, I add a discursive analysis to the discussion about Muslim girls and women's dress in non-Muslim educational contexts. I argue that a law or policy that prohibits the wearing of khimar, burqa, chador, niqab, hijab, or jilbab in the context of public schools is a form of censorship in educational contexts. This sartorial censorship is miseducative in the sense that it impedes the achievement of important educational goals, especially in public education. I consider the public nature of public education and discuss three sets of miseducative effects: First, the examination of discursive processes, including the production of social norms, is limited. Second, the critical uptake of the banned discourse by female Muslim students themselves is foreclosed, and their agency hindered. Third, a metadiscourse arises that translates individual sartorial discursive acts into generalized terms (such as “veils” and “headscarves”) without noticing what is lost in translation.