From a laboratory curiosity to the market place

Polymers that exhibit high electrical conductivity have successfully been synthesized in the last few decades. The early problems associated with the stability and solubility of such conducting polymers have largely been overcome using chemical intuition and experimentation. A fairly wide range of interesting applications based on these polymers is emerging; some of these are highlighted in this article.     

数学证题中易犯的逻辑错误与剖析

在数学课堂教学过程中,培养学生遵守正确的思维规律,掌握好推理和证明方法,是使学生学好数学基础知识、提高基本能力的有效途径.而数学的推理、证明必须遵循形式逻辑的基本规律,形式逻辑的基本规律有同一律、矛盾律、排中律,充足理由律.如果学生在解题过程中违背了这些基本规律,就会产生不同的逻辑错误.下面,我们针对学生在解题中常犯的逻辑错误进行分析,引起大家在教学中的重视.这些逻辑错误主要表现在:     

External quality monitoring in the market place

Abstract

The paper presents a case‐study about the experience of leading sector‐wide change from within a national agency. This experience is analysed in relation to the literature on leadership and change and against the back‐drop of wider social, economic and political changes affecting higher education in the UK ‐ changes that have parallels in other countries. From the literature, the author draws out certain ‘principles’ about leading change and highlights the activities that were developed in practice. The case that is discussed is that of the 3‐year ‘Graduate Standards Programme’ mounted by the former Higher Education Quality Council in the UK. This Programme (the GSP) was formally set up to define and establish threshold standards for undergraduate degrees in the UK, but also sought to examine UK approaches to defining and assuring standards in the light of far‐reaching changes affecting the higher education system. Lessons about leadership, managing change and quality enhancement in an academic context are drawn out. The author concludes that ‘good process’ is more important than the static notion of ‘good practice’ when seeking to create and lead change in higher education.     

Integrated learning systems: where does the management take place?

For the last four years of the UK national investigation into the effectiveness of integrated learning systems (ILSs) we have been monitoring the educational contexts within which ILSs are used. Management issues related to ILS use are a significant factor in that educational context. In this paper some of the key management issues related to the effective use of ILSs are outlined. These will include: styles and levels of management of the learning by the ILS; management of the ILS as a learning tool (models of ILS usage); partnership or subservience (‘who’ manages ‘who’ and does it matter?). For some schools, however, the introduction of an ILS has had more profound impacts than this, in that we have recorded changes in teachers' pedagogy. Where such profound changes have been reported then those factors and processes now clearly modelled in school effectiveness and improvement debates have been shown to be operating     

Education and the market place in Hong Kong and Mainland China

This paper attempts to examine how market forces have affected educational development in Hong Kong and Mainland China. In both places, there has been a trend to the decentralisation and marketisation of education in recent years, particularly in the realm of higher education. Based upon recent research conducted in Hong Kong and China, the author argues that higher education in these two places has been significantly affected by emerging market forces. The core of the paper is confined to the discussion of two major issues: user charges and the introduction of competition and cost recovery in education. The main focus of this paper is on what strategies educational institutions in Hong Kong and China have employed in response to the strong tide of marketisation. Particular attention will be given to discussing how markets and competition have affected the governance and delivery of educational services in Hong Kong and China. This comparative study has demonstrated that even though the recent developments in higher education in these two places have been experiencing a similar global trend, the global tide of universal trend in which private charges, market competition, non-state provision, corporate governance, system-wide performance management should not be treated as a simplistic notion of undifferentiated universal trend. Instead, different places may take different configurations in cases of marketization which remain national-specific as well as global.     

The Academic Work Environment in Australian Universities: A motivating place to work?

This paper identifies positive (motivating) and negative (demotivating) sources of academic work motivation in Australian universities. In 1998, the Academic Work Environment Survey (Winter, Taylor, & Sarros, 2000) was administered to a stratified sample (five positions, five disciplines) of 2,609 academics in four types of university (research, metropolitan, regional, university of technology). A total of 1,041 usable surveys were returned (response rate of 40 per cent). Across the sample, academics reported moderate levels of work motivation. Work motivation was found to be relatively strong at professorial levels but weak at lecturer levels. Quantitative and qualitative findings indicated the work environment in academe is motivating when roles are clear, job tasks are challenging, and supervisors exhibit a supportive leadership style. The work environment is demotivating where there is role overload, low job feedback, low participation, and poor recognition and rewards practices. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of study findings for university leadership.     

Studying activities that take place in speech interactions: a theoretical and methodological framework

The paper proposes a theoretical and methodological framework based on a pluralistic, concerted approach to the study of activities that take place in and through speech interactions. The framework has a general scope, applying to any collective activity taking form through language interactions. It contributes to a fuller understanding of the dynamics of activity and the emergence of the phenomena observed. The framework fits a constructivist and interactionist paradigm. It allows an approach to different dimensions of the activity: communicational, functional, discursive and interlocutory. The theories, models, concepts and methods chosen to address each of the dimensions are presented. From the study of a collaborative philosophical inquiry produced in the first year of a French primary school, we illustrate the use of the framework and show how it can be enriched according to the nature of the activity studied and researchers’ aims.     

Merging of the public and private boundary: education and the market place in China

This paper examines the ways in which the flourishing of the market economy has affected educational development in mainland China. Unlike the Mao era when educational development was entirely directed by the central government, there has been a strong trend of diversification and decentralization of education in the post-Mao period. In recent years, private schools and colleges have become more popular on the mainland, the development of which inevitably challenges the conventional public and private boundary. The principal goal of this paper is to examine how China's education has gone through a process of `marketization'. Based upon our field research conducted in mainland China, we argue that China's educational development has been significantly affected by emerging market forces. The core of the paper is confined to the discussion of four major issues: the emergence of private education, user charges and cost recovery in education, as well as the design of courses and curricula to meet emerging market needs in China. The main focus of this paper is thus concentrated on what strategies educational institutions have employed in response to the strong tide of marketization.     

西部地区高等学校应当率先创建绿色大学

西部大开发是一项长期而艰巨的历史任务,实施这一伟大战略,应当从根本点做起,那就是提高西部地区近３亿人的素质;治贫先治愚,环保当先行;当务之急,是要通过广泛深入的宣传教育,培养环境意识和可持续发展观念;我们认为,要搞好此项工作,应当以创建绿色高等学校为突破口,率先在西部创建绿色高等学校,充分发挥教育系统在生态环境保护和建设方面的作用,对于西部大开发具有重大的现实意义和深远的历史意义。     

Universities,dependency and the market: innovative lessons from Kenya

Higher education in developing nations is typically viewed from a dependency perspective – institutions are seen as merely recipients of Western knowledge, aid and reform efforts. Nevertheless, universities in both the centre and the periphery are dealing with tensions between protecting the public good and embracing neoliberal values based on a market approach to higher education. In the USA and Europe these competing interests are typically cast as mutually exclusive. Our study on the market approach to higher education in Kenya, however, suggests that public and private interests can be complementary, contributing to a re-envisioning of the traditional mission of higher education. This article seeks to examine more fully the nature of reform efforts at two universities in Kenya, to elucidate lessons for universities undergoing market-oriented reform in the West and to suggest a reciprocal relationship between institutions in Africa and Europe, upending the centre-periphery paradigm.     

Difference,discourse and democracy: the making and breaking of policy in the market place

This paper examines the struggles between the principles and structures of governance that centre around notions of welfare and inclusion and frequently contradictory aims based on arguments associated with economic rationality, productivity and performativity as dominant criteria for judging ‘success’. The discussion is extended and explored through an analysis of processes and practices involved in policy-making as it relates to the conflicting aims of ‘raising standards’ and reducing the exclusion of some learners from their local community schools on the grounds of disability or learning difficulty. It draws on selected material from a study of consultation and decision-making relating to the proposed closure of an all-age special school and analyses the use of discourse in two meetings to control agendas. There is a particular focus on the relationship between consultation practices and processes of selection which are normally hidden, and the implications of these for principles of democracy and transparency within the social reconstruction project of New Labour.     

Hierarchies and 'local' markets: the geography of the 'lived' market place in secondary education provision

While not providing a social class analysis of market competition this paper aims to build upon such work by introducing other factors that appear to be present in the education market place. In this paper market competition is considered along two broad dimensions. The first examines educational markets as spatial phenomenon. In the second an empirical study of competition and markets in action is undertaken based on one year's transfer of pupils to secondary schools across six LEAs, each with different geographies. The study proposes three key ways in which competition between schools can be classified. It also suggests that the education market place is, generally, hierarchical, and that the position of schools within these hierarchies is largely associated with their relative examination performances. The paper concludes by suggesting that the concept and the subsequent identification of the ‘local’ markets is necessary before addressing issues such as the impact on school rolls and potential social segregation of intakes.     

Growth Stocks and Lemons: diplomas in the English market‐place 1976–1996

There has been enormous growth in English young people's participation in education over the last 20 years, and a commensurate growth in the number and perceived importance of formal diplomas. However, the growth has been uneven. Politicians have embraced a rather simple theory about the link between economic prosperity and education (and the formation of ‘human capital'). As a result they have supported the creation of a large number of new vocational qualifications, and tried to encourage their uptake. The general population, however, has viewed these qualifications as the lemons of the diploma world; a view supported by evidence on earnings and employment, and the economic returns to different qualifications. Rather than taking vocational qualifications, young people and adults have enrolled for university courses in unprecedented numbers, transforming the higher education sector and the role of diplomas in the labour market. Although the ‘diploma disease’ has advanced with respect to numbers of diplomas, and pressure to stay in school, there is little evidence that this has reduced the quality of English education at school level. Moreover, changes in the world economy have reduced opportunities for unskilled workers in the UK, and suggest that longer schooling may be justified on economic grounds.