义务教育均衡发展的社会资本障碍及其政府治理

以追求教育公平为主旨的义务教育均衡发展既是一种政策取向,也是一种教育实践。目前,人们更关注义务教育的非均衡发展状态、成因及其治理问题。不同时期不同的生产方式、政策选择和制度安排是形成义务教育区域之间、城乡之间和校际之间差异的历史原因和现实原因。义务教育非均衡发展的直接后果是导致非规范性择校行为的发生。在择校过程中,家庭和学校社会资本的力量日益突出,其负向功能被诱发,破坏了就近入学政策,加剧了家庭与家庭之间、学校与学校之间社会资本的分化,损害了教育公平价值。由此,我们提出政府对于消除社会资本障碍的方向性建议:通过合理的政策选择和制度安排,在义务教育学校资源配置均衡的基础上,降低家庭社会资本在教育选择中的作用,建设学校社会资本发挥作用的良性竞争环境,从而治理目前部分家庭、学校社会资本参与择校所引发的社会问题。     

New scalar politics: implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with ‘methodological nationalism’. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggests these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.     

A capital or capabilities education narrative in a world of staggering inequalities?

In a world of tremendous inequalities, this paper explores two contrasting normative models for education policy, and the relationship of each to policy, practices and outcomes that can improve lives by reducing injustice and building societies which value capabilities for all. The first model is that of human capital which currently dominates contemporary education policy globally, harnessing education policy to economic growth imperatives so that development through education is the means to the end of increased resources and income. The second model draws on the work of Amartya Sen to present a human capabilities model of education policy in which human lives are the end of development and the education focus is on promoting capabilities and functionings to choose a good life. An argument is advanced for capabilities as the superior approach. The paper closes by noting the problematic of social change and struggle demanded by a transformative view of education and how or if the capability approach is adequate to the task.     

School diversity and social justice: policy and politics

This paper focuses on the long established diversity in the English education system – independent schools, grammar schools and religious schools – and in so doing explores tensions between education policy, politics and social justice. It explores the differential access to these different types of school, their social composition and implications for social justice and for wider society. It is argued that if social justice is to be a goal of government, further policy changes are needed over and above those that have already been made. However, the political challenges, which have limited policy changes to date, would be significant.     

Family learning and the socio-spatial practice of ‘supportive’ power

Family learning has been an important mode of education deployed by governments in the United Kingdom over the past 20 years, and is positioned at the nexus of various social policy areas whose focus stretch beyond education. Drawing on qualitative research exploring mothers’ participation in seven different family learning programmes across West London, this paper looks at how this type of education is mobilised; that is, how mothers are ‘encouraged’ to participate and benefit from this type of programme. Framed by a neo-liberal policy climate and Foucauldian writings on governmentality and surveillance, we explore how participating mothers are carefully ‘targeted’ for this type of learning through their children and through school/ nursery spaces, and how programmes themselves then operate as a supportive social space aimed at facilitating social networks, friendship and personal development linked to positions of gender, ethnicity, class and migrant status. It is the socio-spatial workings of ‘supportive’ power and power relations that enable family learning to be mobilised that ensures its popularity as a social policy initiative.     

Children's participation in school grounds developments: creating a place for education that promotes children's social inclusion

This paper advances the idea that ‘education for the social inclusion of children’ is similar but different to ‘inclusive education’ as it has come to be understood and used by some authors and UK government documents. ‘Inclusive education’ tends to carry an inward emphasis on the participation of children in the education system (with discussions on school culture, transitions, truancy, exclusion rates, underachievement, and school leaving age). In contrast, education for the promotion of children's social inclusion requires an outward emphasis on children's participation in ‘mainstream’ society while they are still children. The latter emphasis is seen to be lacking in educational policy discourse in Scotland though a recent shift in policy towards education for active citizenship is noted. Examples are provided to show how many policy statements enact a limitation on the scope for education to promote children's social inclusion by emphasizing children's deficits as social actors and focussing on the ‘condition’ of social exclusion. The paper draws on an empirical study of children's participation in changing school grounds in Scotland. The analysis shows how the enclosure of learning in books, classrooms and normative curricula was challenged. Learning from school grounds developments was constructed relationally and spatially, but the scope of what was to be learned was often delineated by adults. The paper closes with a discussion of how education that promotes the social inclusion of children will benefit from seeing both children and adults as current though partial citizens and using socio-spatial opportunities for the generation of uncertain curricula through their shared and/or differentiated participation.     

Discourse of derision: the role of the mass media within the education policy process

It is asserted that the mass media play a significant part in the education policy process, yet this contribution has received little attention in empirical and theoretical analyses. Convergence between theoretical work on education policy and media studies in linking social institutions with the economy in the perpetuation of social inequalities, while accepting their relative autonomy, provides a starting point for incorporation of the media role in conceptualization of the education policy process. Concepts which may assist the exploration of the media role within education policy are denned, including the anthropological notion of myths. These concepts are employed in analysing a policy issue wherein the British government and the mass media framed the relevant debate as a polarization between progressive and traditional education. The analysis draws on the experience of a primary school which was portrayed in a current affairs television programme as exemplifying progressive educational practices. Topics that would benefit from further study are suggested.     

Understanding equity as an asset to national interest: developing a social contract analysis of policy

Alongside the influence of market-based reforms in education policy has been the growth of policy that has largely been overlooked – those that outline social contracts. This paper draws on policies that connect with equity as a way of illustrating this social contract turn in policy and develops a conceptualisation of social contracts as they apply to education policy. The argument provides three principles that underpin social contracts, including informed consent, negotiation and accountability. This paper applies these principles to three levels of social contract. At the first level are broad social contracts, which are associated with debates about the kinds of things that states should expect from its citizens, and the things that citizens could expect from governments and the state. The second level of social contract is an institutional or field-based social contract, which spells out the obligations and connections between a specific field and other fields. This level names a kind of social contract that is often exemplified in policies or statements by specific institutions. The third level of social contract deals with contract-like mechanisms embedded in fields that make tangible the obligations and expectations of citizens in fulfilling the expectations of fields.     

Educating child practitioners: a (re)turn to the university disciplines

This paper analyses a specific disjunctive policy space in Scotland involving the current key children's social and educational policy agenda, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), and a recent national report on teacher education, the ‘Donaldson Report’. In four main parts, the paper first introduces and applies in policy review and analysis a capitals frame to identify the policy–practice discontinuities currently inherent in the ‘GIRFEC-child practitioner education’ policy space, exemplified by the Donaldson Report. Then, the same capitals frame is applied to examine the capitals resources demanded in the particular ‘child–child practitioner education’ policy space previously delineated. Next, examples of policy disconnects amongst current child practice and practitioner education policy production and implementation, which warrant a concerted integrative cross-sector project to ensure coherent social and intellectual capital relations at all levels, are discussed. Finally, the paper calls for the governing professional registration bodies and universities involved in the education of child-sector practitioners to engage in the redesign of university programmes underpinned by principles of transdisciplinarity and transprofessionalism. The methodology is policy sociology and policy text analysis.     

Social benefits and the subsidization of higher education: A critique

This paper examines the policy relevance of assertions that hypothetical social benefits generated by higher education satisfy normal public investment criteria. A subsidization model of higher education is introduced to emphasize the importance of either social benefits or political collusion as justifications for public support of higher education. The most common arguments in support of the social benefits approach are critiqued. The paper concludes by examining the question of whether even the existence of social benefits is a sufficient condition for subsidization and the need for examination of alternative funding systems is highlighted.     

应试教育的经济解释

教育是实现社会流动的重要途径，每个家长都希望子女能够通过教育向更高的社会阶层流动。在当前的劳动用人体制和教育评价体制这两大“约束条件”下，家长对教育的重视转化成了对考试成绩的追求。改革应试教育，就要改革促使应试教育得以形成的“约束条件”——劳动用人体制和教育评价体制。     

The educational imagination and the sociology of education in Australia

A remarkable feature of the sociology of education is its proliferation under a broad gamut of research themes and topics. Understanding the relationship of education to social reproduction and social change are pivotal to the sociology of education, and have fruitfully informed research in fields such as gender and education, vocational education and lifelong learning, policy sociology in education, cultural sociology of education, literacy, social justice and education, globalisation and education. Tracking the historical trajectory of the sociology of education in Australia, this article underlines the productivity of educational research and methodological advances in the fields of gender, literacy, and policy. It also points to the failure of the sociology of education and educational research to engage with the education system’s complicity in reproducing Indigenous and ethnic disadvantage. I argue for an sociology of education along lines envisaged by Emile Durkheim who recognised the importance of understanding education systems past and present, so that educators might comprehend the relationship of education to social change. New theories, methodologies and fields of education play an important role in informing understandings of contemporary education. However, if education and educational research are to inform social futures, they require an educational imagination able to account for achievements and deficiencies; an educational imagination able to undertake theoretical deliberations about the social and material conditions, struggles and occlusions that have and continue to constitute the purpose and practice of education.     

美国联邦大学生资助政策的转变及其影响

美国联邦大学生资助政策是联邦高等教育政策的重要组成部分,学生资助政策扩大了高等教育入学机会,促进了高等教育的发展,提高了美国的国民素质和生产力。联邦学生资助政策在实践中不断进行适时地调整和变革,随着财政资助项目的变化,少数民族学生丧失了大学的信心吗？由于债务因素,改变了学生的学术计划吗？这些变化对本科教育质量意味着什么？本文试图探究美国联邦学生资助政策的转变对大学生入学和学习,以及教育质量的影响。     

日本教育反贫困的政策逻辑与实践路径

儿童贫困是世界各国面临的共同难题.日本自2013年起先后制定了《儿童贫困对策推进法》与《儿童贫困对策大纲》,建立了以教育为先、四位一体的综合政策体系,旨在通过教育赋能消除贫困代际传递.政策重点在于扩大学前教育及高中阶段教育机会,采用服务支持与现金支持结合的形式,政府主导、社会力量参与保障政策资源.纵向完善了贯穿学前教育...     

Untangling the Net

Abstract

The importance of computer training in social work education will continue to increase as the profession becomes more globalized and technological. It is the authors' premise that social work education must include the integration of training in computer technology. One resource available to educators is the Internet. The world wide web contains a vast amount of information on policy and social issues. This article discusses the use of web based learning exercises to simultaneously teach social policy and enhance student computer skills. Two learning exercises are presented which are designed for use in social work policy courses. The authors present their teaching experiences and provide suggestions on using this approach in the classroom environment. Information on resources and useful URL's for policy research is included in the discussion.     

Meritocratic Epistemic Communities: An Alternative Policy Paradigm for Higher Education

This paper attempts to propose an alternative policy frame for higher education policy by demonstrating the inadequacy of the market approach adopted by the 2011 English higher education policy in addressing the economic and social agenda, and by reframing higher education as a mechanism that selects and distributes talents to vocational sectors in a way that achieves socially optimal outcomes. The paper shows why government control is more appropriate than market mechanism in managing higher education cost, how effective screening and distribution of talents can be achieved through deliberation among epistemic community members and how the alternative policy frame supports a social justice agenda. The idea of a meritocratic epistemic community for screening and educating talents is central to this new frame as it facilitates the creation of a common space where competing stakeholders of one vocational sector gather together to deliberate on the merits of the future workforce.     

Conceptualizing social justice in education: mapping the territory

Within recent studies of education policy, social justice has been an under‐theorized concept. This paper is an attempt to begin to remedy this situation. It critically examines some of the most prominent ways in which social justice has been and is being thought about within various traditions of social theory and concludes by sketching out a framework for conceptualizing social justice in the context of education policy research. However, the main purpose of the paper is not to provide a definitive conceptualization of social justice but to open up a debate which might usefully inform the work of the education policy research community.     

论教育政策的道德品性

教育政策与道德之间有着天然的、本位意义上不可分割的联系。教育政策欲发挥规范效力,必须基于一定的道德谱系之中,具备伦理上的正当性。在社会转型与多元利益冲突加剧的背景下,作为从更上位、更宽广、更基础层面对教育政策进行引领、规约和协调作用的道德品性愈来愈突显,具体表现在：教育政策与道德在发生学上具有同源性;教育政策须以伦理道德原则为价值导引;教育政策的终极目的是人的全面发展。这种体现鲜明道德品性教育政策的具体表征形式为：秉持＂以人为本＂的教育政策理念;恪守＂正义性＂的教育政策安排;遵循＂公共性＂的教育政策导向。     

Does educational privatisation promote social justice?

Social justice in education refers to the expectation that the education system provides fairness in its access to opportunities and results. Proponents of educational privatisation believe this would not only open up opportunities for those that otherwise are restricted from attending good schools, but that it would also improve overall efficiency in the education system through pressures of market competition. This article first provides a framework for analysing a quasi-market in education and for considering the potential effects of privatisation. It then applies this framework to the Netherlands, a school system premised completely on choice where two thirds of the schools are privately sponsored. We conclude that the Dutch system, thanks to a series of policies and regulations in place, performs relatively well on social justice, when looking at freedom of choice and overall productive efficiency. However, for equity and social cohesion, despite clear policy efforts, the privatised system seems to undermine social justice for certain groups in the population. The dilemma observed here is that some private benefits of education must be compromised to achieve greater equity and social cohesion. It is an open question whether policy makers are willing to make such tradeoffs.     

Lifelong learning policy in two national contexts

This article describes and discusses the development of lifelong learning policy in two EU member states, Denmark and Portugal. The purpose is to show how different societal and historical contexts shape the development and implementation of lifelong learning policies, even though these policies have significant common elements. As a basis for the discussion an inventory of policy elements is presented. Denmark and Portugal have been chosen as examples of smaller EU member states with different historical, social and cultural characteristics. Developments and policies in the two countries, including the links with EU education policy, are described. The discussion includes comparison drawing on the inventory of policy elements. A main conclusion is that the different historical trajectories of the two countries remain very important for present-day education and for the advancement of lifelong learning policy. Early development of public primary education and popular adult education has provided a strong foundation for lifelong learning policy in Denmark while in Portugal not only institutional provision but also popular demand for lifelong learning has had to be built up relatively recently. EU education policy has had much more impact on lifelong learning policy in Portugal than in Denmark, because Portugal has had to depend much more on economic support from the EU social fund.