The politics of international league tables: PISA in Japan’s achievement crisis debate

Using the political‐economic analysis of globalisation and education as well as a culturalist approach to education policy borrowing, the paper analyses the role of local actors, specifically, national newspapers and the Ministry of Education, in mediating the potentially homogenising curricular policy pressure of globalisation exerted through the PISA league tables. Using the recent Japanese education policy debate as a case study, the author demonstrates how the Japanese media interpreted the PISA 2003 findings in a way that resonated with the specific cultural, political, and economic context of the time and how the Ministry used the findings to legitimise otherwise highly contentious policy measures. Questioning the conventional interpretation that the PISA 2003 shock caused the Ministry to redirect its controversial yutori (low pressure) curricular policy, the paper reconstitutes the Ministry as an active agent that capitalised on an external reference (PISA) to re‐establish its political legitimacy in a time of increasing neo‐liberal state‐restructuring.     

Performance Indicators and League Tables: A Call for Standards

League tables are weighted combinations of scores on performance indicators. The Times newspaper publishes an annual league table of British universities and the focus of this article is the 1994 table. The scores of ninety-six universities on fourteen performance indicators are ranked using weights which 'reflect the interests of students'. The league table is intended as a resource which allows students to compare universities and therefore it is important for both students and universities that valid inferences can be drawn from its use. The table fails to meet any of the technical requirements which would assure its internal construct validity. The educational measurement literature requires that validity inquiry must include consideration of social consequences and it is demonstrated that the technical shortcomings of the Times table could have significant adverse impact, even in the top ten universities. It is argued that universities should forsake their current stance of non-co-operation and develop a shortlist of demanding technical standards, linked to the educational measurement literature, which could be referenced in effective attacks upon poorly constructed league tables.     

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

League tables of universities that measure performance in various ways are now commonplace, with numerous bodies providing their own rankings of how institutions throughout the world are seen to be performing on a range of metrics. This paper uses Lyotard's notion of language games to theorise that universities are regaining some power over being placed on league tables by creating narratives that manipulate their rankings to promote their own strengths. This paper examines the findings of a study involving university responses to global rankings throughout 2016 produced by two major ranking bodies, Times Higher Education and QS Top Universities. The existing literature has established that ranking tables can be used as a vehicle for humiliation and can produce terrors for all those involved. Thus, the significance of this study's findings is in new ways of theorising university responses to appearing on league tables at a time when academia is a high‐stakes activity where institutions’ abilities are measured and reported on at a global scale.     

What's in a name? The impact of reputation and rankings on the teaching income of English universities

This study examines the impact of universities’ reputation on teaching income and demonstrates how strongly reputation may affect the fees that they can charge. Higher Education is increasingly competitive and international, and institutions are preoccupied with national and international prestige. Research output is demonstrably central to reputation and, specifically, to global rankings, but less has been written about the benefits of high prestige for teaching income and the ability to charge high fees. This article uses English data to show the impact when fees are partially deregulated. Public universities with high rankings in global league tables and on domestic measures can command teaching income per student which is very much higher (in this case typically more than a third) than lower‐prestige institutions. This financial return to prestige further increases universities’ incentives to seek high positions in league tables and establish a reputational brand.     

Benchmarking academic standards in the UK

Abstract

The Dealing Report in the UK supported the use of benchmarking in higher education, taking as its stimulus the use of benchmarking in industrial and commercial contexts. The UK Government's concern regarding academic standards has raised the question of whether benchmarking could be applied to them.

This article reports on a pilot study of the benchmarking of academic standards in the UK, and demonstrates ‐ with reference to empirical data ‐ that benchmarking in this context needs to be approached differently from benchmarking in industrial/commercial milieux, since it requires a combination of finely‐drawn comparisons and professional judgements if valid conclusions are to be drawn. It is argued that the complexity which underpins academic standards is inimical to the production of statements about standards that will be applicable across the span of a diverse national system of higher education. The argument presented can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to systems of higher education beyond the UK.     

以党建为引领 切实加强高校共青团建设

在新形势下,创造性地开展"党建带团建"工作,有利于党的建设和团的建设相互促进,相得益彰,也有利于发挥党、团组织在人才培养中的积极作用,为完成高校以育人为中心的各项任务提供思想和组织保证。基于此,从党建与团建的关系入手,就当前高校共青团组织如何加强以党建为引领进行深入剖析,对扎实推进高校共青团工作具有十分重要的意义。     

The impact of size and specialisation on universities’ department performance: A DEA analysis applied to Austrian universities

This paper explores the performance efficiency of natural and technical science departments at Austrian universities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We present DEA as an alternative tool for benchmarking and ranking the assignment of decision-making units (organisations and organisational units). The method applies a multiple input and output variables approach, which is a clear advantage to other approaches using simple performance ratios. To deliver reasonable results, suitable input and output variables have been determined in a previous step using correlation analyses and OLS regression. The results validate the methods applied, and reveal performance differences and scale effects. The use of multiple output variables enables the revealing of detailed improvement or reduction amounts of each input and output of the evaluated units and furthermore for identifying the specialisation of teaching, research, and industrial cooperation. We find significant evidence that the size of a department influences its overall and specialisation performance; both small and large departments perform above average, which proves that simple linear scale effects do not exist.     

Reviewers

Abstract

The growth in importance of performance assessment in education over recent years has been linked with a concern to ensure that the service represents ‘value for money’. To date the absence of a satisfactory analytical framework has meant that questions of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘efficiency’ have been kept separate. An additional problem has been that, whilst there are many different outcomes which are appropriate for education authorities to pursue, conventional models handle these only one at a time.

In this paper we use data on the 96 English LEAs to show how an underlying model allows authorities to be compared in terms of ‘efficiency’ when facing different environmental circumstances and utilising different resource inputs. The technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is first described in the context of an explanatory model, and then the results of applying this to the English LEAs are presented.

As distinct from a league table’ analysis, DEA gives some indications of where improvements are to be sought. It allows for ‘trade‐offs’ between outputs of different types and provides a small but distinct peer group of ‘efficient’ authorities to which an ‘inefficient’ LEA can be compared.

The efficiency measure used is ‘relative efficiency’ which arises from comparing the actual performance of an inefficient authority with that of others which can be used to model its environmental circumstances and resource inputs.

A number of case studies are described. The limitations of the technique, and the caution required in interpretation, are discussed.     

我国青年阶段篮球竞赛体系现状分析及发展研究

随着高校篮球赛事的发展与繁荣,原有的青年联赛受到了冲击,我国青少年篮球人才的培养模式处在了一个转型期,并伴随着诸多问题与困惑。如何协调各联赛间的关系,加速培养目标的实现,是现阶段我国青年篮球人才培养面临的一大课题。本文在大量文献资料分析及走访专家的基础上,提出了我国青年阶段篮球竞赛体系今后发展的思路和构想。     

Social Justice,Democratic Education and the Silencing of Words that Wound

In recent years, research within the sociocultural perspective on moral learning has contributed important knowledge about how individuals develop their moral ability by participating in sociocultural activities. To a lesser extent, sociocultural research has focused on the role of individual continuity in these processes. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the progress of the sociocultural perspective by suggesting an approach that allows for an in situ analysis of how individuals' prior experiences take part in the processes of moral meaning‐making, which also takes sociocultural activity into consideration. The philosophical and methodological basis for this approach consists of a combination of Dewey's transactional perspective on meaning‐making and Wittgenstein's first‐person perspective on language use. The article contains an empirical example that illustrates this approach. This analysis shows how prior experiences are re‐actualised in an event and thus participate in the process of moral meaning‐making, as well as contributing to the substance of the meanings made.     

Learning Through Benchmarking: Developing a Relational, Prospective Approach to Benchmarking ICT in Learning and Teaching

This study discusses benchmarking the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning between two universities with different missions: one an Australian campus-based metropolitan university and the other a British distance-education provider. It argues that the differences notwithstanding, it is possible to develop a useful and rigorous benchmarking relationship between such institutions that draws on previous benchmarking research and improves the approach by benchmarking key processes, not just outcomes. By defining a process used to embed ICT in subjects and using this as a focus of the benchmarking, a relational and prospective approach to quality assurance for ICT can be clarified, one which promotes coherence amongst the benchmarks that can be used for the purposes of improvement.     

University Admissions and the Prediction of Degree Performance: an Analysis in the Light of Changes to the English Schools’ Examination System

The United Kingdom's Department for Education has recently changed the nature of the AS‐level examinations normally taken by students aspiring to enter higher education degree courses one year into their post‐compulsory education. In the face of protests from universities and other institutions that this would both harm students’ progression towards the A‐level qualifications, on which entry to English universities is normally based, and make it difficult for universities determining which of their applicants were best placed to benefit from their degree courses, the Department conducted research which it claimed showed that degree outcome could be predicted as well from the results of GCSE examinations taken one year before AS‐levels as from AS‐levels themselves. This paper critiques those analyses and their conclusions showing, through a re‐analysis and extended interpretation of the Department's data, that AS‐levels provide a more reliable predictor of degree performance in 2011 than GCSEs and that many students who performed better at AS‐level than at GCSE gained a place, and performed well, at a university with high entrance standards.     

高校办学效益DEA评价指标体系研究

高校办学效益是目前社会和高校管理者日益关注的问题。在对高校投入产出进行全面分析的基础上，结合DEA方法对评价指标体系的要求，对高校办学效益DEA评价指标体系的建立进行了探讨。     

SCIENTIFIC SELF‐DEFENSE: TRANSFORMING DEWEY'S IDEA OF TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSPARENCY

In this essay, David Waddington provides a basic outline of John Dewey's often‐overlooked views on technology education and explores how these ideas could be updated productively for use in contemporary contexts. Some of the shortcomings of Dewey's ideas are also examined—his faith in the scientific method may have been excessive, and some critics have charged that his aspirations for a technology‐infused citizenship education were overly ambitious. However, Waddington contends in this analysis that by combining Dewey's ideas with the insights of contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour, it is possible to update the notion of technological transparency to create a fresh approach to science and technology education. This new approach, which Waddington calls “critical transparency,” aims to help citizens develop a healthy skepticism toward science and technology.     

Do League Tables Contribute to the Development of a Quality Culture? Football and Higher Education Compared

The increasing use of league tables to summarise the relative performance of universities suggests an explicit analogy with association football. The extent to which this analogy is useful is explored through a comparison between the operation of the Premier and Nationwide Football Leagues and Universities and Colleges in England and Wales. This comparison considers issues such as what the league tables actually measure, how performance is linked to rewards or penalties, what mechanisms are available for improving performance, and what similarities there are between the locations of more or less successful football clubs and universities.     

DEA方法在研究型大学建设绩效评价中的应用

在综述DEA方法的基础上,通过选取“985工程”重点建设的9所研究型大学指标数据进行分析,结果表明,这些研究型大学建设的投入产出已经基本达到了最优,也从另一个角度检验了我国研究型大学在基础建设阶段取得的建设成果.     

Building the mobile hub: mobile literacies and the construction of a complex academic text

This paper contributes a definition of mobile literacy. This is worthwhile because although mobile, internet‐enabled devices are increasingly prevalent in many people's lives, mobile literacy appears to be under‐theorised and lacking definition. After giving an overview of the scale and nature of mobile device use, the paper develops the definition through building on an existing body of work which seeks to define literacies, digital literacies and mobile learning. The definition takes account of the mobility of technology, of learners, and of learning. A systematic multimodal analysis of a complex undergraduate text, in the form of a conference‐style poster, is then undertaken in order to exemplify the definition offered. The analysis attends to both the semiotic resources exploited by the text's author and the wider context the text is created within. Interview data complements that constructed through analysis of the text itself. Combining these two data sources reveals the ideational, interpersonal and textual/organisational meanings communicated by the text, and how mobility is a contextual factor which is fundamental to the literacy practices employed by the author to convey these meanings.     

Measuring research competitiveness in UK universities: introducing the Herfindahl Index to the 2008 and 2014 research assessment exercises

Like its 2008 predecessor, the, 2014 Research Excellence Framework was a high-stakes exercise. For universities and their constituent departments, it had zero-sum implications for league table position in a way that the 2001 exercise did not, and post facto it is having a significant effect on investment and disinvestment as departments vie with each other internally for dwindling estate and staffing resources. Yet there has never been an analysis of how different Units of Assessment compare with each other in terms of their competitiveness, and how the percentage of staff submitted in each discipline affects the competition space. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to introduce the Herfindahl Index, currently used as the basis for antitrust regulation in the US, to an educational setting; and to apply the Index to the 2008 and 2014 research assessment exercises to gauge the competitiveness of individual disciplines. It finds that competition in the UK research sector is exceptionally tough, but that competitiveness in some subjects, especially Education, is hugely increased when the metric used as base is the total number of staff eligible, rather than the total number of staff submitted, which suggests a very concentrated market in terms of quality.     

(De)coloniality and South African academe

ABSTRACT

The colonial nature of South African universities remains a source of debate among students and academics. Decolonization as rethinking academic institutional practices seems less controversial; the specificity of how to decolonize the academia is the core of divergent arguments and contesting ideologies. Consequently, many suggestions and methods for the decolonization of South African universities have been proffered. Although some of these suggestions are pertinent, a critical question about what should South African academe decolonize from needs to be engaged. This requires a critical, theoretical and intellectual discourse of coloniality in order to rethink the academia in South Africa. Drawing from Anibal Quijano’s critical discourse of coloniality of power, this paper (re)visits the nature of coloniality, explores approaches to decolonization and situates these understandings to the academia in postcolonial South Africa. A polycentric approach to decolonization is supported with a goal of decolonization as innovations.     

Concurrent Evaluation of Customer Relationship Management and Organizational Excellence: An Empirical Study

This article concurrently studies customer relationship management (CRM ) and organizational excellence (OE ) by pursuing three goals. First, it investigates the relationship between CRM and OE ; second, it conducts a performance assessment from CRM and OE viewpoints; and third, it analyzes how each factor of CRM and each criterion of OE affects an organization's performance. To achieve the first goal, a number of hypotheses about potential relationships between CRM factors and OE criteria are proposed with the cooperation of experts and using fuzzy DEMATEL . These hypotheses are then examined using the path analysis method to find out which one is supported and which one must be rejected. Subsequently, the data envelopment analysis (DEA ) approach is employed to accomplish the second goal. Finally, a t‐test is used to achieve the third goal. To implement the research in the real world, two major international airports of Iran are considered as our survey cases.