Organizing higher education in a knowledge society

The integration of higher education systems in the Western world has led both to development of overall strategies for the organization of higher education institutions by public authorities, as well as to strategies by higher education institutions aiming to position themselves within emerging higher education systems. This article first asks whether these developments represent converging or path dependent trends before it sketches a conceptual point of departure for the analysis of the relationship between institutions in higher education systems based on the effects of integration on academic hierarchies and functional specialization. Then I discuss how recent attempts at integrating higher education systems in Europe and the US may affect the relationship between institutions in the light of conceptions of education as a process by which students learn to learn or by which they learn specific occupational skills. Thirdly, the development is situated in a wider context where the relationship between different types of institutions are considered in relation to the spread of an extended and more utility oriented concept of knowledge. Finally, I consider briefly some possible future developments based on how modern capitalist and public managerialist knowledge regimes constitute conditions for higher education integration.     

Asia Pacific science education in a knowledge society

Science education, since the end of the nineteenth century has been a formal vehicle to ensure the perpetuation of scientific knowledge necessary for general scientific literacy and the creation of a society of scientists. However, since then, beliefs about knowledge and knowing have changed from science being described as being just a pile of chronologically documented facts, through the dynamic growth of scientific knowledge as explained by Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, to the present twenty-first century concept of knowledge societies by which new scientific knowledge is being interpreted. Science education perspectives in relation to teacher education and pedagogies need to be frequently revisited. Indeed, many nations in the Asia-Pacific region are doing just that. How then is the teaching and learning of scientific knowledge in the region? This article will review and compare research related to science achievement, quality of science education and approaches to teaching science in the Asia-Pacific region in particular five nations, in an attempt to answer this question.     

The teacher's role and approaches in a knowledge society

This article is about changes in teaching and learning. It is argued that a pluralist approach, stressing differences in qualities and problems is favourable. The paper is based on a research project regarding changing conditions for teachers and professional identity in the Danish upper‐secondary school. Both theoretical and empirical points from the research project concerning teaching and learning in an area of reform are presented. The main purpose is to develop reflections on various approaches to method and learning styles in relationship to teacher and student roles.     

Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society

Assessment practices in higher education institutions tend not to equip students well for the processes of effective learning in a learning society. The purposes of assessment should be extended to include the preparation of students for sustainable assessment. Sustainable assessment encompasses the abilities required to undertake those activities that necessarily accompany learning throughout life in formal and informal settings. Characteristics of effective formative assessment identified by recent research are used to illustrate features of sustainable assessment. Assessment acts need both to meet the specific and immediate goals of a course as well as establishing a basis for students to undertake their own assessment activities in the future. To draw attention to the importance of this, the idea that assessment always has to do double duty is introduced.     

On generating knowledge in service to society1

In the US debate over science‐based educational research, experimentation is again coming to the fore as ideal for establishing an evidence base of what works in educational interventions thus contributing to the climate of accountability in educational research and practice. Mixed methods research is being positioned in this discussion as a reasonable alternative, a way of making it possible for both experimentalists and non‐experimentalists to join forces in the quest for accountability. This paper argues that mixed methods research is hardly something new; moreover, it is an epistemological response to what is basically a moral–political problem.     

Education,knowledge and the network society

The ‘development of individual capacities’, in addition to the ‘education of responsible citizens’ and the ‘preparation for work’, constitutes one of the most important objectives to be achieved by education systems and, in this sense, makes up one of the main planks of that which Dale terms ‘mandates for the education system’, i.e. projects for education based on ‘conceptions of what it is desirable and legitimate for the education system to bring about’. In a previous work we tried to map out, on the basis of the objectives ‘preparation for work’ and ‘education of responsible citizens’, the outlines of a new mandate for European education policy that appears to be in the making in accord with recent socio‐economic, political and educational developments. In this article, we centre our attention on the ‘development of individual capacities’ in an attempt to map out the effects of the simultaneous pressure, top‐down and bottom‐up, that has been increasingly brought to bear on the nation state and on the education system. With regard to the first, it is argued that what is at stake is the transformation of knowledge itself into money (i.e. pure performance), while with regard to the second, there appears to be taking place a movement of knowledge from the school (national level) to the local community in which this latter is interpreted as the ‘educative city’ (where a ‘transparent’ communicational pedagogy holds sway). This work aims at challenging the dichotomy constructed by way of an analysis of the implications, for both pedagogy and the development of individual capacities, of the development and consolidation of a network state and society.     

Rethinking argumentation-teaching strategies and indigenous knowledge in South African science classrooms

Our response to Hewson and Ogunniyi’s paper focuses, on the one hand, on some of the underlying tensions associated with alinging indigenous knowledge systems with westernized science in South African science classrooms, as suggested by the new, post-apartheid, curriculum. On the other hand, the use of argumentation as a vehicle to accomplish the alignment when the jury is still out on the appropriateness of argumentation as a pedagogical and research tool heightens the tension. We argue that the need for education stakeholders from indigenous heritages to value, know and document their own indigenous knowledge becomes paramount. The textualizing of indigenous knowledge, as has been done in western science, will create repositories for teachers to access and may help with the argumentation strategies such as advocated by the authors.     

The alchemy of learning and work: negotiating learner knowledge in a global society

This article explores issues of literacy and identity of skilled migrants in an educational context in Australia as a learning society. First, it concentrates on forms of knowledge imposed on the learner and looks at how new discourses shape the self. Next, it tests the validity of the four pillars of education in the life of the learner. The paper then discusses the notion of lifelong learning and its appeal to (or existence for) the migrant learners. Finally, it poses important questions about Self–Other dichotomy, emergent voices and a sense of integration. The analysis suggests that further education and employability are closely linked to acquiring discourses set by the education policy designers and the workplace. Without mastering both, passports to further/higher education or professional and other jobs are not issued. The paper argues that literacy skills that incorporate new discourses penetrate and shape existing identities, giving them a sense of new selves, but do not necessarily empower the agency, as the self in control of one’s life. However, hope is not lost, as shown by the group of dedicated educators whose efforts to support the migrant‐learners lead to meeting their goals in work and education of their choice. When embraced by the society, these learners gain a genuine sense of belonging and move away from the position of being Self/Other marginalised. The article concludes by drawing together issues of literacy, identity, knowledge and lifelong learning that interconnected, if harnessed and used wisely, ultimately emancipate and give a decision‐making voice to migrant citizens. Thus they become knowledge workers whose acceptance and personal satisfaction, I firmly believe, contribute to a freer and happier global society.

At the boundary life blossoms.

James Gleick, Chaos

     

Just say know? Schooling the knowledge society

This review essay challenges the practice of rooting educational theory in the economic assumptions that underlie the current championing of a knowledge society . It examines the approaches of three recent works: one book, Andy Hargreaves's Teaching in a Knowledge Society , and two edited collections, Barry Smith's Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society and Peter Jarvis's The Age of Learning . These works deal with the concept of a knowledge society in terms of the professional development of teachers, the cognitive development of students, and the role of adult education. While these books pose critical and interesting challenges to the idea of a knowledge society, they also speak, as a whole, to the need for a more coherent defense among educators of knowledge's place within a public sphere that is imagined to exist on a global scale. This defense is especially important in the face of an increasingly commercialized approach to knowledge that is affecting schools and universities alike.     

Liberal education reconsidered: cultivating humanity in the knowledge society

In the knowledge society, there is a conflict between “education for profit” and “education for humanity.” Education for profit is needed for students’ economic survival and success in the knowledge economy. Education for humanity is needed for their existential lives worthy of human beings. This paper deals with the question of whether it is possible to educate for humanity in the knowledge society. First, I suggested a complemented concept of “education for profit in the broad sense,” transforming the knowledge society for a better one. Second, I discussed Biesta’s criticism of “cultivation of humanity,” defending using this term as a general and honorific sense. Finally, I explained how an expanded concept of education for profit in the broad sense is compatible with the cultivation of humanity. Education for profit in the broad sense, considering the disadvantaged in the social and political sense, is to teach virtues such as caring, compassion, justice, etc. Teaching various values in addition to economic value also contributes to the cultivation of humanity by enriching human life. Teaching various learning skills for continuous learning, “social capital” as well as intellectual knowledge, global citizenship, communal relationship, is to cultivate one’s self-learning capacity. I concluded the paper by reconsidering directions of liberal education in the knowledge society.     

Leading educational transformation in Asia: sustaining the knowledge society

This article explores the implications of the knowledge society for education and education systems. It focuses on how education systems in Asia are contributing to the development and sustainability of the knowledge society through creating powerful professional learning communities. The article explores how professional collaboration, at scale, is being used to generate social capital in order to promote educational transformation and improvement. The article draws upon a range of theoretical perspectives to examine how professional learning communities are contributing to educational improvement and the construction of new knowledge. The article concludes by arguing that disciplined, collective and inter-dependent learning is critical for the knowledge society to be sustained.     

The tale of academic practice in a rising knowledge society: focus on a university in South Africa

Tertiary Education and Management - This paper is based on a study conducted to establish if academic practice in a university designated as Azania is aligning or diverting from the expectations of...     

共享的幻象——信息社会中关于教育知识的建构

教育资源实现的共享,比起以往法定知识中的选择,其所参与的人群、所牵涉的力 量、所遵循的逻辑更为复杂,它拓展了“选择”的问题域,使得知识的建构过程从自上而下的权力 控制,拓展向自上而下的动员与自下而上的主动参与相结合的知识生产方式,原有的城乡二分的 分析模式拓展向贫富二分的分析模式。     

市民社会与政治国家的对立--潘恩《常识》中的市民社会思想解读

潘恩是18世纪杰出的政治思想家、激进的资产阶级民主主义革命家和理论家。他的《常识》及其关于市民社会对抗国家的思想在西方政治思想史上产生了重要的影响。