Online Design Education: Meta‐Connective Pedagogy

Rapid technological advancement has changed the landscape of design education to be integrated with educational technology, and the worldwide COVID‐19 pandemic has further accelerated its transition to online education. Pedagogical engagement with online education is unavoidable to ensure that the transition is successful when the situation ends. Yet, many prior studies on online design education remain focused on technical and administrative uses of digital technologies. In this article, meta‐connective pedagogy is introduced to enable educators and researchers critically to engage with pedagogical concerns emerging from the connective nature of the digitally networked world. Meta‐connective pedagogy is to focus on we are always‐being‐connected and argue that authentic learning and teaching are determined by diverse forms of pre‐existing connectivity. This article consists of four parts. First, it is argued that studio‐based learning has developed a ‘resistant’ stance towards online education, which justifies the omission of understanding connective features from its discourses. Second, four up‐to‐date studies on online design education are critically reviewed in a comparative manner, as their views are split into technical and pedagogical aspects. Third, meta‐connective pedagogy is introduced to address why and how connectivity becomes an emerging pedagogical concern for online education. Fourth and last, a schematic form of meta‐connective design education is articulated, and new roles and responsibilities of educators are addressed. Overall, it is argued that the whole concept of design education is subverted towards connectivity that is inclusive of social components of traditional design studios in a more efficient way.     

The myths about e‐learning in higher education

Proponents have marketed e‐learning by focusing on its adoption as the right thing to do while disregarding, among other things, the concerns of the potential users, the adverse effects on users and the existing research on the use of e‐learning or related innovations. In this paper, the e‐learning‐adoption proponents are referred to as the technopositivists. It is argued that most of the technopositivists in the higher education context are driven by a personal agenda, with the aim of propagating a technopositivist ideology to stakeholders. The technopositivist ideology is defined as a ‘compulsive enthusiasm’ about e‐learning in higher education that is being created, propagated and channelled repeatedly by the people who are set to gain without giving the educators the time and opportunity to explore the dangers and rewards of e‐learning on teaching and learning. Ten myths on e‐learning that the technopositivists have used are presented with the aim of initiating effective and constructive dialogue, rather than merely criticising the efforts being made.     

Community development as citizen education

Everyday professional discussion often refers to the idea that community development is essentially a learning process. This article sketches a comprehensive theory of community development as citizen education by following the different traditions in community development and by defining the educational aspect of each tradition. Among the traditions described here are traditional community organizations as a social work method, the radical community organization of Alinsky, the neo‐Marxist approach of community action, and the settlement movement. The resulting theoretical framework defines community development as an alternative route for the education of citizens with low levels of formal education in the same way as labour unions and churches often are alternative routes towards active citizenship for low‐income groups. Next, three forms of education are singled out within community development: first, education as training of local leadership; as an action‐oriented and on the job learning process supported informally by the community worker. This form of education resembles the informal vocational education in which an experienced craftsman trains his pupils on the shop floor. Second, education as consciousness raising, which reverses the sequence of learning processes: in this case it is not action which leads to education but education that hopefully leads to action by citizens. There is a whole range of providers of such consciousness raising activities, such as community development organizations, local centres for adult education, churches through their celebrations and adult education classes. A recent development is the ‘new localism’ in social movements, such as the environmental movement, emphasizing consciousness‐raising activities in the local community. Third, education as service delivery: here education is a service for the community in the same way as community development can deliver other services to a community such as affordable housing and health centres. Partly these educational services are ‘survival education’, such as job readiness training programmes and literacy programmes; partly they are ‘leisure education’, typically blurring the borders between ‘pure’ education and recreational and social opportunities for residents.     

The promise and peril of education: the teaching of in/tolerance in an era of globalisation

This article addresses the pedagogical implications and possibilities that globalisation poses for educational policy and praxis as it relates to teaching about difference in an ever more diverse world. Among the most salient questions in an era of accelerated globalisation is how seemingly different cultures, civilisations, nationalities, ethnicities and races are to coexist peacefully in an increasingly borderless world, or whether they are forever destined to experience conflict based on cultural chasms in the guise of a ‘clash of civilisations’. This article highlights the tension between two perspectives on education: education as a force in cultivating intolerance and education as a panacea for intolerance. While not negating the potential for education to remedy social ills, we consider the extent to which education can produce change in the opposite direction. In the following pages, we present a context for our discussion of in/tolerance by providing an overview of the double‐edged, or Janus‐faced, qualities that both education and globalisation possess. We then draw on social‐psychological, anthropological and sociological literatures in bringing together three theoretical constructs—moral exclusion, the genocidal continuum and symbolic violence—in examining how intolerance is created and reproduced within educational settings. Following this overview, we present three vignettes to exemplify the teaching of intolerance in different historical and geo‐political contexts, namely, Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Israel. Finally, we conclude with recommendations that pay particular attention to the kind of education that that teaching of tolerance necessitates.     

Breaking silence: educating citizens for love,care and solidarity

An indifference to the affective domain and an allegiance to the education of the rational autonomous subject and public citizen are at the heart of formal education. The impact of Cartesian rationalism is intensifying with the glorification of performativity measured by league tables and rankings. The citizen carer and the care recipient citizen are only recognised in the educational arena when professionals are being trained to manage those in need of care. Education for informal care labour, solidarity work and love labour is generally not part of the formal educational trajectory. Because the scholarly understanding of work has been equated with economic self preservation and self‐actualisation through interaction with nature, education is seen as preparation for this type of work. Education is indifferent to other‐centred work arising from our interdependencies and dependencies as affective, relational beings. In particular it has ignored the centrality of nurturing for the preservation and self‐actualisation of the human species. In this article the authors argue that sociologists need to engage with the extensive feminist scholarship on care if they are to challenge the deeply care‐less view of the citizen that is implicitly accepted in new and older forms of liberal thinking. The rational economic actor model of the citizen is contrasted with the care‐full view of the citizen and the implications of both for education are explored.     

Positivism,Structurationism and the Differentiation‐Polarisation Theory: a reconsideration of Shilling's novelty and primacy thesis

This paper critically assesses Chris Shilling's claims that structuration theory provides a new and important direction for sociology of education. That assessment is conducted with particular reference to the long‐standing research programme in the sociology of education, known as the differentiation‐polarisation theory (d‐p). The plausibility of the claim that d‐p is positivist is examined, and the extent to which d‐p meets the supposed inadequacies of sociology of education allegedly exposed by structuration theory is investigated. It is concluded that the novelty and importance of structuration theory for sociology of education and a fortiori education policy remains unproven.     

Revealing the research ‘hole’ of early childhood education for sustainability: a preliminary survey of the literature

In 2007, Environmental Education Research dedicated a special issue to childhood and environmental education. This paper makes a case for ‘early childhood’ to also be in the discussions. Here, I am referring to early childhood as the before‐school years, focusing on educational settings such as childcare centres and kindergartens. This sector is one of the research ‘holes’ that Reid and Scott ask the environmental education community to have the ‘courage to discuss’. This paper draws on a survey of Australian and international research journals in environmental education and early childhood education seeking studies at their intersection. Few were found. Some studies explored young children’s relationships with nature (education in the environment). A smaller number discussed young children’s understandings of environmental topics (education about the environment). Hardly any centred on young children as agents of change (education for the environment). At a time when there is a growing literature showing that early investments in human capital offer substantial returns to individuals and communities and have a far‐reaching effect – and when early childhood educators are beginning to engage with sustainability – it is vital that our field responds. This paper calls for urgent action – especially for research – to address the gap.     

Environmental education and the issue of nature

Much official environmental education policy in the UK and elsewhere makes scant reference to nature as such, and the issue of our underlying attitude towards it is rarely addressed. For the most part such policy is pre‐occupied with the issue of meeting ‘sustainably’ what are taken to be present and future human needs. This paper considers several issues posed by this anthropocentric approach and explores the view that environmental education—indeed any education—worthy of the name needs to bring a range of searching questions concerning nature to the attention of learners, and to encourage them to develop their own on‐going responses to those questions. It is argued that our present environmental predicament not only provides an exciting opportunity to re‐focus education on the issue of human relationship to nature, but also requires the exploration of this issue for its long‐term resolution. Extensive implications for the curriculum and the culture of the school are raised.     

Private higher education: challenges for Australia and beyond

Among the chief characteristics of the post‐industrial society are ambiguity and paradox. In Australian higher education, as in other sectors of Australian Society, these have found expression in individualism, private initiative and entrepreneuship.

The ‘privatization’ of higher education now includes the imposition on enrolment charges, the re‐introduction of ‘full cost’ fees, especially for private overseas students, moves towards the deregulation of salaries and conditions of employment of academic staff and the establishment of new ‘self‐contained’ and ‘hybrid’ private higher education institutions.

In response to these developments, debate has tended to centre upon a number of mythologies which inter alia assert that private higher education is new to Australia, that it is foreign to the Western academic tradition and that such education avoids the employment of public funds. Moreover, it is claimed that while private higher education is ipso facto elitist, it will, through competition, result in a more effective and efficient public sector.

The above mythologies are examined in the light of past, present and proposed developments in Australian higher education, with particular note being taken of the establishment of the Bond University in Queensland.     

Mori Akira's Education for Self‐Awareness: Lessons from the Kyoto School for Mindful Education

What does it mean to educate for self‐awareness? How does this fit within education, with its other objectives, and other learning processes? These are key questions for more comprehensive versions of the mindful education movement. In order to provide some responses to these questions from a cohesive philosophical position, this article examines the philosophy of education of Mori Akira (1915–1976). It closely analyses his philosophy of self‐awareness (jikaku), while drawing comparisons with other Kyoto School philosophers. In order to fully understand Mori's particular conception of self‐awareness, it traces how this idea developed throughout his entire career: from his first book, The Philosophical Quest for Educational Ideals (1948), which focusses on the questing self‐awareness of the teacher, to the early–middle period (particularly The Practicality and Inwardness of Education, 1955, and Philosophical Anthropology of Education, 1961), which develops a systematic view of the self‐awareness of students, and to his final book, The Fundamental Principles of Human Formation (1977), which re‐examines generativity in light of uncertainty and death. What this trajectory shows is a view of education centred on self‐awareness and dynamically wrestling with key educational paradoxes, potentially deepening the philosophical grounding of mindful education.     

The Effects of Preschool Education: Some American and British Evidence

ABSTRACT

Tensions between schools and the outside world have often arisen out of the lack of contiguity between the aims of child‐centred education and the demands of society on education. Technology now offers the opportunity for neutralising these tensions; it is argued that technology confers on individuals more autonomy and reduces the power of the large organisation by exposing the weaknesses inherent in its structure; as society becomes more individual‐centred the logic of child‐centred education will become more clearly apparent. Yet education in its perception of the effects of technological change is short‐sighted and its response is marked by a kind of stereotypy. Some reasons for education's difficulties in understanding the effects of technological change are advanced while some developments in schools are identified as positive reflections of technologically‐induced change. It is suggested that recognition and understanding of the processes underlying these developments is necessary if we are to promote the benefits to be derived from the new changes.     

Schooling the new generation of German citizens: a comparison of citizenship curricula in Berlin and Baden‐Württemberg

In Germany, unlike other European countries, citizenship education has a long history. Since the Second World War, its role has evolved from promoting de‐Nazification in the West and state socialism in the East to emphasising common citizenship in a multicultural society. Today, the federal states (Bundesländer) are largely autonomous in matters of education. Drawing on citizenship curricula from two states with historically opposite political constellations – Berlin and Baden‐Württemberg – we argue that they share an emphasis on the fragility of democracy and the challenges arising from migration. While Baden‐Württemberg favours the concept of tolerance, Berlin privileges the idea of interculturalism. There are important within‐state differences: the Baden‐Württemberg curriculum for the vocational‐track Hauptschule being more similar to the curricula in Berlin, perhaps as a result of the larger concentration of migrants. This raises questions for educators and policy‐makers around the need for a single coherent model of citizenship education and the importance of citizenship in multicultural Germany for all.     

An outsider's perspective on a provocative proposal: What would Flexner think?

This viewpoint commentary focuses on a proposal for integrated anatomy education in undergraduate college from Dr. Darda published in the Anatomical Sciences Education. Although the proposal is for college level education, the proposal echoes some ideas proposed a century ago by Abraham Flexner when he wrote his report titled “Medical Education in the United States and Canada.” It begins with an acknowledgement of the author's status as an outsider. There have been numerous calls for change in basic science education, particularly in medical education. Interestingly, however, the monumental reforms of the “Flexner Report” were impelled largely from outside the specific discipline of medical education. The commentary discussion then moves to observations about the proposal for Integrative Anatomy and support for the proposal from both the Flexner Report and the 2009 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, “Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians.” The essay considers the benefits of the research on the learning sciences that now inform our work in education; the influence of competency‐based education that frees education from a lock‐step approach of course completion to a student‐focused integrative approach to learning; and the availability of online resources for anatomy education through repositories, such as MedEdPORTAL. The final observation is that the changes underway in education and in the sciences basic to medicine, in particular, are substantial and will require the dialogue that Dr. Darda is promoting with his provocative proposal. Anat Sci Educ 3: 101–102, 2010. © 2010 American Association of Anatomists.     

Toward a Typology of Business Education in the Internet Age*

Many diverse forces are motivating institutions of higher education, particularly business schools, to develop and deliver education via the Internet. As higher education institutions explore this opportunity, the question of how courses and degree programs should be designed for effective online delivery via the Internet is a nontrivial concern and challenge. To address this concern and challenge, this paper articulates, defines, and justifies a typology consisting of four types of online distance education that can be pursued by institutions of higher education. The four online distance education types—Overview Model, Overview Model with Feedback, Technical‐Skills Model, and Managerial Learning Model—can be differentiated along a number of content‐related, delivery‐related, and learning‐related issues and have applicability at various educational levels. In addition, the paper highlights and discusses five key lessons for institutions to consider in their desire to launch online distance education initiatives. These lessons provide insights not only for launch success but also for the ongoing sustainability of online distance education.     

Environmental Education as Critical Education: how teachers and students handle the challenge

Previous research studies suggest that environmental education for social change has to be considered as critical education rather than as nature study. In a participatory research approach, classroom projects with teacher teams in five senior high schools were initiated and in‐service seminars were offered. A theorising debate about environmental education resulted in a critical environmental education concept based on human action in local social systems and the questioning of the norms and value judgements of the people concerned. Classroom projects were analysed with respect to locally constructed critical knowledge and in view of the teaching/learning culture. This study shows that teachers are most concerned about ways of handling a complex and value‐laden process. It is concluded that reflection on processes and methods is essential if teachers are to understand their students’ critical exploration of social issues.     

Peer mentoring: engaging pre‐service teachers in mentoring one another

This article discusses a peer mentoring teacher education initiative that aims at developing pre‐service teachers’ capacities to participate successfully in learning communities, both during their initial teacher education and throughout their teaching careers. Peer mentoring utilizes the latest conceptualization of mentoring, that of co‐mentoring by Bona et al. or that proposed by Hargreaves and Fullan, where all teachers give and receive support. Such a conceptualization challenges the traditional assumption that the mentor knows best and is consistent with the latest approaches to teacher professional development, where teachers are encouraged to participate in learning communities. A peer mentoring teacher education initiative is described and three essential elements are highlighted.     

EDUCATION AND PLACE: A REVIEW ESSAY

Abstract In this review essay, Jan Nespor uses three recent contributions to place‐based education, Paul Theobald’s Teaching the Commons, C.A. Bowers’s Revitalizing the Commons, and David Gruenewald and Gregory Smith‘s edited volume Place‐Based Education in the Global Age, to examine some fundamental conceptual and practical issues in the area. One is how “place” is defined in place‐based education theory, and in particular how moralizing idealizations of place woven into problematic distinctions (place/nonplace, urban/rural, local/global, and so on) may actually make it harder for us to understand education and place. A second is how class, ethnicity, gender, and other forms of difference are addressed — or not — in the field’s theoretical formulations. Finally, Nespor explores problems of articulating the visions of place‐based education in these texts with larger social or political movements to transform schooling and environmental practices.     

The rewards of human capital competences for young European higher education graduates

Abstract

The labour market rewards for a number of required human capital competences are analysed using a sample of young European higher education graduates. Factor analysis is applied to classify competences by jobs into eight orthogonal groups, namely participative, methodological, specialised, organisational, applying rules, physical, generic and socio‐emotional competences. Estimates for the total rewards for competences are obtained through conventional wage regression, whereas estimates of the total rewards are derived in terms of job satisfaction through ordered logit regression. Explanatory variables include personal characteristics, job attributes, occupational titles, fields of study, type of higher education institution and country dummies. Results on wage rewards show that jobs with higher requirements of participative and methodological competences are best paid; conversely, jobs with higher requirements of organisational, applying‐rules and physical competences are worse paid. Results on total rewards suggest that jobs with higher requirements of competences increase graduates’ satisfaction, the only exception being applying‐rules competences.     

General Education,General‐Technical Education and Integration

Summaries

English

Answers to questions pertaining to general education and basic subjects, as well as to vocational education (general‐technical education in particular) and the principle of integration cannot be reduced to formal speculations or to bare definitions, no matter how elegant and correct. In our era, which is the era of logic and of data‐processing, of automation and computers‐‐the analysis of the question of general and general‐technical education and the corresponding basic subjects of contemporary education must have the qualities of logical and epistemological necessity. The renaissance of formal and mathematical logic in contemporary general education and the inroads made by these subjects into the content and structure of contemporary vocational training‐‐are facts and trends without precedence in the history of education and school. Other developments from which there can be no retreat are the inclusion of data‐processing into the content and structure of the general education school, and the heavy reliance on mathematics in the process of vocational training, combined with elements of cybernetics, formal and mathematical logic, and science of management and control. Also, the time has come for a new principle of teaching, the principle of integration.