The path of history: narrative analysis of history textbooks – a case study of Belgian history textbooks (1945–2004)

The philosophical background of the subject history in secondary education has been mainly addressed through research based on ‘obvious’ source types (curricula, discussions in committees or journals, …). This article proposes a narrative method of analysing history textbooks in order to study the underlining historical philosophy of history education.     

Making the grade: a history of the A–F marking scheme

This article provides a historical interpretation of one of the defining features of modern schooling: grades. As a central element of schools, grades—their origins, uses and evolution—provide a window into the tensions at the heart of building a national public school system in the United States. We argue that grades began as an intimate communication tool among teachers, parents, and students used largely to inform and instruct. But as reformers worked to develop a national school system in the late nineteenth century, they saw grades as useful tools in an organizational rather than pedagogical enterprise—tools that would facilitate movement, communication and coordination. Reformers placed a premium on readily interpretable and necessarily abstract grading systems. This shift in the importance of grades as an external rather than internal communication device required a concurrent shift in the meaning of grades—the meaning and nuance of the local context was traded for the uniformity and fungibility of more portable forms.     

Teachers’ views of mathematics textbook series in Flanders: Does it (not) matter which mathematics textbook series schools choose?

The debate on the differential effects of mathematics textbook series is a recurrent topic in the research literature. Research results remain inconclusive, pointing to a lack of evidence to decide on the relevance of the selection by schools of a mathematics textbook series. Studies also point to difficulties in comparing textbooks. Recently, in order to examine the influence of mathematics textbook series on student learning, the need to take into account mediating variables between the mathematics textbook series and the enacted curriculum is stressed. This paper focuses on one such mediating variable: teachers’ views of mathematics textbook series. Views of a mathematics textbook series of 814 teachers and mathematics performance results of 1579 students were analysed. The results point out that, with regard to teachers’ views of mathematics textbook series, the question ‘Does it really matter which mathematics textbook series schools choose’ has to be answered positively. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Standards in examinations: a matter of trust?

This paper is addressed to the international community of educators and educational policy makers who, it is argued, need to commit to joint research and creative action in respect of the challenge of Education for All (EFA). The first section, A Global Challenge for Teacher Development, sets out: the implications for teacher education of the Education For All agenda; the potential of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in addressing this problem; an overview of an applied research project exploring new models of teacher education using ICT in rural and resource challenged environments. In the second section Towards New Models of Professional Development, four categories of teacher professional knowledge from this model are used to interpret and explore the findings of the project and its impact on teacher knowledge and development. The paper concludes that ICT can no longer be viewed as some sort of optional pedagogic strategy available in ever increasing sophistication, as well as quantity, to only a small proportion of the world's teachers. They need to be seen as an essential aspect of teaching's cultural toolkit in the 21st century, affording new and transformative models of development that extend the nature and reach of teacher learning wherever it takes place. Such models must be experienced, shared and evaluated by educators world wide if the global commitment to achievement of the EFA targets is to become a reality.     

A history of the right: The battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.     

Tool-use in a content management system: a matter of timing?

Given the rising popularity of content management systems (CMSs) in higher education, we investigated how students use the available CMS tools, as well as whether the moment of using a CMS tool affects students’ learning. This temporal dimension has been neglected in current research on CMS use. More insight into students’ tool-use is particularly important from an instructional design perspective because research has repeatedly revealed that a learning environments’ effectiveness depends heavily on students’ adaptive tool-use. Data were collected by logging the frequency and the time students (158) use the available tools within a CMS. Repeated-measures analyses revealed that students’ tool-use changed throughout the course, a dynamism that was different for each tool and was related to course-specific deadlines. Significant temporal student differences were found for some types of tools. Furthermore, students’ course performance was significantly impacted by the moment students used the course material outlines and the discussion board. In line with expectations, effects were different dependent on the tool. Hence, by examining students’ tool-use from a temporal perspective, this study highlighted that the timing of use matters. Furthermore, this timing depends on tool functionality. Consequently, the results have interesting implications for designing CMSs and they suggest implications for releasing some type of CMS tools at specific moments in the learning process.     

How to improve pupils’ literacy? A cost-effectiveness analysis of a French educational project

The Action Lecture program is an innovative teaching method run in some nursery and primary schools in Paris and designed to improve pupils’ literacy. We report the results of an evaluation of this program. We describe the experimental protocol that was built to estimate the program's impact on several types of indicators. Data were processed following a Differences-in-Differences (DID) method. Then we use the estimation of the impact on academic achievement to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis and take a reduction of the class size program as a benchmark. The results are positive for the Action Lecture program.     

Hands-on history: towards a critique of the ‘everyday’

The modern Turkish state and society have been greatly influenced by reforms of the education system. Second Constitutional Period reforms can be viewed as the preparatory stage of Republican reforms and a time when many of the later reforms were planned and given limited application. In this way both periods contributed to the foundation of modern Turkey. The innovations pioneered by Late Ottoman intellectuals stemmed from various origins, mostly European positivists and materialist philosophers. American pragmatism was added as an ideological source during the foundation of the Republic. It can be observed that ideological trends took root from Ottoman times according to the degree that intellectuals were affected by them. In this paper, the ideological origins of educational reforms during the Second Constitution Period have been studied in relation to the influence of European philosophers on Ottoman intellectuals of the time and their ideological environments. Late Ottoman intellectuals were found to have been largely affected by France’s positivism, German’s materialism and Comte, Durkheim, Büchner and Spencer. The paper reveals how modern Turkey’s educational philosophy parameters have been shaped by these intellectuals’ ideas.     

Picturing ‘our’ heritage in the pedagogic text: layout and illustrations in an Australian and a Swedish history textbook

This paper is about re-representing the lifeworlds experienced by different participants in the 'same' physics classrooms; dissatisfied with the monolithic accounts that dominate the educational literature, we offer here an attempt to w/ri(gh)te classroom research. This paper, therefore, has a dual purpose: We exemplify how authors might want to represent different perspectives on the 'same' classroom and we build on this example to argue for w/ri(gh)ting research by drawing on literary forms that differ from traditional master narratives. W/ri(gh)ting requires reading in new ways; by skipping text, readers risk missing out on the reflexivity of our argument.     

Educational tracking and sense of futility: a matter of stigma consciousness?

During the past decade, both qualitative and quantitative research have documented strong feelings of fatalism amongst pupils enrolled in technical and vocational tracks in secondary education. Whereas those feelings have been shown to predict decreased school involvement and school misconduct, relatively little is known about their exact origins. In this paper, we explore to what extent they should be considered a stigma consciousness caused by the demeaning impact of perceived contempt to which pupils from technical and vocational tracks are exposed. Data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study from Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, N: 1967) were used to explore the distribution and consequences of perceived contempt with regard to one’s choice of study. About 20% of the pupils enrolled in technical and vocational education reported that some people looked down on them due to their studies. Moreover, even after taking into account different ability measures and social background characteristics, a strong direct relationship remained between perceived contempt and feelings of futility. In the conclusion, we elaborate on the implications of our findings.     

An overview of web-based school collaboration: a history of success or failure?

The notion of school collaboration has become widely recognised as an effective means of fostering cultural links and supporting communication between geographically separated schools. As shall be acknowledged in this paper, school collaboration follows on from a long history of collaborative initiatives across the past 50 years. However, the introduction of digital technologies and the internet in the 1990s has raised new challenges and created new opportunities for ‘telecollaboration’ whilst the growth of social media over the past five years is seen to have transformed the ways in which online collaboration is experienced by most end users. Based on a review of the existing body of literature, this paper offers a critical overview of current models of web-based collaborative programmes – attempting to map out the complex nature of school collaboration and consider the actors and factors that can shape successful implementation into educational practices.     

The ‘German children’ of Mozambique: long-term legacies of a socialist educational experiment

State-led education policies that centre on citizenship formation and are based on socialist-inspired values have been found in many newly independent post-colonial regimes. Such policies have led to a number of educational exchange programmes between developing countries and former ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries. This paper looks at an ambitious secondary school education exchange programme between Mozambique and the former German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. Using Yuval-Davis' three analytical categories of social location, identification and emotional attachment, and ethical and political values, the paper shows how an important part of the identity of former participants in a school exchange programme, who returned to Mozambique in 1988, is built around the concept of being ‘German’ and ‘socialist’. These values of socialist solidarity continue to guide many aspects of participants' lives. However, because in contemporary post-structural adjustment capitalist Mozambique, such values are perceived as a hindrance to contemporary notions of citizenship, these values are lived out mainly in relation to their peer group of fellow ‘German children’.     

International student mobility in a German and Portuguese university: Which factors in the host institution matter?

In a globalising world, international mobility in higher education is an important phenomenon for students and higher education institutions. It is therefore essential to understand the factors that determine international students' satisfaction with higher education institutions that serve as hosts. Through research of an exploratory, quantitative nature, this study presents results from a survey among 289 incoming international students in two universities in Germany and Portugal. Our findings show that the factor we define as educational experience was an important determinant of student satisfaction. Furthermore, the appraisal of academic reputation is dependent on the university. We conclude that satisfaction with academic factors is more important for international students than satisfaction with non-academic aspects.     

Competing concepts of publicness in the creation of a modern people in the history of modern education in Korea: 1894–1919

Abstract

The term ‘publicness’ is a keyword to explain the creation of a people in the history of modern education in Korea in which the relationship between the ruled and the ruling power rapidly changed from the perspective of continuity and discontinuity. In Korea, the term has been commonly used in three different contexts, and its meanings have changed since the 1894 Gabo Reform, the first reform for the modernization of Korea. Even when the ruling power changed in 1910 with Japanese colonialism, the ruling class took the meaning of publicness as a governing institution (管制的 公共性), which had a very weak sense of publicness as an ethical principle of fairness (Gong [公]) or as public benefit and opinion (Gong [共]). In contrast, the resisting power, which was fully established throughout the colonial era from 1910 to 1945, lacked the sense of publicness as a ruling institution, but embraced the two other concepts of publicness. This historical experience of the competing concepts of publicness materialized into the creation of a modern people through law and education even in the post-colonial period of modern Korea. Generally speaking though, the creation of a modern people in Korea has been strongly affected by the concept of publicness as a ruling institution through a nationalist education.     

Foreign language teachers and the implementation of intercultural education: a comparative investigation of the professional self‐concepts and teaching practices of Belgian teachers of English,French and German

It has now become a commonplace to state that foreign language learning should be viewed from an intercultural perspective. Teachers are now required to teach intercultural communicative competence instead of mere communicative competence. It follows that new professional demands are made on teachers. The assumption seems to be that teachers are already moving in the advocated direction and are willing to support the new objectives put forward. The observation that this belief remains largely intuitive with little rigorous evidence to support it constituted the rationale for the research we report on here. The study's aim was to enquire into how the current professional self‐concepts of Flemish teachers of English, French and German relate to the envisaged profile of the intercultural foreign language teacher and into the extent to which their teaching practice can be characterized as directed towards the attainment of intercultural communicative competence instead of towards communicative competence. The findings of this study inspire optimism that progress is being made and that teachers are willing to support intercultural objectives. At the same time, our hypothesis that teachers might not yet have left approaches that favour the teaching of communicative competence for approaches directed towards the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence found confirmation.

Il est à présent communément admis que l'acquisition des langues étrangères doit être considérée dans une perspective interculturelle et que les professeurs ne doivent pas enseigner la compétence communicative mais la compétence communicative interculturelle. Par conséquent, de nouvelles exigences professionnelles s'imposent. On suppose généralement que les professeurs sont déjà en train de s'orienter vers cette nouvelle direction et sont positifs vis‐à‐vis des nouveaux buts à atteindre. Le fait que cette supposition est surtout intuitive et n'est pas étayée par des données objectives constitue le point de départ de l'étude que nous présentons dans cet article. Notre étude consiste à examiner le rapport entre l'image professionnelle qu'ont les professeurs flamands d'anglais, de français et d'allemand d'eux‐mêmes et le profil voulu d'un professeur de langues étrangères sous l'angle interculturel, ainsi que la mesure dans laquelle leur pratique d'enseignement peut être caractérisée comme orientée vers l'acquisition d'une compétence communicative interculturelle au lieu d'une compétence communicative. Les résultats de notre étude suggèrent que les pratiques ont en effet évolué dans ce domaine et que les professeurs veulent atteindre les objectifs interculturels. En même temps, notre hypothèse selon laquelle les professeurs n'auraient pas encore remplacé les approches qui favorisent l'apprentissage de la compétence communicative par les approches orientées vers l'acquisition de la compétence interculturelle a été confirmée.

Behaupten, dass der Fremdsprachenunterricht aus interkultureller Sicht betrachtet werden soll, ist heutzutage zu einem Gemeinplatz geworden. FremdsprachenlehrerInnen werden erwartet, interkulturelle kommunikative Kompetenz statt kommunikative Kompetenz zu fördern. Folglich werden neue professionelle Anforderungen an LehrerInnen gestellt. Generell wird angenommen, dass LehrerInnen die neuen interkulturellen Zielsetzungen unterstützen und sie in ihrem Unterricht auch anstreben. Die Beobachtung, dass diese Annahme größtenteils intuitiv bleibt und nicht von empirischen Daten untermauert wird, war Anlass zu der Untersuchung, über die hier berichtet wird. Zielsetzung der Studie war es, zu überprüfen, in wie weit das professionelle Selbstverstehen von Flämischen Englisch‐, Französisch‐ und DeutschlehrerInnen sich zum Profil des interkulturellen Fremdsprachenlehrers verhält, und in welchem Maße der aktuelle Unterricht sich als Unterricht charakterisieren läßt, der den Erwerb interkultureller kommunikativer Kompetenz statt kommunikativer Kompetenz nachstrebt. Die Ergebnisse unserer Studie sind vielversprechend und zeigen, dass Fortschritte gemacht werden und dass LehrerInnen dazu bereit sind, in ihrem Unterricht interkulturelle Zielsetzungen anzustreben. Zugleicherzeit aber bestätigt unsere Studie die Hypothese, dass der aktuelle Fremdsprachenunterricht eher auf den Erwerb kommunikativer als interkultureller kommunikativer Kompetenz ausgerichtet ist.

Hoy en día es un tópico afirmar que el aprendizaje de las lenguas extranjeras debería ser abordado desde una perspectiva intercultural. Actualmente se les pide a los profesores de lengua que impartan competencias comunicativas interculturales en lugar de meras competencias comunicativas. De ahí que los profesores tengan que responder a nuevos requisitos profesionales. La suposición parece ser que los profesores ya están yendo en la dirección indicada y que están dispuestos a llevar a cabo los nuevos objetivos. La observación de que esta opinión todavía es muy intuitiva y que no está apoyada en evidencia rigorosa constituye el motivo de la investigación que presentamos aquí. El objetivo de este estudio es examinar en qué medida la auto‐percepción de profesores flamencos de inglés, francés y alemán se corresponde con el perfil previsto del profesor de lengua extranjera intercultural, y hasta qué punto sus prácticas docentes están enfocadas hacia la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa intercultural en lugar de la competencia comunicativa. Los resultados de este estudio justifican el optimismo ante la idea de que hay progreso y que los profesores están dispuestos a fomentar objetivos interculturales. Al mismo tiempo, se ve confirmada nuestra hipótesis de que hay profesores que aún no han cambiado enfoques que favorecen la enseñanza de competencia comunicativa por enfoques dirigidos a la adquisición de la competencia comunicativa intercultural.     

Globalizing critical studies of ‘official’ knowledge: lessons from the Japanese history textbook controversy over ‘comfort women’

This paper discusses the Japanese history textbook controversy over ‘comfort women’ to tease out insights that help globalize the existing theoretical discussion of politics of school knowledge. I begin by documenting how the domestic struggles over Japanese history textbooks are empowered and disempowered by the regional and international power relations. Using the Japanese case, I first problematize the use of hegemony in critical scholarship wherein struggles over school knowledge have been defined within the framework of a nation‐state. Second, I call for situating the discussion of counter‐hegemonic strategies in the increasingly internationalized politics of education witnessed around the world. In sum, this study calls for broadening the application of the notions of hegemony and counter‐hegemony in critical education scholarship to take full account of the complex political dynamics of globalizations.