Images of Science Linked to Labwork: A Survey of Secondary School and University Students

This paper presents findings about the images of science drawn upon in laboratory work, by upper secondary and university students, in academic streams with a science focus. Data were collected through four written questions, administered to a total of 368 students. The questions all required students to comment on laboratory investigations carried out by research scientists or by science students. We show that students' reasoning has an epistemological and an ontological dimension, and that it often differs significantly from accepted perspectives on the nature of science. The issue for teaching appears to be showing students what counts (and what does not count) as appropriate reasoning in actual situations. In other words, explicit teaching about the various relationships that can exist between theory and data would transform labwork towards a more critical process that involves making and justifying decisions.     

French Universities and the Challenge of Modernization

In May 1968 an explosion shook the French university system to its foundations, triggering a general strike and the gravest constitutional crisis of the Fifth Republic. The student unrest that preceded the May revolt, as well as the government reform of the universities that followed, are dramatic expressions of the theme of this conference. Democratization of student and faculty recruitment generated irresistible pressure upon the traditional structures of the French university, which had been designed to handle the training of a fairly small elite. Something had to give - either the elite structures had to be democratized or the democratic pressures had to be contained. After the explosion, the Gaullist government, under the guidance of Education Minister Edgar Faure, opted for a sweeping democratization from above - with results that are far from those originally intended. The reform engineered by Faure ushered in many changes in the French universities; but to an amazing extent the old structures and practices have survived, and what has changed is not what the Gaullists had in mind. Let us first try to view the recent unrest and reform in a larger historical perspective.     

Social life for sale! A critical discourse analysis of the concept of student life on Danish university websites

This paper aims to investigate the marketization of higher education (HE) as it manifests itself in the concept of Student life on Danish HE websites. Taking Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis as its starting point, this paper critically examines this particular practice of marketization by making a single-case study of the pages called Student life at the biggest university in Denmark, Copenhagen University (CU). The findings show that these page elements of social life are intensively and routinely used to soften up the more demanding aspects of being a university student, and that this involves a significant positive evaluation of life as a university student. The paper addresses the potential problems related to the findings in order to contribute to further discussion and reflection upon issues centred around the marketization of HE on university websites and around the construction of what it means to be a student today.     

Academic quality,league tables,and public policy: A cross-national analysis of university ranking systems

The global expansion of access to higher education has increased demand for information on academic quality and has led to the development of university ranking systems or league tables in many countries of the world. A recent UNESCO/CEPES conference on higher education indicators concluded that cross-national research on these ranking systems could make an important contribution to improving the international market for higher education. The comparison and analysis of national university ranking systems can help address a number of important policy questions. First, is there an emerging international consensus on the measurement of academic quality as reflected in these ranking systems? Second, what impact are the different ranking systems having on university and academic behavior in their respective countries? Finally, are there important public interests that are thus far not reflected in these rankings? If so, is there a needed and appropriate role for public policy in the development and distribution of university ranking systems and what might that role be? This paper explores these questions through a comparative analysis of university rankings in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US.     

A Model of Effective Fieldwork Supervision for Trainee Educational Psychologists

This study seeks to provide current survey data from qualified psychologists about effective supervision, in view of increased fieldwork supervision demands, due to restructured initial professional training. A model of effective fieldwork supervision emerges in which a well‐managed and communicative partnership between trainee psychologist and supervisor is formed, in the context of the psychological service, its partners and clients. The authors anticipate that this may support the supervision needs of qualified colleagues, and speculate upon what additional provisions might be relevant in Years 2 and 3 when trainee psychologists will have a dual role as university students and practitioners within services.     

Engaging identities in a regional university classroom

This paper examines the coincidence between how lecturers teach and what students expect to learn at a regional university in Australia. It looks outside cognitive and behavioural theories of motivation to find that both students and lecturers are driven by a common goal, but it is not a methodology. I examine the ways in which students and lecturers seek support for their identity, and how their desire for recognition can support or interfere with the aims of education. The paper proposes that one of the fundamental challenges in higher education is to understand what goes on in-between students and lecturers in the university classroom. While many lecturers in this study are already doing this, there continues to be only an intuitive understanding of what motivates the relation between learning and teaching.     

Continuity and Change in the Collegial Tradition

This article has four main purposes: to explore the meaning of the idea of collegiality, to consider its importance in the governance of British institutions of higher education, to examine the pressures for change that have been exerted upon both the collegiate model of the university as well as upon the idea of collegiality, and to ascertain what relevance – if any – the idea of collegiality has in the context of a system of mass higher education. The article is a report upon ongoing research, of which interviews with some fifty Oxford academics and officials form the core of its empirical base. Naturally we welcome feedback. An important subtheme is our attempt to understand the process of change in British higher education. Our analysis suggests that the change process is best understood through an analysis of the interaction between state pressure for change and developments within the character of the academic profession.     

An exploration of the effect of servicescape on student institution choice in UK universities

In recent years there has been increased discussion of the subjective, emotional and sociological factors influencing student choice of university. However, there is a dearth of information exploring what constitutes these feelings. This exploratory paper uses the conceptual model of the servicescape to provide insight into the emotional factors driving student choice. In-depth interviews with prospective students revealed that first impressions really do count. Students are deterred by poor physical environments and excited by enthusiastic staff and students. Most significantly, the study revealed the necessity of a restorative servicescape to provide both a sense of escape and feeling of belonging. This paper contributes to broadening the application of the servicescape model and to a greater understanding of the impact of the environment on prospective students, and creates an opportunity to inform policy by providing university marketing decision makers with a better understanding of what constitutes the university environment and what makes it appealing to prospective students.     

Governing the academic subject: Foucault,governmentality and the performing university

Drawing on research conducted at National University of Ireland, Galway, this paper explores how senior managers at an Irish university are seeking to measure and facilitate academic performance in the context of national and global competitiveness and a higher education landscape that appears firmly inflected by neoliberal ideas of rankings, benchmarking and productivity. I draw upon Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics, in particular, and I utilise findings from a range of in-depth interviews with central university managers, with a view to critically interrogating the envisioning of what is undoubtedly a new academic subjectivity in the Irish higher education sector—a subjectivity that is being progressively planned for and regulated.     

浅析节约型高校后勤管理机制的建立

随着我国经济的发展,高校的办学规模也在逐渐扩大,在节约型社会的提出和高校后勤社会化改革发展的背景下,如何建立节约型高校后勤管理机制,优化资源配置、提升服务质量、促进高校和谐发展是我们必须认真思考的问题。本文分析了节约型高校后勤管理机制的内部因素和外部因素,比较了国内外高校关于后勤管理的区别,提出了节约型高校后勤管理机制的创新。     

A muted voice in academe: the Korean version of entrepreneurial scholarship

The imperatives of social democratization and global economic competition have opened a new phase of development for the Korean university and its scholarship. The increased social demands for knowledge creation and dissemination gradually extend the scope of professional practice beyond the conventional areas of academic work. This paper explores, based upon the findings of a case study, how Korean universities and their professors have been responding to these demands and what consequences are observable. It also explains how the new demands and responses are contributing to local development. Finally, it highlights several controversial issues in the discourse on entrepreneurial scholarship and discusses these in the Korean context as points for further investigation.     

The imagined and the real: identifying the tensions for academic identity

Changes within the higher education sector have had significant effects on the identity of the individual academic. As institutions transform in response to government‐driven policy and funding directives, there is a subsequent impact upon the roles and responsibilities of those employed as educational professionals. Academic practices are changing as multiple roles emerge from the reshaping of academic work. Institutional pressures to produce specific research outputs at the same time as teaching and undertaking managerial/administrative responsibilities are creating tension between what academics perceive as their professional identity and that prescribed by their employing organisation. Reconciling this disconnect is part of the challenge for academics, who are now seeking to understand and manage their changing identity. Narratives obtained from research in a university with a polytechnic background and an institute of technology (aspiring to be a university), provide some subjective reflections for examining this issue.     

Generative methodology: an inquiry into how a university can acknowledge a commitment to its Aboriginal community

This paper maps ethical and epistemological issues around attempts by a university to negotiate with the traditional custodians of the Sydney basin, the Darug, to facilitate the intergenerational transmission of knowledge within their community, and through the university curriculum. The theory and practice of research raised some important methodological questions about what constitutes knowledge in Aboriginal and western contexts. The project brought us to reflect upon the epistemological basis of our research to consider whether it was history, ethnography, cultural resource management or memory work. As we worked through these issues during the process of consultation and negotiation with Senior Darug, the inquiry began to focus on how a university can acknowledge a commitment to its community. Such a commitment for a university must be built around attentiveness and respect, rather than an epistemology of control. We find that respecting the power structures and organisation of an Aboriginal community is a crucial step for a university in performing such a commitment. Respect for the established power relations in these communities constitutes the very basis of a generative methodology.     

Contracting with students: Re‐thinking Higher Education as invitation to treat

This paper takes as its starting point the idea of universities contracting with students, and of the increased consumer protections for students that such contracts afford. It begins by considering what is at stake in creating a legally binding contract. Using examples from contract law, it then argues that it is difficult to think of a university Higher Education in such terms. While contracts in relation to matters such as campus accommodation offer benefits and protections for both parties, contracting with students over their educational experience is highly problematic because of the precise stipulation of terms that is required. The paper seeks to understand what is distinctive about a Higher Education experience through a concept from contract law known as an invitation to treat. The paper argues that the notions of invitation and negotiation that are at its heart better illustrate the possibilities that a Higher Education afford.     

The phenomenology of on‐screen reading: University students' lived experience of digitised text

As reading shifts from the page to the screen, research focuses primarily upon the nature and effects of hypertextual reading. However, many of the texts that university students read for academic purposes are digitised texts that begin life as paper‐based books and papers and are read on‐screen. Applying the principles and practices of hermeneutic phenomenology, this study sought to gain insight into university students' experiences of reading digitised texts such as e‐books and Portable Document Format files. Open‐ended interviews were conducted with 10 students. A thematic analysis of the interviews revealed six main themes: the disappearing page, to have but not to hold, the ever present screen, getting in focus, the disciplined body and finding what I need.     

The worldly space: the digital university in network time

Abstract

This article considers the effect of information technology upon teaching, learning and research in the ‘digital university’. In less than a generation the university has become a business like any other. It does so in the determining context of neoliberal globalisation and the computer revolution. The university develops through what we may now see as a disastrous ‘category error’. The article argues that humans are analogue creatures who have constructed analogue worlds that they recognise in large measure, in nature. Digital logic is nowhere recognised in nature, and is ultimately alien to us. The university is the key institution for enabling us to understand who and what we are, yet it is being undermined through the suffusion of the market logic and the digital technologies that drive it from a past we look to less, to a present we dwell in more, and a future we are less able to shape.     

The university and high level manpower

In developing countries, universities have been criticised on many grounds: excessive capital and recurrent costs, grave social opportunity costs, forms of regressive taxation, social divisiveness, failure to produce the right kind of manpower to promote social and economic development, failure to advance science and technology. Despite these charges, university enrolments continue to expand.The main explanation seems to be the assumption that there is no alternative to the university as the sole effective producer of high level manpower, whether through directly professional studies or through courses in the social sciences and humanities. This article questions the pedagogical bases of both forms of study as preparations of manpower for employment. Pre-career professional studies appear to be an unsatisfactory compromise between the traditional idea of a university and the particular needs of professional apprenticeship. With the social sciences and humanities, the transferability of disciplinary skills to forms of employment only tangentially related to them appears uncertain.Although the function of manpower development may be inappropriate to the universities, it in fact dominates their existence and underdevelops their other roles as centres of research, scholarship and cultural development. Indeed, universities seem to be losing these distinguishing characteristics to special institutes, which devote themselves primarily to research and only at will to teaching. By undertaking to do what they can only do badly and consequently failing to do what they might do well, universities in developing countries may constitute frauds upon their peoples.     

Global perspectives: aligning agendas?

In recent years there has been a growth in interest amongst a number of universities in the UK and elsewhere in the world on reflecting upon the contribution of higher education to a global society and exploring ways to broaden the curriculum to enable students to make a positive contribution to the world as ‘global citizens’. This paper will suggest, using the UK as an example, that the policy context provides a favourable environment for such developments. However, policy documents often confuse rather than clarify precisely what needs to be addressed, despite their recognition that change is required. Students are increasingly demanding more opportunities to learn and reflect upon their role and contribution to global society and at the same time employers are seeking graduates who have a ‘broader world view’, who can manage across cultures, and who understand the need for sustainable development. Summarising the influences of these drivers, the paper proposes that through a framework of global perspectives developed at Bournemouth University in the UK, these agendas around internationalisation and sustainable development can contribute to better learning and enhance the broader work of the university.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

A study of the partnership between schools and universities to improve science and mathematics education in Indonesia

This paper examines what kinds of impacts a school–university partnership has on schoolteachers and university faculty members, and what types of challenges and tasks exist. The results show the following: (1) joint lesson planning, observation, and reflection, called piloting activities (PA) have succeeded in improving teaching methodologies; (2) faculty members and teachers generally regarded the students under PA as being more participative; (3) it is necessary to ensure linkages between materials and students, as well as between students; and (4) PA resulted in the development of collegiality within schools and between faculty members and teachers.