Master and student in French higher education: Academic language and pedagogical distance

Academic Discourse is a contemporary study of the language of teaching in the Arts faculties of France in the mid-1960s. It was originally published asRapport pédagogique et communication (1965). Carried out during a time of mounting tension, it captures the breakdown in the social assumptions governing teaching practice in French universities. This empirical study of how students use academic language in their essays and exams brings out the implicit cultural expectations underlying scholastic success and the social functions served by the traditional pedagogical regime of the French university.     

Effective integration of ICT in Singapore schools: pedagogical and policy implications

This paper examines and analyses where and how information and communication technologies (ICT) are integrated in Singapore schools to engage students in higher-order thinking activities. Taking the activity system as a unit of analysis, the study documents the actual processes and sociocultural elements that engage students in higher-order thinking. By employing methods such as observations, focus group discussions with students, and face-to-face interviews with teachers, ICT-coordinators and principals, an account of how the activity systems within and between classrooms, and the schools are generated. Based on the analysis of the data from 10 schools, issues in the learning environment are discussed: Necessary (classroom management and orienting activities) and sufficient conditions (scaffolding activities and supporting school policies) for effective ICT integration in the classroom. The account also highlights the constraints of time and lack of knowledge and experience in the contexts that the teachers are working under, and how these constraints are addressed by supporting school policies in the larger sociocultural setting of the school. This account provides a sample of pedagogical and sociocultural issues that are discussed over the course and at the end of the project. Like a good guidebook, the study sensitizes the audience to what is likely to happen given a particular objective, constraint, or design.     

iTEC: conceptualising,realising and recognising pedagogical and technological innovation in European classrooms

Innovation, a complex concept, underpinned a four-year pan-European research project designed to increase the effective use of technology in school classrooms. This article revisits evaluation data collected during the project and explores the challenges of conceptualising, realising and researching ‘innovation’. The authors describe how innovation was conceptualised, highlighting key issues, not all of which could be resolved in the project. The development of an approach to support teachers to change their practices facilitated the realisation of innovation in the classroom. This approach, through which researchers and national pedagogical coordinators worked with teachers to develop their teaching and learning practices with technology in potentially innovative ways, is outlined. Case study data are then used to exemplify how teachers and other stakeholders applied this approach and how they perceived innovation in practice within their own countries. Through a discussion of these cases, the article highlights the challenge of defining innovation in different country settings and, in turn, the complexity of identifying its occurrence. It concludes by proposing the next steps for similar research endeavours.     

Quality assurance in the Singapore education system in an era of diversity and innovation

This paper describes how Singapore attempts to balance the need for quality assurance and the need for educational diversity and innovation. The Singapore experience shows that this is a delicate balance. On the one hand, to promote diversity and innovation, the government attempts to decentralise its power to the schools. On the other hand, for quality assurance, the government sets up quality structures that reassert the centrality of government control. This paper examines the implications of such a strategy and the challenges that schools face in navigating a new paradigm of diversity and innovation while satisfying the requirements of quality assurance.     

Women,capitalism and education: On the pedagogical implications of postfeminism

Abstract

We examine the emergence of the ‘postfeminist’ sensibility from feminist theory and praxis, and its relation and relevance to education. Analytical frameworks such as postfeminism and intersectionality have given equal weight to recognition-based struggles, such as those based on sexual, racial, class-based, gender-related identities. We follow Nancy Fraser’s argument that these identity-based movements have been co-opted by neoliberal politicians and bureaucratic policy-makers, and become a divide and rule strategy, neglecting the subjugating power of capital. Beginning with third-wave feminism’s emphasis on individual identity, women’s struggles have been become a part of the greater parisitic neoliberal project. We consider the implications of this docile and domesticated feminism for the education of women.     

The Well-tempered Learner: Self-regulation,pedagogical models and teacher education policy

This article considers the curriculum reforms of outcomes-based education and the mechanism of a national qualifications framework in South Africa, also referring to New Zealand, in terms of the kind of learners they instantiate and therefore the kind of teachers needed for learners of that sort to be able to learn. Distinguishing between performance and competence models of pedagogy and analysing their implicit pedagogical logic, the article arrives at the conclusion that the curricular reforms initiated in South Africa embody incompatible logics, which can only lead to confusion. The article ends by reflecting on the ideal of the self-regulating learner pursued by much contemporary curriculum reform, concluding that there are distinct and different kinds of selfregulation fostered by different pedagogical models.     

English,language shift and values shift in Japan and Singapore

This is a comparative study of English language education in Japan and Singapore and the role English plays in both countries. English language education in Japan has not been very effective. Although the communicative approach to teaching English was introduced in the 1980s, schools still use the grammar-translation method and most Japanese do not possess the communicative skills necessary for interacting with foreigners. Government rhetoric has also been hesitant in encouraging the learning of English due to concerns about English becoming a threat to the Japanese language and Japanese identity. This paper uses the case study of the Singaporean Chinese to point out that unlike in the Singaporean case, the chances of the Japanese shifting towards the English language and the values associated with it are relatively low.     

Mind the gap: Holocaust education in Germany,between pedagogical intentions and classroom interactions

The injunction to learn from history is a key feature of German debates over the politics of memory and history, which, since the end of World War II, have been seen primarily pedagogical. Thus, state schools were asked to serve as society’s central location for memory and learning. Research on history education has rarely addressed questions about how instruction on the history of National Socialism (NS) plays out in practice, about how ambitious educational goals are implemented at the level of actual instruction, or about the challenges that teachers and students face when they are asked to address such a morally fraught topic. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored these issues using analyses of concrete classroom experience. The paper is based on four carefully selected case studies. The first looks at how a contemporary account of the issue and its moral implications are handled in the classroom. The second examines the consequences for classroom discussion of a discrepancy between teacher expectations and student interpretations of an excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The third also addresses a discrepancy, focusing on the institutionalized generation gap in school. Finally, the fourth case shows how instructional communication benefits when participants assume a reciprocal, though not always articulated, consensus opinion on NS. The interpretation of the cases illustrates how both the organizational framework of schools and the specific conditions of classroom interaction shape the treatment of NS. Classroom interactions are strongly influenced by the quirky, often unexpected, ways that students appropriate knowledge—ways that often conflict with the intended content of the lesson and with public expectations for the treatment of Germany’s past. The analysis reveals a tension between the under-moralization and the over-moralization of teaching the Holocaust, and a tension between the need to represent the crimes of NS adequately, and to fulfill the goals of moral education.