Ethics and engineering education

In the US, Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) recommends the study of ethics so that students acquire ‘an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility’. For the most part, teaching of the subject relies upon the use of scenarios – both hypothetical and ‘real’– and open discussion framed by the codes. These scenarios and this framing are seriously deficient – lacking in their attention to the complexities of context, almost solely focused on individual agency, while reflecting too narrow and simplistic a view of the responsibilities of the practicing engineer. A critique of several exemplary scenarios, and consideration of the demands placed upon today's professional, prompt reflection on the need for, not just a more expansive reading of the codes of ethics re what it might mean to be ‘responsible’, but a substantial reform of undergraduate engineering education across the board.     

素质教育当以育德为先

我国处在社会主义初级阶段的特殊历史时期,尤其是正处在由计划经济体制向市场经济体制转型时期,新旧观念交织,道德很容易失范,现实中青少年违法犯罪现象有增无减,德育的重要性更加突出.中国共产党第十六届六中全会提出构建社会主义核心价值体系,使德育的重要性以政治的高度提上了议事日程.青年时期处于人一生中的思想形成阶段,学生的可塑性、模仿性很强,"蓬生麻中,不扶而直:白纱在砚,与之俱黑."这样,学校加强学生的德育工作意义更显重大.     

台州民办教育发展研究

一、台州各级各类民办教育基本情况 改革开放20多年来,台州各级党委、政府坚持科教兴市战略,把教育摆在优先发展的重要地位,大力实施"人文工程",教育系统在各级党委、政府的领导和支持下,全面贯彻教育方针,依法行政,依法治教,不断深化教育教学改革,特别在办学体制改革方面走出了一条全新的道路,使民办教育成为台州教育事业必不可少的重要组成部分,且已成为台州教育新的增长点和亮点.     

新自由主义、全球化与高等教育发展

高等教育的存在与发展具有两种特性:理智特性和社会特性。这两种特性的演变在不同的历史阶段都受到不同思潮的影响。新自由主义和全球化是影响当今高等教育发展的两大主要思潮。新自由主义通过强调高等教育所传授知识的可交易性、效率性、个体性、竞争性和自由化来重塑高等教育发展的理智特性,全球化则从时空、制度和组织三个维度影响高等教育的社会特性。应对新自由主义和全球化的挑战,需要扭转通过拥抱市场、放弃公共利益来推进高等教育的做法,但也必须抓住机遇使本国高等教育融入全球知识经济。     

Successful globalisation,education and sustainable development

This article examines the role of education in ‘successful globalisation’ and how this links with agendas for sustainable development. In the first part ‘successful globalisation’ is defined as economic growth combined with equality and social peace. Japan and the East Asian tiger economies – particularly South Korea and Taiwan – have been uniquely successful in the last half century in achieving both rapid economic growth over long periods and relative income equality and social cohesion. A host of factors have been responsible for this, including fortuitous geo-political circumstances and good timing. However, education has also played a major role. The article, based on a review of international and national research literatures, analyses how far China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka have managed to develop their own forms of successful engagement with the global economy and what part education policy has played. In the second part we relate our concept of successful globalisation to the parallel discourses of sustainable development and education for sustainable development and reflect on what our notion of ‘successful globalisation’ can borrow from and lend to these literatures.     

Work, skills development for employability and education for sustainable development

This article focuses on the radical changes taking place in skills development for work and life, and their implications for the content of education and schooling. It examines skills development for employability and workforce education, with particular reference to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In turn, it is argued that the impact of these issues upon the world of work will be reflected in those education reform initiatives that will become necessary to keep pace with such institutionalized change. This was a keynote presentation by Rupert Maclean at the APERA Conference and draws heavily on the chapter by Victor Ordonez and Rupert Maclean ‘Seeking a New Education Paradigm for Teaching and Learning to Meet the Changing Needs of Education for All and skills Development for Work and Life‘ in the book ‘Learning and Teaching for the Twenty-first Century: Festschrift for Professor Phillip Hughes’, Rupert Maclean (Editor), Springer Academic Publishers (forthcoming). The authors thank UNESCO-UNVOC consultant Professor David Wilson for his valuable inputs to this paper and to the keynote presentation.     

Ethics before Equality: Moral education after Levinas

Emptiness, indeed nihilism, is a characteristic of so much contemporary discourse regarding morality and moral education. This is found in facile notions of teaching right and wrong but also in the prevalence of rights-talk, with its sacrosanct assumptions about equality. This article examines this discourse in the light of Levinas' account of the primacy of ethics - of my absolute responsibility in the face of the other, of the asymmetry of my relation to the other. It seeks an account of receptivity that releases the ethical from the limitations of moral reasoning.     

Ethics,education policy and research: the phonics question reconsidered

This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policy‐makers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policy‐makers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework.     

Family education, child-parent interactions and child development

We examine the influence of family educational practices on the interaction and communication competencies of four-year-old children. The child, as an active player in its own development, has to manage intra- and inter-personal conflicts in the socio-cognitive and socio-affective registers. We postulate that parental educational practices orient the relationship which each child develops with the world and with itself. Family educational practices were evaluated by means of two questionnaires (general education, specific education). The child’s communication competence was assessed on the following levels: intrapsychic dynamics (projective, tests, social competence and self-representation scales); oral and written communication competence (typological analysis (250 children and their parents). The results show that sociocultural contexts interact with family educational concepts and practices to influence the development of self-representations and the capacity for oral and written communication. General family education modulates the intrapsychic personal dynamics of young children, while specific family education is more responsible for influencing behaviours linked to school activities. A top-down hierarchical analysis was used to differentiate between these two forms of communication competence and the patterns adopted by the child within the diversity of family educational contexts.     

主体教育中的自主、发展与创新

主体教育的主体性不仅体现在教学手段的运用上,更要致力于学生主体精神和主体意识的培养上。学生在课堂上的对话不仅仅是展示,教师要着眼于学生的发展,予以适时恰当地指导。教学不仅仅是倾听,教师要创造性地设计情境和问题,保持学生学习语文的积极性,学会学习语文的方法,努力提高语文素质。