Beyond environmental education: The need for ecological awareness

Environmental education is frequently both inadequate and inefficient, as too little attention is paid to the outside influences of its cultural, scientific and political context. Since ecological problems cannot be solved only by scientific measurement, administrative action and technological compensation, ecological education is necessary to deal with the polluter in his ecological environment. It is inevitable that this type of education will combine natural and human dimensions, that is, that it will make people aware of interrelationships between biotopes and sociotopes, so that conflicts of goals between human and natural environmental demands become apparent and an evaluation of risks becomes possible.The discussion of these problems starts with references to these demands and to the interrelationship of environmental policy, public environmental awareness and environmental education. Against this background a preventive ecological education is postulated and compared with the existing curricula and teaching practice. From the differences didactic conclusions are drawn as to how the predispositions of the public, institutions and young people can be integrated into the establishment of the educational concept of ecological education. There is also a discussion of how the norms of such education will change with the actual interaction of the human and natural dimensions.

---

Zusammenfassung Umwelterziehung ist vielfach unzulänglich und ineffektiv, weil sie die äußeren Einflüsse ihres kulturellen, wissenschaftlichen und politischen Kontextes zu wenig beachtet. Da ökologische Probleme aber nicht bewältigt werden können, wenn sie nur naturwissenschaftlich vermessen, administrativ geregelt und technologisch kompensiert werden, muß sich eine ökologische Erziehung auch mit dem Verursacher in seinem ökologischen Umfeld befassen. Zwangsläufig muß diese Erziehung natürliche und humane Dimensionen verbinden, d.h. Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Biotopen und Soziotopen bewußt machen, damit Zielkonflikte zwischen humanen und natürlichen Umweltansprüchen sichtbar und Risikoabschätzungen möglich werden.Die Diskussion dieser Problemlage beginnt mit Hinweisen auf diese Forderungen und die Verschränkung von Umweltpolitik, öffentlichem Umweltbewußtsein und Umwelterziehung. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird eine präventive ökologische Erziehung gefordert und mit der gegenwärtigen curicularen und unterrichtlichen Praxis verglichen. Aus den Divergenzen werden didaktische Folgerungen gezogen, wie das öffentliche, institutionelle und jugendliche Vorbewußtsein bei der Erstellung eines erziehungswissenschaftlichen Konzepts für eine ökologische Erziehung berücksichtigt werden kann. Weiterhin wird diskutiert, inwieweit die Normen einer solchen Erziehung sich durch das tatsächliche Wechselspiel der humanen und natürlichen Dimensionen verändern.

---

Résumé L'éducation relative à l'environnement s'avère souvent inadéquate et inefficace, du fait que l'on prête trop peu d'attention aux influences extérieures de son contexte culturel, scientifique et politique. Puisque les problèmes écologiques ne peuvent être résolus uniquement par des mesures scientifiques, des actions administratives et des adaptations technologiques, une éducation écologique apparaît nécessaire pour traiter le problème du pollueur dans son environnement écologique. Ce type d'éducation réunira inévitablement des dimensions naturelles et humaines, c'est-à-dire, qu'il fera prendre conscience aux populations des relations mutuelles qui existent entre biotopes et sociotopes, de sorte que les différences majeures d'objectifs entre les exigences humaines et naturelles en matière d'environnement deviennent visibles et afin qu'une évaluation des risques soit possible.Le débat sur ces questions se réfère tout d'abord à ces exigences et à la relation mutuelle qui existe entre la politique écologique, la prise de conscience publique de l'environnement et l'éducation relative à l'environnement. En prévision de ce contexte, on pose le postulat d'une éducation écologique préventive que l'on compare aux curricula et à l'enseignement actuels. Les différences établies permettent de tirer des conclusions didactiques quant à la manière d'intégrer les prédispositions du public, des institutions et des jeunes gens dans la définition du concept éducatif d'éducation écologique. On s'interroge également sur la façon dont les normes d'une éducation de ce type vont évoluer sous l'effet de l'interaction même des dimensions humaines et naturelles.

     

“升格冲动”抑或“应时之需”:职业本科发展之辩

我国职业本科已分批发展了32所,但其发展动机各异,有些出于学校"升格冲动",有些则应对"现实之需",目前对于职业本科该如何发展仍未达成共识,也未形成主导性观点。从国际比较的角度看,职业教育层次延伸有四种典型需求与相应的教育应对。结合当前经济、社会及教育的整体发展趋势,归纳出我国职业本科发展的应有之义是培养具有不可替代性的人才。明晰我国职业本科发展的可为之举,包括职业本科教育的专业设置应基于市场对高端技术技能人才的实际需求,职业本科教育机构应由长期从事高质量职业教育的学校或相关机构升格而来,职业本科教育要践行"产""科""教"深度融合的培养模式,职业本科教育人才培养要注重专业理论知识、专业技术技能以及人文素养的结合等。     

The need for alternative paradigms in science and engineering education

There are two main claims in this article. First, that the classic pillars of engineering education, namely, traditional mathematics and differential equations, are merely a particular, if not old-fashioned, representation of a broader mathematical vision, which spans from Turing machine programming and symbolic productions sets to sub-symbolic orderings such as artificial neural nets. Second, that the paradigm of equivalence ought to be extended to those non-traditional engineering disciplines that require at least the same dedication, such as music and its science, musicology, because they broaden the search and identification of structures, one of the most important tasks of creative engineering. Furthermore, an example of contemporary advanced technology will be given that favours these very claims.     

Equity in education in Chile: The tensions between policy and practice

The article examines education policy in Chile after the return to democracy in 1990 from an equity perspective. Since then, policies have aimed for continuity, coherence and complementarity with the aim of furthering national development, promoting social mobility, and equitable access to quality education at all levels. However, Chile faces the challenge of implementing equity-oriented policies within the legal confines of an education system constructed under the neoliberal model which was introduced by the military government (1973–1990). This has resulted in tensions between policy and practice, which have constrained the role of the state in a highly marketised system in its efforts to distribute quality education more equitably.     

Teacher education for inclusive education in the Arab world: The case of Jordan

This article examines teacher education programmes in the Arab region and the extent to which teachers are prepared to work in inclusive education settings. In the Arab world, the emerging area of inclusive education faces various challenges, among them a teaching force that is not adequately prepared to teach all children. This challenge arises partly because, without content on inclusive education, current pre-service and in-service programmes produce teachers who lack the skills to work with children with special needs in mainstream classrooms. This article focuses on teacher education in Jordan, where the problems and challenges surrounding teacher education programmes for inclusive education mirror those in other Arab countries. In Jordan, training for inclusive education is very limited at both pre-service and in-service levels, both because the idea has only recently been introduced and because of limited financial resources in the country. Still, the growing interest in adopting an inclusive education system has raised awareness about the importance of providing teachers with education that enables them to work with children with special needs in inclusive settings.     

The need for attention to the issue of rural education

This paper argues that strategies for vocational education in Africa, with particular regard to rural communities, which were highlighted as a key aspect of development strategies in the '60s and '70s — such as Education for Self Reliance or the Brigades of Botswana (see Nyerere, J., 1967. Education for Self-Reliance. Ministry of Information and Tourism, Dar es Salaam; Foster, P., 1969. Education for self reliance: A critical evaluation. In: Jolly, R. (Ed.), Education in Africa: Research and Action. East African Publishing House, Nairobi, pp. 81–102) and the World Bank programmes in support of Non-Formal Education (Coombs, P., Ahmed, M., 1974. Attacking Rural Poverty: How Non-formal Education Can Help. World Bank/Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore) — have never been replaced with a viable alternative in subsequent years. Whatever the reasons for the failure or demise of such programmes, which aimed at linking the school curriculum to the world of (rural) work in the past, the need for careful attention to that linkage has increased rather than decreased in the interim given the overall decline in access to secondary and tertiary education and the prospects for finding alternative employment in the formal sector. The paper focuses on recent reform initiatives in South Africa and seeks to make the point that new policy, in so far as it has been shaped by global trends, has failed to engage with the specific interests of the rural poor.     

职业教育：案例与范例辨

案例,源于英语"case",一般被解释为"某种案件的例子","是实践活动中发生的具有普遍性、代表性的典型事例,它反映一个问题、一件工作、一个事件发生、发展和演变的过程,通过对这些典型事例的分析,提出解决问题的办法和思路"(百度辞典).     

Technology in education: Equity and theory are key

For those with access to instructional technology, teaching and learning can be far more interesting and far-reaching than ever before. We as educators can empower our students with an understanding of how to employ these resources to meet their immediate and lifelong goals. We as members of the education industry must work to assure equal access to all students.