Implications of the Introduction of the Doctor of Education Degree in British Universities: can the EdD reach parts the PhD cannot?

Abstract

At a time of continuing concern about the nature and meaning of doctoral education in the United Kingdom, this paper outlines the moves by an increasing number of universities towards ‘part‐taught’ doctorates. Focusing on the new degree of Doctor of Education now offered by over seven British universities, the paper outlines the differences between EdD and PhD in education, and questions the need for any differentiation. Arguing that the ‘statistics of failure’ in doctoral education in the United Kingdom continue to mount a challenge to universities in the United Kingdom, the paper argues for a refocus on process as well as product, where the goal should be on learner empowerment and transformation, rather than on the misassumptlons that doctoral study is primarily an ‘academic apprenticeship’. Finally, the paper indicates an agenda to establish doctoral programmes and structures capable of developing and fostering creative talent whether the individuals undertaking doctoral study are going to become professional researchers or researching and scholarly professionals.     

Comparative education in Greece,as a European ‘semi-periphery’

ABSTRACT

Comparative education was established in Greek universities in the 1980s, with the creation of pedagogical departments and two laboratories, and the publication of a journal. There was an early emphasis on education policy analysis, in terms of assumptions about the ‘semi-peripherality’ of Greece within Europe. Later, the emphasis shifted to what was also called ‘modernisation’ – framed by entry to the European Economic Community. There was an emphasis on education policies in other European countries, and the educational policy of Europe, in contrast with Greece which had not yet absorbed what was becoming ‘a European discourse’. There was a continuing motif – reflections on methodology – but the changing concepts of modernisation, the more or less permanent anxiety about reforming Greek education, and the theme of education within the European Union dominated academic work in comparative education in Greece – even after 2010 and the major new economic crisis. An optimistic view is that comparative education will continue to develop in the Greek university through teaching and research. There is, however, a question to be asked about the silences within Greek comparative education.     

Ettore Gelpi: an appreciation

Abstracts

English

The aim of the paper is to argue for a curriculum model approach to problems of development in adult and lifelong (or continuing) education contexts.

The advantages of such an approach are outlined : relating theory to practice and social policies to educational processes; exploring professional role‐structures and their effect upon received curriculum assumptions in the adult sector, particularly the traditional needs‐meeting, remedial and compensatory elements of such assumptions.

The significance of recent theoretical and policy developments in adult and continuing education is reviewed in these terms and some distinctions made between alternative implicit models of the lifelong curriculum. It is suggested that adult education, as presently constituted, might, itself, be an obstacle to the development of an integrated lifelong education curriculum.

In order to elucidate this a number of curriculum concepts, familiar enough in the general theory of education, are considered in the less familiar context of adult and lifelong education: typologies of curriculum models are used to explore some issues of development in this context (e.g. objectives, provision, process, action, research models etc.)

Ideas of a ‘core’ curriculum, and of the ‘hidden’ or ‘latent’ curriculum, together with curriculum development and evaluation are also considered.

The existing state of the adult and continuing education curriculum is then analyzed within such a conceptual framework. The disposition of professional roles is described, together with the curricular implications of the structure of provision (the University Extra‐Mural Departments, the WEA and the LEA sector).

The ideas of ‘flexibility’ and ‘access’ are critically reviewed as a function of professional (rather than political) ideologies, and the adult‐lifelong curriculum is analyzed in terms of administrative criteria on the one hand and educational process and social action on the other.

A prevailing orthodoxy of continuing education is elucidated in curriculum terms, and contrasted with the curriculum implications of lifelong models. For example, such models stress the functional interdependence of learning stages in an ‘intrinsic’ rather than a ‘remedial’ way, whereas much thinking about adult and continuing education in Britain is concerned with compensatory responses to failures of early educational experience.

In conclusion, it is argued that, in curriculum terms, the development of a continuing or a lifelong education system is by no means as straightforward as is sometimes supposed, and that the obstacles lie primarily within the nature of present curriculum assumptions as much as the more obvious material obstacles to development. Adult education, as it is presently organized, articulates the same kind of curriculum assumptions as initial education. The curriculum assumptions of lifelong education, however, are much more concerned with education in terms of social control and knowledge‐content than with access to professional provision which reproduces curriculum models of initial education sectors.     

Growing scholarly teachers and educational researchers: a curriculum for a Research Pathway in pre‐service teacher education

This paper advocates the development of high‐level research capability in some students in their undergraduate Bachelor of Education course. The rationale for this viewpoint is presented in relation to three questions: ‘What is educational research?’ ‘Why should universities develop high‐level research capability in some pre‐service teacher education graduates?’ and ‘What type of curriculum can support the development of high‐level research capability in some pre‐service teacher education graduates?’ The first two questions are addressed broadly. The latter question is addressed with reference to an existing Research Pathway within a Bachelor of Education course. The paper concludes with the identification of a priority issue for subsequent iterations of the Pathway and a reflection on the shift in my role as a teacher in this Pathway from ‘teacher researcher’ to ‘scholarly teacher’.     

Education or Service? Remarks on teaching and learning in the entrepreneurial university

German universities come under fire: in contemporary political discourse they are considered to be antiquated, inefficient and unfit for international competition. Accordingly, the German government implemented an extensive program of reforms. Following the so‐called ‘Sorbonne Declaration’, the universities shall become part of an European higher education system with comparable and compatible structures. With the focus on the field of academic teaching and learning, this essay discusses the way of defining these activities in a new, entrepreneurial way, and the implications of this process within the university. The reflections lead to the thesis that the actual reforms ask for new forms of critique, because the neoliberal offer of marketable ways to teach and to learn makes the enduring asymmetry of power relations within the educational field invisible, endangers the democratic character of the university and trivializes education.     

University continuing education in a neoliberal landscape: developments in England and Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores the impact of changing higher education policies and funding on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses some of the contextual factors contributing to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite of its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s: an ethos of public knowledge dissemination, acknowledgement of the universities' role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and a strategic as well as pragmatic approach. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department as it experiences institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of demonstrating considerable resilience, the structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been in England. ‘Radical hope’ is advocated as the university‐based adult educator's response in difficult times. It involves challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, and reaffirming the political nature of adult education.     

远程继续教育和企业教育的新型关系与合作机遇

在许多大型企业中,企业培训部门向企业大学的发展和转变,改变了企业教育的理念、模式以及实践,企业教育与远程继续教育的关系也随之发生了根本性的变化,产生了前所未有的新型关系和教育合作机遇。本文旨在分析远程继续教育和企业教育的关系变革和教育合作的机遇及优势。文章分为四个部分,第一部分介绍企业大学兴起的背景和现状;第二部分阐述企业培训部门转向企业大学后,在教育目标、教育策略、管理模式、课程类型、教学模式、学习对象六个方面产生的变革;第三部分分析远程继续教育和企业教育产生的新型关系,表明企业大学和远程继续教育走向一致的发展趋势;第四部分分析远程继续教育机构和企业大学教育合作的机遇和优势,说明双方的合作能够达到优势互补,通过分享办学理念和优质教育资源,取得良好的社会效益和成本效益,最终获得远程继续教育机构、企业大学以及企业员工的三赢成效。     

‘Education for equality’ and ‘education for life’: examining reading literacy and reading interest in Papua New Guinea primary schools1

Reading literacy and reading interest was examined in four primary schools in Papua New Guinea: in an international, suburban, settlement and village school. In this paper we present a summary of findings located within a local context and examine the implications as viewed through two lenses. From an ‘educational for equality’ perspective, the findings suggest a critical need to re‐evaluate the use of national testing to select children for further education and address the serious shortage of reading books in school libraries. From an ‘education for life’ perspective, the findings indicate a continuing need for community‐based actions together with innovative teacher education programs aimed at developing ways of strengthening the connections between home and school.     

Doing Diversity Work in Higher Education in Australia

This paper explores how diversity is used as a key term to describe the social and educational mission of universities in Australia. The paper suggests that we need to explore what diversity ‘does’ in specific contexts. Drawing on interviews with diversity and equal opportunities practitioners, the paper suggests that ‘diversity’ is used in the face of what has been called ‘equity fatigue’. Diversity is associated with what is new, and allows practitioners to align themselves and their units with the existing values of their universities. However, given this, diversity can mean potentially anything: and practitioners have to re‐attach the term ‘diversity’ to other more marked terms such as equality and justice if it is to ‘do anything’. The paper explores the appeal of diversity, the strategic nature of diversity work, and the role of commitment, leadership and training. It also offers some more general reflections on how language works within organisations by showing that words, although they do things, are not finished as forms of action: what they do depends not only on how they are used, but how they get taken up.     

Problematizing the construct of ‘the Chinese learner’: insights from ethnographic research

Large numbers of students from the Chinese‐speaking world are nowadays enrolled in Western universities, prompting the need for awareness of their educational beliefs and practices. Although an established literature seeks to characterize ‘the Chinese learner’, much of this research results in stereotypical representations of a ‘reduced Other’: passive, uncritical and over‐reliant on the instructor. This paper, which is based on ethnographic research conducted in universities in the People’s Republic of China, aims to illuminate some of the common misperceptions of Chinese educational cultures.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

PARTICIPATION OF USA UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES IN CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAMMES

The concept of lifelong education encompasses a number of different types of educational programmes e.g. adult education, recurrent education as well as continuing education. The official legal definition of continuing education in the USA Educational Amendments of 1976 to the Higher Education Act states: “Continuing education programme” means post‐secondary instruction designed to meet the educational ‘ needs and interests of adults, including the expansion of learning opportunities for adults who are not adequately served by current educational offerings in their communities.

The following article presents participation by the US universities and colleges in this form of higher education. It is based oh the paper written by Dr. Rosalind K. Loving, Dean of the College of Continuing Education, University of Southern California and presented during the Salzburg Seminar on Continuing Education which was held from 6 to 26 August 1978 in Salzburg (Austria).     

Bursaries and Student Success: a Study of Students from Low-Income Groups at Two Institutions in the South West

This article draws on quantitative and qualitative data from two institutions to compare the student experience of those with and without bursary awards. Using the student life cycle model, the article examines the ways in which bursaries impact on the student experience before they enter the institution, in the early weeks of their studies and as they progress through their programmes. At these two institutions, students with bursaries were more likely to be retained and to perform well during the first year than those without bursaries. The study found that bursaries can ease financial pressures during their transition to higher education (HE) and that institution‐specific bursaries can affect students’ perceptions of an institution and their commitment to succeed. After 2006, those institutions wishing to charge variable fees will be required to provide bursary support for low‐income students. The findings from this article suggest that HE providers should consider the timing of the bursary payments and the implicit message the bursary sends to applicants if they want to ensure that their bursaries have a positive impact on the student experience.     

Tensions in Higher Education Leadership: Towards a Multi‐Level Model of Leadership Practice

UK higher education is undergoing a period of significant change that generates a series of tensions and difficulties for universities and university leaders. This paper explores these tensions through analysis of findings from a study comprising 152 semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews in 12 UK universities. Building on from theories of ‘distributed leadership’ in schools, five main constituent elements of leadership practice in higher education are identified (personal, social, structural, contextual and developmental) and explored to show how they shape perceptions and experiences of leadership. The paper concludes with a refined model that teases apart the multilayered nature of higher education leadership at individual, group and organisational levels. In particular, it is argued that ‘social capital’ and ‘social identity’ act as important bridges between individual agency and organisational structure and that although widely distributed, higher education leadership may be best regarded as ‘hybrid’.     

Lifelong learning-attitudes to practice in the rural context: a study using Bourdieu's perspective of habitus

This article compares and contrasts the views of educational policy makers and consumers within Lincolnshire, an English rural county, using Bourdieu's notion of ‘habitus’ as a vehicle for analysis. The article focuses on the relative importance of education as cultural capital in determining the motivational factors affecting participation in lifelong learning. The article considers lifelong learning in the context of ‘continuing education’. If lifelong learning is characterized into three discrete yet connected phases: the first, ‘full-time education’ from the age of 5 until leaving full-time education at age 16, 18 or 21; the second, the ‘transitional phase’ between school and work at age 16–21; the third, ‘continuing education’ beyond the age of 21; it is the policies and attitudes to this third phase described in this paper. Education for adults rather than simply the education of adults. Interviews with small groups of learners and an experienced manager of lifelong learning policies in Lincolnshire are used to illuminate clear differences between the continuing education providers' expectations of lifelong learning and those of the learners. The conclusions reaffirm the importance of community and cultural tradition in education and highlight the importance of family learning within the rural context.     

Global field and global imagining: Bourdieu and worldwide higher education

This paper maps the global dimension of higher education and associated research, including the differentiation of national systems and institutions, while reflecting critically on theoretical tools for working this terrain. Arguably the most sustained theorisation of higher education is by Bourdieu: the paper explores the relevance and limits of Bourdieu’s notions of field of power, agency, positioned and position‐taking; drawing on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony in explaining the dominant role played by universities from the United States. Noting there is greater ontological openness in global than national educational settings, and that Bourdieu’s reading of structure/agency becomes trapped on the structure side, the paper discusses Sen on self‐determining identity and Appadurai on global imagining, flows and ‘scapes’. The dynamics of Bourdieu’s competitive field of higher education continue to play out globally, but located within a larger and more disjunctive relational setting, and a setting that is less closed, than he suggests.     

Left Alone: end time for Marxist educational theory?

This paper provides an external account of the demise of the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory flowing from social reproductionism/ resistance theory. Five developments are explored in terms of how they have undercut the ‘old’ educational Marxism: hyper‐academicism; dislocations/disjunctions between theory and practice; the postmodern challenge; the new liberal ‘Left’ challenge; and, the ‘death of Marxism’ syndrome. The first two elements form the basis of some important ‘lessons’ for the revitalisation of Marxist perspectives on education. It is also argued that, although the five trends and developments have posed a serious challenge for the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory, nevertheless, it will probably circulate for some time‐‐given revivals, revisits, and as a source of easy criticism for anti‐Marxists. Finally, there has been a recent flowering of new approaches to theorising education from a Marxist perspective, which this paper maps out.     

La Reformpädagogik,controverses autour d’une histoire et d’un concept

The author sketches the development of Scottish educational principles and ideals from the ‘Book of Discipline’ at the Reformation in 1560 to the Education Act of 1872 and beyond. Religious, and also social, cohesiveness helped to frame a structured educational system intended to be open to all, from a national provision of parish schools to the five post‐Reformation universities. Learning and moral principle were seen as closely intertwined with community rights and responsibilities, all guided by a strong sense of the common good. In general, education was seen as a national and community responsibility, and historically it was characterised by cooperation rather than by competition. The role of education in promoting a better society, until the later 19th century, was nourished by religious faith in alliance with government; thereafter ‘Idealist’ reformers played a leading part in emphasising the role of the state as against that of the church. These ‘Idealists’, however, shared with their 16th‐century predecessors the concept that education was the most important means “by which to reveal to the individual what true citizenship entailed”.     

From Condescension to Complexity: post‐Plowden schooling in the inner city

The 2004 Higher Education Act introduced variable tuition fees of up to £3,000 for full‐time undergraduates in England. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) charging the maximum tuition must give low‐income students bursaries of £300. On top of this mandatory minimum, HEIs now provide additional discretionary financial support exceeding this level to these and other students. The degree to which these new bursaries and discretionary financial support have become a policy instrument for improving access and widening participation has not, as yet, been documented. Little is known about why the government introduced bursaries and what the government saw as their role. Even less is known about the type of bursaries HEIs have introduced or how they are being used, because up till now they have not been examined systematically. This article presents the first such analysis. It concludes that, from the evidence currently available, a mismatch exists between government aspirations and HEIs’ actual use of bursaries and scholarships. Moreover, the bursaries and scholarships put in place may perpetuate existing divisions within and across higher education.     

普通高校继续教育的本质、功能与战略转型

通过对普通高校继续教育本质和功能的探讨,分析了普通高校继续教育存在的主要问题,提出了普通高校继续教育战略转型的基本思路,目的就是为了完善普通高校继续教育的体制、机制和模式,充分发挥普通高校在继续教育和终身教育中的作用和优势。普通高校继续教育是对大学后在职从业人员进行的知识更新教育,是一种高层次的非学历教育,是终身教育的重要组成部分。普通高校继续教育具有传播最新科学技术、搭建校企合作桥梁、构筑终身教育体系等三大功能。目前,很多普通高校在举办继续教育的实践中,存在偏离继续教育本质的倾向,如继续教育被边缘化、以学历教育为主、没有形成与社会的联动机制、教学方法落后、教学内容陈旧等,削弱了继续教育的功能,影响了办学水平和培养质量。普通高校继续教育必须实现战略转型,包括教育结构转型、体制机制转型、办学模式转型和教学建设转型等。