Gardens or graveyards: Science education reform and school culture

This case study describes what happened when two lead teachers in a statewide reform project tried to change science teaching in their schools. Instead of using traditional criteria for leadership, we view their work in the context of their schools' cultures and use Rosenholtz's (1991) concepts of egalitarianism and isolation to analyze how those cultures contributed to and obstructed reform. Five themes illustrate this model of teacher leadership and the first stirrings of school change: reform as a “science look,” change through parental involvement, competing reforms, change through a “sideways door,” and change through public events. The study shows the importance of patience in reform implementation and the need for sensitive study of early change within school contexts. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 757–775, 1998.     

The culture of education policy making: curriculum reform in Shanghai

This paper explores the culture of education policy making in Shanghai using the conceptual tool of a ‘global assemblage’. A global assemblage is essentially a collection of ideas and practices that arise from the interplay between a global form and situated sociocultural elements. Focusing on the global form of curriculum reform, this paper explains how the Shanghai municipal government justifies the introduction of the ‘Second Curriculum Reform’ using the global imperative while maintaining its socialist ideology and central control on high-stakes exams. This paper highlights the active roles played by the municipal government and other local educational stakeholders in assembling their own logics, tactics and counter-measures in the contested space of the assemblage. It is argued that the success of the curriculum reform is mediated and vitiated by the sociocultural elements of a dominant exam-oriented culture and the traditional approaches of memorisation, repeated practice and didactic teaching. The complex and unpredictable process of implementing curriculum reform in Shanghai illustrates the culture of education policy making against a backdrop of globalisation as a problem space.     

坚持先进文化的前进方向 深化教育改革

江泽民同志提出“代表中国先进文化的前进方向”的思想，不仅是当前加强党的建设和加强社会主义精神文明建设的重要指导方针，也是我们深入进行教育教学改革的重要指导思想。坚持先进文化的前进方向，必须重视教育，优先发展教育，高举马列主义的旗帜，加强校园文化建设，进行教育教学改革，全面提高教育教学质量。只有这样，才能使我国的教育真正成为中国的先进文化，才能真正代表中国文化的前进方向。     

高职数学文化教育与高职数学教育改革的思考

高职教育是我国高等教育的重要补充,高职教育的特点决定了高职教育的实践性和技术性,在高职教育中,高职数学教学长期以来缺乏文化教育,数学教学成为了干涩的职业性教育,这不仅无法提升高职数学教育的质量,同时也无法发挥高职数学教育的功能和价值。鉴于此,在高职数学教育中,通过融入文化教育来实现教学改革,在提升高职学生数学职业技能的同时,还能够培养学生的数学思想。     

Potentialities beyond deficit perspectives: globalization, culture and urban science education in the Bronx

The major focus of this ethnographic study is devoted to exploring the confluence of global and local referents of science education in the context of an urban chemistry laboratory classroom taught by a first-generation Filipino-American male teacher. This study investigates encounters between the teacher and four second-generation immigrant female students of color, as well as encounters among the four students. The pervasive spread of neoliberal ideology of accountability and sanctions both globally and locally, particularly in public high schools in the Bronx, New York City fuel situations for teaching and learning science that are encoded with the referents of top-down control. In the face of theses challenges, classroom participants must become aware of productive ways to build solidarity and interstitial culture across salient social boundaries, such as age, gender, ethnicity and role, to create and sustain successful teaching and learning of chemistry. Empirical evidence for solidarity was guided by physical and verbal displays of synchrony, mutual focus, entrainment, and emotional energy, body gestures, and prosody markers. This study shows that classroom participants used a combination of prosody markers to appropriate resources to decrease breaches in face-to-face encounters and, at the same time, create and sustain participation and solidarity to successfully complete an acid–base experiment.     

Going beyond the educational reform document

He was formerly Executive Secretary of the African Curriculum Organization (1976–86) and Programme Co-ordinator with the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession (1986–88) and is the author of numerous publications dealing with education.     

Public education matters: Reclaiming public education for the common good in a global era

This article argues that public education needs to be reclaimed to fulfill its role as a “democratising force” to address social and economic inequality and to respect and recognise diversity and difference. By analysing historical developments in federal policy, funding and economic contexts a case is developed to demonstrate that the role of the state has been dismantled and the public nature of education has been reduced. The factors responsible are articulated and discussed with particular reference to the impact of neo-liberal policy, the “marketisation” of education and new public management. Measures such as those taken by Education Queensland that support the development of school leaders and teachers to engage in research, development and critical debate are supported. International examples of how systems have revitalised and supported the public nature of education are discussed. These include more intelligent accountability systems that respect the professionalism of teachers and collaborative curriculum development strategies that engage with all, including those who are least powerful such as the students.     

Exploring the theory-practice gap in initial teacher education: moving beyond questions of relevance to issues of power and authority

The ‘theory-practice divide’ in teacher education can be viewed not simply as an acceptance of a body of knowledge but instead an acceptance of the teacher educator’s authority to determine what is relevant educational theory. This research aimed to explore student teachers’ views of ‘educational theory’ and how it was discursively positioned relative to their practice in an attempt to examine whether their acceptance or rejection of it was also related to accepting the authority of the teacher educator. Using one-to-one interviews with 23 student teachers and employing a discourse analysis, four categories of students emerged. The paper describes these four categories and discusses the implications of these findings for initial teacher education and our understanding of the ‘theory-practice’ gap.     

Making a difference: moving beyond the superficial treatment of diversity

As populations in contemporary Western societies grow more diverse, the need for teachers to better understand and work with difference productively becomes increasingly critical (Allard & Santoro, 2006 Allard, A. C. and Santoro, N. 2006. Troubling identities: Teacher education students' constructions of class and ethnicity.. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36(1): 115–129. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]; D'Cruz, 2007 D'Cruz, H. 2007. Working with ‘Diverse Bodies, Diverse Identities’: An approach to professional education about ‘diversity’.. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(1): 35–57.  [Google Scholar]). However, the literature on teacher education shows that historically, teacher education programs have aimed to address diversity with add‐on or piecemeal approaches, with little success (McDonald, 2005 McDonald, M. A. 2005. The integration of social justice in teacher education: Dimensions of prospective teachers' opportunities to learn.. Journal of Teacher Education, 56(5): 418–435.  [Google Scholar]). Moreover, some authors (e.g. Lortie, 1975 Lortie, D. 1975. Schoolteacher: A sociological study, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  [Google Scholar]) have argued that “the predispositions teacher education students bring to teaching are a much more powerful socializing influence than either pre‐service education or later socialization in the workplace” (Johnson, 2002 Johnson, L. 2002. “My eyes have been opened”: White teachers and racial awareness.. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2): 153–167. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar], p. 154). This article explores research and scholarship in this area and argues that we must move beyond the fragmented and superficial treatment of diversity if we are to encourage dispositions in all pre‐service teachers that are more closely aligned with a recognitive view of social justice.     

Reclaiming professionalism for geography education: Defending our own territory

In a world where governments increasingly attempt to impose regulation on all professional activities, this paper advocates that professional standards for teachers be developed ‘by the profession for the profession’. Foucauldian archaeology is applied to two teacher standards documents recently published in Australia, one developed at national governmental level and the other by geography teachers through their professional associations. The excavation reveals that both students and geography teachers themselves are better served when teachers assert their own definition of professionalism and thus reclaim their professional territory, rather than being compliant with generic governmental agendas. Whilst we use Australia as an illustrative example, our findings are applicable to all other countries where governments attempt to impose external professional standards on the teaching profession.     

关于教育改革背景下的汉语言教育改革的思考

本文从当前我国高校汉语言文学教育的现状入手,着重分析汉语言教学中存在的现象与问题,并结合当前国家教育改革背景下,对于如何改革创新汉语言教育提出了几点对策。     

Reclaiming quality in higher education: a human factor approach

Interest in quality is well established within higher education. This paper will critically review the most commonly used definitions of quality: fitness for purpose and value for money. It will point out that these two definitions are important but they ignore the emancipatory power of higher education and the development needs of academics and students. This paper will propose a new understanding of quality as a virtue of professional practice, which can be used as a useful force for individual academics and students to increase their commitment to learning and teaching. A new model of quality evaluation will be outlined as a supportive mechanism to enhance academics’ professionalism and to increase students’ capability to learn.     

The international student safety debate: moving beyond denial

In 2009 international student safety became an issue of immediate concern to Australian international education exporters following a series of demonstrations by Indian students and interventions by concerned foreign governments. With these developments the ‘industry’ became fixated on how best to secure Australia’s share of the international education market in a context in which it was impossible to deny international student safety is a systemic problem. This paper contextualizes this development by utilizing a stigma management framework to review the unfolding debate on international students and safety in the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. We argue that in all four cases it took an exogenous shock to convince education exporters to acknowledge student safety as an issue that needs to be openly debated. We also suggest that Australian officials were slow to make this acknowledgement because they mistakenly believed the industry was shielded by its link to the immigration program.     

Judeo‐Christian theology and the environment: moving beyond scepticism to new sources for environmental education in the United States

In the USA, many environmental educators have paid little attention to Western Christian and Jewish ecotheology, in spite of its being a potentially rich resource for environmental education. In part, this neglect can be attributed to popular misconceptions about the influence of religious beliefs on environmental values. This essay reviews the results of relevant empirical studies within the environmental sociology literature since 1977 to clarify common misconceptions. Conclusions from these empirical studies and other sources may make it easier for environmentalists to reconsider the resources of ecotheology. Reconsidering ecotheology is also practical in that it provides environmental education a means of better connecting with the primary values of many citizens, offers new partnership possibilities for building environmental education infrastructure, and broadens the pluralistic base for environmental ethics. Several basic tenets of ecotheology offer starting points for educators by providing common ground between theology and environmental education.     

Poverty reduction and adult education: beyond basic education

One of the Millennium Development Goals declared by the United Nations in 2000 was to reduce by half the population of people living in extreme poverty, by 2015. Adult education can and should contribute significantly to this development goal. Nevertheless it has hardly been explored so far in the national Poverty Reduction Strategies Papers. In as far as attention has been given to the contribution of adult education to the reduction of poverty, the trend has been to focus on literacy or basic education. Nevertheless, adult education is potentially much more than literacy or basic education. Successful contribution of adult education to poverty reduction programmes includes also agricultural extension, vocational education, community development and training for active citizenship. In this introduction of the special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education, we will sketch the state of the art for each of these branches of adult education. Moreover, our central argument will be that developing countries do not only need a more extended system for adult education, but also a more flexible and more targeted system than the rather traditional practices in most developing countries.     

Reclaiming literacies: competing textual practices in a digital higher education

This essay examines the implications of the ubiquitous use of the term ‘digital literacies’ in higher education and its increasing alignment with institutional and organisational imperatives. It suggests that the term has been stripped of its provenance and association with disciplinary knowledge production and textual practice. Instead it is called into service rhetorically in order to promote competency-based agendas both in and outside the academy. The piece also points to a tendency to position teachers in deficit with regard to their technological capabilities and pay scant attention to their own disciplinary and scholarly practices in a digital world. It concludes that there is a case for building on established theoretical and conceptual frameworks from literacy studies if we wish to integrate advantages of the digital landscape with thoughtful teaching practice.     

Developing exploratory language in the classroom: moving beyond teacher as expert

In this article the author describes the collaborative research undertaken by a group of high school teachers and an English adviser. The teachers were keen to find ways of breaking the teacher-dominated discourse pattern within their classrooms. They wanted to see whether, when offered a variety of teacher audiences beyond that of ‘expert-examiner’, students would engage in the kind of exploratory talk, described by the National Curriculum Council (1987-93), as a feature of investigative learning. Teachers' belief that discourse patterns are affected by students' understanding of contextual conditions is examined. The author illustrates the importance of students' shared understanding of collaborative discourse, and discusses how their conception of learning contexts is influenced by the kinds of audiences teachers project     

高职机电类专业教学改革融入企业文化的实践与研究

高职教育需遵循以就业为向导,以能力为本位,通过"校企合作、工学结合"走产学结合之路,因此,高职教学改革要贯彻"校企育人",需将企业文化融入教学全过程,加强学生职业素质的培养,使毕业生以高素质的"职业人"快速适应企业岗位。