Achieving quality and equity through inclusive education in an era of high-stakes testing

While great progress has been made by the international community to promote inclusive education for all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender or disability, many countries still continue to marginalize and exclude students in educational systems across the globe. High-stakes assessments in market-driven economies have increased exclusionary practices. Using international databases and research studies, this paper provides evidence of the poor performance of high-stakes assessment policies, particularly in the United States. The authors analyse and compare the key assumptions and consequences of a market-based system of education with those of a system that is based upon the principles of inclusive education through a school-community model and examples from Europe and Latin America. These models demonstrate that the twin goals of quality and equity can be achieved within a system that addresses educational policy and practices more broadly than market-based reforms. Conclusions call for policy-makers to respond to the discrimination and exclusion of various populations around the world by considering the impact of current educational models and the potential they have to support genuinely inclusive education for everyone.     

Efficiency and equity in Japanese higher education

The historical background and institutional characteristics of theJapanese system of higher education are described and then analysed withparticular reference to their relationship to both efficiency and equity.Post-World War II developments are shown to have initiated a movement fromwhat was a system of government regulation towards one which is moremarket-orientated, including a measure of market segmentation. Thesignificance of a fast-growing private sector is emphasised. The socialcharacteristics of the present-day Japanese system are analysed in terms ofthe employment of graduates, the rate of return and the economic use offinancial and human resources. Factors such as family income, background andregion of residence all influence opportunities and it is argued that thesystem cannot be considered as being entirely meritocratic. Nor can it bedescribed as being dependent on market forces; though both price andacademic quality affect student choice of institutions, the two are notnecessarily correlated. The social and economic consequences of the systemare complex and the author concludes by discussing these in the context oflikely changes in the future.     

高等教育全球化与日本大学改革

在高等教育全球化的背景下,日本大学正在经历着重大变革,同时给大学教育提出了许多新课题。大学教育应高度重视评价体系的确立等战略性课题,同时对“马太效应”等新课题进行研究。在全球化的背景下,应努力做到不被潮流所淘汰,同时也要觉察到全球化的误区。     

‘Timescapes’ in doctoral education: the politics of temporal equity in higher education

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century, the politics of higher education in Australia and around the globe have become dominated by neoliberal agendas of efficiency, profitability and managerialism. This has fundamentally altered the ‘timescapes’ of higher education. In the case of doctoral education, doctoral candidates and supervisors are subjected to increasing time pressures and required to produce a wide variety of outcomes in very short timeframes. These managerial agendas of efficiency and speed impact upon all doctoral candidates and supervisors but present particular practical and epistemic difficulties for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international students. In this article, I illustrate how fast doctoral timescapes encourage assimilationist pedagogies that have been shown to be especially detrimental for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international doctoral candidates. Drawing upon a complex array of theoretical resources that investigate Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis and other authors’ notions of epistemic time and the ethics of time, this article argues for a reconceptualization of doctoral timescapes in order to promote a politics of temporal equity in doctoral education. This especially involves making space for epistemic, lived and eternal temporal rhythms in doctoral education policy and practice.     

Educational policy trajectories in an era of globalization: Singapore and Cambodia

This paper critically discusses the educational policy trajectories of Singapore and Cambodia in an era of globalization. Drawing upon David Johnson’s five metaphors to describe the historical and political forces that shape educational policy trajectories, the paper argues that Cambodia’s current educational policy trajectory is characterized by the “politics of compelling” while Singapore’s situation is more akin to the “politics of selling”. In Singapore, the politics of selling intersects with the politics of gelling, in which various interest groups are encouraged to work together to strengthen the new economy of knowledge. The paper raises a common challenge for Singapore and Cambodia: to shift from a traditional teacher-centred and textbook-based approach to a more student-centred and ICT-based approach in a globalized world. The last section of this paper explores the possibility of addressing this challenge through gelling, by setting a new agenda for education, one that combines foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge from various interest groups.     

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.     

Hegemony and the politics of education in Hong Kong: from the post-war era to the post-handover era

ABSTRACT

The process of Chinese nation-building in education reveals the hegemonic strategies of the colonial power and the adaptation of indigenous forces when Hong Kong was undergoing decolonisation and the transfer of sovereignty. The return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty has been a crucial indicator for the potential re-unification of China, as it presents a model for the possible future reintegration of Taiwan. The idea of hegemony applies to different dominant groups in the two periods under review. In the first period, London attempted to influence the development of groups in Hong Kong and incorporate them into the colonial programme. In the second period, Beijing attempts to influence groups in Hong Kong facilitate the reintegration of Hong Kong into a larger Chinese identity. Yet, it is far too simple to picture a unilateral exercise of power by an identifiable centre and consider the periphery as mere objects of successful manipulation by the centre. Continued study of the evolution of nation-building in education, under the influence of a series of complex and shifting factors of the Hong Kong society, will be enlightening for the comprehension of the ever-changing and increasingly complicated political culture.     

对话的焦虑: 地缘文化·革命文化·全球化

笔者近三十多的学术研究经历了革命文化视野、地缘文化视野和全球化视野三个阶段.地缘文化体现的是民族文化,革命文化体现的是现代社会进程,全球化体现的是西方文化,三者有着密切的联系:地域文化与革命文化的关系表现为革命文化对地域文化负面因素的批判,对优秀地域文化传统的激活,以及两者负面因素的共谋等;地缘文化与全球化的关系,一方面表现为西方强势文化的扩张而形成的一体化,一方面表现为地域文化的顽强抗拒而形成的多极性,尤为重要的是在全球化语境下重建自己的地域和民族文化;革命文化与全球化的关系,一是革命文化产生于全球化与地域文化的结合,二是应当从新世纪全球化视角反思革命文化,使其健康发展.三种文化是一个充满对话的焦虑、而且必须不断整合的历史话题.     

全球化时代高等教育的文化批判

在全球化境域中,高等教育应秉持学术诉求,在全面分析全球化文化逻辑和文化主体的基础上,充分发挥其文化批判功能,以促进我们的文化不仅与全球化发展趋势相适应,而且与现代社会发展的要求相吻合。     

The irony of globalization: The experience of Japanese women in British higher education

Informal interviews and ethnographic research are usedto identify the motivations of Japanese women to studyin Britain, and to examine their experience asstudents as well as peripheral members of the laborforce. It is found that Japanese women's motivationsto come to Britain to study are encouraged by theforces of globalization, including economic, culturaland intellectual factors. Women are also pushed tostudy abroad by domestic factors, as although Japanhas developed an egalitarian education system for bothsexes, women still encounter conservative social normswhich constrain their lives and limit their jobprospects. Japanese women's experiences of highereducation in Britain are mixed. Some women feel thattheir presence is merely tolerated and that they arenot encouraged in their academic endeavours. Othersfind British higher education gives them theopportunity to develop their critical faculties and tobecome integrated into the life of the institution. These mixed responses are indicative of thecontradictory consequences of globalization ineducation. Globalization has helped to give neweducational opportunities to Japanese women. However,it has also created an international recruitmentmarket in which some higher education institutionsview students in financial terms and not as members ofa scholarly community. One of the ironies ofglobalization, therefore, is that the mutualeducational advantages of cross cultural contact areundermined by a reductive, narrowly economic view offoreign students as a source of revenue.     

Diversity,specialisation and equity in education

School diversity in the UK is not a new phenomenon. However, recent reforms to ‘modernise’ the secondary school system towards greater diversity of provision, primarily in England, needs to be explored in more detail. The article begins by proposing three phases in the development of state‐funded school diversity and provision between 1944 and 1997. It then goes on to consider such reforms with the introduction of a Labour government in 1997. We argue that school diversity under New Labour represents a distinct fourth phase within this broad policy agenda. While there is some continuity in the expansion of school diversity this most recent phase is characterised by greater governmental intervention and a stronger commitment to provide greater resources for schools in disadvantaged communities. However, the paper then critically analyses the relationship between recent programmes of education diversity and equity. In particular, we go on to discuss the extent to which critics’ fears about the emergence of a two‐tier system are justified. We conclude that while the fourth phase in the UK school diversity agenda may aim to be more equitable, complementary and collaborative it perhaps fails to recognise that the education system today is more competitive and consumer‐led.     

Learning science in an era of globalization: a phenomenology of the foreign/strange

In this study, we propose a set of concepts for conceptualizing issues of learning science related to globalization, the encounter with the (radically) foreign/strange—as this occurs as part of migration and even as part of the encounter of a learner with the unknown content that science lessons are to impart—from the perspective of the experiencing person and the experience. We take an approach to the question of the foreign/strange that is grounded in philosophies of difference, which have emerged in continental Europe, and which make use of advances in phenomenology, dialectics, and materialism. We draw on ethnographic work in one undergraduate physics course at a Canadian university, where we followed in particular one female Japanese student, who had come to this country for the purpose of getting a degree. As an entry point and as source of empirical materials, we draw on our own auto/ethnographic experience that brings particular advantages to ally pathos to the experience of the foreign/strange, something is happening to (affecting) us that is beyond all experience, understanding, and anticipation. We articulate three phenomenological aspects that pathos (empathy) allows us to understand concerning the experience of the foreign/strange and then provide an exemplary and exemplifying analysis.

论日本侵略者对中国文化教育的摧残与掠夺

从19世纪末到20世纪中叶,日本侵略伴随着对中国的武力侵略,每占领一地,便疯狂地对教进行摧残与掠夺。其侵略程度随着其在华殖民地的不断扩大而不断扩展和强化。日本侵略进行的教侵略是其侵略政策的重要组成部分。与军事占领、民族压迫、经济掠夺相比,这种行径更狡猾、更毒辣、更隐蔽,后果也更严重。其根本目的在于泯灭中国人民的民族意识和国家观念,妄图使中国永远不能独立,永远沦为日本侵略的殖民地。值此抗日战争胜利60周年之际,要通过揭示日本侵略侵华罪证及险恶用心,使其痛认前非,断绝覆辙,以利于世界和平。     

The political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: Latin America in comparative perspective

During the last two decades, Latin American universities have experienced intense pressure to abandon the main principles established in the 1918 Córdoba Reform (i.e., autonomy and autarchy). While funding for public higher education has declined, they are pressured to relinquish a large portion of institutional autonomy in order to accommodate to market demands and to a new set of control strategies emanating from the state.We argue that current changes in Latin American higher education cannot be examined in isolation from larger political and economic changes in the region, which in turn are related to the dynamics of globalization. After the decline of socialist and welfare-state models, neoliberal regimes have become hegemonic in many parts of the world. In most countries, changes in financial arrangements, coupled with accountability mechanisms, have forced universities to reconsider their social missions, academic priorities and organizational structures. Concerns about equity, accessibility, autonomy or the contribution of higher education to social transformation, which were prevalent during previous decades, have been overshadowed by concerns about excellence, efficiency, expenditures and rates of return. The notion that higher education is primarily a citizens right and a social investment – which has been taken for granted for many decades – is being seriously challenged by a neoliberal agenda that places extreme faith in the market.Though we focus on the international dimension of university change, it is important to note that global trends are promoted, resisted and negotiated differently in each national context and in each individual institution. In the emerging knowledge-based society, the polarization between North and South is expected to increase even further if the scientific and technological gaps are not narrowed. Latin American universities have a crucial role to play in this regard. The paper is organized in two parts. The first describes the context of university change, focusing on issues of globalization and neoliberalism. The second examines the main features of university restructuring in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on Latin America.     

全球化和反全球化语境下的新政治

全球化的怀疑论者和全球化的支持者的共同立场提出了全球社会变迁的未来特点以及全球治理的内容等现时代许多根本性的议题。全球化正在重组国家政府的权力、功能和权威使得行使权力的地域和权力主体发生了变化,使得世界政治遭到新限制和国家权力遭侵蚀。虽然存在挑战,但由于多重政治进程共同发挥作用,创建世界新秩序就有了实现的基础。     

School mathematics in the era of globalization

This essay reviews the principles motivating contemporarycritical mathematics discourses. Drawing from varied critical discourses including ethno-mathematics, critical theory, post-structural theory, and situated and ecological cognition, the essay examines the pragmatics of critiques to the privileged role of school mathematics in the era of globalization. Critiques of modern school curricula argue that globalization practices linking education to technological and economic development are increasing, and the curriculum is being re-defined through discourses of privatization, national standards, and global competitiveness. Globalization has reinforced the utilitarian approach to school mathematics and the Western bias in the prevailing mathematics curricula, as well as helped to globalize pervasive mathematical ideologies. In most instances, a newfound status that mathematics is enjoying in this era of globalization is not well deserved, as school mathematics can no longer be considered culturally, socially, politically, nor economically neutral. In particular, school mathematics is increasingly critiqued as a cultural homogenizing force, a critical filter for status, a perpetuator of mistaken illusions of certainty, and an instrument of power. With such concerns it is becoming more evident that mathematics learning and education have implications for building just and democratic societies. As an African female scholar who is now living in Canada, I reflect on what the critical stance might mean for contexts with which I am familiar. I discuss the challenges of school mathematics with a view to improving curriculum and pedagogy so as to raise the awareness of teachers and learners to the questionable assumptions from which mathematics derives its prestige. The mathematics curriculum is central to cultivating values as well as fostering the conscientization of learners.