Reframing the universal right to education

The universal right to education has been enshrined in a range of international rights instruments. Yet despite the considerable secondary literature on the subject, there has been little discussion of the notion of education underpinning the right. This article presents a theoretical exploration of the question, leading to a normative reassessment. The article first assesses the expression of the right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, identifying limitations in its focus on primary schooling. Other candidates for a basis for the right – namely learning outcomes and engagement in educational processes – are then assessed, and the latter is found to provide the most coherent foundation. Nevertheless, the positional benefits of formal schooling cannot be ignored. Consequently, a two‐pronged expression of the right is proposed, involving access both to meaningful learning and to institutions that confer positional advantage.     

Think tanks,education and elite policy actors

The past decade has seen think tanks operate in sophisticated ways to influence the development of education policies. In this paper, I reflect upon the influence of think tanks in the formation of national reform, using the Common Core State Standards initiative in the USA as an illustrative case. In doing so, I explore how certain think tanks, headed by political elites and backed by significant philanthropic funding, have sought to influence the reform initiative. My central argument is that meanings and practices associated with political publics are being transformed as elite policy actors gain influence. Through mobilising significant political and economic power, elites work through think tanks to influence policy debates, re-frame policy problems and advocate for particular policy solutions. The new public formations that are resulting appear to be shifting the conditions of possibility for policy making in education.     

Researching the habitus of global policy actors in education

This paper reprises the argument for the emergence of a global education policy field and then focuses on the shared habitus of global and national policy actors and technicians. It is argued that this shared habitus is constituted as a reflection of and a contribution to the creation of the global education policy field. Bourdieu’s approach to habitus as both methodological tool and concept is used and the significance of the interview encounter to understanding habitus is argued. The authors also draw on the content of interviews with five elite policy-makers and technicians. It was found that the policy actors and technicians shared a similar middle-class embodied habitus; in terms of schemes of perception, they identified with a high-modernist confidence in both science and technology; they identified with a cosmopolitan outlook and sensibility; and demonstrated scientistic approaches that held real confidence in understanding the social through quantitative social science methods.     

Professional higher education institutions as organizational actors

Organizational actorhood is a term that has gained prominence in literature about higher education as a way to describe some of the key global change processes with emphasis on organizational accountability, formalization of structure, focus on goal definition and managerialism. At the same time, there is less knowledge about how organizational actorhood is constructed in professional higher education institutions. Based on over 100 interviews and document studies of two case institutions, this article argues that professional higher education institutions show many characteristics of aiming to construct organizational actorhood, while their understanding of accountability is broader than would be in traditional comprehensive universities.     

论公民的受教育权

受教育权是公民的一项基本权利。这项权利具有全民性、无财产内容、不可转让性和权利义务统一性的特点。接受义务教育权、入学就读权、教育平等权、终身教育权、接受职业教育和职业培训权构成了公民受教育权的主要内容。应当重视和解决目前社会中存在的教育费用增长过快和乱收费现象，社会力量办学中的违法问题和教育法制的缺陷等问题，确保公民受教育权的切实实现。     

School social work and the human right to education

The education rankings of Australian students continue to slide further down the international scale, yet the dominant discourse in relation to both the cause and solution to this perceived decline remains focused on funding, curriculum and teacher quality whilst failing largely to take account of the broader social contexts in which education takes place. Drawing on findings from recent research in primary schools in regional Australia, this paper raises the question of Australian school students’ human right to an education and explores the role that school social workers can play in upholding this right. Discussion draws on international research, including studies that examine the outcomes of employing suitably qualified School Social Workers who can foster links and networks between student, family, school and community. It is argued that these networks create social capital that can serve to enable students to benefit from both the education to which they are entitled, and the connections that may empower them, as they move into adult life.     

Universal primary education in Nepal: Fulfilling the right to education

With the net enrollment ratio in primary education in Nepal at 94%, most children are in the school system, but the system fails to ensure that all enrolled children will continue in school cycle and complete primary education of acceptable quality. Given the system’s poor internal efficiency, Nepal is not likely to achieve the MDG and EFA goals of universal primary education by 2015. This article examines the status of universal primary education in Nepal in the light of legal provisions, enrollment and completion trends, and the quality, and management, of education, including financing. It highlights progress made, issues encountered, and some key lessons learned during the past decade. It examines the efforts to make primary education inclusive in terms of social and gender equity. The review of progress toward Education for All underscores that fulfilling the right to education in terms of adequate quality of services and learning outcomes requires sustained efforts and commitment from the government and local community in several priority action areas related to policies, achieving quality with equity, and educational management.     

Transnationalisation within school education: the interconnection between actors,structures and mechanisms

The current literature of school education, transnationalisation and migration explores actors, structures and social mechanisms, however, tends to focus on these analytical levels separately. This article advocates a more explicit analysis of the interconnections of structures, actors and mechanisms within and across schools and wider national and inter-national levels in the context of transnationalisation of school education. The article adds to the theoretical discussion of transnationalisation and school education by presenting a conceptual tool, which identifies gaps in the current literature and may help to structure future research and policy development.     

论教师权利的二重性——公民权与教育权

教师是履行教育、教学职责的专业人员。确定教师权利需要从教师作为普通公民和作为教育者两个方面出发来加以理解,教师的教育权在教师权利中具有身份的专属性。当教师享有的公民权和教育权发生冲突的时候,教师的教育权是处于第一位的。     

荷兰、意大利的私立教育

从荷兰、意大利私立教育的发展来看，两国政府均以立法确立私立教育的合法地位、充分尊重私立学校的办学自主权、建立学历认证制度来引导和规范私立学校的办学行为，并通过社会中介组织来评估私立党校的教学质量，以促进私立教育的健康发展。研究荷、意两国的私立教育，对我国私立教育立法有一定借鉴意义。     

大学惩戒权与学生受教育权的冲突与平衡

近年来不断涌现的学生诉高校不当处分案，反映了大学惩戒权与学生受教育权的现实冲突正在加深。如何实现二利益的平衡，已成为当前必须解决的一个重要课题。本以两的现实冲突立足，一方面探讨了我国大学惩戒权的内涵和作为大学自治手段存在的合理性；另一方面指出学生受教育权作为一项宪法权利的重要性和不可侵犯性。在此基础上，章针对我国高等教育发展状况和教育法律制度的实际情况，参照台湾及国外立法经验，指出解决问题的关键在于：(1)必须从实体和程序两个方面，加强我国高等教育立法，使大学惩戒权的行使接受法律的限制。(2)设立畅通的行政救济与司法救济渠道，以保障学生受教育权的充分实现。     

Private higher education in Australia

In the post World War Two era and prior to the mid 1980s Australia has been characterised by exclusive public provision, financing and regulation of higher education. The 1980s, however, have been marked by considerable turmoil which culminated in the 1988 White Paper. Circumstances provided by the reform of the higher education system, the booming overseas student market and unmet domestic demand have provided a window of opportunity for private providers. This paper charts the growth of private provision, federal and state government responses and the pressures for subsidy and regulation. The paper concludes that the policies of both levels of government are hastening the development of what Geiger (1988) defines as a peripheral private sector of higher education in Australia.     

Networks in action: new actors and practices in education policy in Brazil

This paper focuses on the role of networks in the policy-making process in education and discusses the potential of network analysis as an analytical tool for education policy research. Drawing on publically available data from personal or institutional websites, this paper reports the findings from research carried out between 2005 and 2011. Through document analysis, we investigated the composition, activities and strategies adopted by an important policy network in Latin America and traced its developments in Brazil. We adopted the categories – texts, technical artefacts, human beings and money – proposed by Callon to identify the links between the main actors and organizations in that network and drew our conceptual framework from the work of Gramsci in order to analyse the struggle for hegemony and the role of business interests in education policy-making. The findings show that the expansion of networks does not replace the State in education, but rather the State constitutes a strategic node in these networks.     

研究者与行动者

理论和实践的互动,也许是远程教育专业化队伍建设的捷径。理论和实践之间的关系,常常如同青春期的儿子与父亲之间的关系,既亲密,又对立。对立也未必是坏事,没有对立,也就难能有机会成长。对于远程教育来说,由于理论和实践双方都远未成熟,这种对立还仅仅表现为互相埋怨。无论说“理论脱离实践”,还是说“实践脱离理论”,都显得不够包容,于成长无益。也许好的办法是互为镜子,理论多照照实践的镜子,实践也不妨让理论给自己做一下扫描。或者,干脆互换一下角色,也未尝不可。开放教育试点提供了这样一个角色互换的机会。试点伊始,是作为研究项目破…     

Validation of networks derived from snowball sampling of municipal science education actors

Social network analysis (SNA) has been used in many educational studies in the past decade, but what these studies have in common is that the populations in question in most cases are defined and known to the researchers studying the networks. Snowball sampling is an SNA methodology most often used to study hidden populations, for example, groups of homosexual people, drug users or people with sexually transmitted diseases. By use of a snowball sampling approach, this study mapped municipal social networks of educational actors, who were otherwise hidden to the researchers. Subsequently, the resulting networks were validated through interviews with central respondents and by using prior investigations of the municipalities. Our results confirmed that the majority of the designated respondents recognized the resulting sociograms and their own position in these. It was also found that not all predictions based on existing knowledge of the municipalities aligned with SNA data. However, these discrepancies could be explained by development in the municipalities in the time following previous investigations. This study shows that snowball sampling is an applicable method to use for mapping hidden populations in educational settings, but also that qualitative studies are needed in order to interpret the networks in real-life contexts.