Globalisation and Its Educational Discontents: Neoliberalisation and its impacts on education workers' rights,pay and conditions

This article examines some impacts of neoliberal education policies during the current period of the intensification of neoliberal capital. Section 1 examines the relationship between education and capital, identifying three plans capital has in relation to education. It sets out some of the major aspects of neoliberal policy developments in schooling and further education. Section 2 describes, analyses and evaluates the research methodology used in developing this article, locating the methodology within the debate between 'methodological purists' on the one hand, and 'committed research' on the other. The research for this article, within the 'research for social justice' paradigm, is rationalised. Section 3 examines the impacts of neoliberalisation on education workers' securities - their pay/ salaries, conditions of employment, stresses and pressures at work, and their work identity and status. It also examines the impacts on the rights and powers of education trade unions. The article ends, in Section 4, by briefly calling for resistance to the global neoliberal capitalist agenda in schooling and education.     

Conceptualizing social justice in education: mapping the territory

Within recent studies of education policy, social justice has been an under‐theorized concept. This paper is an attempt to begin to remedy this situation. It critically examines some of the most prominent ways in which social justice has been and is being thought about within various traditions of social theory and concludes by sketching out a framework for conceptualizing social justice in the context of education policy research. However, the main purpose of the paper is not to provide a definitive conceptualization of social justice but to open up a debate which might usefully inform the work of the education policy research community.     

Canadian and US adult learning (1945–1970) and the cultural politics and place of lifelong learning

This essay examines adult learning in Canada and the USA (1945–1970). It explores this emergence in relation to moves to establish academic adult education as a cultural force that could help citizen learners to negotiate a way forward amid the collision of instrumental, social, and cultural change forces altering life, learning, and work in the emerging postindustrial society. In this regard, it focuses centrally on lifelong learning as an idea designed to have broad appeal in rapid-change postindustrial culture. In particular, it attempts to explicate a cultural politics of lifelong learning, which academic adult educators hoped would give the field a higher profile within what they perceived to be an emerging change culture of crisis and challenge. Two key factors are considered in these deliberations. First, this essay explores the relationship between public education (understood as schooling for children) and adult education. It takes up how this problematic relationship interfered with a post-war turn to lifelong learning. Second, it examines the shift in the meaning of the social in understanding adult education as social education in postindustrial society. It argues that the post-war discourse of democracy delimited this meaning, locating the social predominantly within a concern with preserving the dominant culture and society.     

A Path Worth Taking: The Development of Social Justice in Outdoor Experiential Education

This article examines the influences promoting social justice in the field of outdoor experiential education. The philosophical foundations of outdoor adventure including the work of John Dewey and Kurt Hahn are considered in light of social justice education. The historical evolution of social justice activism within the professional community is analyzed. Other influential trends including the development of outdoor programs sensitive to social justice concerns, the cross fertilization from other related fields, and the demographic and economic imperatives to transform the field are described. The methodological fit between outdoor experiential education and social justice education is the final influence presented. The article concludes that potentials for social justice education within the outdoor experiential education field create an imperative for inclusion.     

From voicing your opinion to politicised voice: a youth-led social justice class at an urban continuation high school

This article examines the work of three urban youths as they designed and taught a social justice class at an urban continuation high school in California, USA. Drawing from a two-year ethnographic study of the project, it shows that youth participants constructed a set of imagined binaries to frame teachers, schoolwork and coercion in opposition to students, voice and liberation. The article examines how the youths distinguished ordinary coercive teaching from their own liberatory teaching, creating a coercive/liberatory binary that served as metaphor for a series of binaries shaping their approach to social justice education: teacher/student, adult/youth and schoolwork/voice. It concludes that although the social justice class accomplished many important aims, the reconstruction of and reliance on a coercive/liberatory binary within the project ultimately limited its effectiveness as a social justice education effort.     

Women,Education and Empowerment in Asia

ABSTRACT Education is widely perceived as an indicator of the status of women and even more importantly, as an agent for the empowerment of women. This article examines the relationship between education and several facets of empowerment, using the macro statistics on countries in Asia presented in the United Nations Human Development Report, 1995, which attempts to compute country specific 'Gender Empowerment Measures', as well as data from qualitative studies in selected representative countries. The study concludes that there is no positive linear relationship between education and the economic, social and political empowerment of women, as a consequence of the interface of gender ideologies and social and economic structural constraints. It further examines factors that surface from within education structures and content and from social and economic structures and gender relations within the family that constrain the role of education as an agent for the empowerment of women.     

Social enterprise,education and work: entrepreneurialism on the margins

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the rise of social enterprise in relation (and in response) to the contemporary nexus between education and work. Contextualising social enterprise within the broader trend toward private influences in education, the paper explores how diffuse networks driven by both market ideals and a social conscience are shaping new sites of education and work on the margins. Drawing on in-depth research undertaken on the experiences of homeless street press sellers of the social enterprise The Big Issue, I bring focused attention to the lived experience of these transformations in policy and practice. The analysis reveals how entrepreneurialism intersects with precarious poverty to frame sellers’ cultivation of their skills and techniques as enterprising workers on the margins.     

Gender,education and the possibility of transformative knowledge

Global policies today encourage greater access by women to formal schooling but leave aside issues of content and school practices essential to the modification of the social relations of gender. This article assumes a holistic approach and compares the promise of education with its actual contribution to transformative knowledge. It examines why education is upheld as such a promising mechanism, despite the numerous obstacles it faces given contemporary developments, particularly the increasing pressures of globalisation that move steadily weakened nation‐states away from interventions to foster social justice. Lack of consensus within the women's and feminist movements, limited efforts to change teacher training programmes and scant attention to the work of women‐led non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in the provision of alternative education are identified as key elements in need of attention if transformative knowledge is to be secured.     

瑞士教育改革的主要趋势

文章评述了瑞士在学校和家庭的相互关系、天才儿童和残疾儿童的教育、学生的政治教育和公民教育、妇女的社会工作、大学毕业生的教育程度与社会地位、少数民族学生的教育等方面的问题和做法。     

Widening participation in postgraduate studies in Greece: mature working women attending an e‐learning programme

This article examines issues relating to widening participation in postgraduate study programmes in Greece. It focuses on a group of mature women and examines their experiences from attending a novel postgraduate e‐learning programme at the University of the Aegean. It presents findings from a study, which looked into mature women’s decision to return to higher education in relation to their responsibilities stemming from marriage, motherhood, work and housework. In particular it examines how these women balanced their different and often conflicting roles, managing to operate within very tight time schedules and demands from their postgraduate studies. The findings of this study have policy implications for issues of equality of educational opportunities and participation in higher education in Greece and elsewhere.     

Crossroads of public art,nature and environmental education

This paper explores how environmental education through ecological art can help students develop creativity, critical thinking, and an arts-informed notion of being a citizen of the world. In illustrating the importance of uncovering the relationship between environmental education and ecological art, the paper examines how this may be used to promote intellectual development, inspiration, and a greater consciousness about social and environmental issues. Through a discussion of examples of classroom projects and processes that integrate art into the curriculum, the paper examines how teachers can use the work of ecological artists to help students learn to ask questions and examine contextual information about ecological art, which are argued to be essential for engagement and motivation. The paper also discusses how infusing ecological art into environmental education can help individuals develop a greater sense of connection with nature both within and beyond the classroom setting.     

Accountability: a key‐word in the discourse of educational reform

This paper examines the relationship between language and power in education policy. It takes the example of accountability as the specific focus for an analysis of discursive power in the shaping of education in the 1990s. In doing so, it examines the ways in which language contributes to the construction and maintenance of norms and consensual positions in education. Drawing on work in critical linguistics and cultural theory, the paper considers how recent changes in education might be analysed in a way which relates specific examples of social and linguistic practice to larger scale theoretical concerns. The examples which provide the specific focus for discussion in this paper relate to the concept of accountability and are drawn from an empirical study of the enactment of the statutory curriculum for English in secondary schools in 1992‐93.     

Education,social class and social exclusion

This paper begins by noting the centrality of the issue of working-class school failure within the sociology of education in Britain. It argues that recent government policies have taken insufficient account of sociological work on the impact of social class on educational success and failure. It also suggests that sociologists should pay more attention to middle-class education. The importance of this is illustrated through reference to research on the trajectories of pupils receiving different forms of secondary education. The paper then argues that social inclusion policies need to address a variety of forms of middle-class self-exclusion from mainstream public provision as well as working-class social exclusion. It concludes that education policy needs to be located within a broader social policy framework.     

Hierarchies and 'local' markets: the geography of the 'lived' market place in secondary education provision

While not providing a social class analysis of market competition this paper aims to build upon such work by introducing other factors that appear to be present in the education market place. In this paper market competition is considered along two broad dimensions. The first examines educational markets as spatial phenomenon. In the second an empirical study of competition and markets in action is undertaken based on one year's transfer of pupils to secondary schools across six LEAs, each with different geographies. The study proposes three key ways in which competition between schools can be classified. It also suggests that the education market place is, generally, hierarchical, and that the position of schools within these hierarchies is largely associated with their relative examination performances. The paper concludes by suggesting that the concept and the subsequent identification of the ‘local’ markets is necessary before addressing issues such as the impact on school rolls and potential social segregation of intakes.     

Social Workers and the Judicial System

Much of social work practice is affected by the law and many social workers can expect some involvement with the legal/judicial system during the course of their work. This paper reviews social workers' historical commitment to justice for their clients and in a broad societal context and examines current and evolving roles of social workers vis-ä-vis the rapidly changing judical system. Based on the increasing involvement of social workers in legal and justice-related functions, specific proposals are offered for upgrading the legal/judical content of social work education.     

Economic Rationality or Social Justice? Gender,the National Qualifications Framework and educational reform in South Africa, 1989‐1996

This article examines the ways in which gender redress has been conceptualised in different phases of the policy development work on the National Qualifications Framework, a key initiative of education reform in South Africa. It identifies two discursive framings for the NQF‐‐the discourse of economic rationalisation, utilised by business and COSATU, and that of social justice, utilised by the ANC and COSATU. It concludes that neither, for different reasons, have grappled with gendered social relations or the gendered, but dispersed, power of the state. The paper points out that the existence of a widespread women's organisation in South Africa during the transition period had little impact on policy formulation in education and training, thus raising questions about ways in which women's demands can have an impact on education policy change.     

Sex education,homosexuality, and social contestation in 1970s New Zealand

This essay examines the relationships between homosexuality and sex education in New Zealand during the 1970s. It argues that reading sex education debates and resources provides a useful way of exploring connections between the ontologies and politics of sexuality at that time. In particular, the advent of social movements concerned with sexual issues marked a turning point in homosexuality's appearance within formal and informal modes of sex education. During the 1970s, sex education and related debates became a key site at which various conceptualisations of homosexuality were constructed and contested. By analysing the struggles between radical and conservative perspectives, we can see how same‐sex desire came to symbolise changing sexual mores, as well as broader ideas about social order and social change.     

Legislation, education reform and social transformation: the People's Republic of China's experience

With special reference to the People's Republic of China (PRC), this paper examines relationships between law, education reform and social transformation that have been under-researched. The argument is that, despite national leaders' high expectations, the use of law to effect or consolidate educational reform in the PRC is affected by both legal and extra-legal factors such as politics, economics, and social norms and cultures. The paper first establishes a framework within which the PRC is analyzed. Secondly, the paper looks into the policy context in which the PRC adopts the strategy of using law to govern the nation and education, and examines the contrasting scenarios between promotion of governance of education with the law, and public defiance of education laws in the PRC. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the deep-seated problems behind the scenario in the wider social and political contexts that shape education and law, and examines the role of law in governance and social change.     

The Impact of Research Training and Research Codes of Practice on Submission of Doctoral Degrees: An Exploratory Cohort Study

The paper examines the impact of the transformations in doctoral education in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the United Kingdom over the past decade. It focuses on the introduction of formal research training and codes of research practice and in the first longitudinal candidate cohort study examines their impact on doctoral outcomes, especially Ph.D. submission rates. Results from this quantitative study show that engagement with research training, completion of a project outline and plan and appointment of a supervisory team were statistically positively associated with submission of the thesis within four years. It is concluded that the professionalisation of doctoral education by research training and codes of research practice has had a positive impact on doctoral educational outcomes.     

Challenges Faced by Canadian Social Work Field Instructors in Baccalaureate Field Supervision

ABSTRACT

This article examines the challenges faced by social work field instructors in two Canadian provinces. The results are based on the responses from 239 field instructors to a questionnaire survey. Findings highlight student difficulties, administrative issues with the social work schools, and practicum setting challenges. These demands hinder the optimal implementation of social work field education, reveal the concerning gatekeeping role of schools of social work, and discourage some social workers from taking on (or continuing) as field instructors. Implications for social work student placements, supervision of students, academic programs, and directions for future research are presented.