Client Groups' Perceptions of Local Education Authority Policy‐making: expectations and outcomes

Consultation with a range of interest groups, initiated by a local education authority, about a major policy development creates expectations among the client groups consulted. Client groups perceive public consultation as having a number of desirable purposes but they assess the importance of the several possible objectives of consulting differently, and those perceptions, coupled with their expectations and desires, determine their assessment of the effectiveness of consultation as a strategy for the management of change.     

Fundamental Aspects of Interpreter Education简介

本文介绍Fundamental Aspects of Interpreter Education书的主要内容,并结合我国口译测试评估的现状进行了探讨。该书介绍了译员培训的相关文献,分析了课程基础、教学方法、课程模式等口译课程的主要方面,从口译测试评估的效度、信度、种类和测试规范等方面做了深入系统的阐释,结合理论基础进行了详实的实证研究,对帮助我国口译教师充分了解口译测试评估的基本原理和方法具有重要意义。     

Student Difficulties in Socio‐scientific Argumentation and Decision‐making Research Findings: Crossing the borders of two research lines

Students' poor argumentation in the context of socio‐scientific issues has become a concern in science education. Identified problems associated with student argumentation in socio‐scientific issues are misevaluation of evidence, naïve nature of science conceptualizations, and inappropriate use of value‐based reasoning. In this theoretical paper, the authors propose that incorporation of decision‐making research findings to argumentation research may help students overcome these problematic areas. For this aim, decision‐making research findings about value‐focused decision‐making framework and common heuristics have been discussed. Specifically, the authors propose that explicit teaching of argumentation research should provide students a decision‐making framework in which students can consider their values about a socio‐scientific issue and assess different alternatives as well as incorporate teaching about common heuristics. The authors believe that this incorporation is necessary for a quality student argumentation in socio‐scientific issues.     

Why not Intercultural Education?

Now more than ever teachers and those in teacher training positions are being confronted with the prevalence of multicultural and multilingual classroom environments. Along with this presence, they also face international and national policies which call for effective and successful strategy building for coping with diverse settings. This appeal often manifests with an inability on the teacher＇s part to effectively facilitate these multicultural classrooms, as well as an inability on the students＇ part to interact and finally contribute to a larger national and global goal of intercultural cooperation. A growing body of research suggests that as those in the field of teaching and teacher education seek to improve classroom techniques, curricula, and teaching practice in the area of diversity they continue to face disparaging and almost disillusioning results. What were traditionally seen as venues in dealing with issues in multiculturalism and diversity through multicultural education have been left unanswered？ The purpose of this article thus seeks to explore the pedagogical concept of intercultural education as a way to suggest discourse of dealing with the challenges to diversity in the classroom.     

Curriculum Balance,Curriculum Review and Curriculum‐led Staffing: A Response

There are an increasing number of research studies concerned with the realm of middle management in schools. However, few of these studies have adequately defined what might be considered middle management in schools, or have clarified which posts constitute those of middle managers. In addition, these studies have rarely considered the way in which different departmental cultures and structures affect leadership style and departmental performance. This article acknowledges the importance of the role of the head of department in secondary schools in school wide change and outlines some of tensions and dilemmas facing those who manage from the middle. It considers the leadership tensions facing heads of department in secondary schools and points towards the variety of departmental contexts, structures and cultures in which heads of department, or subject leaders operate. The article offers an analysis of the dynamic between leadership and culture within the departmental context. It concludes by suggesting that heads of department have a major contribution to play in managing cultural change at both the department and whole school level.     

Education and self‐change

This paper explores three psychological theories of self – Kenneth Gergen's theory of the crystallised self, Carol Dweck's theory of the incremental self and William Swann's theory of the homeostatic self – for their ability to account for personal change in general, and radical self‐change in particular. Special attention is paid to their educational implications. The overall conclusion is that whereas all three theories provide important insights into self‐change, none of them gives a fully satisfying account.     

Interactive Teacher Decision‐making—still a basic skill?

A general common sense model of interactive teacher decisions is presented. The model assumes that the teacher wishes to choose actions that are appropriate to the situation and to the goals of her teaching. The decision process is thought to include perception, judgement and choice of behaviour from the teacher's behavioural repertoire, but as a result of the immediacy of classroom situations and the teacher's limited information processing capacity, the process may be partly unconscious and the decisions seem spontaneous. The process is affected, consciously or unconsciously, by knowledge variables and emotional variables. Interactive teaching is viewed as consisting of a series of such situations. Research on teacher decision‐making in simulated classroom situations is recommended. It is suggested that teacher education should include discussion of classroom situations and training in interactive decision‐making and the value of such programmes should be studied.     

NCVQ and the 16‐19 Curriculum

Abstract

In Britain, the National Council for Vocational Qualifications is developing a new framework of vocational qualifications (NVQs). This paper presents an analysis of the place of this emerging system within the broader context of 16‐19 education. The needs for reform of 16‐19 provision are identified, and the potential contribution of NVQs to meeting them is analysed. Firstly, it is suggested that NVQs may not contribute sufficiently to student/trainee empowerment, because of employer control of the system. Secondly, while NVQs may be well suited to the training of adults in employment, it is suggested that they are ill‐equipped to meet the needs of students on full‐time vocational courses. Based on this analysis, three alternative future scenarios for 16‐19 education and training are presented, and the strengths and weaknesses of each identified. It is concluded that the extensive use of NVQs within 16‐19 education and training is likely to be counterproductive.     

Open‐mindedness and the University Curriculum

This paper discusses the conditions for selecting and structuring media education in the Swedish comprehensive school, with citizenship education at the core. With reference to John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, different conceptions of the nature of the public are elaborated, which also have inherent in them the tension between a modern and a postmodern interpretation of communication. These conceptions, called ‘communication discourses’, affect the selection and structuring of the content of media literacy when interpreted on the basis of curricula, syllabuses and teaching materials. In the paper communication discourses are also considered from a more overarching angle of socialization ‐ how education and media affect the individual's conceptions of his/her own and other individuals’ relationship to society. The question put here is to what degree differing (social) subjects ‐ identities defined on the basis of social class, gender, race and so on ‐ are found in the texts of the institutions: how are subjects presented and represented?

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between ‘facts’ and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussions.

(John Dewey, 1991: 3)

     

General Education,General‐Technical Education and Integration

Summaries

English

Answers to questions pertaining to general education and basic subjects, as well as to vocational education (general‐technical education in particular) and the principle of integration cannot be reduced to formal speculations or to bare definitions, no matter how elegant and correct. In our era, which is the era of logic and of data‐processing, of automation and computers‐‐the analysis of the question of general and general‐technical education and the corresponding basic subjects of contemporary education must have the qualities of logical and epistemological necessity. The renaissance of formal and mathematical logic in contemporary general education and the inroads made by these subjects into the content and structure of contemporary vocational training‐‐are facts and trends without precedence in the history of education and school. Other developments from which there can be no retreat are the inclusion of data‐processing into the content and structure of the general education school, and the heavy reliance on mathematics in the process of vocational training, combined with elements of cybernetics, formal and mathematical logic, and science of management and control. Also, the time has come for a new principle of teaching, the principle of integration.     

Thread,Web and Tapestry‐making: processes of development and language

Development models have moved away from the simple export or imitation of western patterns towards local ownership and participatory approaches. This movement has brought with it increasing attention to the place of culture, ethnicity and language in development. In situations of high linguistic diversity, debate has concentrated largely on language choice and use in the formal educational system without reference to wider participatory processes of development in the community. Questions of language choice in both education and development are, however, crucial where local community languages have little written tradition and may have been considered of too little significance to develop. This article will review the major features of participatory development and ask how far similar processes have been or might be applied in promoting the use of local languages for such development. These questions will be explored in selected African contexts. How does intervention for language development dovetail with other kinds of development intervention? What is the interplay between the cultural basis of participatory development and the expression of ethnic identity through local languages? What lessons might be drawn from participatory development for community‐based processes of language development? How significant is the notion of empowerment with regard to the linguistic resources of a community? In conclusion, the article will argue that language development processes must figure prominently in participatory approaches to development multilingual environments and that attention to language must proceed along similar participatory lines.     

Does STES‐Oriented Science Education Promote 10th‐Grade Students’ Decision‐Making Capability?

Today’s society is continuously coping with sustainability‐related complex issues in the Science‐Technology‐Environment‐Society (STES) interfaces. In those contexts, the need and relevance of the development of students’ higher‐order cognitive skills (HOCS) such as question‐asking, critical‐thinking, problem‐solving and decision‐making capabilities within science teaching have been argued by several science educators for decades. Three main objectives guided this study: (1) to establish “base lines” for HOCS capabilities of 10th grade students (n = 264) in the Israeli educational system; (2) to delineate within this population, two different groups with respect to their decision‐making capability, science‐oriented (n = 142) and non‐science (n = 122) students, Groups A and B, respectively; and (3) to assess the pre‐post development/change of students’ decision‐making capabilities via STES‐oriented HOCS‐promoting curricular modules entitled Science, Technology and Environment in Modern Society (STEMS). A specially developed and validated decision‐making questionnaire was used for obtaining a research‐based response to the guiding research questions. Our findings suggest that a long‐term persistent application of purposed decision‐making, promoting teaching strategies, is needed in order to succeed in affecting, positively, high‐school students’ decision‐making ability. The need for science teachers’ involvement in the development of their students’ HOCS capabilities is thus apparent.