Advancing Education's Autonomy through Looking Educationally at Philosophy

This article offers a general framework for considering education's autonomy and its implications for the relationship between education and philosophy. In it, Doron Yosef-Hassidim examines an initiative in Israel that calls for an autonomous secular public education and uses it as a context to clarify what education's autonomy means and to identify its major characteristics. To enhance the idea of education's autonomy, he further argues that education should not be subordinate to philosophy and that the question about being human must be kept open and educational. In particular, education's autonomy requires resisting the temptation of applying a philosophical framework about being human to education, even if the particular philosopher of education agrees with the philosophical framework. Finally, Yosef-Hassidim proposes a strategy for treating the question about being human as one that involves both the work of philosophers of education and practitioners in the classroom.     

From traditional to formal education in the lower Arabian Gulf, 1820–1971

This article charts the development of education in the lower Arabian Gulf from its traditional beginnings in the nineteenth century to the provision of more formal schooling and eventually a ministry of education following Britain's withdrawal from the region in 1971. In order to provide a better understanding of the complexities and relative advances and setbacks to this development, special emphasis is placed on the social, economic and political context of education's trajectory; including the lower Gulf's dependent relations with its Imperial protector and its reliance on foreign educational aid from Kuwait.     

Technocracy,educational structures and libraries: historical notes from the United States

This paper discusses the application and effects of technocratic ideology in schooling and educational policy in the United States, and traces it up through present planning for ‘virtual libraries’ and rethinking of educational structures. This is done by reviewing the development of educational structures and policies and by looking at selected developmental/historical periods in American life when technocratic ideology was particularly influential in schooling and educational policy. Through this process the authors establish ideological connections between technocracy, education and the new educational processes that virtual libraries represent. In this analysis virtual libraries are the newest site of the extension, deepening and possible totalizing of the values of technocratic educational policy and processes.

The paper begins with a brief definition of the concept of technocracy which is placed in its historical context. An overview of the historical periods of dominant technocratic ideology in American education is then presented. The overview covers particular eras from the early nineteenth century through the 1980s, tracing the manifestations of technocracy in educational practice and policy (the early industrial era, the era of Scientific Management and social efficiency, the Sputnik era and the push for computers in education). The paper then turns to an analysis of current technocratic education reforms and the connections to the “virtual library”. The virtual library is representative of this historical technocratic pattern, and‐‐at least as currently envisioned‐‐is the next technocratic extension into education. The paper concludes with a summary analysis of this trend.     

Rousseau and the image of 'modern education'

The concept of 'modern education' is directly connected with Rousseau's theory of education. It is often said that Rousseau 'founded' modern education, or at least was its most influential predecessor. The paper argues that 'modern learning' or 'experimental education' was discussed within the late-17 th century 'quarrel of the ancients and moderns'. After this historically important debate, education and learning could be connected with the open experience of modern science. When compared to this tradition, Rousseau was not a modern writer. His concept of education has been far too paradoxical to serve as a groundwork for what was considered to be 'modern' or 'progressive education' at the end of the 19 th century. The image of progressive education was strengthened by child psychology, especially by theories of learning and development. Rousseau's stoic concept of 'negative education' is in many respects the opposite to such a viewpoint.     

The changing nature of autonomy: Transformations of the late Swedish teaching profession

This article discusses teacher autonomy in the case of the Swedish teaching profession since the 1980s. It is argued that deregulation, decentralization, and marketization reforms of the 1990s have indeed increased teacher autonomy, but in some respects also led to a increase of complexity in the Swedish school system. In order to handle this complexity, the state intensified a standardization of schooling, which restricts teacher autonomy today. Relevant the paper's understanding is that teacher autonomy is always about control, exerted internally by the profession itself and facilitated externally by state standards. The article argues that the restriction of teacher autonomy in recent times is also related to a simplified understanding of the phenomenon in the reforms of the 1990s.     

大学文化视域下大学自治权力的发挥

高等教育领域综合改革的深入推进和大学管办评分离模式的提出,更加强调了政府的宏观管理职能,强化了大学的办学自主权。大学的当务之急是如何能充分发挥好这些自治权力,办出自己的特色。但综观大学发展现象,其自治权力并未得到充分有效的发挥,这与大学文化自觉性的缺失、大学文化品格的保守性和大学核心价值的模糊息息相关。因此,有必要从大学文化视角出发,对大学自治权力不能有效发挥的原因进行深层次探析,并提出策略建议。     

Foucault,Educational Research and the Issue of Autonomy

This article seeks to demonstrate a particular application of Foucault's philosophical approach to a particular issue in education: that of personal autonomy. The paper surveys and extends the approach taken by James Marshall in his book Michel Foucault: Personal autonomy and education. After surveying Marshall's writing on the issue I extend Marshall's approach, critically analysing the work of Rob Reich and Meira Levinson, two contemporary philosophers who advocate models of personal autonomy as the basis for a liberal education.     

Educational Justice,Epistemic Justice,and Leveling Down

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that education is a positional good; this, they hold, implies that there is a qualified case for leveling down educational provision. In this essay, Ben Kotzee discusses Brighouse and Swift's argument for leveling down. He holds that the argument fails in its own terms and that, in presenting the problem of educational justice as one of balancing education's positional and nonpositional benefits, Brighouse and Swift lose sight of what a consideration of the nonpositional benefits by itself can reveal. Instead of focusing on education's positional benefits, Kotzee investigates what emphasizing education's nonpositional benefits would imply for educational justice. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology, Kotzee holds that theories of educational justice would benefit from a consideration of the virtue of epistemic justice, and he outlines solutions to a number of problems in the area from this perspective.     

Formative Autonomy: Lessons from Elio Petri

John Baldacchino's discussion of the concept of autonomy in this article runs on the dual track of the arts and education. His aim is to engage with the notion of autonomy in terms of what human beings invent (through art) and know (through education) by what they share as free and intelligent beings who live convivially. Following Luigi Pareyson's argument that by form one means a living organism endowed by its own legality (and thereby its own autonomy), Baldacchino offers an analysis of Elio Petri's film La classe operaia va in Paradiso (The Working Class Goes to Heaven) as context for this discussion, which adds a third dimension to the notion of autonomy: that of the political. Here, autonomy is presented as a triangulation of sorts, where what we mean by the autonomous stands for our artistic, educational, and political dispositions (and abilities) to mediate and represent a number of immediate questions with yet-to-be-found answers.     

Group Identity,Individual Autonomy and Education for Human Rights

The United Nations Declarations of Human Rights (1948) express an ideal for the protection of cultural rights of everyone. They propose an education that is multicultural and non‐discriminatory and recognise that parents have the right to choose their children's education. Article 13.3 of the International covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights gave parents the right to choose for their children “schools other than those established by public authorities to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions”. The paper feels uneasy with this principle that grants parents the right to educate their children in conformity with their own convictions. Such rights could result in restricting the education of children to the narrow framework of parental beliefs and values that could be antithetical to social harmony, individual autonomy and equal opportunity. The question is, should such a right be extended to all parents including those who believe in racial superiority, in apartheid, Nazism or Fascism or in the inherent intellectual differences between boys and girls? The paper discusses some of these issues and asks how can the best interests of the child be served in a pluralist, multicultural, multiracial society. The paper acknowledges that in a pluralistic democratic society there will always be tensions between the public interests, the interests of the group and the interests or autonomy of the individual. These interests are discussed within the framework of fundamental human rights, common or separate schooling and multicultural education. The paper sees these as interrelated issues which are connected with group identity and equal opportunity. Where these interrelated issues conflict, the paper takes the stance that the rights and the autonomy of the individual should take precedence over the others, especially if the notion of human rights and human dignity is to be preserved in practice. This is obviously a controversial issue and the hope is that the paper will open up these issues for further discussion and debate.     

改革开放以来我国高校办学自主权的历史嬗变与制度逻辑

办学自主权既是高校有效实施内部治理的基础,也是现代大学制度建设重要内容。改革开放以来,我国高等教育实现了从三级管理体制的建立,进而到以办学章程为载体的治理体系改革的历史嬗变,高校的办学自主权明显扩大。从制度变迁的视角看,高校办学自主权的变迁体现了权力与制度的互构关系:权力秩序呈现出从集中管控到分权治理的特点,制度模式从国家本位到多元导向的发展趋势。受路径依赖和高等教育供给制度的影响,我国高校的办学自主权在变迁过程中产生了宏观鼓励与微观约束、临时性制度过多与总体性制度欠缺、外部放权和内部集权等多对矛盾关系。在当前我国"双一流"建设的背景下,进一步提升高校的办学自主权,迫切需要加大高等教育领域"放管服"改革的力度,实现从行政主导型的制度变革转向发展驱动下的高校自主性治理改革。     

The role of the ‘technical fix’ in UK lifelong education policy

The integral place of information and communications technology (ICT) in UK lifelong education has been established by a series of technology-based initiatives introduced by the New Labour government since 1997. Initiatives such as the University for Industry, learndirect, People's Network and National Grid for Learning are being implemented as part of a coherent lifelong education policy-agenda fundamentally based upon the use of ICT. Yet, beneath the political enthusiasm for technology-based education, the role of ICT in lifelong learning remains largely unexamined and unproblematized, with many policy-makers and educationalists content to view technology as providing a ‘technical fix’ for many of education's problems. From this background, the present paper provides a critical perspective on the technological foundations of the UK government's lifelong education agenda. In particular, it examines the nature and form of the policies that have been introduced and then contrasts them with the rhetorical claims that are being made by government and other official actors. In this way the paper discusses how such policies continue to be shaped within a restrictive technocratic and determinist discourse of the ‘technical fix’, thus conforming to traditional narratives of society and technology. The paper then goes on to explore how such construction juxtaposes social and economic elements of the policy-drive and threatens, ultimately, to restrict the eventual educational effectiveness of these ‘new’ lifelong learning initiatives.     

Postcolonial Interventions Within Science Education: Using postcolonial ideas to reconsider cultural diversity scholarship

In this paper, I utilise key postcolonial perspectives on multiculturalism and boundaries to reconsider some of science education's scholarship on cultural diversity in order to extend the discourses and methodologies of science education. I begin with a brief overview of postcolonialism that argues its ability to offer theoretical insights to help revise science education's philosophical frameworks in the face of the newly intercivilisational encounters of contemporaneity. I then describe the constructs of multiculturalism, and borders and ‘border thinking’ (after ) that become useful to develop postcolonial readings as an active methodology of critique able to intervene and develops more revealing interpretations of some of science education's scholarship and differentiated experiences. As the focus of these interventions, I have selected ) ‘Defining “Science” in a Multicultural World: Implications for science education’ and ) ‘Multiculturalism, Universalism and Science Education: In search of common ground’ from the ongoing discussion on multiculturalism and cultural diversity within the journal Science Education. Finally, I conclude this paper with some general comments regarding postcolonialism and the science education scholarship on cultural diversity.     

我国高等教育市场化的源头和动力--一种新制度主义分析

本文以新制度主义的视角来考察中国高等教育领域出现的市场化现象,发现了市场化的源头为招收走读自费生,并且在具体分析市场化过程当中,发现其动力来自于高校内部的一些精英的意识和努力——他们不仅很好地把握了机构自身的利益,而且为其合法化做出努力。而这一合法化过程以“扩大高校自主权”概念的提出为核心。     

Globalization and the Asia Pacific: an exploration of efficiency and equality aims of education1

The paper aims to explore the relationship between globalization and education through an investigation of educational policy development in the specific context of the Asia Pacific. The paper's primary focus is on data collected from the World Bank, OECD, IMF and UNESCO to look primarily at three interrelated trends in education: increasing enrollments at all educational levels, issues of gender equality, and changes in public expenditure. In the paper, we argue that developments in education are increasingly impacted by a particular conception of globalization, which is illustrated in the overarching pressure of efficiency on educational aims. Although both efficiency and equality aims of education are present in recent policy developments in the Asia Pacific, the importance attached to education's capabilities of advancing human capital development have brought about a fundamental tension between two purposes of education: one relating to efficiency and one underlying education's potential to advance goals of access and equality.     

Ethics ‘in’ and ‘for’ Higher Education

This paper analyses the apparent conspiracy of silence and/or culture of disinterest with regard to ethical issues in higher education. A first interpretation treats it as an almost entirely negative phenomenon – the subordination of university values to external political and market forces. The second interpretation, elaborated here, is more nuanced and less judgmental; the apparent erosion of the autonomy of the university and growing fuzziness of traditional academic values are seen as evidence not of decline‐and‐fall but of higher education's success within the expanding territory of the knowledge society.     

Iconoclastes: Poor pedagogy

This article describes the teacher lore of Torey Hayden, its emphasis on a pedagogy of caring, and its use in preservice teacher education to address affective outcomes. Eight concepts that make up caring relationships and are reflected in Hayden's wisdom of practice are discussed. Four separate studies are then described examining the outcomes of reading Hayden on preservice and inservice teachers' affective understandings and skills. In the first two studies reading Hayden was more effective than reading professional texts in promoting positive attitude changes toward children with disabilities. In the third study decreased punitiveness toward classroom behavior management was associated with the therapeutic impact of reading Hayden. In the fourth study inservice teachers, who had read Hayden in preservice coursework over a 10‐year period, rated her stories as a strong influence in preparing them to teach and in shaping their current teacher practices, attitudes, and identity. Reasons why Hayden's teacher lore had a positive influence on teachers' affective development are offered. Hayden's philosophy of attachment and loss in forming relationships is discussed.     

Decentralization of higher education and its implications for educational autonomy in Taiwan

This article primarily aims to investigate the effects of decentralization on educational autonomy in Taiwan through historical and documentary analysis. To draw an analytical framework, it begins with a brief examination of the concept of autonomy. This is followed by an examination of how decentralization has influenced the state-institution-individual relationship in Taiwan's higher education by using a three-level hierarchical model. After analyzing decentralization as empowering practices, it argues that the emergence of a performativity culture has generated an antinomy of the decentralization reforms, in which decentralization has formed a new ecology of education administration in Taiwan on the one hand, and simultaneously has brought the issue of bureaucratization in education on the other.     

Special education's zombies and their consequences

Zombies are defined as ideas or persistent myths that should have died out but have not. Special education's biggest zombie is that only full inclusion brings about true social justice and the most effective education for students with disabilities. Three examples of specific zombies about full inclusion are presented. First, that full inclusion has been internationally accepted policy since the Salamanca Statement in 1994. Second, that the feasibility of full inclusion has been demonstrated in some countries. Third, that there is extensive evidence that inclusion is more effective that special education. Six strategies that have been used to promote these inclusion zombies to the general public and legislators in various countries around the world are discussed. These are: reframing the problem; denying its reality; portraying special education as something of which most people disapprove; presenting full inclusion as something most people want; making the distinction between the two maximally stark; casting all challenges to the zombie as addressing the wrong question or relying on flawed research and demanding unthinking belief in full inclusion. It is concluded that special education's zombies related to full inclusion must be exposed, challenged and finally eradicated so that future education provision for children with disabilities can focus on achievable goals and evidence of effectiveness rather than placement.

Key points

• Special education's biggest zombie is that only full inclusion will bring true social justice to schooling because special education is essentially an inappropriate way of dealing with diversity; is a relic of the last century, unfairly discriminatory and exclusionary.
• Three inclusion zombies are: that full inclusion was recommended by the Salamanca Framework; that full inclusion has been shown to be a feasible approach to meeting all special needs; and that there is convincing research evidence that inclusion is more effective than special education. All three zombies are false but widely disseminated.
• Six strategies are used to promote full inclusion zombies: reframe the nature of the problem; deny the reality of the situation; portray special education as something generally disapproved of; present inclusion as something most people want; make a stark distinction between the two; cast all challenges to the zombie as flawed.
• Full inclusion zombies must be exposed, challenged, and eradicated, so that continued development of theory, research and practice in the education of young people with special needs can once again be the main focus of educators in this field.