Networks in Education: An Analysis of Selected Discourses

‘Network’ is a fashionable and current term in every field of contemporary society and education is no exception. In this paper, the concept of network (and other associated concepts, such as partnership and collaboration) is reviewed. Such revision regards selected theoretical contributions and is explored in terms of the use of the concepts in legal documents and in the discourses of aldermen and educational officers from Portuguese municipalities, offering a critical and multi-layered perspective. The analysis reveals the various layers of the network concept, often appearing vague and diffuse. It is a floating signifier disputed by different discourses and embodied by different meanings. This, in turn, brings major research problems linked to the use of the concept of network in education.     

Double gamers: academics between fields

The field of academia is frequently associated with traditional norms that aim to regulate scholarly activity, especially research. The social web, as another field, is often viewed as challenging long-established conventions with novel knowledge production practices. Hence, the two fields seem to oppose rather than complement each other. Using a Bourdieuian lens, this research examines research participants’ accounts of their approaches to practice on the social web in relation to academia. The paper reports on the habitus dissonance between the two fields, before discussing the effects of the two fields’ competing doxas on individuals’ habitus.     

Capturing habitus: theory,method and reflexivity

Bourdieu’s career long endeavour was to devise both theoretical and methodological tools that could apprehend and explain the social world and its mechanisms of cultural (re)production and related forms of domination. Amongst the several key concepts developed by Bourdieu, habitus has gained prominence as both a research lens and a research instrument useful to enter individuals’ trajectories and ‘histories’ of practices. While much attention has been paid to the theoretical significance of habitus, less emphasis has been placed on its methodological implications. This paper explores the application of the concept of habitus as both theory and method across two sub-fields of educational research: graduate employment and digital scholarship practices. The findings of this reflexive testing of habitus suggest that bridging the theory-method comes with its own set of challenges for the researcher; challenges which reveal the importance of taking the work of application seriously in research settings.     

Skilled Students and Effective Schools: Reading Achievement in Denmark,Sweden, and France

This study investigates how reading achievement relates to student and school characteristics in countries with different reading scores at the fourth grade level. Data comes from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 for Denmark, Sweden, and France and the multilevel analysis includes two levels: student/home and schools. The school effectiveness and the home literacy models informed the selection of the independent variables. Results show that students’ early literacy skills, home literacy practices and resources, and reading behavior are associated with reading scores in all countries. Furthermore, across different countries there are student/home universals and school particulars that explain variation in reading achievement. Educational policies should address home and school literacy skills and practices, school climate, and school composition to improve students’ reading ability.     

An ideology critique of global citizenship education

ABSTRACT

In the last two decades, global citizenship education (GCE) has become a catchphrase used by international and national educational agencies, as well as researchers, to delineate the increasing internationalisation of education, framed as an answer to the growing globalisation and the high values of citizenship. These developments, however, have created issues, due to the presence of two conflicting discourses. While the discourse of critical democracy highlights the importance of ethical values, social responsibility and active citizenry, a neoliberal discourse privileges instead a market-rationale, focused on self-investment and enhanced profits. These two discourses are not separated; they rather appear side by side, causing a confusing effect. This article aims to analyse GCE as an ideology, unveiling not only its hidden (discursive) content but also the role played by non-discursive elements in guaranteeing the coexistence of antagonistic discourses. It will be argued that not only the critical democratic discourse does not offer any resistance or threat to the neoliberal structuring of higher education, but also this discourse can function as an apologetic narrative that exculpates all of us who still want to work in universities, notwithstanding our dissatisfaction with their current commodification.     

Briging it all back home: some implications of recent science and technology studies for the classroom science teacher

In this paper, we support the validity of drawing from science studies to reshape science education. While true educational reform must involve alternative curricular structures, we stress that we do not propose here either a comprehensive curricular framework or a report on a pilot classroom project, as our research perspective comes from science studies rather than from education. Instead this paper is intended to encourage educators to draw from methodologies used in science studies to further their goals in education research and in classroom teaching. First, we examine theoretical connections and divergences between science studies and theories of education. Secondly, we discuss the benefits of teaching science as a social process and offer some suggestions that can be introduced by classroom teachers into pre-existing science curricula.