Achieving equivalence: a transnational curriculum design framework

Transnational education is now essential to university international development strategies. As a result, tertiary educators are expected to engage with the complexities of diverse cultural contexts, different delivery modes, and mixed student cohorts to design quality learning experiences for all. To support this transition we developed a transnational curriculum design framework that synthesises knowledge about what impacts on curriculum design. This framework aims to help academic developers communicate complex educational concepts and foster international communities of practice. It guides cyclical implementation that is focused on achieving equivalent and quality educational outcomes for students regardless of their location across the globe.     

Thinking through moments of sexual refusal in Looking for Alibrandi and The Rage in Placid Lake

This paper explores two scenarios in which young women refuse the sexual advances of young men in the films Looking for Alibrandi and The Rage in Placid Lake. The paper highlights the heteronormative nature of education around refusing sex, which reinstates gendered stereotypes of masculine as active and feminine as passive. Acknowledging sex education literature over the past ten years which has highlighted that ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty are often absent in the teaching of sex education, the paper examines key moments in films and the feelings they convey, suggesting that such instances offer significant potential for building young people’s affective sexual literacies. By exploring and critiquing the justifications for sex given by the young men, and by considering the Catholic Josie in Looking for Alibrandi alongside the secular Gemma in The Rage in Placid Lake, the multiplicity of reasons for young women’s decisions to abstain from sex are highlighted. Noting the absence of ethical engagements in such moments, it is suggested that thinking through them may be beneficial in enabling conversations regarding negotiation in sexual encounters.     

Semantic Innovation: Arithmetical and Algebraic Metaphors Within Narratives of Learning

This paper examines a theoretical perspective on the ways in which children progress in learning mathematics. It suggests that there is a difficulty in associating teaching discourses with the mathematics they locate. This can result in an incommensurability between alternative perspectives being offered. The paper resists attempts to privilege any particular account but rather demands an analysis of these discourses and their presuppositions. In developing these themes the paper invokes Ricoeur's analysis of time and narrative as an analytical approach to treating notions such as transition, development and progression in mathematical learning. His notion of semantic innovation is introduced. This embraces both the introduction of a new metaphor into a sentence or the creation of a new narrative which reorganises events into a new plot. The notion is utilised in arguing that the shift in the student's mathematical development from arithmetic to first order linear equations with unknowns reconfigures the contextual parameters governing the understanding of these mathematical forms. It is also utilised in showing how alternative approaches to accounting for such transitions suit different and perhaps conflicting outcomes. For example, demonstrating awareness of generality or performing well in a diagnostic test featuring the solution of linear equations.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

THE EVOLUTION AND IMPACT OF PROGRAMME EVALUATION IN A NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL

While the purpose, theory and method of evaluation of educational programmes are well‐documented, there is little published evidence on the actual evaluation of higher professional educational programmes and their outcomes. This paper outlines the background and development of programme evaluation in a new institution of higher professional education. It outlines current programme monitoring activities and their effects, and identifies the urgent and feasible tasks to be undertaken in the methodologically difficult and politically sensitive area of outcome evaluation.     

Chinese economic development, rule of law, and the internet

The Internet and its World Wide Web (Web) have an important role to play in the economic development of China. The government of the People's Republic of China has declared its intention to open opportunities for foreign trade and investment in China. Part of the commitment is a commitment to rule of law. Rule of law acceptable to commercial interests requires transparency and decisional rationality. These two features can be realized most quickly by connecting legal institutions through the Internet's Web to bodies of international commercial law, thus creating a virtual library for Chinese legal decision makers, and using the Web as a quick and cheap electronic “printing press” for Chinese legal decision makers. As a result, their statutes, rules, and decisional law become available to commercial interests. But technology is not enough. Innovative cross-cultural exchange programs aimed at the legal, managerial, and Web-master professions will round out this rule of law support for commercial globalization.     

Pathways of China's PM2.5 air quality 2015–2060 in the context of carbon neutrality

Clean air policies in China have substantially reduced particulate matter (PM_2.5) air pollution in recent years, primarily by curbing end-of-pipe emissions. However, reaching the level of the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines may instead depend upon the air quality co-benefits of ambitious climate action. Here, we assess pathways of Chinese PM_2.5 air quality from 2015 to 2060 under a combination of scenarios that link global and Chinese climate mitigation pathways (i.e. global 2°C- and 1.5°C-pathways, National Determined Contributions (NDC) pledges and carbon neutrality goals) to local clean air policies. We find that China can achieve both its near-term climate goals (peak emissions) and PM_2.5 air quality annual standard (35 μg/m³) by 2030 by fulfilling its NDC pledges and continuing air pollution control policies. However, the benefits of end-of-pipe control reductions are mostly exhausted by 2030, and reducing PM_2.5 exposure of the majority of the Chinese population to below 10 μg/m³ by 2060 will likely require more ambitious climate mitigation efforts such as China''s carbon neutrality goals and global 1.5°C-pathways. Our results thus highlight that China''s carbon neutrality goals will play a critical role in reducing air pollution exposure to the level of the WHO guidelines and protecting public health.     

Knowledge,skills, competence: European divergences in vocational education and training (VET)—the English,German and Dutch cases

Policy debates on employability, lifelong learning and competence‐based approaches suggest a convergence of VET approaches across European countries. Against the background of the creation of a European Qualifications Framework, this paper compares the VET systems of England, Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis reveals the distinct understandings and meanings of outwardly similar terms. These meanings are deeply rooted in the countries’ institutional structures and labour processes and still inform national debates and policies today. The paper identifies a major distinction between a ‘knowledge‐based’ VET model in Germany and The Netherlands and a ‘skills‐based’ model in England. There is a need to develop trans‐national categories that take into account the social construction of terms such as ‘skills’ and ‘qualifications’.