The Democratic Imperative to Address Sexual Equality Rights in Schools

Issues of sexual orientation elicit ethical debates in schools and society. In jurisdictions where a legal right has not yet been established, one argument commonly rests on whether schools ought to address issues of same‐sex relationships and marriage on the basis of civil equality, or whether such controversial issues ought to remain in the private sphere. Drawing upon an antiperfectionist liberal framework, Dianne Gereluk argues that schools have an obligation to educate students in two important ways. First, students must develop an awareness and understanding of the range of acceptable and permissible ways of life that may lead to human flourishing. Second, students must understand the requisite protections and recognition afforded to individuals in a pluralist society.     

Stop the E-train! A plea for the thoughtful use of language in computer-conferenced contexts

In this paper, I take the position that the recently increased ‘e-talk’ permeating our language potentially compromises our field's professionalism by ‘one-minutizing’ learning that uses computer-mediated technologies. In so doing, I discuss historical aspects of adult education, the importance of language as a naming function, the evolution of the romance of cyberspace, and the need for adult and distance educators to maintain a clear sense of their practice as distinct from the amorphous clamouring of the burgeoning e-world.     

Vocational education and training for development: A policy in need of a theory?

The current decade has seen a significant return of interest in vocational education and training (VET) amongst the international policy community. This rise in policy and programmatic interest in VET's role in development, however, stands in contrast to the state of the academic debate. Whilst there have continued to be both policy and academic developments in VET in OECD countries; in the South there has been a paucity of VET research and little in the way of theoretical exploration. Rather, the academic orthodoxy in the international education and development field is dismissive of VET's possible contribution. Given the return of the policy interest in VET for development, and the possibilities of a broader vision of education–development relations beyond 2015, when the MDGs end, it is time to revisit the role of VET in development from an explicitly theoretical stance. In this article, I argue that the current approach to VET is grounded in an outmoded model of development, whilst the academic critique of VET in developing countries is clearly long outdated. In contrast, I examine the implications for VET of recent trends in thinking about development through the exploration of three particular theoretical approaches: human rights, capabilities and integrated human development. I conclude by considering the purposes, natures and possibilities of VET as a means of human development.     

Knowing and doing vocational education and training reform: Evidence,learning and the policy process

Much of VET policy internationally draws on a toolkit that has been seriously questioned for its logic, international relevance and effectiveness by considerable amounts of academic research. Reflecting primarily on our experiences of leading a complex, multi-country policy study, we develop an account that seeks to explore ways in which the apparent incommensurability between academic and policy knowledge can be addressed. This leads on to a broader discussion of key issues of contestation in the debates about knowledge for policy as they relate to international education and development more generally. We consider three key turns in the discourse of international education policy and research: to “governing by numbers”, “what works” and policy learning, and ask what happens when these discursive trends travel to Southern and VET contexts. We suggest that this analysis implies that policymakers need both to be more modest and reflexive in their expectations of what knowledge can be mobilised for policy purposes and more serious in their commitment to supporting the generation of the types of knowledge that they claim to value. For international and comparative educators, we stress the importance of being clearer in seeking to shape research agendas; more rigorous in our approaches to research; and better in our external communication of our findings. Given the particular focus of this special issue on VET, we end by reiterating the particular challenge of reawakening research on VET-for-development from twenty years of slumber.     

A success/failure paradox: reflection on a university-community engagement in Australia

There has been an increasing interest within the academic literature on the role played by Higher Education Institutions in the social and economic development of their communities. The Australia Government has recently released its National Science and Innovation Agenda (NISA) which is designed to incentivise university-community research partnerships. In this article, the identified lack of Australian university-community engagement will be problematised through the experience of academics who undertook such an engagement in a regional university setting. A completed research project is used as a lens through which institutional factors impacting on collaborative projects between universities and their communities are identified. The difficulties of university-community engagement are unpacked and problematised so that the various forces contributing to the shortage of university-community partnerships can be better identified and understood. The unitary manner in which university-community research is to be reported under NISA is highlighted as a key barrier to regional research partnerships.     

Relationships between hard/soft,pure/applied,and life/nonlife disciplines and subject book use in a university library

In a university library, variability in circulation of books by subject area is partly but directly dependent on the academic program—e.g. if the anthropology department enrolls more students than the physics department, then more anthropology books should circulate. However, if the number of students enrolled in each subject is the same, the number of books circulated in one subject may still be larger than in the other. Therefore, other sources accounting for variability must be sought. One possible source is in the nature of the subjects themselves. For example, subjects (as represented by academic disciplines or departments) are often called hard or soft, pure or applied, life or nonlife. The purpose of this paper was to determine the relationship between these characteristics and the number of books charged out of an academic library by students. Three major hypotheses were formulated:(1) the softer a subject, the more books charged on that subject; the harder the subject, the fewer the books charged;(2) the purer the subject, the more books charged; the more applied the subject, the fewer the books charged;(3) The more a subject can be characterized as life oriented, the greater the difference in number of books charged between that subject and those characterized as nonlife oriented. A scale value for each characteristic in each of 60 academic subjects was determined by a survey of faculty of the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Correlation and multiple regression were employed to assess the proportion of circulation variance accounted for by each of the three characteristics. Other variables—masters, upper and lower level enrollments, credit hours being taught, number of books already in the library, and level of degree offered—were tested as controls. Hypothesis (1) was weakly supported under the condition that shelflist and masters enrollments were held constant (3% of variance). Support was somewhat firmer (10% variance) when the dependent variable was defined as proportion of shelflist circulated. Hard/soft was also significant (15% of variance) when pure/applied was held constant, but shelflist and enrollments were not. Hypothesis (2) was modestly supported under the condition that other variables were not held constant. Otherwise pure/applied was not significant. Together, pure/applied and hard/soft, in that order, and when no other variables were controlled accounted for 26% of the variance. Hypothesis (3) was not supported under any of the conditions tested. Results have implications in sociological understanding of the relationship between disciplines and library use, in formulating a rationale for library collection building, and in administrative, budget allocations to subjects.