Coping by Copying? Higher education institutions’ student recruitment strategies

Growing national and international competition for students puts pressure on higher education institutions (HEIs) to develop marketing and student recruitment strategies; these are also driven by financial stress caused by performance-based funding mechanisms. In this paper we explore Norwegian HEIs’ student recruitment strategies. What type of student recruitment strategies do HEIs develop? How are the strategies linked to the institutions’ student market position? We combine qualitative research strategies including in-depth interviews and document analysis with quantitative analyses of the student market positions of different types of institutions in Norway.

     

Rethinking agency as an assemblage from change management to collaborative work

The movement towards inclusion comes together with a neoliberal audit mentality whereby individuals are held responsible for the transformations. The Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) are seen as ‘change agents’ whose task it is, to support teachers in adapting their approach to optimise the chances for children with special needs in regular schools. In this paper, we want to problematise the ‘responsibility-blame discourse’ and look differently at agency. By using a diffractive methodology based on collaborative work, in which we have used material images of the workplace of the SENCO, and read-the-data-while-thinking-with-theory, we deconstruct the individualisation of agency. The SENCOs are no longer seen as separate individual humanist subjects where agency is solely lodged in the body of an individual agent [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press] but the SENCOs are part of the intra-active entanglement of multiple agencies, of an assemblage. This re-conceptualisation of agency leads to a different approach to inclusion, in which the participants in any encounter can work as part of the assemblage to develop communities capable of re-thinking practice and transforming it into a place where children with special needs become legitimate members of the school.     

School psychology—why is the profession dying?

The state of the profession is addressed as it relates to training, practice, certification, and its professional identity. It is suggested that death of the profession is imminent unless the profession is upgraded and a new image and role are surfaced. One of the problems is that since the passing of current judicial and legislative acts PL 93-380 and 94-142, the traditional role of psychologists is no longer tenable, and new ways of behaving are required which have implications for training and practice. Survival through rebirth can occur, and new directions are suggested for the profession to consider in reassessing its new and changing role.     

10 Jahre Arbeitsausschuss Gutes Spielzeug

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Educational career and substance use in adolescence

In modern, competitive societies the social organisation of «youth» implies both the chance and risk of (intergenerational) vertical social mobility. It is suggested that it is precisely this basic feature that to a considerable extent gives rise to substance use. In particular the paper aims at analysing the impact of the risk of educational downward mobility as well as some related characteristics. Using LISREL VI, it is shown that this type of educational career pattern, actual or anticipated, substantially contributes to the consumption of legal drugs. Weight is given to an extended analysis of the mode of action involved in the relationship between substance use and the career pattern as well as associated characteristics, respectively. As far as home is concerned, social conflict and associated feelings on the side of the adolescents turn out to be a major ‘mechanism’ through which the observable impact of educational downward mobility can be traced back. Integration into both the cultural system of «legalized» drug use and subcultural contexts as provided by social cliques is a further condition that strongly influences substance use among adolescents.     

‘We did see the lapwing’ – practising environmental citizenship in upper-secondary science education

This article explores factors that promote the practice of environmental citizenship in science education and aims to contribute to the development of the concept of practising environmental citizenship. We follow six Norwegian secondary students (aged 16–17) participating in a small-scale intervention study conducting an assignment on a socioscientific issue (SSI) in their local district. Our findings reveal that dealing with an SSI in real-world settings through out-of-school activities set in the students’ local district is important for practising environmental citizenship. This article also addresses the tensions between the practice of environmental citizenship and the cultural issues related to school science. Our findings reveal that tensions exist between working with ready-made-science, as students normally do, to deal with science-in-the-making through an SSI. This research discuss the practical implications of the concept of practising environmental citizenship in science.