Journey to the future

The Library view on development and initiatives in the electronic publishing environment: a paper presented at the STM Innovations Seminar, London, December 1996     

Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices

Abstract

The separating and isolating tendencies of measuring practices can lead educators to lose sight of the aims and purposes of education. These end purposes can be used to guide and ensure that the activities of educators are educational, and therefore, Biesta recommends there is a need for educators to reconnect with them. This article. explores this notion of a ‘reconnection’ and argues that if educators are to challenge any potentially miseducative measuring practices, then this reconnection must require educators to value and desire particular end purposes. Desires are recognised to be existential in character and are identified as being necessary for initiating actions. It is argued here that this aspect of desires is important for understanding the significance of a ‘reconnection’ because without it the purposes of education may remain only as abstract philosophical ideals. To make a difference and to challenge the isolating and miseducative tendencies of some measuring practices, educators must come to value particular purposes of education, and in addition, they must exercise the courage to enact them. This can be made possible because educators strongly care for and desire the actualisation of the purposes to which they are connected.     

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.     

ACADEMIC LEADERSHIPS VIEWS OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY AND BLACK STUDENTS: THE CASE OF HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

The purpose of this study was to understand academic leadership's views of the field of school psychology. This is the first study that has attempted to incorporate the views of historically Black college and university (HBCU) Psychology Department Chairs' regarding the field of school psychology and the potential development of school psychology programs at HBCUs. The results indicated that Department Chairs at HBCUs are not recommending the field of school psychology to their students based on a variety of reasons related to their views of the field (e.g., lack of focus on Black research issues). Despite the shortage of school psychologists and ample career opportunities, Department chairs in our sample do not recommend the field of school psychology as a first option graduate school choice. Implications are discussed in terms of increasing the number of African Americans in the field of school psychology.