Human Rights Education and Training for Professionals

Although human rights education (HRE) has a long history, it has only recently begun to realize its transformative potential. A critical catalyst in this process is the emerging global ethos of accountability. Within this context, HRE can play a crucial role in the construction of a universal culture of human rights, inspired by a shared commitment to a humane order and a belief that human beings have both the capacity and the responsibility to make a difference. In such an effort, the training of professionals is vital, especially of those professionals who can influence public debate on accountability and governance. Innovative HRE initiatives, characterized by a commitment to experiential learning and to international and regional cooperation among state and non-state actors, constitute a step in the right direction.     

The Role of Department Head in Australian Universities: Tasks and Stresses

This study of the academic department head in Australian universities continues the discussion explored in the article entitled, “The Role of Department Head in Australian Universities: Changes and Challenges” published in the April edition of HERD, 16(1), 1997. The current article examines the role in terms of the departmental‐specific stress factors of administrative relationships, role ambiguity, administrative tasks, academic roles, and perceived expectations. Four discrete roles of the department head are also examined, namely: leader; manager; scholar; and academic staff developer. Findings indicate a job where the major chair stressors include administrative demands, as well as balancing the needs of scholarship with the everyday responsibilities of chairing a university department. An examination of the tasks chairs perform indicates that the leadership and academic staff development roles take precedence, followed by scholarship and management imperatives. Implications of the findings for the present and future role of the academic department chair are discussed.     

Collaborative design decision-making as social process

ABSTRACT

Collaborative design is recognised as being shaped by complex social, cognitive, material, and technical processes. In the case of design decision-making, however, the social dimension has yet to be fully understood as the product of the whole team dynamic rather than as simply the sum of the individual (cognitive) contributions. This paper examines the interactional work teams of first-time design students do that produces decisions in undergraduate engineering design projects. Close analysis of decision-making episodes, recorded in design meetings in a yearlong ethnographic study, reveals the joint social and situated work teams do to produce decisions. Students were found to do decision-making via three overlapping phases that were invariant across the database: (i) Design options emerge, (ii) teams orient to design options, and (iii) design decisions come off. This paper exemplifies these phases of decision-making as inherently – and not just incidentally – social, and illustrates how decisions are produced in novice design teams via these phases in multifarious ways. We argue for an explicit retrospective focus on the processes and consequences of team decisions following projects as an avenue for fostering the development of design judgment that engineering graduates will take into their professional practice.     

School climate: perceptual differences between students,parents, and school staff

Research suggests that school climate can have a great impact on student, teacher, and school outcomes. However, it is often assessed as a summary measure, without taking into account multiple perspectives (student, teacher, parent) or examining subdimensions within the broader construct. In this study, we assessed school climate from the perspective of students, staff, and parents within a large, urban school district using multilevel modeling techniques to examine within- and between-school variance. After adjusting for school-level demographic characteristics, students reported worse perceptions of safety and connectedness compared to both parent and staff ratings (all p < 0.05). Parents gave the lowest ratings of parental involvement, and staff gave the lowest ratings of academic emphasis (ps < 0.05). Findings demonstrate the importance of considering the type of informant when evaluating climate ratings within a school. Understanding how perceptions differ between informants can inform interventions to improve perceptions and prevent adverse outcomes.     

The influence of model infant—toddler group care on parent-child interaction at home

The effects of day care participation on parent-child interaction at home were assessed using a university-based, half-day model infant—toddler program. Hypotheses concerned whether “child-centered” features of the physical and social environment were carried over by parents to the home. Nineteen matched pairs of center and noncenter children (ages 2 to 24 months at start) were followed for 8 months. All had employed student mothers. Methods included brief parent-reported “spot” observations, a videotaped observation of a bathing or feeding routine, and home environment assessments. Parents showed few group differences during the first half of the study period. At study end, however, center homes were more child-centered with respect to play, safety, and dinner arrangements. Center parents scored higher in proximity and warmth and lower in “teacher-avoided” behaviors. Noncenter parents at study end scored higher in authority (limit setting) and communicating values and labels. The findings are interpreted as supporting an ecological model of substantial intersection and cross-influence between home and day care settings.     

Pupils,Recipe Knowledge,Curriculum and the Cultural Production of Class,Ethnicity and Patriarchy: a critique of one teacher's practices

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to further elaborate processes of teacher socialisation and to explore their implications for a critical theory of schooling. Employing a radical humanist paradigm (Burrell & Morgan, 1981), and in delimited fashion, it attempts to elucidate multi‐dimensional processes of chalkfacial negotiation— in a school where the pupils’ ‘parent culture’ is Jewish, bourgeoise and patriarchal; and the teacher is a non‐Jewish, home economist. As such, the paper is a study of a non‐'unidirectional’ intercultural classroom where the ‘parent society’ is not officially fenced out of the school’ unlike, for example, the Cherokee (Dumont & Wax, 1969) or the working class. As a critical case, despite and because of its anthropological strangeness, it hopefully metaphorically illumines processes that all teachers, especially ‘cleanworkers’, experience.     

Alternatives to the entrepreneurial university: New modes of knowledge production in community service programs

Globalisation has significantly altered patterns of research and development, and production. In turn, this has generated new organisational forms and practices in higher education knowledge production. As a result, a strong trend towards the 'entrepreneurial' university has emerged, characterised by increasing market-like behaviour and governance. Within the dominant neo-liberal global consensus, this primarily serves the market and the private good. However, this is a growing counter concern for higher education's contribution to equity, community development and the public good. Drawing from various case studies, focusing on South Africa, this paper identifies the higher education-community partnership model as a complementary alternative to the entrepreneurial university. It is shown that knowledge production in these partnerships closely resembles so-called mode 2, applications-driven knowledge production. Potentially, however, the partnership model integrates and mutually enhances experiential learning, relevant research and community development.