Comparative education research: poststructuralist possibilities [1]

Various authors have charted the changing and intertwined emphases in comparative education over the last four decades, including modernisation and development, socially critical and neo-Marxist perspectives, and ethnography and phenomenology. Ideas from postpositivist thinking—postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism—have been particularly challenging to comparative education, because they disrupt the power structures that imbue much of comparative education and challenge the metanarratives of progress, modernity, dominance and subordination that have been the life blood of the major sets of ideas in the field. In order to examine in part the way in which comparative education is opening itself up to these challenging paradigms, we examine the shifts, developments and omissions in the use of poststructural theoretical frameworks and methodologies in comparative education in the period 1991–1999 and provide a constructive contribution to the debates about the future directions of comparative education in a rapidly internationalising and globalising world.     

Exploring the Utility and Student Perceptions of Synthetic Cadavers in an Undergraduate Human Anatomy Course

The synthetic cadaver is a high-fidelity model intended to replace or supplement other anatomy learning modalities. Academic attainment and student perceptions were examined in an undergraduate human anatomy course using a combination of plastic models and synthetic cadavers to learn lower body anatomy (“Experimental group”), compared to a Historical group who used only plastic models. Grades on an upper body test, for which both groups used only plastic models, were compared to ensure that no academic differences existed between groups (P = 0.7653). Students in the Experimental group performed better on the lower body test for which they used both plastic models and synthetic cadavers (median = 73.8% (95% CI: 72.0%-75.0%) compared to the Historical group (70.1% (95% CI: 68.3%-70.7%), P < 0.0001); however, less than half of students (49%) attributed this to the synthetic cadavers. Students' perception of laboratory resources (P < 0.0001) and learning experience (P < 0.0001) both improved with the addition of synthetic cadavers compared to using only plastic models, and 60% of students in the Experimental group agreed that the synthetic cadavers would be a key reason that they would choose that institution for undergraduate studies. This investigation showed improved student grades when plastic models and synthetic cadavers were combined, in addition to improved student perceptions of the learning experience. Results of the student questionnaires also suggested that although synthetic cadavers carry a notable up-front cost, they may be a useful recruitment tool for institutions.     

Academic Self-Concepts in Ability Streams: Considering Domain Specificity and Same-Stream Peers

The study examined the relations between academic achievement and self-concepts in a sample of 1,067 seventh-grade students from 3 core ability streams in Singapore secondary education. Although between-stream differences in achievement were large, between-stream differences in academic self-concepts were negligible. Within each stream, levels of students’ achievement and their self-concepts were systematically related only when considered in the matching academic domain and the appropriate level of specificity. In English, lower achievers in the high-ability stream tended to underestimate their achievement, whereas higher achievers in the low-ability stream tended to overestimate their achievement. This pattern, however, was not evident in mathematics and the general academic domain. Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of considering the interplay of domain specificity and same-stream peers in academic self-concepts.     

Community organizing,schools, and the right to the city

One of the central tenets of the neoliberal world view is that there is no alternative to market-based societies with their focus on competition, individualism, and the abandonment of social safety nets and environmental protections. This vision has become the new common sense. As neoliberal policies and practices have spread across the planet, communities and regions have been turned into winners and losers with seemingly little voice in the matter. Alternatives, however, are in fact being invented in places that have been most victimized by this process. Much can be learned from them. Non-formal and formal educators in Detroit, Michigan and Roxbury, Massachusetts are demonstrating how young people can become participants in efforts to resist this vision and join with their communities in inventing solutions that promise to be healthier for human beings and the natural world.