Changing South African schools?: an analysis and critique of post‐election government policy

This article provides an exposition, analysis and critique of post‐election policy concerning state schooling in South Africa. In particular the article focuses on the White Paper on the Organisation, Governance and Funding of Schools. Policy is analysed at three levels, namely the economic, ideological/discursive and the political. At the economic level it is argued that although the White Paper makes provision for redress of past inequalities, limitations in government expenditure are limiting the possibilities for reform. It will also be argued that the White Paper must be seen as the outcome of contestation between different discourses concerned with race, culture and education. Finally the White Paper has been shaped by the interim constitution as well as by political struggles within the state and civil society.     

Optimizing the Power of Choice: Supporting Student Autonomy to Foster Motivation and Engagement in Learning

Choice plays a critical role in promoting students' intrinsic motivation and deep engagement in learning. Across a range of academic outcomes and student populations, positive impacts have been seen when student autonomy is promoted through meaningful and personally relevant choice. This article presents a theoretical perspective on the motivational role of choice in learning, based on self‐determination theory. Theoretical principles and current research on student motivation and engagement are described. Conditions under which choice promotes students' intrinsic motivation are then presented.     

‘I’m not here to learn how to mark someone else’s stuff’: an investigation of an online peer-to-peer review workshop tool

In this article, we explore the intersecting concepts of fairness, trust and temporality in relation to the implementation of an online peer-to-peer review Moodle Workshop tool at a Sydney metropolitan university. Drawing on qualitative interviews with unit convenors and online surveys of students using the Workshop tool, we seek to highlight a complex array of attitudes, both varied and contested, towards online peer assessment. In particular, we seek to untangle convenors’ positive appraisal of the Workshop tool as a method of encouraging ‘meta-cognitive’ skills, and student perceptions relating to the redistribution of staff marking workload vis-à-vis the peer review tool as ‘unfair’, ‘time-consuming’ and ‘unprofessional’. While the Workshop tool represents an innovative approach to the development of students’ meta-cognitive attributes, the competitive atmosphere that circulates, and is quietly encouraged, within the tertiary education sector limits the true collaborative pedagogical potential and capacities approach built into peer-to-peer review initiatives like the Workshop tool.     

Public Emotions and their Personal Consequences: The Nationalizing Affects of the Australian Football League since 1990

This article examines the historical and emotional consequences of the Victorian Football League's decision to ‘go national’. Many saw the emergence of the Australian Football League (AFL) as a threat to the authentic attachments of supporters. As many localized social practices were ‘rationalized’, however, engagement with the League increased across Australia. This article suggests that this success can be explained, in part, by the ways in which public representations of the AFL provided new points of identification for supporters. Drawing on recent work by critical theorists of emotion, I suggest that the already passionate culture of Australian rules supporting has been reworked by the animation of nationalistic attachments and the increasingly intimate representation of players in Australian public life. Ironically, though, these new modes of representation have opened the AFL out to heated debates about the emotions of the players themselves. The contested emergence of the crying AFL player in Australian public life since 2000 is both a product of these shifts and an example of the unruliness of identification and idealization. Attachments to players in the language of national identity, I suggest, are psychically volatile because they are connected to how supporters understand their own identities, lives, and losses.     

Information Technology in Dutch Education

Abstract

This edited version of a longer paper by Leon Henkens supplements the article ‘Teacher Training in the Netherlands’ also published in this issue of EMI. The author looks in particular at the second cluster of measures to be implemented under the Dutch Government's ‘Informatics Stimulation Plan’ (INSP) which identify the target groups for training in IT. Attention is focused on children currently at school and unemployed school leavers. The account given reflects some of the initiatives jointly undertaken by the governmental authorities and the private sector in the execution of the objectives of the INSP.