Academic careers and the valuation of academics. A discursive perspective on status categories and academic salaries in France as compared to the U.S., Germany and Great Britain

This article explores the changing dynamics between gender, cultural capital and the state in the context of higher education expansion in contemporary China. With a particular focus on the one-child generation and women’s opportunities and aspirations, I draw upon empirical evidence from a first-hand survey study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with female undergraduates from one-child families in 2007. The findings from the survey study suggest that singleton status might mediate the impact of socioeconomic status and cultural capital on students’ academic performance and elite opportunities. The qualitative interview data provide further evidence on how singleton women’s aspirations are related to their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. The most significant finding is concerned with singleton girls’ strategy of applying for Chinese Communist Party membership as a way to minimize their social and gender disadvantages. I argue that there emerges a bottom-up approach of women empowerment through qualifications and political selection during China’s transition. Political selection is dressed up in seemingly meritocratic selection, thus becoming more appealing to female undergraduates who, in turn, take advantage of party membership to add a silver lining of political loyalty to higher education qualifications.     

“I want to speak like the other people”: Second language learning as a virtuous spiral for migrant women?

This article contributes to scholarship on migrant women’s second language (L2) education in North America and Europe. Questioning reductionist understandings of the relationship between female migrants, their receiving communities and L2 education, the authors consider existing literature as well as their own qualitative work to investigate the challenges, opportunities and agency of migrant women. Weaving together and thematically presenting previous scholarship and qualitative data from interviews, participant observations and classroom recordings from a mixed-gender L2 adult migrant classroom in Austria and an all-women L2 migrant classroom in the United States, they trouble conceptualisations which position women primarily as passive recipients of education and in need of emancipation, while simultaneously elevating communities as agentic providers of these. Specifically, the authors emphasise that (1) L2 proficiency is not a guarantee for migrant women’s social inclusion or socioeconomic advancement; (2) migrant women’s complex challenges and agency need to be recognised and addressed; and (3) all involved in L2 education of migrant women do well to become learners of their own experiences of oppression, including their complicity in it.     

How transformational learning promotes caring,consultation and creativity,and ultimately contributes to sustainable development: Lessons from the Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL) network

Oases of learning which are transformative and lead to significant behavioural change can be found around the globe. Transformational learning has helped learners not only to understand what they have been taught but also to re-conceptualise and re-apply this understanding to their daily lives. Unfortunately, as many global reports indicate, inspirational transformational learning approaches for sustainable development are rare and have yet to become the norm – despite calls for such approaches by several outstanding educators and organisations. This article examines three learning approaches developed by the network of the Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL). These approaches are structured around core elements of transformative learning for sustainable development, yet focus particularly on the ability to care, consult with others and be creative. They seem to depend on the learners’ ability to articulate their perceptions of sustainable development in relation to their own values and to identify how these are actualised in their daily life. Together with other core elements of transformative learning, an almost magical (not precisely measurable) synergy then emerges. The intensity of this synergy appears to be directly related to the individual learner’s understanding of the contradictions, interlinkages and interdependencies of modern society. The impact of this synergy seems to be concurrent with the extent to which the learner engages in a continual learning process with those with whom he/she has contact. The findings of this study suggest that mainstreaming transformational learning for sustainable development in ways that release the “magic synergy of creative caring” can result in the emergence of individuals who are willing and able to move from “business as usual” towards more socially just, economically equitable, and environmentally sensitive behaviour.     

Efficient Social Justice: How Critical Race Theory Research can Inform Social Movement Strategy Development

Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars in Education, like activists, are intent on dismantling racism in education (and society at large), and often do so by engaging the problem of racial injustice through social science research. CRT research creates a wealth of awareness about how racism functions, and as a result, inspires social agency to create a more just society. This conceptual piece explores how CRT research, when joined with the efforts of activists, is even more potent with capacity to realize social justice. In the paper, the tenets of CRT in Education are outlined, and serve as the foundation of a model that reveal how each tenet can shape research designs, that inform decision making in social movement strategy development. The model is inspired by the author’s personal experiences with combining CRT research with social movement strategy development, and is intended to serve as an impetus for increased dialogue about how CRT social science research, particularly in Education, can support activists’ goals to dismantle racism.     

The Tensions Between Shared Governance and Advancing Educational Equity

This article examines the relationship between shared governance and one school district’s (in)ability to advance educational equity. Specifically, we consider the district’s policies, discourse, and practice around equity within the context of site-based management and shared decision making. We suggest that if equity is indeed a major district responsibility, then it seems inconsistent to leave equity at the mercy of shared governance and occasional externally-imposed mandates because most individual school leaders and educators are not currently taking up this agenda or implementing changes that would result in equitable education. Thus, our work suggests that progress toward educational equity may best be achieved through top-down, directive leadership in districts.     

Walanbaa warramildanha: The impact of authentic Aboriginal community and school engagement on teachers’ professional knowledge

The conundrum of Indigenous education in Australia is that there are multiple, highly contested and polarising narratives that vie to inform both public and policy debate about how to construct effective schooling of Aboriginal students. Two of these contested discourses, which are seen to drive much of this debate, highlight the complexity of concerns—one which is essentially aspirational in its intent but unperceptive to the realities of Aboriginal student achievement and a second data focused discourse that is managerial and evaluative in its focus to disclose policy and pedagogic failures on student outcomes. The first has posed the politically more palatable proposition that there has been a slow, sometimes faltering but inexorable improvement in Aboriginal education, while the second highlights a mounting body of qualitative data that document an overall failure by school systems to lift Aboriginal student education achievement. The author recognises the complex and historical nature of the multilayered ‘issues’ that sit at the heart of Aboriginal underachievement. He argues that one of those underpinning issues that has plagued Aboriginal education centres on the depth of the socio-cultural disconnect between Aboriginal students and their communities, and teachers. He also argues that, too often, teachers are appointed to schools with limited social, political and professional knowledge about the particular needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students such that it impacts on their capacity to establish authentic connections to students. The research on which this article is based sets out to provide an understanding of both the nature and dynamics of community and school engagement in sites with high proportions of Aboriginal students. The study aimed to investigate teachers’ capacity to develop authentic pedagogic practices that are responsive to the educational, cultural and aspirational needs of Aboriginal students. In particular, the research highlights how the relational dynamics between schools and Aboriginal people have been deeply affected by colonial histories of exclusion and systemic disadvantage, pervasive school discourses of marginalisation and in particular an ignorance about holistic needs of Aboriginal students at school and the resultant negative relational interactions between schools and Aboriginal families. This multisite ethnographic study was undertaken with Aboriginal community members, teachers and school principals in 2012 as doctoral research. It was conducted within a relational landscape characterised by an enduring socio-cultural dissonance between schools and their Aboriginal communities. The study focused on examples of authentic collaboration and purposeful interactions between Aboriginal communities and schools that were shown to support teachers in building deeper understanding that enhanced their cognisance of the wider needs of Aboriginal students. The findings in this article highlight that when authentic engagement between Aboriginal people and schools occurred, it appeared to positively impact the teachers’ professional knowledge and created a consequent interest within these communities to engage with their schools. The research further identified that in each site the Aboriginal participants articulated an interest in developing authentic school collaborations that would enhance student outcomes. These findings suggested that teachers need to honour, understand and actively reflect on community history, contexts and aspirations to develop the skills and knowledge to address the particular socio-cultural and educational needs of Aboriginal students.     

A Criterion-Referenced Approach to Student Ratings of Instruction

We developed a criterion-referenced student rating of instruction (SRI) to facilitate formative assessment of teaching. It involves four dimensions of teaching quality that are grounded in current instructional design principles: Organization and structure, Assessment and feedback, Personal interactions, and Academic rigor. Using item response theory and Wright mapping methods, we describe teaching characteristics at various points along the latent continuum for each scale. These maps enable criterion-referenced score interpretation by making an explicit connection between test performance and the theoretical framework. We explain the way our Wright maps can be used to enhance an instructor’s ability to interpret scores and identify ways to refine teaching. Although our work is aimed at improving score interpretation, a criterion-referenced test is not immune to factors that may bias test scores. The literature on SRIs is filled with research on factors unrelated to teaching that may bias scores. Therefore, we also used multilevel models to evaluate the extent to which student and course characteristic may affect scores and compromise score interpretation. Results indicated that student anger and the interaction between student gender and instructor gender are significant effects that account for a small amount of variance in SRI scores. All things considered, our criterion-referenced approach to SRIs is a viable way to describe teaching quality and help instructors refine pedagogy and facilitate course development.     

Choice of Academic Major at a Public Research University: The Role of Gender and Self-Efficacy

Females are underrepresented in certain disciplines, which translates into their having less promising career outlooks and lower earnings. This study examines the effects of socio-economic status, academic performance, high school curriculum and involvement in extra-curricular activities, as well as self-efficacy for academic achievement on choices of academic disciplines by males and females. Disciplines are classified based on Holland’s theory of personality-based career development. Different models for categorical outcome variables are compared including: multinomial logit, nested logit, and mixed logit. Based on the findings presented here, first generation status leads to a greater likelihood of choosing engineering careers for males but not for females. Financial difficulties have a greater effect on selecting scientific fields than engineering fields by females. The opposite is true for males. Passing grades in calculus, quantitative test scores, and years of mathematics in high school as well as self-ratings of abilities to analyze quantitative problems and to use computing are positively associated with choice of engineering fields.