Social justice,capabilities and the quality of education in low income countries

The paper sets out a theoretical approach for understanding the quality of education in low income countries from a social justice perspective. The paper outlines and critiques the two dominant approaches that currently frame the debate about education quality, namely, the human capital and human rights approaches. Drawing principally on the ideas of Nancy Fraser and Amyarta Sen the paper then sets out an alternative approach based on a theory of social justice and of capabilities. The paper develops an overall understanding of how education quality can be understood in relation to the extent to which it fosters key capabilities that individuals, communities and society in general have reason to value. It then analyses three inter-related dimensions of the quality of education from a social justice perspective. Each dimension is considered in relation to contemporary policy debates and research including the work of EdQual. The first dimension, that of inclusion draws attention to the access of different groups of learners to quality inputs that facilitate the development of their capabilities, the cultural and institutional barriers that impact on the learning of different groups and priorities for overcoming these. The second dimension, that of relevance, is concerned with the extent to which the outcomes of education are meaningful for all learners, valued by their communities and consistent with national development priorities in a changing global context, whilst the third dimension, that of democracy considers how decisions about education quality are governed and the nature of participation in debates at the local, national and global levels. It is argued that a social justice framework can provide an alternative rationale for a policy emphasis on quality that encompasses but goes beyond that provided by human capital and rights approaches; that through emphasising the importance of context and through providing a normative basis for thinking about quality in relation to development, it provides a useful starting point for re-conceptualising education quality and how it can be evaluated; and, that it draws attention to the central importance of public dialogue and debate at the local, national and global levels about the nature of a quality education and quality frameworks at these levels.     

Best Practices for Preschool Music Education: Supporting Music-Making Throughout the Day

Early Childhood Education Journal - Active engagement in music has numerous academic and social benefits for young children and music-making is included in many early childhood standards and...     

English for Scientific Purposes (EScP): Technology,Trends, and Future Challenges for Science Education

To date, the concept of English for Specific Purposes has brought about a great impact on English language learning across various disciplines, including those in science education. Hence, this review paper aimed to address current English language learning in the science disciplines through the practice of computer-assisted language learning to identify the use of learning technologies in science-based literacy. In the literature review, the researchers found that science-based literacy instruction shares many pedagogical aims with English language teaching in terms of reading, writing, listening and speaking, allowing it to be classified as English for Scientific Purposes (EScP). To answer the research questions, the researchers conducted the survey by extracting related articles and teaching examples from the Web of Science. In the search procedure, the researchers used the keywords science OR scientific AND technolog* OR comput* in ten selected journals of social science citation index. Only articles which are specified as journal articles rather than other document types were included. After compiling the corpora, the researchers compared the trends, methodologies and results of EScP instruction in science education. The implications of this study include the opportunities, advantages and challenges for EScP instruction in science education to further develop better educational approaches, adopt new technologies, as well as offer some directions for researchers to conduct future studies.     

Meme Engineers: children as producers of musical culture

This paper examines the ways in which young children construct and negotiate musical meaning as song-makers in a post-modern consumerist musical world. A critical analysis of the presentation of music in two popular Australian children's television programmes (Play School and Hi-5) and the ways in which such media impact upon children's constructions of music and musical understanding is presented. This analysis provides a context for the examination of tensions that exist between a modernist account of what constitutes musical understanding in the young child, and an account that is cognisant of post-modern aesthetics. The implications of this concerning views of children's musical development and curriculum decision making are discussed and a view of the child as an active agent in the construction of her musical worlds is illustrated through an examination of the musical narratives of a 4-year-old child.     

Overcoming problems in doctoral writing through the use of visualisations: telling our stories

Doctoral students experience many challenges on the long journey towards completion. Common problems include: synthesising data, working at a conceptual level, clarifying the relationship of the parts of the thesis to the whole, finding a voice and completing a viva successfully. Few authors have addressed the use of visualisations to meet these challenges. This paper focuses on the use of visualisations in doctoral writing. It presents narratives about seven ways that visualisations can help students to make breakthroughs in their writing, namely, as an organiser of the relationships of the parts of the thesis to the whole, a trigger for peer discourse, a vehicle for conceptual work, a metaphor to express key concepts, a trigger for professional development, a visual aid for the viva and as a prompt for freedrawing and freewriting.     

From promises to practices: the fate of educational software in the home

Abstract

Thirty-two families were given six market-leading, educational CDROMs each, and usage of them was logged over 11 weeks. These children and their parents were also interviewed on three occasions. Although parents and children were enthusiastic upon receipt of the software and envisaged that it would be a useful learning tool, children's use of these titles rapidly declined to an average of between only 10 and 25 minutes a week. Children spent most of their time using these products alone; collaboration with other family members was minimal. This is compared with parents' examples of other learning activities that take place as a whole family. Parents and children were asked to discuss the perceived qualities of the CD-ROMs. Parents had limited insight into how this home computer experience might relate to their children's experience in classrooms and they made little reference to informal theories of learning and teaching in judging the quality and impact of the software. This was classified as ‘good’ mainly in terms of features that could promote recreational enjoyment. It is concluded that the purchase/provision of a PC and of educational CD-ROMs is not enough, by itself, to foster lively learning practices in the home. Parents and schools need to work more closely together if this is to be achieved.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.