Running a TEMPUS Project: First Experiences

This paper describes the experiences gathered at Aachen University's computer science department while running one of the first TEMPUS projects. An outline of the historical background is followed by a brief introduction to the TEMPUS programme as such. The aims and goals of our project, BASCULE, are then described in more detail. Finally, we discuss the lessons we have learned.     

Conceptualisation and development of the physics related personal epistemology questionnaire (PPEQ)

This study was designed to develop an assessment tool to measure high school students’ personal epistemology (PE) in the physics domain by using validation processes. Based on theoretical foundations of PE, the PPEQ was conceptualised on six hypothetical dimensions: structure of knowledge [SK], justification of knowledge and knowing [JK], changeability of knowledge [CK], equations in physics [EQ], quick learning [QL], and source of knowledge [source]. In total, 42-items were developed deductively for these dimensions, and a panel of experts assessed the content validity of the instrument. Subsequently, factor analyses were performed to obtain construct-related evidence. First, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the data collected from 362 ninth graders. EFA yielded a six-factor solution which excluded the EQ and divided SK into two dimensions: coherent SK and hierarchical SK. Second, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with the remaining 27-items on data collected from a new sample of 350 ninth graders. The CFA results confirmed that the PPEQ assesses six factors emerged from EFA. Internal consistency of the PPEQ was also found to be very high with Cronbach’s α reliability coefficient of .92, and the coefficients of dimensions ranged from .71 to .83.     

Teaching,Freedom and the Human Individual

The essay represents teaching as the coming to be of the human individual. In order to do so, it reflects on the character of human life by which it is knowledge of itself. Being knowledge of itself, human life is self-determining or free. Therefore generality and particularity come together in the human being in a distinctive way: a human being is not an exemplar, instance or specimen of a species, nature or life-form. Rather, she is her own principle. This is captured in the idea of the human being as an individual. The essay reveals teaching to be the form of coming to be which is proper to what is an individual in this sense. In this way, the essay shows teaching to be internal to human freedom.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: exploring the global in motion

The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects upon how these articulations can be seen to relate to globalisation. In so doing, it addresses concerns about the globalising potential of ESD within the field of environmental education research, and aims to open up for an alternative understanding of the processes associated with the rearticulation of ESD in different national education policy settings. The alternative conception that is put forward promotes an understanding of these re-articulations of ESD as contingent, opening up a space for contestation and counter-hegemonic articulations.