The organisation of academic knowledge: A comparative perspective

How is academic knowledge organized? Does thisvary from country to country, and, if so, how?This paper explores these questions through anexamination of some of the data included in theCommonwealth Universities Yearbook 2001.In particular, an analysis is presented of thedifferent names given to basic academic units(departments, schools and/or faculties) inAustralia, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.Evidence is provided regarding forms ofinstitutional organization, and of the varyingstrength of different disciplines or fields ofstudy.     

A perplexed story

This piece of life‐story—or, to give it its grand title, auto‐ethnographic research—owes its initial impetus in becoming a written project to a photograph someone took of me in a London secondary school staffroom early on in my teaching career. The young man in the photograph peers out at me from my office wall. Sometime last year, he began to compel me to dig around in filing cabinets for the journals, occasional poems and other dusty relics of a teaching life; it seems he has helped me to recollect the social and historical experiences that have affected my development.     

Discourse communities: A framework from which to consider professional development for rural teachers of science and mathematics

This paper explores aspects of professional development for teachers of science and mathematics in schools in rural Australia. The study identified a range of issues including tensions between government, school and individual professional learning priorities and their respective responsibilities; the shaping of professional development by rurality; and issues of generic versus subject-specific professional learning. The paper will focus on the needs of teachers, particularly secondary teachers, for subject-specific professional development and the capacity of different professional development approaches for satisfying these needs. The notion of discourse communities is proposed as a framework for considering this issue.