Directed Time,a Year on: staff perspectives

This study is a follow up to a previously published article in this Journal (Vol. 8(3), 1988), which sought to examine the allocation and management of directed time from a headteacher's perspective. The purpose here is to consider the ramifications of imposed time budgeting for teaching staff and to examine the impact of directed time, a year after its imposition, on school systems.     

Is self-assessment in religious education unique?

This paper addresses the question: is self-assessment in religious education unique? It first presents an overview of some challenges for assessment from subject differences, and then reviews the generic literature on self-assessment. It builds on earlier empirical research on self-assessment in religious education, carried out in an English state secondary school; this was used to propose a variant of self-assessment which is tailored to the demands of religious education – reflexive self-assessment. Its implications for more general understandings of the relationship between subject pedagogy and self-assessment are discussed, especially the recognition of values not only in religious education but in other subjects too, reinforcing the need to develop subject-specific variants of self-assessment that reflect the breadth of learning outcomes.     

For and Of the Truth: 'Upbuilding' Higher Education in Church Colleges

This article argues that church colleges of higher education, in their desire to be distinctive, can benefit from rethinking the relationship between the philosophical and the religious in order to retrieve a view of higher education as 'upbuilding'. This will be achieved by illustrating how the central idea of speculative philosophy—that our learning about truth occurs in and through the phenomenology of aporetic experiences of the conditions of possibility—can contribute to the debate within church colleges regarding what is different about their higher education. In short I will argue that Hegel and Kierkegaard (amongst others) find the aporetic experience of contingency to be of absolute significance. In what follows I will show how the religious and the philosophical are both constitutive of that absolute significance and how, when allowed to re-form each other, then together (and apart) they commend the kind of 'upbuilding' higher education that church colleges espouse.     

周林与首席检察官:拒绝入境的政治策略

新西兰原本应为欧洲人的定居地,中国人应被拒绝入境是一个早已既定的事实。考虑到这一事实,那些已设法进入新西兰的中国人位置何在?他们在新西兰的法定身份和地位如何?同样重要的是,那些出生在新西兰的中国人的地位,他们是新西兰人还是中国人?他们能同时既是“中国人”又是“新西兰人”吗?这些问题对于确定新西兰的国家特性是相当重要的。谁是新西兰人,谁是合格的新西兰人?直到最近,对于新西兰特性的确认还与英国性、与盎格鲁撒克逊的社会归属和大英帝国联系在一起。在这种界定下,中国人能成为新西兰人吗?直到1919年,当周林(音译)因为其在新…     

Research assessment in Hong Kong

A system of research assessment was developed and implemented inHong Kong during the period from 1991 to 1994 as an input to theassessment of the public recurrent funding allocations of theterritory's higher education institutions and as an extension ofthe University Grants Committee's other quality assuranceactivities. Refinements were subsequently introduced for the nexttwo assessment exercises in 1996 and 1999. This paper describesthe evolution of the process, identifies some significantdifferences from that in the UK on which it was modelled, andevaluates the 1999 research assessment exercise, in particularthe application in that context of the Carnegie Foundation'sdefinitions of research and research-related scholarlyactivities, viz. the scholarships of ``discovery, integration,application and teaching'.     

A Postmodernism Worth Bothering About: A Rejoinder to Cole, Hill and Rikowski

This paper is a response to one published in the June 1997 edition of the BJES (Cole, Hill & Rikowski, 1997) which criticises the author's claims about the utility of postmodern analysis for studies in education (Blake, 1997).     

Partnership with Schools: a case study of a geography field course

British teacher education institutions are being encouraged by the Department of Education and Science to develop a partnership with schools by involving teachers in the design of courses and in selecting, teaching, supervising and assessing students. However, as partnership is a two‐way process, there should be reciprocal action with tutors helping teachers in school activities.

This case study describes a programme of work devised for a geography field course in which a group of PGCE students teach 120 third form pupils from a local comprehensive school. The evaluation provides evidence that the exercise, apart from being an enjoyable and stimulating experience, fulfils DES expectations of the value of genuine partnership to all concerned—tutor and students, teachers and pupils. The author is indebted to the geography staff at Ulverston Victoria High School for their help in organising this course.     

Peer group cultures and social identity: an integrated approach to understanding masculinities1

Sociological research investigating boys' masculinity performances has commonly recognised the importance of peer group cultures in identity construction. Whilst such work has undoubtedly offered important and useful frameworks for interpreting and understanding boys' behaviour in schools, the article argues that social psychological theories of intergroup relations also proffer important insights. Drawing upon interview and survey data, the article focuses on the existence of intergroup bias between peer groups in two secondary schools and demonstrates how a social identity framework can assist in providing a fuller and more complex understanding of boys' masculinities than sociological insights alone. Furthermore, it is suggested that gender work strategies designed to address and ultimately help some boys restructure their constructions of masculinity, which recognise the range of complex sociological and social psychological processes at work, are likely to more effective than those that offer partial insights. As such, strategies that draw upon work on masculinities and upon social psychological theories of intergroup relations may be particularly effective.     

Is higher education in really ‘internationalising’?

It is a widely accepted maxim that, like business generally, higher education is globalising. For many countries, higher education is now an important export sector, with university campuses attracting international students from around the world. Licensing production, in the form of franchising degree provision to international partners, is beginning to mutate into foreign direct investment as many universities set up campuses in other countries. While there are clearly parallels between the globalisation of business and higher education, this paper examines the supply- and demand-side drivers within the university sector. It argues that an alignment of special factors, rather than an inexorable trend towards commercialisation, has caused the recent internationalisation of higher education and concludes that current trends are unsustainable in the medium-term.