Virtual and Classical Universities between Complementarity and Contrast

This essay reflects upon the themes that emerged from the seminar "Teaching and Organization of Studies in the Virtual and Classical University: Conflict and/or Mutual Reinforcement", for which the articles appearing in this issue of Higher Education in Europe were originally prepared. The reflections are organized around four major themes: (i) the acceleration of change in higher education owing mostly to the ICTs; (ii) complementarity and contrast between virtual and classical universities; (iii) institutional responses to change; and (iv) quality issues. Various agendas for further attention are proposed.     

Information Skills in Education for Manufacturing Technology: the Case for an Integrated Quality Approach

Considerable ‘user education’ work of high quality has been produced from academic librarians to impart information skills to students on degree-level and diploma BTEC engineering courses. However, in the author's opinion, this lacks a focus on some points of importance for the effective teaching of potential engineers and technologists, This requires the following.

(1) More case-studies of engineering problems highlighting information retrieval aspects.

(2) More accurate grounding in the way engineers actually use information.

(3)Better integration between lectures, information guides, exercises and test material.

(4)Greater emphasis on the analysis stage of technical problems, and linkage to types of available information to help generate solutions—information needs analysis.

Scope exists for packaged teaching material incorporating improvements and drawing upon advances in educational technology such as CAL methods. The author attaches a sample scheme based on advanced manufacturing themes, developed for the BTEC Production Engineering course at Coventry Polytechnic in the UK.     

Disruptive Behaviour in Non-Referred Mainstream School Children,Aged Seven to Nine: A psychophysiological contribution

Data are summarised relating resting heart/pulse rate to teachers' ratings of disruptive behaviour in a sample of 206 non-referred children, aged 7-9 years, attending mainstream schools and not subject to specialist attention. Low base heart rate (BHR) was found to be associated with teachers' ratings of disruptive behaviour, confirming similar earlier research based on children aged 11-16 years. The findings are discussed in relation to psychophysiology and child development and with reference to several theoretical frameworks, identifying the need for further research.     

Death to Critique and Dissent? The Policies and Practices of New Managerialism and of 'Evidence-based Practice'

In this article, the author develops a critique of new managerialism and of its implications for the professional work of scholars and teachers. She then critiques 'evidence-based practice' as it is being developed for schools. She argues that it is only possible to make sense of the policies and practices of the evidence-based practice movement within the framework of new managerialism. She also explores some of the tensions and contradictions between managerialism and gender reform in educational contexts. She ends with a challenge to begin the work of generating the collective story through which we can dismantle the hegemony of new managerialism and engage in the transformative work that will afford us a different future.     

Choice Within Constraints: Mothers and schooling

ABSTRACT This article explores the discourses of choice in the context of the current, and international, public policy debates about providing freedom of choice for parents as consumers in the education market place. In particular it explores the public and private discourses of choice to illustrate the argument that mothers as parents are not 'free to choose' but act within a range of constraints. We term these both structural and moral constraints and offer evidence about them as experienced by mothers over time in relation to bringing up children, from resources to negotiations about relationships and expectations about both the nature of family life, employment and their children's place within the future. It also offers some evidence from our various research studies of mothers from their perspectives, about the processes of choice, in the context of both structural and moral constraints, including issues about involvement in their children's education and schooling. Consideration is also given to mothers' evaluations of their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their possibilities of child rearing and education. The article concludes with the argument that mothers' experiences of the processes of bringing up and educating their children are not at all in harmony with the, albeit contradictory, public policy discourse of their being free to choose. Mothers' various perspectives from their varied vantage points are indeed limited by structural and moral possibilities in a patriarchal and racist society.     

‘I’m a Woman Before I'm an RE Teacher': managing religious identity in secondary schools

Religion and sexuality tend not to make easy bedfellows. This article draws on a life history study which has followed a cohort of religious education (RE), secondary postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) students through their training and into their first years of teaching. In addition to the adaptations, stresses and challenges commonly faced by people when they become teachers, it seems that RE specialists have to deal with unattractive (personal) identities and expectations associated with their subject. The article discusses the ways in which women RE teachers used clothes, hairstyles and make-up, together with explicit reference to their social lives, to challenge the ascribed identities which had negative implications both for their own sense of self and for their pedagogy.     

Dystopia on the Health Superhighway

The emerging Information Superhighway is starting to induce visions of dystopia within the medical profession. In several countries, doctors have opposed plans for the establishment of national health data networks. In the most recent example, the Council of the British Medical Association threatened to boycott the government's national data strategy. This action followed the lead of Australian doctors, many of whom have consistently opposed a national wide-area network for health data. In common is the fear that this data linkage will erode medical independence, increase the power of government health authorities, and eliminate the confidentiality of medical information. Doctors have a duty of care to patients to protect confidentiality, and they say the emerging national networks compromise this responsibility. Here, I argue that the emerging health superhighways should either conform to strict privacy standards or they should be demolished.