Globalisation and the curriculum: Proposals for the integration of education and training in South Africa

In South Africa, the post-apartheid government has committed itself to an integrated approach to education and training. This article addresses South African policy debates, illustrating that global trends such as integration are shaped by significant local influences in the production of specific policy positions. The integration debate in South Africa reflects both equity and human resource development concerns, and is more fully developed in adult basic education and training than in formal post-compulsory education. The article analyses the proposals for integration as part of a complex policy agenda, arguing that the implementation of integration proposals will not be straightforward. This is due to the genesis of the integration debate in training rather than both education and training, its assumptions about economic development, and the contested nature of the policy process.     

A two-level study of predictors of private tutoring attendance at the beginning of secondary schooling in Germany: The role of individual learning support in the classroom

More and more students attend private supplementary tutoring to improve their academic achievement. Private tutoring might be understood as a reaction to insufficient instructional quality in school, especially regarding individual support. However, it might also be possible that parents generally see insufficient grades as an indicator of lacking support and engage a tutor in hopes of improvement or to enhance a competitive edge for their children. So far, the relationship between tutoring attendance and perceived individual learning support during classroom lessons has not been tested. We used multilevel analyses based on N = 2,842 students in 102 Grade 5 classrooms at German academic track schools to test for a relationship between private tutoring in several subjects and students’ shared perception of the instructional quality in these subjects. On the individual level, we controlled for typical predictors of private tutoring such as academic achievement and family income, as well as for additional variables such as working behaviour and parental homework assistance. In classrooms with more individual support, students were less likely to start private tutoring in English. However, we did not find comparable relationships for tutoring in mathematics and German. Therefore, school principals and educational policy-makers should monitor the incidence of private tutoring and consider within-school structured tutoring programmes as an effective measure to improve academic achievement and to meet parents’ desire for individualised instruction.     

The effects of time and practice upon culture assimilator trainingLos efectos del tiempo y la practica en el entrenamiento de asimiladores de culturaEffets du temps et de la pratique sur l'entrainement avec l'assimilateur culturel

The culture assimilator is a technique for training persons from one culture to better understand the behavior of persons from another culture. A laboratory test, using 35 white female college students, of an assimilator for teaching Whites about black culture revealed significant improvements in trained subjects' knowledge of black culture and in their enjoyment of an interpersonal interaction with black confederates. Support was found for the hypothesis that assimilator training heightens subjects' anxiety with regard to interpersonal encounters with members of the target culture, but that the anxiety decreases over time. Results suggest a small positive effect of a supportive practice interaction with a target culture member prior to the behavioral measures. Some of the attitude measures were significant in the hypothesized direction, but others were significant in the opposite direction. Possible causes and implications of these results are discussed.