Community education in the 1980s: What can we learn from experience?

The last ten years have seen a revival of interest in ‘community-oriented’ forms of education as a result of wide spread disillusionment with the trends of social change which have been experienced both in developing and in more highly developed countries. Much of the recent thinking about the dysfunctional nature of conventional schooling in poorer countries has emphasised its alien nature, regarding it as an importation ill-adapted to the development needs or cultural context of these countries. It is too often overlooked that problems of reforming or replacing conventional educational patterns largely derive from the fact that these patterns are in fact firmly rooted in the local situation and up to this time have drawn much of their strength from their very considerable success in performing the tasks allocated to them by their various clienteles. In this paper it is argued that whilst there may well be a pressing need for reform in order to meet changing circumstances and, notably, the mass education situation in which we now find ourselves, we are unlikely to achieve successful reform unless we examine the roots of our problems more thoroughly than we have often been inclined to. There is real danger that we may be carried forward on bandwagons of doubtful relevance to our real situation and that we may once again be distracted from the careful analysis of our own experience without which our judgements and decisions may well prove ill-founded.This paper seeks to examine some of that experience in the hope of identifying some of the considerations we should bear in mind as we consider the potentiality of forms of community education which are currently being urged upon us.     

The Natural Sciences in the New Universities

The introduction of interdisciplinary courses and a high level of research activity were characteristics of the science schools of the New Universities whose consequences, educational and financial, are examined in this paper.     

Compliance, resistance and seduction: reflections on 20?years of the funding council model of governance

Formally the new public management model of governance was introduced into British higher education with the passage of the 1988 Education Reform Act, which abolished the existing University Grants Committee (UGC) and instigated the funding councils. This article explores the relationship between the state, the funding councils and the universities with respect to the contemporary development of the English system of higher education. The analysis is based on an exploration of four key policy issues: the quality assurance regime, the research assessment exercises, the widening participation agenda and the introduction of student fees. The goal is to explore how the quasi-state organisations—in particular the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)—have mediated the relationship between the state and the universities. The evidence suggests that the coupling of the state to the universities follows one of three tracks: compliance, resistance and seduction. The article explores what factors determine why one relationship (or combination of relationships) prevails, and explains patterns of change over time. The overall conclusion is that institutional interaction is very complex, and it is inaccurate—as is sometimes claimed—to view the funding council as little more than a compliant channel of government policy.     

The DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN CAPACITY IN MALAWI: THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Faced with accelerating poverty, the Malawi government has re-awakened its commitment to the development of human capacity and the role of development in this context. This paper explores the relationship between development and science and technology. It goes on to review the country’s science and technology needs and how these justify taking developmental action. It concludes that strategies designed to increase access to education should not be limited to the primary sector, but should also include secondary curricula and university science and technology programmes. Drawing on the arguments in the article and personal experience, the authors suggest promoting the development of human capacity in Malawi by creating special “science schools” in the secondary sector and increasing the number of scholarships for university science students.     

Looking back: On relevance,probabilistic indexing and information retrieval

Forty-eight years ago Maron and Kuhns published their paper, “On Relevance, Probabilistic Indexing and Information Retrieval” (1960). This was the first paper to present a probabilistic approach to information retrieval, and perhaps the first paper on ranked retrieval. Although it is one of the most widely cited papers in the field of information retrieval, many researchers today may not be familiar with its influence. This paper describes the Maron and Kuhns article and the influence that it has had on the field of information retrieval.