Book reviews

International Review of Education -     

‘Philanthropizing’ consent: how a private foundation pushed through national learning standards in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (National Learning Standards), entered the policy debate in Brazil and became the most important reform initiative of the Ministry of Education between 2015 and 2017. We argue that this accelerated policy process was contingent upon the practice of philanthropizing consent: foundations’ use of material resources, knowledge production, media power, and informal and formal networks to garner the consent of multiple social and institutional actors to support a public policy. In other words, these foundations do not impose policies on governments; rather, they ‘render technical’ high-stakes political debates on pressing issues of educational equity and then influence state officials’ consensus about which policies to adopt. We argue that this philanthropic influence is not simply a neoliberal, profit-maximizing scheme; rather, it is an attempt by foundation and corporate leaders to garner power and influence on different scales, and re-make public education in their own image. Although this educational policy game is in many ways participatory and widely accepted, foundations are only able to play this role due to their tremendous economic power, a direct product of the unequal global political economy, and the systematic defunding of the public sphere.     

Some observations on dropping out in distance education

This paper is an appraisal of drop‐out from a German perspective. This perspective is refreshingly and challengingly different — even to the rather casual German expression, ‘Karteileiche’, which means literally ‘file corpse’. The paper argues that drop‐out cannot and even should not readily be compared across systems, since significant parameters differ. The paper offers different professional viewpoints then moves to consider solutions to the problem. For die FemUniversitat the solution is not pragmatically driven but rather requires a theoretical research base.     

Spiritual Formation Within Christian Higher Education

The Christian university has a distinct responsibility to provide an environment devoted to the spiritual formation of students. Spiritual formation is not to be viewed as the only important goal of the university, thereby sacrificing intellectual or relational development, but rather spiritual formation is the aggregate “product” of the Christian college. It is a culminating attribute produced holistically from the collection of experiences gained while attending the Christian college. Christian higher education has distinct advantages in its history of spiritual formation while also facing significant challenges. Yet as the Christian colleges are true to their calling, there are few institutions better positioned to examine the spiritual formation of their students. This article reviews various aspects of this spiritual formation.     

Development and Evaluation of an Inquiry-Based Elementary Science Teacher Education Program Reflecting Current Reform Movements

The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council 1996, National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press) and various other national and state documents call for teachers who possess science content knowledge, employ an inquiry approach in teaching, and engage in reflective practices. This paper describes a rationale for choosing particular recommendations to implement and how we incorporated those as we revised our elementary science education program. An analysis of the impact of the reformed inquiry-based content courses revealed that students who take more than one reformed content course improve their science content knowledge and efficacy towards teaching science significantly more than students who take fewer courses.     

Food Fights: Cookbook Rhetorics,Monolithic Constructions of Womanhood,and Field Narratives in Technical Communication

Field narratives that (re)classify technical genres as liberating for women risk supporting the notion that feminism is a completed project in technical communication scholarship. This article suggests that technical communicators reexamine the impact of past approaches to critical engagement at the intersections of gender studies and technical communication; cookbooks provide a material example. The authors illustrate how a feminist approach to cookbooks as technical/cultural artifacts can productively revise field narratives in technical communication.     

University research funding and publication performance—An international comparison

In current science policies, competition and output incentives are emphasized as a means of making university systems efficient and productive. By comparing eight countries, this article analyzes how funding environments of university research vary across countries and whether more competitive funding systems are more efficient in producing scientific publications. The article shows that there are significant differences in the competitiveness of funding systems, but no straightforward connection between financial incentives and the efficiency of university systems exists. Our results provoke questions about whether financial incentives boost publication productivity, and whether policy-makers should place greater emphasis on other factors relevant to high productivity.     

An Innovative Course Featuring Action Research Integrated with Unifying Science Themes

In this article, we describe an innovative capstone course for preservice K-8 teachers integrating action research and a unifying theme in science (AAAS in Science for all Americans. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989; NRC in National science education standards. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1996). The goals of the capstone course are to increase student knowledge of the unifying theme, improve written communication skills, and introduce students to educational research. We provide evidence that each of these goals is met. Student growth in theme knowledge is demonstrated through concept maps, questionnaires, and previously reported assessments. Improved writing ability is demonstrated using the spelling and grammar checking feature of Microsoft Word. The analysis of action research reports demonstrates that students are able to connect their action research project results to previous research.