Ethnicity and education in China and Vietnam: discursive formations of inequality

This article aims to understand how ethnicity is discursively framed in national policies in China and Vietnam and argues that policy discourses affect how the ‘problem’ of ethnicity and educational inequalities is framed and how these inequalities can be addressed. The analysis shows how both Marxist and market-economy governing rationalities frame ethnic minority groups as lower status than the majority group and in need of either socially evolving to the communist ideal or assimilating into the global economic market, respectively. Using Fraser’s multi-dimensional approach to analyse discursive formations of inequality, we show how these policy discourses produce a non-ethnic economic citizen with socialist tendencies that negates cultural or social recognition and political representation. We conclude that researchers and policymakers need to consider how ethnicity is discursively framed to understand and address inequalities.     

Decent work in Poland: a preliminary study. Suggestions for educational and counselling practice

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Work and its meanings have often been and still are objects of scholarly research. In the context of global crises, increasing...     

Universities,dependency and the market: innovative lessons from Kenya

Higher education in developing nations is typically viewed from a dependency perspective – institutions are seen as merely recipients of Western knowledge, aid and reform efforts. Nevertheless, universities in both the centre and the periphery are dealing with tensions between protecting the public good and embracing neoliberal values based on a market approach to higher education. In the USA and Europe these competing interests are typically cast as mutually exclusive. Our study on the market approach to higher education in Kenya, however, suggests that public and private interests can be complementary, contributing to a re-envisioning of the traditional mission of higher education. This article seeks to examine more fully the nature of reform efforts at two universities in Kenya, to elucidate lessons for universities undergoing market-oriented reform in the West and to suggest a reciprocal relationship between institutions in Africa and Europe, upending the centre-periphery paradigm.     

Student perceptions of peer assessment: an interdisciplinary study

Peer assessment provides students with multiple benefits during their learning process. The aim of our study is to examine students’ perception of peer assessment. Questionnaires were administered before and after the peer-assessment process to 416 students studying 11 different subjects in four different fields taught at the University of Girona. Results suggest that students have a positive predisposition towards this methodology, both before and after its implementation. Students perceive it as a both motivating and recommended methodology that facilitates the acquisition of learning at different levels. As for its limitations, students highlight the responsibility that comes with it and a certain amount of distrust in fellow students’ abilities to peer-assess.     

Classroom contextual effects of race on children's peer nominations

Black children generally receive poorer sociometric nominations compared with Whites. This effect is not fully understood because Black children rarely hold a classroom majority and teachers' race is rarely investigated. Research from a person-environment perspective suggests that the effects of children's race depend on the racial composition of the classroom and society's racial attitudes. Sociometric nominations were obtained from 1,268 5th graders, between 9 and 11 years old (53% Black), across 57 classrooms (3-95% Black students). Half of the teachers were Black. The results indicated that ratings of Black children were more influenced by the racial context of classrooms than were ratings of White children. The implications of this study are discussed in relation to group dynamics and racial discrimination.     

Occupational Well-being Among University Faculty: A Job Demands-Resources Model

The effects of changing academic environments on faculty well-being have attracted considerable research attention. However, few studies have examined the multifaceted relationships between the academic work environment and the multiple dimensions of faculty well-being using a comprehensive theoretical framework. To address this gap, this study implemented the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) model to investigate how job demands/resources in the academic environment interact with multiple dimensions of faculty well-being. The study participants were 1389 full-time faculty members employed in public universities in the Czech Republic. The participants completed a questionnaire assessing perceived job resources (influence over work, support from supervisor and colleagues), job demands (quantitative demands, work-family conflicts and job insecurity) and three dimensions of faculty well-being (job satisfaction, stress and work engagement). A structural equation model was used to test the effects of “dual processes” hypothesized by the JDR theory, i.e., the existence of two relatively independent paths between job demands/resources and positive/negative aspects of faculty well-being. The model showed a very good fit to our data and explained 60% of the variance in faculty job satisfaction, 46%, in stress and 20% in work engagement. The results provide evidence for the dual processes, including the “motivational process” (i.e., job resources were related predominantly to work engagement and job satisfaction) and the “health impairment process” (i.e., job demands were predominantly associated with stress, mostly through work-family conflict). The study expands current research on faculty well-being by demonstrating the complex, non-linear relationships between academic work environments and different dimensions of faculty well-being.     

All that glitters is not gold—Mixed early labour market outcomes of STEM graduates in Poland

The expansion of higher education resulted in a growing interest in post-graduation labour market outcomes. Two conflicting narratives are present in the debate. The first focuses on the shortage of skills and the need for further expansion of the sector and seems to pertain mostly to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The second revolves around over-education and mismatch leading to graduate unemployment or underemployment. Such concerns pertain especially to humanities and social sciences. However, in this article, we argue that the STEM versus non-STEM opposition on which this debate is premised is not adequate for analysing post-graduation labour market outcomes. We leverage a unique administrative dataset comprising monthly records on the labour market status of the entire population of recent Polish university graduates (N = 161,323) to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the STEM category in terms of labour market outcomes and the limited predictive value of the field of study for those outcomes. We argue that the category is too broad and internally diverse to be used as an overarching category, especially in research meant to inform policymaking.