Lifelong Learning for Employment and Equity: the Role of Part‐time Degrees

The last few years have seen a growing debate and new initiatives by government and other agencies on the concept of lifelong learning. The objectives of these have been to provide better access to a broad knowledge base and to develop individuals' employability and economic success. But lifelong learning is not a new phenomenon. In the UK and elsewhere many adults have always studied for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. Study through part‐time degrees has long been one option for many adult learners. This paper draws on data from a study undertaken for the Department for Education and Employment on the employment of part‐time students and considers whether part‐time study benefits people's careers and whether some people benefit more than others.     

Strategies that promote historical reasoning and contextualization: a pilot intervention with urban high school students

Reading and Writing - The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two types of historical problem-solving instruction with advanced urban high school students’...     

Fish-out-of-office: How managerialised university conditions make administrative knowledge inaccessible to academics

Academics report feeling unable to cope in the managerialised university. To confirm these feelings are symptoms of managerialism's tightening grip, we use Bourdieusian concepts of field and capital to compare academics and professional staff experiential statements in an Australian university. We compare their field conditions and examine how their differences enable or hinder the accumulation of capital that defines their field. Findings show that managerialism requires professional staff to share work tasks and be on-campus, which enables them to accumulate the capital they require. Managerialism also permits and resources academics to working out-of-office to accumulate their required capital. Consequentially though, university operational knowledge becomes informal and only accessible to professional staff who accumulate the required social capital to access it. Professional staff are thus fish-in-water; easily accumulating social capital through day-to-day activities. But academics become fish-out-of-water (office); they flounder to access operational knowledge, which leads to feelings of not coping.     

Reconciling Political and Economic Goals in the Net Neutrality Debate

The net neutrality debate is one of several sites of struggles to adapt and redefine rights and obligations of stakeholders in the Internet-centric communications system. Its outcomes will shape the future of the Internet and influence the level and distribution of its benefits. We identify key values that drive the net neutrality discussion and examine the governance mechanisms proposed to achieve these objectives. We find that there is no single policy instrument that allows realization of the range of valued political and economic objectives simultaneously. Contrary to some of the claims advanced in the current debate, safeguarding multiple goals requires a combination of instruments that will likely involve government and nongovernment measures. Furthermore, promoting goals such as the freedom of speech, political participation, investment, and innovation calls for complementary policies.