Searching for the political dimension in education for sustainable development: socially critical,social learning and radical democratic approaches

By means of a narrative research synthesis, the aim of this article is to explore how the political dimension can or should be staged as a teaching and learning content in education for sustainable development (ESD). The study is limited to research literature dealing with the political dimension in relation to the phenomenon of conflict. Three approaches to the topic are identified: a socially critical approach (SCA), a social learning approach (SLA) and a radical democratic approach (RDA). Notably, SCA and SLA are already established in the research field, whereas RDA is a result of our synthesis. The scope of the synthesis is limited to these three approaches. We follow up the narrative research synthesis by comparing the three approaches to discern how the political dimension emerges as an educational content by using conflict as part of the teaching and learning activities. The main results are that all three approaches tend to downplay the political and produce political sameness. The article ends by suggesting possible directions for further research that would fruitfully translate the idea of the political dimension into educational settings and enrich the political dimension as a concept in ESD in both practice and research.     

A language modeling framework for expert finding

Statistical language models have been successfully applied to many information retrieval tasks, including expert finding: the process of identifying experts given a particular topic. In this paper, we introduce and detail language modeling approaches that integrate the representation, association and search of experts using various textual data sources into a generative probabilistic framework. This provides a simple, intuitive, and extensible theoretical framework to underpin research into expertise search. To demonstrate the flexibility of the framework, two search strategies to find experts are modeled that incorporate different types of evidence extracted from the data, before being extended to also incorporate co-occurrence information. The models proposed are evaluated in the context of enterprise search systems within an intranet environment, where it is reasonable to assume that the list of experts is known, and that data to be mined is publicly accessible. Our experiments show that excellent performance can be achieved by using these models in such environments, and that this theoretical and empirical work paves the way for future principled extensions.     

Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: a review of the research literature

The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to sustainability? Our analysis identified two different definitions of ESD: first, as a threefold approach to education based on questions concerning education about, in and for the environment; and, second, as an approach to education that includes three interrelated dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Two major research areas are identified in this study. The first area relates to how teachers understand ESD, while the second area focuses on how ESD can be implemented in educational practice. During the period studied, the research has evolved from teaching children facts about the environment and sustainability issues to educating children to act for change. This new approach reveals a more competent child who can think for him- or herself and make well-considered decisions. The decisions are made by investigating and participating in critical discussions about alternative ways of acting for change.     

The Future of Public Libraries: A Technology Perspective

Libraries have to change their operations because information has become ubiquitous. They must adopt the posture that they are a force for societal change, and that means new ways of thinking about services like career development and lifelong learning. The ability to help users access the critical information they want or need will be key to public library future success.     

The Transformation of Teaching Habits in Relation to the Introduction of Grading and National Testing in Science Education in Sweden

Research in Science Education - In Sweden, a new curriculum and new methods of assessment (grading of students and national tests) in science education were introduced in grade 6 in 2012/2013. We...     

Expressions of agency within complex policy structures: science teachers’ experiences of education policy reforms in Sweden

We explore the experiences of school science teachers as they enact three linked national curriculum and assessment policy reforms in Sweden. Our goal is to understand teachers’ differing responses to these reforms. A sample of 13 teachers engaged in 2 interviews over a 6–9-month period. Interviews included exploration of professional background and school context, perceptions of the aims of the policy reforms and experiences of working with these reforms in the classroom. Analysis was guided by an individual-oriented sociocultural perspective on professional agency. Here teaching is conceptualised as an ongoing interplay between teachers’ knowledge, skills and personal goals, and the characteristics of the social, institutional and policy settings in which they work. Our analysis shows that navigating the ensuing continuities and contradictions results in many different expressions of teacher agency, e.g. loss of autonomy and trust, pushing back, subversion, transfer of authority, and creative tensions. Typically, an individual teacher’s enactment of these reforms involved several of these expressions of agency. We demonstrate that the sociocultural perspective provides insights into teachers’ responses to education policy reform likely to be missed by studies that focus largely on individual teacher knowledge/beliefs about reform or skills in ‘implementing’ reform practices.