Part-Time Faculty Involvement in Decision-Making

Drawing from a survey of 1,239 part-time community college faculty, this analysis investigates their views about being involved in departmental and campus-wide decision-making. The adjuncts had somewhat of a voice in instructional decisions pertaining to their area of expertise, but virtually no involvement in personnel or broader organizational matters. In all domains, they expressed desire to have a stronger voice. However, they also noted barriers to inclusion of part-time faculty in decision-making, including schedule constraints, compensation, and respect from their full-time counterparts.     

Globalization and Internationalization: the Implications on the Mental Health Field in Bhutan

Globalization and internationalization are terms growing in prevalence in the mental health professional field with increasing interactions between nations and cultures around the world. After a broad review, we define globalization as the continual process of interactions between cultures with the dominant culture influencing local cultures towards integration. Internationalization, on the other hand, we define as a partnership between cultures focused on mutual development and in which the local individuals and communities are empowered to make decisions about how best to meet their needs. In our analysis, we specifically examine the recently modernized country of Bhutan as a nation greatly influenced by both processes. More research is needed to further the knowledge within the internationalization literature and to ethically develop the mental health profession in Bhutan.     

Diffusion of the National Qualifications Framework and outcomes‐based education in southern and eastern Africa

This article explores policy and curriculum diffusion in southern and eastern Africa through an examination of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and outcomes‐based education. The article argues that the NQF was adopted for different reasons in different contexts, but that discourse coalitions and conferences have been critical in spreading these ideas in a new regional political and economic context. It shows how South Africans have tried to export the idea at the very moment when evidence is revealing little relationship between policy intention and outcome, it is contested at home, and there is a retreat from it in some sectors of education.     

Young bilinguals’ voices: reflecting on being experts and becoming literate

This article provides findings about how the construction of literacy practices mediated the positive identity development of first-grade bilinguals in an inquiry-based setting over an academic year. Utilizing a sociocultural approach and a Positive Discourse Analysis lens, the researcher reports findings from an exemplary primary classroom that facilitated positive identity development among young bilinguals as they simultaneously developed language, literacy, and content knowledge.     

Embodying the least-adult role

The aim of this article is to emphasise physicality and embodiment in child-centred research, fieldwork and intellectual activity. It will argue that research is not a separate form of action, placing the researcher in a position of epistemological privilege, but an embodied capacity developed through practical activity. This will be explored through an examination of the ‘least-adult’ positionality. Drawing from a large ethnographic study of primary schools in Dublin, Ireland, this article contends that the body must be put at the centre of the research process. I introduce the conceptualisation of the ‘passive’ and ‘active’ body, as key components for the relational context of fieldwork. Moreover, through an engagement with phenomenology, it is argued here that knowledge production is an embodied capacity developed through a sensuous relationship with the field.     

A new intelligent tutoring system*

Early in 1984, Logica started an ICAI research contract with MoD (Procurement Executive), which was to be undertaken in collaboration with the technical authority at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Malvern. A prototype system, which has become known as TUTOR, was scheduled for delivery to the client later in 1985. Initially, and for evaluation purposes, the system ran on VAX 11/780 hardware under VMS. The target subject for TUTOR was the field of emergency procedures in flight safety regulations as taught to air traffic controllers. Initial development of TUTOR, however, has been aimed at the Highway Code, a domain which we, as well as the client and other observers, are familiar with. Evaluation of TUTOR would be based on both domains. Prolog was chosen as the implementation language because ICAI, as we shall see, makes use of rich data structures that can easily be expressed in Prolog.     

Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa

The article uses both primary and secondary sources to examine why learner-centredness, outcomes- and competency-based education and national qualifications frameworks were favourably received at local level in sub-Saharan Africa but have not resulted in widespread change in classroom practice. It argues that they found local favour because they were not entirely new ideas, and were ambiguous enough to be seen as key vehicles for achieving not so much educational, as economic, social and political goals. It suggests that the failure of implementation could lie in expectations that education would lead to transformation without paying necessary attention to implementation and capacity.     

Avoiding the “Inexorable Push Toward Homogenization” in School Choice: Education Savings Accounts as Hedges Against Institutional Isomorphism

ABSTRACT

The assumption that rational choice dynamics will lead to diversity of school supply is at the heart of K–12 school choice arrangements. Yet as the field of school choice becomes more established, there will be the “inexorable push toward homogenization.” If vouchers, tuition tax credit scholarships, and education savings accounts become more significant players in the education market in the years to come, isomorphism, if it occurs, will limit the utility of school choice. Drawing on experiences from the charter sector and the Louisiana Scholarship Program, this article considers whether education savings accounts might encourage less isomorphism of practice among participating private schools than school choice options such as vouchers and tuition tax credit scholarships.