Aligning Olympic education with the liberal arts: a curriculum blueprint from Taiwan

Background: For some time the Olympics have enjoyed a relatively cosy, and quite unsurprising, relationship with Physical Education and its practitioners. Yet, as academics continue their critiques of all matters Olympic, this seemingly symbiotic partnership is being placed under much closer scrutiny. The debates are typically orientated around several key concerns, namely, the vagaries of Olympic discourse, the implicit assumptions that align Olympic idealism with ‘good’ moral education, the relevance of Olympic values in young peoples' lives, the Olympic industry's politicizing/colonizing of educational domains, and the utility of Olympic ideals for affecting social, cultural, and (physical) educational change. One other discussion thread, which we add to in this paper, has been the (in)congruencies between Olympic idealism and non-Western cultural contexts and educational frameworks. Combined, the scholarly voices essentially encourage theorists and practitioners to approach the relationship between education and the Olympics with care.

Context and curriculum overview: Cognizant of these contentions, this paper exhibits an Olympic education curriculum for first-year undergraduate students enrolled within a provincial Taiwanese University's Liberal Arts programme. We detail three tentative themes around which an Olympic education curriculum might be constructed: Peace, Multiculturalism, and Global sensibilities. These particular themes are concomitant with Olympic idealism, but also align with contemporary East Asian Liberal Arts frameworks. In our curriculum design, the emphasis is on developing an Olympic education that not only introduces students to broader global ideas (e.g. universality and cosmopolitan citizenry), but that respects and reflects national/localized specificities (e.g. Asian philosophical traditions and their legacies in educational institutions).

Considerations: The paper stresses the need to further Olympic debates outside the traditional domains of sport and Physical Education, and continue the challenge to Western-orientated sport pedagogies. Our intention is to create a strong cross-cultural study Olympic-inspired Liberal Arts programme that may better link tertiary students in Taiwan with key sport institutions in East Asia, and also throughout the wider communities around the world. We envision aspects of our course material may hopefully serve as a useful reference for other teachers and provide a blueprint for future curricula that might challenge Western-Olympic education orientations.     

Qualitative research in Australia

Qualitative educational research in Australia has been characterized since the early 1970s by vitality and interest in reconstructing in cultural terms the best research practices, particularly those observed in the UK and USA. The former's influence is best demonstrated in case study method and participatory action research in the 1980s. Australian qualitative educational sociology, drawing on critical theoretical methods, continues to command strong international respect. More recently, post‐structuralist theory has influenced many approaches to qualitative inquiry, especially in feminist research, which reflects a more globalized view of research. Whatever theoretical and methodological directions Australian qualitative enquiry takes in the later 1990s, research must address political and economic contexts of change both nationally and globally if it is to make a difference.     

The epistemological foundation for Cicero's litigation strategies

Cicero recognized the benefits that a forensic orator could receive from a cooperative study of rhetoric and philosophy. This work isolates and examines two aspects of philosophy—dialectic and ethics —that were particularly important to the courts of the Republic.     

Service Learning Experiences in University Science Degree Courses

This article describes a study about a service learning project at a small undergraduate university. We examined how professors and students became involved in service learning through course work and related activities. This study sought to find out why participation in service learning is low in post-secondary education science and mathematics courses. Participants described challenges to participation as well as benefits which, if emphasized, may allow for some growth in participation by science degree students.     

Professional norms in school leadership: Change efforts in implementation of education for sustainable development

This study identifies and analyses professional norms as a means of illuminating school cultures and how norms are distributed in the system. Of special interest is the role of school leaders and how they lead, organize and realise school development. The study research question is: What professional norms do school leaders highlight in change efforts? We are also interested in identifying the support mechanisms and obstacles to implementation and norm setting exhibited by school organisations. The case we used explores change processes in the implementation of education for sustainable development at three upper secondary schools in Sweden. It was conducted in three phases, starting with a questionnaire for all teachers and principals. In the second phase, each of the principals was interviewed individually. The third phase used focus groups consisting of the principals that made up the leadership groups. Our results indicate that professional norms are set when principals and teachers experience expectations from each other, from students and from policy documents. There is also a need for well-functioning communication in the organisation to set and disseminate norms. The school principal plays a crucial role in these norm setting processes. By becoming more aware of existing norms in the organisations, and how norms can be changed, this knowledge can support principals in change efforts.     

Telecommunications Management

DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS by Leo A. Wrobel (Boston: Artech House, 1990—price not given, ISBN 0-89006-460-1,112 pp.)

LONG DISTANCE SERVICES: A BUYER'S GUIDE by Daniel D. Briere (Boston: Artech House, 1990—price not given, ISBN 0-89006-439-3,293 pp.)

ADVANCES IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT edited by Jagdish Sheth and Garly Frazier (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1990—$63.50 each, ISBN as listed below)

MANAGING THE R&D/MARKETING INTERFACE FOR PRODUCT SUCCESS: THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS FOCUS edited by Massoud Saghafi and Ashok K. Gupta (1990—ISBN 1-55938-144-2,218 pp.)

PURCHASING IN THE 1990S: THE EVOLUTION OF PROCUREMENT IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY edited by Wesley J. Johnston (1990—ISBN 1-55938-145-0,257 pp.)     

Framing “world class” differently: international and Korean participants’ perceptions of the world class university project

This study analyzes how the world class university (WCU) project in Korea is perceived by participating international scholars and Korean principal investigators by conducting focus group interviews and utilizing semantic network analysis. While international scholars and Korean principal investigators agree that the success of WCU depends on mutual collaboration, the expansion of qualitative evaluation, and effective student education, their core interests and values differ. International scholars place much weight on core educational values that are tied with students and research. On the other hand, Korean principal investigators take greater interest in the administrative side, including formal evaluation, regulation, and attendance for the required number of class days. This difference in assessing the WCU project emerges as an obstacle to mutual understanding and collaboration. Rather than judging which group’s frame of reference is better or more relevant, our analysis focuses on offering a context-specific understanding of frame while avoiding the cliché of “cultural difference.” Lastly, the analysis of frames offers some useful implications for the Korean higher education research and policy community.     

Corporate federalism and the reform of teacher education in Australia

Current Australian commitments to competency‐based teacher reforms have wide acceptance. The key to this has been the affirmative stance adopted by the peak education unions and by ‘progressive’ educationalists, the nominal guarantors of recent professional advances in teaching. Since Australian approaches to ‘competencies’ are part of a more general agenda of industrialization of education, what is clearly indicated are radical changes in the way that nominally independent/critical language of education is currently being interpreted and applied: this is now being used to support an overall restructuring in which substantive (professional) forms of teacher authority are being uncompromisingly targeted. The transformations identified in this paper as having special strategic significance involve the themes of ‘school as community’ and ‘critical practice’. These have been detached from their traditional (robustly anti‐industrial) reference points and redeployed to authorize a more active (because supposedly conflict‐free) regulatory role by newly empowered managers and to advance the claim that ‘the practical’, on its own, can now be revalorized to allow real scope for creative and contextualized interventions by teachers. A strictly managerialist/technicist perspective upon schooling is thus represented as occupying the highest moral and cognitive ground. Correspondingly ruled out is the case for any real measure of educational pluralism or leamercentredness, no matter the sociocultural complexities, thereby licensing the extension to the school site itself of direct (educationally unmediated) political controls over education. As its counterpoint to the new agenda, this paper stresses the need for a robust decision‐making role by educators at all levels of policy formation, and for learner‐centred interventions which are much more than technical, whatever the processes of revalorization supposedly at work.     

The Cognitive Linkage and Divergence of Spelling and Reading Development

This study aimed to investigate to what extent reading and spelling share cognitive processes at different phases of literacy acquisition. The contributions of phonological awareness, letter-sound matching skills, and rapid naming (RAN) to spelling and reading were measured in a large sample with Dutch children (N?=?1,284) covering all primary school grades. The results indicated a different developmental pattern for spelling than for reading. At initial phases of literacy acquisition, phonological awareness and letter-sound matching skills contributed to both reading and spelling performance. However, in contrast to the declining influence of phonological awareness and letter-sound matching skills on fluent word reading (see also Vaessen & Blomert, 2010 Vaessen, A. and Blomert, L. 2010. Long term cognitive dynamics of fluent reading development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105: 213–231. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.11.005[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the contributions of these skills to spelling performance were stable over the years, suggesting an ongoing reliance on orthography/phonology mappings during spelling. RAN did not contribute to spelling performance in any of the grades, in contrast to its strong contribution to reading performance, suggesting that RAN captures a cognitive skill that is unique for reading acquisition.     

Strategic Planning,Performance Indicators,Research Policy: the New Issues Facing University Management

Higher education systems throughout the world are coming under the joint influences of continuing reduced resources, demand for research to solve short term economic problems, and the perceived value in the application of business models of management. These influences have given rise to several related movements: strategic planning, performance indicators, research policy. The paper provides a discussion of each of these movements.