Internal review and self-evaluation — the chosen route to school improvement in ireland?

In recent years there has been an intense debate in many countries concerning the best approach to improving schools. The various methods being tried might be reasonably seen as constituting a continuum ranging from strict external control and inspection at one end, to self-evaluation and internal regulation at the other. In practice, most education systems appear to be moving towards a combination of these methods, involving a degree of external monitors of internal self-evaluation mechanisms. This article analyses the gradual emergence in the Irish education system of such an accommodation. It charts the increased emphasis being placed upon school self-evaluation and argues that it does constitute the best way forward. However, it also highlights a major lacuna at the heart of the emerging system, namely the lack of firm data on which schools can really base effective improvement strategies.     

初中英语教材Learning English使用调查分析

初中英语教材Learning English体现了新的教学理念和教学方法。通过调查、分析本套教材使用已取得的初步成效和存在的问题，提出促进对新教材、新教法的理解和认识,更好地推广使用的建议。     

Qualitative data analysis in cross‐cultural projects

Large‐scale research projects, conducted in a cross‐European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy‐makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it prioritizes a full range of qualitative research strategies. This paper outlines the use of a universal model and the approaches recently taken by two research teams and contrasts these with another recent nine‐partner comparative European study that used ethnographic methods. We then describe the analytical procedures used in the project, which encouraged participant observation and individual researcher interpretation in order to generate grounded accounts and outline how they were culturally sensitive and meaningful to research teams who used varied analytical approaches. However, this raised difficult issues for the ‘final’ analysis and the production of a loosely coupled research report. Our pragmatic solution was a process of ‘qualitative synthesis’ whereby individual partner reports were collated by the Project Director and treated as data and a grounded theory approach was applied to generate tentative theory in respect of creative learning. The paper concludes by arguing that data generated by a loosely coupled approach to qualitative comparative research which uses a wide range of data collection methods can be effectively analysed with a qualitative synthesis.     

Open Learning and New Technologies in Teacher Education: new paradigms for development

This paper suggests that teacher education is undergoing significant transformation. In most countries there is a recognition that the quality and extent of provision will need to be raised. Open and distance education, utilising new interactive forms of technology, will have a crucial, perhaps major, role to play in this process. The school will act increasingly as a ‘site’ for learning within evolving models of initial and in‐service teacher education. All forms of teacher education will exploit new technologies. There will be an increasing convergence between conventional and open and distance modes of delivery. New assessments of costs and effectiveness will need to be made. Changes in technology has rendered ‘out‐of‐date’ much of the previous evaluative evidence. National and international expertise in open and distance education, new methodologies and teacher education will need to be developed.     

The Reconstruction of Primary Teachers' Identities

Primary teachers have had to reconstruct their identities in response to the reconstruction of the education system. The holism, humanism and vocationalism of the old Plowden self-identity has been challenged by a new assigned social identity signalled in the assault on child-centred philosophy, the diminution of elementary trust, and changes in the teacher role. These challenges have thrown up new dilemmas for teachers, and represent 'fateful moments' in the careers of their identities. In trying to resolve the dilemmas, teachers have engaged in identity work, characterised mainly by identity talk, and a number of emotional and intellectual strategies. The result has been a partitioning of the old Plowden self-identity, with the 'real self' being largely withheld from the new personal identity and the sense of vocationalism being set to one side. The new personal identity in teaching represents a more instrumental and situational outlook, with the substantial self finding more expression elsewhere. Identity work is still in progress and seems set to continue while teachers have to find ways of relating to two or more competing discourses.     

Putting higher education in its place in (East Asian) political economy

ABSTRACT

This article relates changes in higher education (HE) and research in East Asian societies to recent trends in political economy and, in particular, the reorientation of developmental states (DSs) in the region. The DS is oriented to catch-up competitiveness and, as the horizon of development shifts, so do its appropriate institutional forms and strategies. Catch-up competitiveness is guided by economic imaginaries, often linked to geoeconomic, geopolitical, and broader societal imaginaries, whose hegemony depends on particular discursive and disciplinary practices. The shift in the roles of HE and research is related to the reorientation of DSs from export-oriented, investment-led growth to knowledge-intensive, investment-led growth, supplemented in some cases by efforts to create international financial hubs to exploit a global trend towards financialisation. These themes are explored through comparison of selected East Asian economies/societies. The article ends with some general conclusions about the state's continuing role in HE and its internationalisation in the region.     

Making it Happen: a personal account of a teacher education aid project in the Solomon Islands

Secondary teacher education in the Solomon Islands has been non‐existent since an early attempt was abandoned a decade ago. An international aid project now has attempted to implement a carefully wrought plan. This article outlines the plan, describes what actually happened when the plan was implemented, and proposes some principles which might be useful in guiding the efforts of future project managers charged with the responsibility of making things happen in a culture other than their own.