Reconceptualising educational assessment in South Africa — testing times for teachers

This paper explores some of the problems arising when Continuous Assessment (CA) is grafted onto established pedagogic practices. It focuses on three issues: teachers' restricted understandings of assessment, teachers' emphasis on criteria that demonstrate concern with social control, and some of the problems connected with peer assessment. Two vignettes derived from fieldwork associated with a project to improve the quality of primary education are used to raise the issues. We argue that the development of desired practices is hampered above all by tacit values in tension with those underpinning the new curriculum. These values, together with the complexity of curriculum design, create serious problems of manageability and interpretation, which can only be addressed through detailed interactive in-service training, aimed at reconceptualising teachers' notions of assessment.     

Academic libraries and university presses

In recent years university presses have undergone some significant changes, such as expansion of their scope to include materials that may have appeal beyond the scholarly market. This article investigates, through the use of a survey of university libraries, the acquisition of university press products by libraries. In general, recent years have been changes in the relationship between university presses and libraries that have resulted in fewer items being purchased by the libraries.     

Children are not Meant to be Studied …

The project of studying children in order to understand them, which lies at the heart of contemporary thinking about children and their education, is misconceived. It rests, jrst of all, upon a false belief that we can only come to know something properly by deliberately and systematically pursuing knowledge of it. Secondly, it offers a paradigm of knowing children which justifies parents and teachers in not giving themselves to children. By re-interpreting the problems that adults experience with children as technical, as arising from lack of information about them, it ignores the personal and moral dimension of adults' relations with children and thus further alienates them from one another.     

Creating a Binary Policy in Austria

In 1993, the Government of Austria passed legislation establishing a 'binary policy' in higher education. A new accrediting body the Fachhochschulrat was created, empowered to accredit vocationally oriented courses in any institution seeking to offer them. Institutions meeting certain conditions will be entitled to seek designation as Fachhochschulen. The policy marks an important departure from the traditionally highly regulated and centralized system of policymaking in Austria. The article offers an analysis of the factors leading to the policy and analyses the implications for the future. It draws on the author's experience as a member of a team of examiners from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) undertaking a policy review of Austrian higher education, and points to lessons for Austria from the United Kingdom's experience over the last 25 years.     

Publisher and author partnerships: a changing landscape

This article discusses the changing relationships of authors and publishers, the current trends and challenges they face, and the direction of these relationships in the future. As the STM publishing industry finds itself in the midst of significant technological and economic changes, this article provides background to these changes and looks at the key elements, including open access business development, institutional repository trends, and emerging public financing policies in the future.