The American faculty in an age of globalization: predictors of internationalization of research content and professional networks

A steady stream of studies on high-stakes tests such as University Entrance Examinations (UEEs) suggests that high-stakes tests reforms serve as the leverage for promoting quality of learning, standards of teaching, and credible forms of accountability. However, such remediation is often not as effective as hoped and success is not necessarily ensured. As reasons for such a failure were mostly studied after implementation or at completion phase of a reformed test, i.e., a-posteriori scrutinies, there remain theoretical and analytical gaps regarding policy/planning phase, i.e., a-priori explorations. To contribute toward ameliorating this problem, the present study, based on in-depth interviews with 14 policymakers and proponents of the UEEs reform, detailed their conceptualization of this change in terms of the underlying policies, prospects, and perspectives. The analysis came up with three major frameworks: ‘conceptual image of the intended impacts’, ‘paradigm shift from psychometrics traditions to edumetrics culture’, and ‘ulterior challenges of transition’. The analytic glance further provided corroborating links to two global perspectives on assessment: political and technological perspectives. The findings are suggestive that the technological challenges of the current change intersect with the policies that still envisage the same ‘selecting function’ for the UEE’s alternative. This would thwart the success rate of the ideals or desirable changes aimed by the ‘directing function’ of this reform. The a-priori planning analysis is, thus, noteworthy given that it becomes a terrain for examining the formulated policies and the intended practices, and for evidencing how policy influences and is influenced by the reals of practice.     

A cognitive approach to threshold concepts

This paper asks a fundamental question: what is happening inside the mind of the undergraduate during teaching and learning experiences, and how should curricula be designed to support it? A number of concepts lend themselves to providing an answer, principle among which is the relatively recent idea of Threshold Concepts. In this paper we attempt to critically evaluate both the ‘product’ and ‘process’ of Threshold Concepts and subject the idea to a stress test by comparing it to the longer established Schema Theory of Learning. This mapping enabled a novel empirical study involving undergraduate civil engineering students to be performed. The methods derived from Schema Theories of learning provide a set of findings that compliment and strengthen certain key areas of Threshold Concepts, as well as leading to the development of some interesting principles of curriculum design.     

Educational policy for citizenship in the early years in Australia

Understandings of young children as active and capable citizens, while evident in discourses of early childhood education and research, are not widely reflected in the policy for the early years of schooling in Australia. This paper makes an analysis of the gaps and tensions between discourses of young children as active citizens and policy for citizenship education at the national level in Australia and at the Queensland State level. There is a widespread discourse within early childhood that regards young children as citizens and democratic participants in their own lives, as a reflection of the oft-cited Article 12 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, educational policy and curriculum for citizenship in Australia, by and large, adheres to age and stage understandings of children that deem young children unable to conceptualise and/or articulate ideas of what it means to ‘be a good citizen’. We ask which discourses are being harnessed in educational policy for citizenship in Australia, what discourses are silenced or ignored and what this tells us about how young children are thought about in Australian politics and education.     

“Encouragement of sound education amongst the industrial classes”: mechanics’ institutes and working-class membership 1838–1881

Historians and educationalists have often assumed that working-class adult education emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century with the introduction of state-funded technical colleges. This was not the case. In 1823, the Glasgow Mechanics’ Institute was opened and within a few years similar institutions were being established across the whole of Britain. This culminated in the formation of the mechanics’ institute movement which provided a foundation on which further education was established. This paper questions the generally accepted view of historians that mechanics’ institutes made little contribution to adult working-class education, instead offering scientific knowledge to the middling classes. It addresses the issue of what educational impact the mechanics’ institutes exerted upon the adult working classes in relation to some North of England institutes, particularly those that were members of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’ Institutes. The term working class only begins to emerge during the 1830s, the period when several institutes were being established, and for the purpose of this paper, the works of E.P. Thompson, E.J. Hobsbawm and R.S. Neale, with regard to class, and the lists of the occupations of those who attended mechanics’ institutes, from the annual reports of the Yorkshire Union, form the basis of the debate, confirming that such institutions did indeed provide working-class adult education.     

Assessing Emphasis on Aging in Social-Work Curricula in the United States

The number of Americans over 65 will more than double, from 34.8 million in 2000 to 70.3 million in 2030. The coming decades will bring about unprecedented demand for social services for the elderly. In this paper we assess the response of the social-work profession to the demand for trained social workers with course work in the broad field of aging. Nearly 30% of master-level programs in social work were selected. Content analysis of the curricula offered through these programs was performed. The objective was to evaluate the share of the gerontologically oriented courses in social-work curricula. Findings suggest that the emphasis in social-work curricula content dealing with one of the fastest growing sectors of our population is limited in currently accredited programs. We found an overall average of 3 courses, mostly offered as electives.     

Context and history: Using a capabilities-based social justice perspective to explore three generations of western Turkish female teachers’ lives

The purpose of this paper is to understand historically and contextually the well-being and agency of selected female teachers in Turkey. The paper develops a justice model based on the capability approach to build on the relation between freedom and equality, and to take gender and cultural diversity as a key element. The research draws on results from in-depth biographical narratives of 15 participants from west Turkey, examining the real freedoms and opportunities of three different generations of female teachers through constructing a gendered look into women's lives. The study begins by developing a framework linking women's opportunities and freedoms drawing its normative compass from Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. It explores how female teachers’ well-being can be understood in relation to key capabilities that individuals, communities and society have reason to value and how these capabilities and functionings can be expanded or constrained. The paper argues for the significance of thinking about capabilities in the professional lives of teachers who work for social change. Through a historical and generational sequence, it captures the egalitarian aspects of the capability approach, and strengthens its emphasis on freedoms of women. The findings of this enquiry indicate that there are persistent economic, cultural, ethnical, structural and gendered inequalities in women's lives, but that women also have agency to bring changes in their lives and through their teaching.