Community projects and excluded young people: reflections on a participatory narrative research approach

Inclusive education over the last decade has become a frequently used concept in the international literature and has been accorded legitimacy through various international declarations. In India, it has gained currency with its usage in government documents, in schools and in the popular media. This paper reviews the literature in the field of inclusive education in the Indian context with an aim to elucidate the different perspectives in its understandings and various conflicts in its conceptualization, while identifying significant gaps. The paper begins by adopting a chronological approach, tracing the development of this concept. Further engagement with the literature attempts to seek answers to questions such as who is included, into what they are included and why they are included. Based on reflections gathered from the literature, it is noted that the field of inclusive education is driven by a rather narrow and limiting perspective. It is therefore argued that inclusive education must be regarded as an approach encompassing the broader education system. Only when understood as such, can we fulfil our goal of education for all.     

Should We Teach Children to be Open-Minded? Or,is the Pope Open-Minded about the Existence of God?

The recommendation that we encourage children to be open-minded has been gathering strength. Yet given the everyday meaning of 'being open-minded about something', we may decide to reject this recommendation because it proscribes teaching and learning. There again, recent philosophical accounts of open-mindedness seem to oppose everyday meaning and lead to the absurd conclusion that the Pope is open-minded about the existence of God. This paper suggests two ways of looking at these problems, the second of which reconciles ordinary usage with open-mindedness as a desirable educational objective.     

Challenges to Academic Values and the Organization of Academic Work in a Time of Globalization

With the ongoing Bologna Process in mind, the author analyzes the effects of globalization on the academic world. In so doing, he traces the origins of globalization, arguing that it is not as new a phenomenon as one might think. He then analyzes the interactions of academic work and globalization and of academic values and globalization. Focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, the author proposes that the negative effects of the communist period on higher education in the region have stimulated a greater awareness of the fragility of traditional academic values than may be the case elsewhere, and a heightened desire to protect them. At the same time, the experience of communism (and now of transition) seems to have imparted great flexibility and pragmatism to higher education in the region as it responds to the challenges of globalization. Still, globalization is highly challenging to European higher education, East and West.     

The Body Disciplined: Rewriting Teaching Competence and the Doctrine of Reflection

Shortly after the publication of The Reflective Practitioner (1983) and the sequel Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987) 'reflection-in-action' became a major concept in teacher education. The concept has, however, been criticised on ontological/epistemological as well as practice oriented accounts ( Van Manen, 1995; Newman, 1999 ; Erlandson, 1995). In this paper I argue that reflection-in-action is a theoretical construction that snatches the interacting, working, and producing bodies from their practices, and consequently, matters of politics, of discipline, of institutional interaction and of the workings of social categories are reduced to matters of thinking. Turning to Foucault (1991) I claim that the doctrine of reflection is interwoven in the logic of discipline.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books Reviewed in this Article: Statistics For Biologists. School Census and Resource Pack. Statistics Concepts and Controversies. A Question in Dispute. The Design of Experiments: Statistical principles of practical application.     

How Psychological Education Can Promote Mental Health with Competence

After citing research indicating that competence is a necessary condition of mental health, this article defines cognitive competence as a crucial form of mastery, attempts to show how it develops, illustrates how mental health depends on this capacity, and briefly sketches out four conditions psychological education curriculums can provide for facilitating students' acquisition of cognitive competence.     

敦煌研究院旧藏一叶回鹘文《阿毗达磨顺正理论》残叶及其相关问题研究

敦煌研究院藏有一批不同文种的各类文献,内有不少回鹘文文献.本文首次对其中一叶回鹘文《阿毗达磨顺正理论》进行原文转写、汉译和注释,并就相关问题进行探讨.     

Teacher Education in Germany

The concepts of idealism, individualism and pragmatism represented in the scenario-model of the ATEE-RDC19 are applied to teacher education in Germany. In respect to idealism the marked scholarly approach of the current German training system and its organisational problems are discussed. With regard to individualism and pragmatism the paper deals with the special psychological demands on students made by teacher training with an individualistic or pragmatic orientation. Finally, the relevance of the psychological problem is shown with regard to reform models that are currently debated in Germany.