Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.     

设计性物理实验教学模式研究与探索

分析教学模式的实质和特点,针对传统物理实验教学模式存在的问题,结合设计性物理实验特点,研究适合设计性物理实验的教学模式,并在教学实践中进行探索和实践,以提高学生的实验能力和综合素质。     

Contradictions of time in collaborative school research

The sustainability of research-based innovations in schools is constrained not only by systemic institutional barriers and inherent contradictions between schooling and research, but also by the related issue of time. This case study suggests that relative timescales, e.g., the collective activity of schooling over decades versus the individual actions of researchers over semesters or years, hinder the coordination and synchronization of schooling and research processes. Using cultural–historical activity theory and heterochrony, this analysis of data from a 4-year collaborative school-university research and development project suggests that, in spite of active support from school personnel, temporal conflicts undermined research activity and the sustainability of the innovation. At the same time, when researchers aligned their actions with the actions and timescales of school personnel, core elements of the innovation were appropriated into school practice.

Common legacy,different paths: the transformation of educational systems in the Czech Republic,Slovakia, Hungary and Poland

The goal of this work is to better understand the institutional changes in the educational systems of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We demonstrate that the educational reforms implemented during the transformation introduced very different institutional arrangements in the four countries, despite the fact that their systems shared many common characteristics at the beginning of the 1990s. Differences between the national approaches to educational reforms are particularly reflected in the modes of education decentralisation, the level of school autonomy, accountability and funding mechanisms. We believe that different institutional arrangements may have contributed to the divergent achievements of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland in the PISA programme.     

论教育考试公正的内涵与实质

教育考试公正是教育考试的生命线,也是社会公正的重要体现。本文在讨论公正的一般内涵和实质基础上,着重研究教育考试公正的理论内涵和社会实质。文章认为,教育考试公正就是组考者通过考试使可能的应试者得其所应得,或者说使可能的应试者各得其所,其社会实质在于:它是教育公正的基本前提,是社会公正的重要体现,是社会资源合理分配的基础方式,是个人潜能合理开发的保证机制。文章提出,不能仅仅从教育考试本身来认识教育考试公正的必要性和重要性,而要从整个社会的宏观视野、站在人类更好地生存和发展的高度来认识教育考试公正问题。     

教育信息化建设规划主要原则的探讨

教育信息化日益成为教育、教学、管理水平和能力的标志,是提高教学、管理水平和能力的重要手段,也深刻地改变着教育的管理模式和管理理念,为教育现代化提供了必不可少的保障。如何在教育信息化建设过程中坚持科学发展观,把握信息化的规划原则,是信息化建设工作必须解决的问题,本文为此作出了探讨。     

Education on population matters in Europe: results from a comparative survey among students in five European countries

In 1996–1997, within the framework of the European Observatory for Population Education and Information, a comparative survey was conducted among students in final classes of secondary education in several European countries. On the one hand, the survey attempted to assess the effects of education on population in terms of knowledge acquired; the issues addressed in the questionnaire pertained to knowledge of demographic facts and trends (such as the ageing of Western societies and immigration). On the other hand it tried to ascertain students' opinions on demographic trends. What are young people's views on intergenerational solidarity, how tolerant are they towards immigrants, what are their views on recent changes in family structures? This knowledge is important since it is young people's attitudes and future behaviour that will help to shape both the social tissue and the economic prosperity of the European and world population. In this article we present a comparative analysis of survey results obtained in five European countries. We examined the question whether knowledge acquired in the course of scolarisation influences opinions. The results evidence a significant relationship between knowledge of the migrants' issue and attitudes of tolerance towards migrants. By means of multivariate analyses, the impact of factors such as social origin, study orientation and gender on both students' knowledge and attitudes, are investigated. We conclude that adequate educational training on population issues can have a significant positive impact on attitudes of tolerance.     

浅析校园文化对人才培养的作用

章通过对校园化的分析和研究，阐述了校园化对人才培养的重要作用，主要认为：校园化是学生从“大中学生”到“小大学生”过度的桥梁；校园化是联结个人与集体，学校与的纽带；校园化是青年学生走向成熟的重要途径，等等。     

Educational Research for Policy and Practice in Japan – With Particular Reference to Youth Education

Based upon the Fundamental Law of Education, Japanese school education system has long been a source of pride for the country as a result of the high school participation rate, the homogeneity of compulsory education throughout the country. However, the confidence of the people in its schools is now showing severe signs of strain and fatigue. In recent years, there have been many reports about the growing seriousness of a number of educational problems having to do with young people in their childhood and adolescence. Since the mid-1970s, a number of problems have been highlighted. They include violent behavior, juvenile crimes, bullying, refusal to attend school, dropping out at secondary level of education, and corporal punishment. Against the above background, based on recommendations from such advisory bodies as the Central Council for Education and the National Commission on Education Reform, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has adopted a range of policies and launched a series of educational reform programmes. For instance, what is called “Rainbow Plan”, based on the final report submitted by the National Commission on Education Reform, provides the country with basic guidelines for the educational reform in the near future. Roles of educational research for making policies have been of significance. Research initiated by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) and the National Federation of Educational Policy Research Institutes (NFERI) is an example of contributions to the development of educational qualities in the country. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Conceptual ecologies for educational research through Deleuze,Guattari and Whitehead

This article will explore the increasing interest in the application of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Alfred North Whitehead to educational research, for example, as a conceptual underpinning for inquiry in the new materialisms, and/or educational posthumanism. The exploration of this paper is complicated by the fact that Deleuze and Guattari changed their philosophical position in their dual publications, with, for example, their last book: What is Philosophy? representing a substantial departure from their rhizomatic work in, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. This article will explain the changes in position with reference to the mapping of conceptual ecologies that Deleuze and Guattari are describing through their philosophy, and not dualism. Concept creation appears in the analysis of Western philosophy in: What is Philosophy? and as the job of philosophy. In contrast, A Thousand Plateaus presents a whole raft of interrelated concepts that help explain the connections between capitalism and schizophrenia, but do not present ‘concept creation’ as a positive task as such, even though one could impute that they are successfully doing it. This article will explain these changes in positioning of Deleuze and Guattari as a mode of sophisticated conceptual ecology, which takes into account the work that they want their concepts to perform. Transcribed to educational research, ‘concept creation’ is an importantly non-methodological task, which is augmented and expanded with reference to the metaphysics of Whitehead’s process philosophy (a non-method), and how it has been taken up, for example, by Isabelle Stengers in terms of research positioning and science.