Agonistic democracy and passionate professional development in teacher-leaders

Politicians and policy-makers in education routinely proclaim the centrality of schools and teachers in sustaining and consolidating democracy and democratic society. This article offers an account of teachers engaged in research in their schools and classrooms, with peers and students, so as to highlight the democratic potential of this engagement. In order to do so, it draws on an agonistic account of democracy that is distinct from more familiar liberal or procedural versions. Such an account is characterised by an emphasis on the values of constitutive pluralism, robust contestation and enduring tragedy, where the latter entails recognition of the ineliminable nature of (political) conflict and the inevitability of loss in human life. The teachers involved in this research demonstrated capacities which, it is argued, reflect an agonistic democratic ethos, including: developing the confidence to assume intellectual leadership by asking questions and eliciting and engaging plural perspectives in relation to these questions; engagement in the cut and thrust of research without the expectation of finding any final or perfect solutions; and an acceptance of difference and disagreement as constitutive and constructive elements in rethinking areas of policy and practice. Developing and encouraging these capacities, it is argued, is important in an increasingly authoritarian policy context that threatens the vital links between democracy and education highlighted by Dewey a century ago.     

再论教育创新与教师素质

教育创新是教育改革与发展的战略选择，是马克思主义教育思想在中国的新发展，它是时代赋予教育事业新的历史使命。作为教育创新主体的教师，要从贯彻落实“三个代表”要求的高度，提高自身素质，增强推进教育创新的自觉性和坚定性。     

The promises and limitations of international comparative research on teacher education

This article revisits methodological perspectives on international comparative research on teacher education (TE). Benefits and problems related to comparative educational research methodology in general are discussed. Further, methodological issues associated with designing and carrying out an international comparative study on TE are addressed using a multi-level study on teacher education in Finland and Norway an as example. Towards the end of the article, the promises and limitations of international comparative research on TE are presented. Important benefits of comparative education on TE include widening the understanding of one’s own and other TE systems as well as gaining an understanding of international trends. However, uncritical use of such research may lead to decontextualised, ahistorical and standardised transfer and development of education and educational policies. The article concludes by urging researchers in the field of international comparative research on teacher education to address the questions: What is being compared? How is context addressed?     

用教育技术引领教育改革——论我国教育技术的定位(二)

教育技术是一项解决教育问题的系统技术,可用于推动教育、教学的各个层面上的改革。但二十多年来,由于认识受限,定位不当,我国这一领域的工作偏重于硬件设施建设与服务、教育媒体制作、教学方法改革等方面,且这些活动大部分在战术层面上开展,教育技术没有发挥更大的作用。当前,我们应关注在战略层面上实施教育技术,追求“效果、效率和效益”,即教育绩效,这是我国穷国办大教育的国情所要求的。战略优先,战术配合,战略战术互动,促进教育整体改革,落实科学发展观,这应成为信息化进程中我国教育技术高起点新发展的指导思想,成为我国教育技术学科知识体系构建研究的基本思路。用教育技术引领教育改革,在宏观层面上应重视需要的评估和系统规划,确保“做对的事情”;在中观层面上要推广教学系统设计,在微观层面上要加强对研究成果的运用,确保“把事情做对”。目前我国教育技术界电教人员或计算机科学人员的工作仅是教育技术的一个组成部分,教育技术也是各级教育管理者和广大教师的共同事业。     

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.     

2003年全国高考中两道立体几何试题的评析

据改卷同志的介绍，今年高考中，理科的立几题得分率很低。为此。本文从解法分析着手．对此题作了深入地探讨，并提出了改进的意见。     

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。     

现代远程教育校外学习中心模式及对自学考试的启示

我国的现代远程教育经过近十年的发展,已经取得了很大的成绩。校外学习中心模式已经逐步建立起来,并已成为支撑远程教育的重要形式之一。校外学习中心模式吸收了国外开放大学学习中心模式的精髓,有着明显的中国特色。本文从"学习中心"的起源、职能、运行模式等方面对校外学习中心模式进行了全面的分析,并提出该模式对自学考试完善社会化学习支持服务体系在两方面有重要启示作用。一是,校外学习中心市场化的运作模式及其组织保障系统;二是,服务的思想和力度可以通过学习中心模式得到更好的实现和加强。     

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.