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.     

形成性评价与聋校语文教学

聋校语文教学大纲虽然对语文教学的目的提出了要求 ,但对具体教学的每一单元及课时应把握到何种程度 ,如何提高学生对单元及课时知识的掌握 ,尚缺乏明确可靠的衡量标尺。鉴如此 ,我们在近三年的教学中尝试运用布卢姆 :“掌握学习”理论 ,引入“单元形成性评价” ,取得了点滴成绩 ,现将有关探索及认识撰成此文     

校园网建设的策略及原则

该文针对目前各级各类学校建设校园网风靡全国的现状 ,提出了基于Internet的校园网建设的教育目的、策略、流程图 ,并进一步分析、总结、提出设计建设校园网的教育性原则及其他原则     

The “A” factor: Coming to terms with the question of legacy in South African education

This paper attempts to offer an alternative framework for assessing education delivery in South Africa. Its purpose is to develop an analytic approach for understanding education delivery in South Africa in the last 11 years and to use this framework to pose a set of strategic questions about how policy might be framed to deal with delivery. The paper begins with a quick review of the country's achievements and challenges in education and shows that a failure to produce a high quality education system remains the country's primary challenge. The broad approach that is taken is to suggest that dominant approaches for understanding this lack of performance underplay the specificity of the country's context and specifically so its apartheid legacy. This legacy, it is argued, continues to be determinative in shaping, and accounting for the character of current social behaviour in the country, including the performance of children in schools.     

远程教育的全球化趋势——论远程教育系统（四）

开放与远程教育的全球化趋势和现状，在趋同与一体化的同时，多元化与多样化是全球化中同时并存、相辅相成的两大趋势，中国加入世贸组织后，人才共享、教育共享将加速中国的现代化进程，同时使我们对人类明的进步作出更大的贡献。     

利用现代教育技术实现优质本科教育

通过在教学过程中对美国优质本科教育七原则的实践,提出有效运用现代教育技术,辅助传统课堂教学,构建教师指导下的以学生为中心的新型教学模式,以实现优质本科教育。     

论修女对西欧中世纪文化的贡献

西欧中世纪的修女院同男修道院一样,是当时的文化教育中心,受到系统教育的修女们在文化领域取得了一定成就,主要表现在:从事教育和传教事业;抄写手稿,装帧书籍,保存文化典籍;著书立说,其作品包括神秘主义著作、书信、戏剧、诗歌、音乐等。修女们之所以能取得这些成就,既与当时的社会大环境有关,也源于她们献身上帝、服务他人的信念和个人的天资与努力。     

Eye movement analysis of information processing under different testing conditions

The study reported herein was designed to use eye movement data, collected during solution of complex figural analogies, to test the premise that enhanced feedback mechanisms and opportunities for dual coding of figural stimulus information result in the allocation of an increased percentage of information-processing resources to rule application activities. Subjects were given items from the Advanced Progressive Matrices under elaborated feedback, subject verbalization, or standard procedures. Results indicate that elaborative testing conditions, involving elaborated feedback or subject verbalization, enhance the rule-governed nature of information processing during inductive reasoning by augmenting feedback and dual coding.     

Does prior mathematics knowledge really lead to variation in elementary statistics performance? Evidence from a developing country

A model incorporating prerequisite mathematics performance and other variables deemed to be associated with learning elementary statistics (ES) is developed. The relationship between ES performance and the explanatory variables is well represented by the logistics form. Aptitude, effort and motivation are the only significant explanatory variables of ES performance. Since prerequisite mathematics is not significant, statistical thinking at the tertiary level may be mostly intuitive and non-mathematical. Students with low aptitude experience increasing returns to effort over the first half of the feasible effort interval, while high-aptitude students experience diminishing returns at all levels of effort. The levels of effort required to achieve a minimum pass are interpreted.