Re-Learning American History: Understanding the Assumptions Underlying Intercultural Communication

Course: Intercultural Communication

Objectives: Students will challenge their assumptions about other cultures and question ethnocentric understandings of other cultures     

The third sector and the governance of education

This article explores the nature, scope and form of third-sector involvement in education in New Zealand as demonstrated through a comparison of its relationship with the state in two distinct periods of state and educational development. It begins with an analysis of the period of state expansion from crown colony to centralised administration in the mid-1870s. It then examines the relationship in the decade following the restructuring of education in 1989, as the neoliberal state negotiated economic changes at the national and supranational levels, and challenges to the existing educational organisation from both the political left and the political right. Although an almost mirror image of nineteenth-century arrangements is identified, the nature of the state/third-sector relationship was vastly different as a smaller, but nonetheless stronger, state retained control over the governance of education and, with it, possibilities and limitations for third-sector involvement.     

A Report on the American Environment

Abstract

Volunteers monitor watershed health in more than 700 programs in the US, involving over 400,000 local stakeholders. New Mexico Watershed Watch is a student-based watershed monitoring program sponsored by the state's Department of Game and Fish which provides high school teachers and students with instruction on methods for water quality monitoring, riparian habitat evaluation and watershed planning. Schools monitor small watersheds, assessing watershed health and water quality with an interdisciplinary approach that identifies impacts of land use. Students learn scientifically credible field methodologies to create long term databases on watershed health for use by state and federal agencies. Maps of land use, land ownership, soil stability, topography and human impacts are used in an overlay format to identify priority problem areas. Watershed plans are formulated to improve water quality and restore degraded riparian and upland sites.     

Are Environmental Professors Unbalanced? Evidence From the Field

Most outcomes assessment in higher education has focused on content knowledge or skills development; however, attitudinal change is also a legitimate focus of assessment. We use the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to test whether courses designed to meet the same university environmental literacy requirement changed student environmental attitudes, and whether these changes resulted from instructor and/or course-content effects. We found student environmental attitudes did change significantly but in different directions depending upon who taught the course. The ability to measure such changes adds to the discussion in the environmental education community on the desired nature of attitudinal change and of the responsibilities of higher education instructors.     

Evidence for the Validity of a Social Connectedness Scale: Connectors Amass Bridging Social Capital Online and Offline

One of the key characteristics of effective opinion leaders is that they are highly connected; they know many people and have numerous weak-tie relationships. Two studies were conducted that found evidence consistent with construct validity. The first (N = 35 and N = 57) found that connectors knew more people from a randomly selected list of names. A second study, with two surveys, was created (N = 561 and N = 189) such that the connectedness scores of some of the subjects in the first survey could be linked to how many subjects knew them in the second. Results indicated that those with higher connection scores were more likely to be known by others. Moreover, in the second survey, measures of Facebook use and bridging social capital were found to be associated substantially with connector scores.     

When prophecy fails

Inaccurate predictions about educational technology are discussed, and the tendency for them to go unchallenged. Their global generalizability is questionable when the expertise underlying them is restricted to local contexts or is unknown. The limitations of futuristic studies need to be stressed to prevent their conclusions from being applied out of context. Problems arise when studies inaccurately claiming to represent developing-world needs and conditions are used for educational planning in those nations. The article analyzes the predictions made by the annual Horizon Reports and the One Laptop Per Child project. It suggests that these projects are currently responding to criticism in a manner similar to that described in the classic study When Prophecy Fails.     

Like a Version: playing with online identities

The paper offers a neo‐Marxist framework of interculturalisation to accommodate the increasing cultural diversity in the internationalisation of higher education with specific reference to Chinese students in New Zealand. At present, there are few official strategies in place to provide for the needs of international students in New Zealand universities. Tolerance is often promoted to cope with differences in general, but this notion is not sufficient to embrace and encourage cultural diversity in higher education. The paper reviews neoliberal and neo‐Marxist perspectives of interculturalism/interculturalisation. In order to move beyond mere tolerance of cultural diversity, which is seen as a problem to be overcome, the paper concludes that a national and institutional policy for internationalisation in higher education should be underpinned by neo‐Marxist principles of interculturalism.     

Child‐Rearing Practices and Expert Identities: A tale of two interventions

Paul Smeyers’ keynote address to the PESA 2007 Conference, ‘The Entrepreneurial Self and Informal Education: On government intervention and the discourse of experts’ provides a timely call for questioning the governing of the family. This paper draws upon Smeyers’ key concerns to explore both historical and contemporary trends in clustering government agencies, under the guidance of child development experts. The guidance of two expert groups is problematised, with particular attention to an absence of commitment to Māori perspectives of education and child‐rearing. Such an absence reflects, in New Zealand, a dangerous undermining of the historic treaty between the British and Māori. The paper then challenges, with brief reference to Jacques Derrida's discussions on autobiography and Freud's Legacy, the identity of expert groups advocating early intervention in the lives of families measured as a burden on economic and social progress. The paper posits that perhaps it is the developmental expert that requires some form of early intervention.     

谈新形势下高职教育观念

人的行为都是受观念支配的,不同的思想观念,会产生不同的行为结果。我国的高等职业教育发展的时间不长,人才培养目标和办学模式等还在不断的探索创新,但新的形势不仅为职业教育发展提供了良好的机遇,但同时又面临严峻的挑战。面对高等职业教育快速发展的形势,我们的教育思想、人才培养的方案、培养的目标、课程内容的设计、教学的方法及全方位素质教育等观念必须与时俱进。     

学分制下高中实施体育选项教学存在问题及分析

2003年<普通高中新课程方案(实验)>正式颁布,这标志着普通高中课程改革全面启动.实施学分制是本次高中课程改革的一个重点,实施选项教学是体育课程改革的一大亮点和难点.通过文献资料法、访谈调查法、问卷调查法、实地考察法对实验区学校3年多选项教学实践中存在的问题进行调查与分析,发现主要存在学分制没有真正落实,学生选课具有盲目性,师资专项结构不合理,选项课等同于运动技能提高课等问题.