新时期我院校园文化与兵工文化的对接

兵工文化是一种具有80年光辉历史的优秀文化,其求实献身的精神鼓舞着几代兵工人。我院长期隶属兵工行业,在兵工文化的巨大影响力下,形成了具有兵工特色的校园文化。校园文化对提升学校学生文化素养,扩大学校影响起到了积极的作用。新时期,兵工企业和学院都发生了本质的变化,"传承兵工文化",让兵工文化与校园文化紧密对接,提高"文化软实力",对促进学院又好又快发展具有现实意义。     

竞技体育强国视阈下的中国三大球发展研究

运用文献资料法,比较分析法分析我国三大球代表队参加奥运会的成绩,并与我国竞技优势项目的成绩对比,认为三大球项目应坚定不移地走职业化改革道路,实行体育法制化以促进职业体育的发展,重视后备人才的培养,加强训练理论和实践的探索。     

INVENTING THE CHARTERED TEACHER

ABSTRACT:  This paper explores the effects of enacting a collaborative and enquiry based model of teacher professionalism in the UK. Based on work with Chartered Teachers in Scotland, it indicates that the barriers to changing the basis of teacher professionalism are complex and multi-faceted because of the contested nature of teachers' work identities. Chartered Teacher status is achieved by qualification against an occupational standard which positions those who attain it as leading teachers, exerting a significant influence with their colleagues to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. This paper looks at some of the conceptual and practical difficulties faced by Chartered Teachers as they try to enact what this new 'status' means. It argues that those with an interest in the professional development of teachers need to position themselves as knowing agents in the complex systemic and political aspects of changing practice in schools.     

Regions and their relations: sustaining authoritative professional knowledge

The development and iteration of a body of professional knowledge appropriate to the demands of practice is a central concern of studies of professional education and work. This article concentrates on Bernstein’s notion of the ‘region’ of professional knowledge, identifying regions as complex socio-epistemic entities into which forms of knowledge are appropriated and transformed to meet the requirements of practice. In order to better understand the constitution of professional knowledge, there is a need to conceptualise how knowledge is recontextualised between regions, disciplinary ‘singulars’, and professional practice. Two variables, proximity and dominance, are introduced to illustrate how relations between regions, singulars and practice may vary, with implications for what is recontextualised into regions. In some professions, there are pressures for greater proximity between regions as a consequence of changes in work practices, while in others there is the potential for the dominance of recontextualisation processes by market and bureaucratic logics. It is suggested that actors within regions need to find ways to maintain authority over professional knowledge while avoiding the risks of control by bodies ill-equipped to maintain knowledge validity. The analysis provides a lens through which to view developments in the knowledge bases of professional, or professionalising, occupations, and concomitant changes in professional education.     

Uncertain pathways: foundation skills tutors and marginalised students in neoliberal times

This article deals with the work of polytechnic tutors on adult foundation programmes and describes how their work has been affected by the current neoliberal climate in the education sector. Inclusive neoliberalism is characterised by heightened regulation, reduced support for the public sector and a greater requirement for individual responsibility. The push to improve skills to meet labour demand is promoted as addressing social needs. Policies devised to promote these neoliberal values have led to numerous and far-reaching changes in adult education. In this study 73 foundation skills educators drawn from 8 institutions were interviewed to gain their insights into the effects of these policies. The article discusses three types of detrimental effects: the growing distrust between teaching staff and management; unsettling changes to institutional policy and its effects on staffing issues; and threats to the professionalism of teaching staff, the delivery of foundation studies, and the students themselves. Finally, the article suggests alternative possibilities for addressing these issues.     

Accountability and professionalism: a contradiction in terms?

Declining trust in public services has led to increasing calls for higher education to be ‘accountable’ for the quality of its teaching and learning provision. However, increasing levels of quality evaluation have led academics to feel that their professionalism is under attack. Reflecting on this history and various dimensions of accountability, this paper seeks to interpret accountability by addressing two questions: What is accountability in higher education? How can it be related to academic professionalism? The paper argues that professionalism and accountability appear to be contradictory terms, but can exist simultaneously. If academics' moral and social responsibility becomes requisite to an enhanced social accounting for the quality of university teaching and learning, there could be less perceived tension between academic professionalism and accountability.     

Establishing the overall service quality of engineering education: fuzzy logic approach

Measuring overall service quality (OSQ) is gaining prominence in higher education due to the increased competition among engineering education institutions (EEIs) and growing awareness about value for money among the public. Determination of OSQ on certain institutional aspects is done by various agencies throughout the world. Each system uses a different set of weighted indicators to measure the overall service quality of institutions. Five service quality factors, namely professionalism, integrated education, facilities, responsiveness and empathy are considered in the study. Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are used to determine the aggregate weights of the factors to handle the vagueness present in the linguistic values of the stakeholders’ subjective opinions. Final weights of the factors are assessed by taking the distances of each factor between Fuzzy Positive Ideal Rating and Fuzzy Negative Ideal Rating. An illustrative study is presented to determine the OSQ of EEIs. The results help to focus on the factors which need immediate attention to enhance the quality of EEIs.     

Observation of teaching and learning: teacher development or micropolitics and neo-Fordism

Ethnographic research in a further education college (College X) between 2000 and 2005 was designed to uncover the impact of the Common Inspection Framework (the inspection framework for all post-16 non-higher education and training) on the Observation of Teaching and Learning (OTL) process within the college. Such research indicated that the assumption of narrow pedagogies by observers of teaching, in line with the expectations of the college observation policy, had minimised the effectiveness of the process because it caused OTL to become neo-Fordist and micropolitical in nature rather than a means for lecturer development. This was the product of top-down policy and procedure within College X, but also an over-controlling local Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Ofsted inspection framework which limited the extent to which senior managers were able to accommodate different learning contexts within the OTL process. The clear implication of research in College X was that improvements in teaching and learning require inspection and observation processes to focus on subject-specific pedagogy and professional values rather than bureaucratic procedures and narrow pedagogies.     

Reclaiming professionalism for geography education: Defending our own territory

In a world where governments increasingly attempt to impose regulation on all professional activities, this paper advocates that professional standards for teachers be developed ‘by the profession for the profession’. Foucauldian archaeology is applied to two teacher standards documents recently published in Australia, one developed at national governmental level and the other by geography teachers through their professional associations. The excavation reveals that both students and geography teachers themselves are better served when teachers assert their own definition of professionalism and thus reclaim their professional territory, rather than being compliant with generic governmental agendas. Whilst we use Australia as an illustrative example, our findings are applicable to all other countries where governments attempt to impose external professional standards on the teaching profession.     

Reconceptualising professionalism in early childhood education: insights from a study carried out in Bologna

This paper explores the issue of early childhood professionalism from a socio-cultural perspective. In particular the article is concerned with how pre-school teachers conceptualise their professionalism by making sense of the work they carry out on an everyday basis in early childhood institutions. In analysing teachers’ perceptions special attention has been paid to the socio-political and historical conditions that have contributed to shaping them. Drawing on a recent empirical study conducted within Bologna province (Italy), contemporary issues in early childhood professionalism are analysed and insights for a possible re-conceptualisation are offered through a critical interpretation of teachers’ perspectives. The findings discussed in the article highlight how a complex conceptualisation of professionalism, building upon continuous learning in relational contexts, is currently challenged by recent neo-liberal influences. In facing these challenges a crucial role will be played by teachers’ collaborative practices in the workplace that, if reclaimed as a space for collective decision-making, could potentially become an arena for rethinking teachers’ professional development in dialogue with local communities.