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.     

A model for making decisions about ethical dilemmas in student assessment

In this mixed-methods study we investigated the development of a generalized ethics decision-making model that can be applied in considering ethical dilemmas related to student assessment. For the study, we developed five scenarios that describe ethical dilemmas associated with student assessment. Survey participants (i.e., educators) completed an online survey to express their decision-making process when faced with ethical dilemmas relating to student assessment. Based on the literature and the educators’ written responses to the scenarios, elements to consider in an ethics decision-making model related to student assessment include the following: (1) the critical incident giving rise to the ethical dilemma; (2) identification of the conflict elements; (3) decisions about the ethicality of the elements; (4) justification of the decisions; (5) implications; and (6) alternative suggestions. This model offers guidance to educators in considering the dimensions of an ethical dilemma in assessment prior to making a decision.     

A National Curriculum for Wales: A Case Study of Education Policy-Making in the Era of Administrative Devolution

The 1988 Education Reform Act legislated for a statutory curriculum in state-funded schools in England and Wales. This study explores how, out of a common curriculum framework for both countries, there emerged a school curriculum that was adapted to the distinctiveness of the linguistic and cultural context in Wales. The roles of those most closely involved in policy development in Wales are examined as is the relationship between the 'national' and 'territorial' arenas of policy-making in the months leading up to publication of the Education Reform Bill in November 1987. It is argued that a pragmatic approach to policy development in Wales during that period laid the foundations both for a reworking of the 1988 curriculum framework during the 1990s and for potentially more radical change following the 2002 Education Act.     

让传统人文素养滋润中学生的精神世界

新颁布的《普通高级中学语课程标准》强调了语教育的人性。利用中学言教学,充分发挥中国古代学这一民族瑰宝在人素质中的影响是加强和改进未成年人思想道德建设、提高学生人素质的有效途径之一。     

东西方家族企业“不同质”伦理动因之比较

家族企业的繁衍，在东西方各有其伦理动因，分属不同的文化。其伦理动因在家族企业的存在、发展之中，无论是作用的范围还是作用的程度均有较大差别，在对家族企业伦理动因现代价值的探讨中，涉及东西方家族企业伦理动因之比较就在所难免。不能以“叛离家庭”（或“以家为本”）与否，作为衡量东西方家族企业伦理动因差异的唯一标准和作为是否具有“优秀的文化基因”的判别标准。以“家为本位”特征的作为当代中国家族企业繁衍主要伦理动因的儒家家族主义，并不一定就不具有优秀的“文化基因”，而只具有否定的价值。     

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.     

明朝嘉靖以前中央政府对宣府镇的惠农政策

以农为本一直是封建王朝的执政理念.明朝嘉靖以前中央政府对宣府镇采取的一系列保护和发展农业的政策和措施,如减免租税、屯田垦荒、救灾复业等成为宣府镇农业经济发展的决定性因素.     

世纪之交高等师范院校面临的挑战与抉择

世纪之交的中国高等师范院校面临着严峻的挑战,其中最主要的挑战来自五方面：即社会主义市场经济对现代师范教育体制的冲击;知识经济时代对高素质教师的要求;基础教育的发展对提高师资学历层次和专业素质的迫切需要,名牌综合性大学兴办师范专业对现行师范教育体制格局的打破;国家近年对重点大学的政策倾斜和重点投入拉大了差距;这些挑战,对于高等师范校的未来前途,都具有决定性、根本性、全局性的影响。中国的高等师范院校应     

浅析中国近现代历史发展的两次重大转变

中国由半封建半殖民地社会转变为社会主义社会、由闭关自守局面转为对外开放局面，这是中国近现代以来最重大的两次转变。如果从全球化的视域中进行考察，可以看出全球化浪潮对这两次转变的影响非常大．全球化潮流是使中国发生这两次转变的深远背景。     

Expectations versus reality: the case of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong’s new senior secondary reforms

This article reports the findings of a five-year longitudinal study investigating the introduction of Liberal Studies in the context of Hong Kong’s new senior secondary educational reforms. The aim of this empirical research, which adopted diachronic analysis to allow comparisons over time, was to compare teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the Liberal Studies curriculum before and after its introduction. Methodologically speaking, the study was informed by documentary inquiry, with approximately 560 newspaper articles and government reports collected to identify the issues surrounding the curriculum debate. Questionnaire-based surveys conducted in the pre- and post-reform periods revealed a sharp contrast between expectations and reality for both participant groups following the curriculum’s introduction. Whilst the students demonstrated favourable attitudes towards Liberal Studies before studying the subject, a certain degree of disappointment was expressed after the new curriculum came into effect. In follow-up interviews with teachers, they expressed a lack of confidence in teaching such a multi-disciplinary subject and criticised the overly ambitious nature of the curriculum. Liberal Studies, as currently taught, runs the risk of falling out of favour with Hong Kong secondary school teachers, and the question of whether it will play an increasingly important role in promoting patriotic education after the demise of Moral and National Education is deserving of research attention.