Great Expectations? Childhood,Family, and Middle-Class Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century England

ABSTRACT

Existing histories of social mobility have focused on adults and on measuring the achievement of individual upward mobility. However, children and families were central to mobility strategies. Using the papers of the Heywoods of Bolton, this article examines how the families of the industrial middle class endowed their offspring with the goods and character needed to secure their social standing, highlighting the emotional intricacy of these processes. It demonstrates that such families conceived of social mobility as a familial project and that rather than pursuing upward mobility, their chief objective was to guard against social decline.     

‘Educare’ in Australia: analysing policy mobility and transformation

Abstract

Background: Early childhood education and care has been an area of significant policy attention, public investment and private market activity in Australia over the past three decades. Australian educationists and policy-makers have looked to international examples for evidence, policy design and institutional models. However, this area is under-researched in Australia, with regard to how these knowledge flows are theorised, and how policy is implemented on the ground.

Purpose: The paper’s purpose was to contribute new Australian-focussed conceptual and empirical insights on the trajectories, development and implementation of evidence-based policy in the field of early childhood education and care.

Sources of evidence: The paper is based on three main sources of evidence: ? the critical literature on policy transfer and policy mobility

? policy statements, reports and planning documents produced by national- and state-level governments

? data from fieldwork analysis of new capital works and programmes in the early childhood field.

Main argument: International research and evidence on the benefits of investment in early learning has had a significant impact on the framing of Australian policy. So too has a move in several countries to align early childhood institutions with schools. However, a dominant paradigm of policy transfer, reliant on pluralist and rationalist frameworks of policy-making, fails to account for the dynamics of policy development and implementation across and within jurisdictions and geographical space. Conceptualising a new alignment in Australia between children’s centres and schools as ‘educare’, this article employs the theoretical lens of policy mobility to account for the circulation and transformation of educare policy in Australian settings. Through an empirical analysis of a new educare centre in the growth corridor of western Melbourne, the article demonstrates the extent to which neoliberal policy settings outside the educational sphere, around public finance, partnership, place and infrastructure provision, influence the implementation of ‘educare’ policy.

Conclusions: The educare discourse in Australia addresses a complex and multiscalar set of policy problems that associate child development with concerns around human capital formation, economic efficiency and productivity, place making and community building, and the role of the public sector in neoliberal democracies. International circuits of knowledge, policy design and institutional models in the educare field have been significant in shaping recent Australian policy, despite well-publicised views expressed in Australia on the disconnection between academic research and policy. The strength of policy mobility as a theoretical lens to assist our understanding of these influences lies in its critique of formalism in policy-making and in its attention to fluidity and transformation. The mobility lens encourages new empirical research that focuses on spatial and institutional dynamics, assisting our reading of on-the-ground developments in Australia’s fastest growing city.     

投资者情绪对定向增发折价的影响研究

利用2006年至2010年第3季度的定向增发事件作为研究样本,着重分析投资者情绪对定向增发折价的影响及其作用路径。研究发现:投资者情绪对定向增发折价影响显著,投资者情绪越乐观(悲观),定向增发折价越大(小);投资者情绪对定向增发折价的影响路径分析表明,市场错误定价是投资者情绪和定向增发折价间的中介变量;进一步研究显示,定向增发题材对市场错误定价影响显著,定向增发后股票出现低估的可能性增加。     

MATLAB仿真软件在现代控制理论课程教学中的应用

以实例介绍了MATLAB仿真软件在现代控制理论课程教学中的应用。为适应新形势下现代控制理论课程的教学。尝试将MATLAB仿真软件中的SIMULINK工具引入现代控制理论的课堂教学中,借助于SIMULINK可视化的编程和仿真演示,将抽象的理论和概念变得更为通俗易懂,加深了学生对基础理论的认识和理解,也培养了学生系统综合分析设计的能力,并且为学生今后使用MATLAB进行控制系统设计打下了基础。     

当代中国阶层固化趋势探析--基于马克斯·韦伯的阶层理论

近年来,“二代”现象的层出不穷反映了我国社会阶层明显的固化趋势。阶层固化会使社会失去生机,造成对立情绪,不利于社会公平的实现和长久的稳定发展。因此,文章从马克斯＆#183;韦伯的阶层理论出发,分析了阶层固化趋势的成因,并提出相应的对策。     

基于义务教育均衡发展对开展教师流动的思考——以浙江省嘉善县开展教师流动为例

实现义务教育的均衡发展除了财政的硬件投入以外,教师的整体素质的提高尤为重要,而教师流动是实现优化教师队伍的很重要的途径。文章以嘉善县为例,进行了深入的调研,发现嘉善县为了确保义务教育的均衡发展,数年来开展教师流动工作,并取得了卓有成效的成绩,希望嘉善县的作法可以为相关部门提供借鉴作用。