Promoting retention and successful completion on Masters courses in education: a study comparing e‐tuition using asynchronous conferencing software with face‐to‐face tuition

This paper considers the influence of e‐tuition using an asynchronous written conferencing package, FirstClass, upon retention and success rates for Masters‐level courses in a distance learning programme as compared with similar courses that were supported in a traditional manner using face‐to‐face tuition. The paper investigates the common assumption that the use of e‐tuition might negatively influence both retention and success rates by studying data gathered on UK Open University Masters courses in education. These data have allowed direct comparisons between e‐tutored and face‐to‐face tutored courses to be made. The effect of linking assessment to participation in activities using FirstClass is also considered in this study. This research has revealed that e‐tutoring using FirstClass appears to have no significant positive or negative influence on either retention or success on such courses.     

Age,gender, ethnicity and the digital divide: university students’ use of web‐based instruction

This paper focuses on the effects of social–structural factors (age, ethnicity and gender) on university students’ use of web‐based instruction. The study uses data from registration questionnaires of students at the Open University of Israel. During the period between 1995 and 2002 there has been a continuous increase in the proportion of students who use the Internet and email for study purposes. However, a significant minority (one‐third of the students) are still not Internet users. Previous studies have referred to the digital divide in terms of differences in access to the relevant hardware and explained it mainly by social and structural factors. Current research tends to focus on the digital divide in terms of use rather than access, and explains it mainly by micro, individual and situational characteristics. The present study shows that structural factors such as age, gender and ethnicity also play a significant role in the continuous existence of the usage gap. The social and educational implications of this gap are discussed.     

Modern apprenticeships in Scotland

The paper provides an analysis of the take‐up of modern apprenticeships in Scotland for the period 1999–2001. The methodology includes secondary data sources and a case study. The findings indicate that, although the numbers participating in the MA scheme have increased, there remain major concerns both with completion rates and the quality of the programme. The authors also question the relevance of using pedagogically driven theoretical models to understand the complex and dynamic nature of work‐based employment practices.     

Pupils,the forgotten partners in education action zones

Education action zones (EAZs) involving local partnerships are one of the government's policies set up to help raise standards in pupils' performance and behaviour in areas of economic and social disadvantage. This article explores the nature of these partnerships and the fact that pupils are excluded. It reviews literature on student voice and describes interviews with 139 Year 8 pupils in two inner city zone schools to gain an insight into their perceptions about their learning. The data highlights some differences by gender and ethnicity and also the steps pupils believe are necessary if improvements are to be made. If zone schools are to live up to the promise of ‘empowering people and communities’, the paper argues pupils need to be included as stakeholders who shape the implementation of policy and become part of the solution to the difficulties EAZs are charged to address. The paper concludes by suggesting this will require a shift in the dominant epistemology to recognize pupils as co‐constructors of learning and a shift towards more democratic forms of relations in order to encourage pupil participation and enable their voices to be heard.     

Between education and the economy: high‐stakes testing and the contradictory location of the new middle class

This paper analyzes the contradictory location of the professional and managerial new middle class within the rising tension between old systems of the industrial capitalist model of education, epitomized by a reliance on high‐stakes, standardized testing and the newer forms of production associated with the ‘fast’ capitalism of the global economy. The author argues that the professional and managerial new middle class is faced with a dilemma since they benefit from systems of high‐stakes, standardized testing, yet require schools to also teach the types of skills and flexibility associated with knowledge economy. The analysis suggests that this dilemma represents the contradictory class location of the new middle class relative to both discursive and productive resources.     

The Learning is In‐between: The search for a metalanguage in Indigenous education

Following the first significant research into Indigenous methods of learning, it was argued that Indigenous students could learn western knowledge using Indigenous ways of learning. Subsequent research contradicted this finding to take the position that Indigenous students must learn western knowledge using western methods and so this set the scene for the development of a pedagogy where Indigenous students could learn how to learn. Theorists in Indigenous education began to search for a metalanguage. Crosscultural theorists have perceived this metalanguage in terms of an explicit and transparent pedagogy while critical theorists want Indigenous students to develop their own ways of speaking and writing and to be conscious of how they do this. However, I take the position in this paper that there is already a metalanguage at work in‐between the student and the teacher in the classroom although it is often obscured from consciousness in the effort to articulate valid, quantifiable outcomes.     

Experience and the Limits of Governmentality

Following Foucault, ‘critique’ could be regarded as being the art not to be governed in this way or as a project of desubjectivation. In this paper it is shown how such a project could be described as an e‐ducative practice. It explores this idea through an example which Foucault himself gave of such a critical practice: the writing (and reading) of ‘experience books’. Thus it appears that such an e‐ducative practice is a ‘dangerous’, public and uncomfortable practice that is not in need of pastoral care but requires generosity, presence and attention. As such it demands a pedagogy of experience which is to be invented in order to ‘make’ oneself into a question, to transgress the limits of a governmental regime.     

Vulnerable Voices: An examination of the concept of vulnerability in relation to student voice

Vulnerable student voices are a matter for concern in contemporary higher education, but that concern is directed more towards identifying vulnerable groups, and seeking to widen their participation in higher education. It is less to do with the vulnerability of certain modes of voice when students are there.

The concept of student voice may be anatomised into three constituent elements: an epistemological voice, or a voice for knowing, a practical voice, or a voice for doing, and an ontological voice, or a voice for being and becoming. A voice for being and becoming is less valued and validated in contemporary higher education, and more vulnerable, than voices for knowing and doing. Developing an ontological voice is deemed less important than developing epistemological or practical voices, yet an ontological voice is fundamental to those two other voices.

The concept of vulnerability needs to be extended from referring to certain under‐represented groups in the student body to indicating the strength or weakness of certain modes of the student voice. Vulnerability is not only about the vulnerability of the presenting student, but also about his voice yet to be uncovered. Reinterpreting vulnerability fosters modes of recovering ontological voices at risk of being lost.     

Voluntary Self‐Control: Education reform as a governmental strategy

This paper takes the vigorous political debate unleashed in Germany by the results of the PISA study as a stimulus to take a closer look at the strategic aims and effects of the current education reforms, of which the PISA study is only one example. It shows that the reform measures underpin a powerful process of normalisation. In this context, the PISA study, along with other reform measures, can be seen as a ‘power stabiliser’. The paper indicates how techniques of political domination are linked with ‘technologies of the self’ and how the ‘discourse of self organization’ can be seen as the core of a governmental strategy to assimilate education more thoroughly than ever before into a network of disciplinary procedures and ‘voluntary self‐control’.