The Merging of the PCFC and the UFC: Probable,Desirable or Inevitable?

Post-war growth of higher education has attracted the interest of national governments. They are properly concerned with higher education's contribution to economic success and equity, and the efficient and effective use of public funds. They can intervene by means of legislation (which is unwieldy), exhortation (which is ineffective), or funding incentives. Funding councils must operate within a social and political context which determines the balance between planning and the market, central and local direction, public and private funding. They have only four strategies to choose from: deficiency-, formula-, contract-, and core-funding. The first was nearly fatal; the last is the preferred option for the future.
There are two issues: the merging of the two funding councils (PCFC and UFC), and the ending of the binary system. The first could produce a welcome single guiding intelligence for UK higher education, and economies of scale. The second raises the question of the funding of fundamental research. The merging of PCFC and UFC and the reorganisation of research-funding is a two-headed nettle. It must be grasped soon.     

Curriculum Design and Epistemic Ascent

Three kinds of knowledge usually recognised by epistemologists are identified and their relevance for curriculum design is discussed. These are: propositional knowledge, know‐how and knowledge by acquaintance. The inferential nature of propositional knowledge is argued for and it is suggested that propositional knowledge in fact presupposes the ability to know how to make appropriate inferences within a body of knowledge, whether systematic or unsystematic. This thesis is developed along lines suggested in the earlier work of Paul Hirst. The different kinds of know‐how and their relationships are discussed and it is suggested that they occupy different places and different relationships in any curricular hierarchy. The changing role that knowledge by acquaintance plays within this hierarchy is also discussed. Implications of this account for the current National Curriculum and for curriculum design more generally are discussed, looking at History, Science and Design Technology as examples.     

Developing professional skills in chemistry — An initial study

Conclusions The limited data gathered in this pilot study suggests there may be a considerable mismatch between those professional qualities desired by industrial employers and those they generally find in new chemistry graduates. The issues raised seem sufficiently important to warrant a wider investigation. It is intended to use the data found in this initial study to design a more detailed survey in a second phase of this project.     

Research abstracts

Abstracts are compiled by Nancy R. Preston, ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-2340. Telephone: 315-443-3640. Internet: ERIC@SUVM.SYR.EDU.     

Re-thinking school–university partnerships: A Swedish case study

All trends in educational reform point away from the traditional isolation of teachers and teacher educators from their colleagues and from other stakeholders towards an increased sense of being in rather than outside the broader community. In the case of relationships between universities and schools, however, co-operation and collaboration is often complicated by their different cultures and traditions. As yet, there have been few systematic attempts to conceptualise the territory for teacher and school level development and change in relation to the sustained strategic roles which universities may play. This paper presents the results of an independent evaluation of an innovative cluster of seven partnership projects between teachers, schools, and researchers and teacher educators in a university in Sweden. It concludes that differentiated strategic partnerships are necessary in order to meet the different, ideological, generative and capacity building needs of schools and teachers.