bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Commercialism in Education: Historical Perspectives, Global Dimensions and European Educational Research Fields of Interest
Authors: Lohmann Ingrid
Published: November 2005

Around the globe, the systems of public education currently are being transformed into marketised institutions. Education is essential to the basic needs of every individual. But in a so-called ‘free-market’ economy, access to schools and universities is open only to those who can afford it. Jan Amos Comenius, Adam Smith, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, among others, laid the theoretical foundations of public education. Today, however, their ideas are being functionalised by corporate libertarians and ‘free-market’ ideologues. With the help of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services they promote the abolishment of the public sector worldwide, including the EU. In opposition to this, the struggle for public education cannot be grounded on the demand for free und full access to (higher) education alone. It has to be conceptualised, in addition, within the horizon of a non-eurocentric, postmodern, global public sphere.
Does a School Make a Difference? Perceptions of an ‘Effective School’
Authors: Collins Ayse Bas
Published: November 2005

This article examines perceptions of an effective school considering relevant literature, teachers’, administrators' and students' judgments. It discusses effectiveness as it applies to private school systems operating in Turkey. It gives abridged aspects of the current Turkish Education System: state; and private. This perception, Eastern European, Quasi-Mediterranean, draws commonalities with Western systems lying groundwork for comparisons of universal problems faced by educators. The study employed qualitative case study methods and procedures. Data were collected through interview schedules, document analysis and observation notes. Results show that the subjects perceive ‘effective school’ qualities as being school leadership, school culture/climate and quality human resources. Commonality can be found between the situation presented here and other developing school systems.
How We like Our School to Be … Pupils' Voices
Authors: Papatheodorou Theodora
Published: November 2005

Overall research findings have revealed that the school environment both immediate and in the wider sense of the community does play a role in pupils' academic and behavioural outcomes. The present article aims to discuss pupils' experiences of, and suggestions for, the physical environment of the school which they attend. A case study was conducted in the United Kingdom in a primary school located in an area that is characterised by high levels of economic and social deprivation. Methods of collecting data included documentary evidence, interviews, observations, focus groups and pupils' drawings and designs. The study findings have shown that there are great concerns about pupils' learning and behavioural outcomes and that the school experiences overcrowding conditions as well as lack of space and facilities that provide opportunities for creative activities. The pupils themselves also showed awareness about the limitations of their school environment and their discussions revealed the physical environment to be of considerable importance to their experience of learning. The implications of the study findings for teachers, policy makers and budget holders will be highlighted.
The Missing Person: Student Roles in Home-School Interviews
Authors: Walker Barbara M.
Published: November 2005

In British secondary schools the ‘Parents' Evening’ is held annually for each year group to allow parents and subject teachers to meet and discuss a child's progress. This article draws from two qualitative studies of Parents' Evenings and focusses on the difficulties faced by parents, teachers and students in trying to integrate the young person into this type of home-school liaison. Much of the data consisted of tape-recordings of Parents' Evening interviews made by teachers or parents. Key analytical concepts include the parent-teacher-student interview characterised as ‘institutional talk’, where the participants struggle over control of personal information, definition of problems and follow-up action. Even though it is becoming more common for students to attend these events, the article brings out their relative powerlessness and concludes that, while parents and teachers contest authority within the interview, the role, power and identity of the young person is even more problematic.
Factors Influencing Learning in Work: A Comparison of Two Research Projects (European- and United Kingdom-Based)
Authors: Sambrook Sally
Published: November 2005

This article reports on two research studies exploring factors influencing learning, one in the United Kingdom (UK) and the other conducted across Europe. The European project focused on an investigation of the role of human resource development (HRD) practitioners in creating opportunities for, and supporting, lifelong learning. This article examines one aspect of that project — factors inhibiting and enhancing learning in work, specifically in large, learning-oriented organisations. These factors were categorised at organisational, functional and individual levels. The UK project focused on computer-based learning, with researchers exploring learners' perceptions of the quality of computer-based learning materials. Computer-based resources can offer accessible, flexible and affordable learning opportunities. However, it is important for managers, HRD practitioners and learners to be able to judge the quality of information and communication technology (ICT) based resources to ensure effective learning. It is also important for managers and HRD practitioners to be able to recognise, understand and address the more subjective factors identified by learners themselves which might the effectiveness of ICT-based learning in education and work contexts. Drawing upon the two research studies, the article identifies, compares and contrasts the various factors influencing learning in work, at organisational, functional and individual levels, and then focuses upon factors influencing computer-based learning. Research findings suggest that the same factors could be both positive and negative features, highlighting the complexity and subjectivity of investigating both factors influencing learning in work and learners' perceptions of the quality of computer-based learning materials. However, it is argued that identifying such factors is an important step, enabling managers and HRD practitioners to recognise how learning might be hindered or helped within the organisational, and particularly ICT, context. The article presents a model of factors influencing learning in work.
Constructs Used by 17–19 Year Old Students in Northern Europe When Informally Evaluating Their Teachers
Authors: Johannessen Tor Aase , Harkin Joe , Mikalsen Oyvind
Published: November 2005

This article reports the findings of a joint international Socrates project, ‘Quali-Teach’, that researched the constructs that students aged 17–19 in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Norway use to informally evaluate their teachers. Although one would expect considerable differences in the constructs due to the factual differences in the educational systems of the countries, as well as other factors, the study shows no signficant differences between the groups. The most important determinants of student evaluation of teachers are constructs that describe affective behaviours of the teacher, which have an impact on the learning climate; and constructs that describe aspects of the professionality of the teacher, such as his/her teaching skills. In keeping with earlier research by the principal researchers, the main finding seems to be that the creation of a positive learning climate is the most important factor in effective teaching, in the perceptions of young adults, irrespective of country and curriculum area; combined with a range of professional skills that may be developed in initial training.
From Centralisation to Decentralisation: Governance of Education in Sweden
Authors: Lundahl Lisbeth
Published: November 2005

This article draws on interviews with Swedish system actors, at national and local levels, to consider the impact of changes in the governance of education in Sweden, which have been characterised as a shift from centralisation to decentralisation. The respondents discuss their explanations of change, putting emphasis on social and economic developments, and consider alterations in the relationships between the centre, the localities and the institutions. Change is mostly seen as both inevitable and positive: only a minority raise concerns about the impact of deregulation on inequalities.
The New Magistracy of Influence: Changing Governance of Education in Portugal
Authors: Alves Natália , Canário Rui
Published: November 2005

This article considers the impact of recent changes in the governance of education in Portugal, drawing on interviews with Portuguese politicians and administrators centrally involved in education policy-making in the last 15 years. The interview data reveal a strong focus on the school as a vehicle for building democracy in Portugal. The school remains central to a project of enhancing social justice and supporting community, but at the same time there are concerns about the capacity of the school to cope with pressure for change. The same ambiguity is present in system actors' view of teachers: they are central to policy but also judged to be inadequate to meeting the need for change. The interviews also draw attention to the expanded role of supranational and transnational agencies in policy-making in Portugal, and the emerging ‘magistracy of influence’ that is engaged in these networks.
Vocational Curriculum and Pedagogy: An Activity Theory Perspective
Authors: Billett Stephen
Published: November 2005

This article advances a scheme that proposes how curriculum goals and content might be conceptualised for vocational education. The scheme is founded in socio-historical activity theory. An account of the social sources of vocational knowledge (sociogeneses) comprising history, culture and situation is discussed to illuminate how both the canonical requirements of vocational practice and its manifestations in actual practice need to be accounted for in curriculum goals and content. Currently, curriculum frameworks for vocational programmes focus on the sociocultural level of practice (e.g. national competencies, national skills standards). Yet, these fail to account for the actual manifestations and requirements of the vocational practice and how judgements are made about performance. An emphasis on practice as a basis for considering curriculum goals and developing adaptable outcomes is proposed.
Entrepreneurship and Vocational Education
Authors: Onstenk Jeroen
Published: November 2005

Entrepreneurship is an important European Union objective for education and lifelong learning policies (European Community, 1999). This article reports the results of a research project on entrepreneurship competencies in higher and vocational education commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. A three-layered concept of entrepreneurship competencies is presented. The way in which innovations in higher and vocational education develop competencies for entrepreneurship, enterprising behaviour and employability is analysed. The views of students and teachers in entrepreneurship-oriented education are presented. The article ends with recommendations on promoting entrepreneurship competencies in (vocational) education and lifelong learning.
From Teachers for Education Change
Authors: Beach Dennis
Published: November 2005

This article concerns issues connected to social inclusion and exclusion in Swedish upper secondary education in the late 1990s, after the 1994 curriculum reform. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork that was completed in 2000 and that appropriated participant observation and interview methods in data production. Extensive comments from teachers and headteachers on strategies and ideas about how to work within the context of the reform, with respect particularly to expressed aims of providing an education of good and comparable quality for all students and opening up higher education to groups who were previously excluded from it, figure strongly in the article. The intention was to discover what the people working within schools felt about their working experiences with respect to social inclusion and to understand what stands in the way of the realisation of social inclusion at present. The article indicates that two competing regimes of truth currently operate on what counts as valid teacher work but also that a creative subject position for all education participants is important in projects of inclusion.
Making Space in the Standards Agenda: Developing Inclusive Practices in Schools
Authors: Dyson Alan , Gallannaugh Frances , Millward Alan
Published: November 2005

In spite of the focus on inclusive education in recent years, there is a relative dearth of studies which explore the complexities of the move towards greater inclusion. This article seeks to redress this situation by reporting some interim findings from a three-year study of schools' attempts to develop more inclusive practices, involving teams of researchers from three higher education institutions working in partnership with 25 schools, in three local education authorities. The development took place within a national policy environment which focused heavily on the issue of ‘standards' narrowly defined. This article reports the way that this context helped to form schools' responses to inclusion and the ambiguities in these responses. It argues, however, that the view of schools' actions as entirely determined by this external agenda is as erroneous as the image of them battling heroically against it in the name of inclusive values. Rather, to a greater or lesser extent, schools tried or were impelled to find spaces within the ‘standards agenda’ where different values and priorities could be realised. The article outlines some of the factors which made this process more or less likely to occur and offers an important new way of thinking about the development of inclusive education.
Using Problem-Based Learning to Explore Qualitative Research
Authors: Donnelly Roisin
Published: November 2005

The aim of this article is to discuss an approach to deliver a component on qualitative research on a research methods module in a postgraduate diploma in third level learning and teaching using problem-based learning (PBL). The Diploma in Third Level Learning and Teaching is on offer to a variety of academic staff (lecturers) in higher education at a higher education institute in Ireland, hereafter referred to as participants. The 10-week Research Methods module is one of eight offered on the Postgraduate Diploma, all designed and delivered using the pedagogic strategy of PBL. The entire Postgraduate Diploma is voluntary, and only lecturers who are keen to implement novel pedagogical approaches in their own subject disciplines apply for a place on the modules. However, the key to the participants' success is by using the principles of PBL to share and discuss valuable information with their colleagues in a variety of other disciplines. The opportunity is being given to enhance group learning in a real-life multidisciplinary learning environment. The objective of this module was to explore qualitative research methods and their distinctive value as an educational research approach. The learning issues established in the PBL group focused on the relationship between the actual real-life authentic problem, the theoretical underpinning and epistemology associated with a qualitative research approach.
Students' Concepts of Democracy
Authors: Husfeldt Vera , Nikolova Roumiana
Published: November 2005

In addition to assessing the civic knowledge and skills of adolescents, examining students' concepts of democracy was an important aspect of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study. Based on theories and previous research with adults and youth in this area, a set of survey items was developed to cover several models of democracy. In the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study of 14 year olds, the confirmatory factor analysis showed one factor with items relating to the generic or rule of law model. A second factor, participatory democracy, did not meet IEA scaling standards. In contrast, confirmatory factor analysis of upper secondary school students' data revealed a three-factor solution for the democracy items, suggesting that they have more differentiated concepts of democracy than 14 year olds.
Integrating Culture and Higher Education: A Pragmatist Approach
Authors: Badley Graham
Published: November 2005

By taking a pragmatist approach to both higher education and culture, it will be seen more clearly how integration between the two may be usefully effected. Indeed, what is argued is that such an approach enables the use of important pragmatist principles — such as democracy, equality, freedom, growth, justice and tolerance — to bind culture and education closely together. It is an argument which sees the university as the best institutional embodiment of the principles and values which pragmatists think should characterize a modern (even a postmodern) liberal culture. This approach should challenge those in universities who are content that the academy is becoming a safe haven for academic capitalism.
Comparative and International Perspectives on Educational ‘Spaces’
Authors: Findlow Sally
Published: November 2005

This review evaluates the contribution of Comparative and International Research in Education: globalisation, context and difference by Michael Crossley & Keith Watson (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003) to current efforts at exploring ways forward for comparative education, suggesting alternative ways in which central questions could be approached. It focuses on the notion of balance in policy-theory, insider-outsider, developed-developing world terms, and explores a number of actual and potential approaches towards achieving the kinds of integration that the book recommends. Finally, it argues that it is in this intersection (or balance) that the relevance of such disciplinary reconceptualisation lies for the discussion about ‘European educational research spaces’.
Studying the Supra-National in Education: GATS, Education and Teacher Union Policies
Authors: Fredriksson Ulf
Published: November 2005

This article starts by putting the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into a general context of privatisation. It is noted that the privatisation process is in many cases complex and not only about full-scale privatisation of schools. The growing trade in education must be seen in this context. GATS is not an agreement which deals with educational issues from a political or educational perspective, but from a commercial and trade perspective. The purpose of GATS is to liberalise trade in services, which also includes education. Commitments made in GATS negotiations are difficult to withdraw and the protection of commercial interests which GATS provides is stronger than the protection of human rights, in, for example, the Convention of the Right of the Child. The protection given in GATS to public services, including public education, is ambiguous at best and in many cases open to interpretation by Trade Dispute Panels. It can be assumed that such panels will deal with some educational matters in future. Another risk for the future is that governments will use GATS as an excuse for deregulation and privatisation within the education sector. There is also a risk that education will become part of a general negotiation game where governments may have to open up the education market in their own countries in order to get access to other markets and that education policies will increasingly be decided by trade ministers instead of education ministers. The international trade union movement, including Education International, has been critical of GATS and has raised a number of issues. Also, there is a growing concern about GATS among national teacher unions. Many teacher unions have taken different initiatives: produced information material; established a dialogue with governments; and built broader coalitions with other trade unions, student organisations, etc.
Bildung: A paradigm regained?
Authors: Prange Klaus
Published: November 2005

Bildung is a key concept in the German tradition of educational theory. Originally meant to indicate a specific state of mind and ideal of perfection, it now serves as a symbol of the unity of whatever refers to the field of education, particularly to its organisational and functional aspects. The aura of Bildung is bestowed on its counterpart in the form of preparation for the needs of the day. However wrongheaded or deplorable that may appear in the light of traditional values and ideas, this alienated use of the concept of Bildung may be a blessing in disguise: it keeps alive the memory of autonomous learning as opposed to regular training under the imperatives of the day. The paradigm of Bildung survives in title if not in substance as a paradigm to regain.
Doubts and Intrigues in Ethnographic Research
Authors: da Silva Sofia Marques
Published: November 2005

This article acknowledges some moments of intrigue aroused during the execution of an ethnographic investigation at a high school, in Oporto, Portugal with young boys and girls. The making of this investigation aroused our reflection towards what we consider to be some intrigues and towards the Social and Human Sciences themselves, epistemologically and methodologically speaking. How do we place ourselves in an investigation? How can we define our own intentions in the bosom of the familiar-strangeness relationship as far as the context is concerned? How can we analytically and ontologically deal with intrusion? When are we given permission by the reality we want to know? How shall we define the fidelities and infidelities in our interpretations and questionings? How do we define ourselves and define the others in the moments of mutual expiation? What amount of care do we take when organising the texts' or narratives? What do we kill and build in the images produced in those texts? What lucid referents may we establish to the understanding of others' experiences? These are some of our doubts and intrigues.
Cultural Intersections: The Life Story of a Roma Cultural Mediator
Authors: Gobbo Francesca
Published: November 2005

The article presents the life story of a young Roma cultural mediator who narrates (1) her life and professional decisions, still rather uncommon among young Roma women, and (2) the impact of her education and work experiences and achievements on her self perception. The narratives, from which the life story emerges, express the young Roma's efforts to interweave two different cultural perspectives; furthermore they emphasize how cultural diversity can be a way to be and to relate to others. The life story is told as a personal project negotiated between the Roma and the Gagé cultural heritages; the cultural constraints within and without cultural boundaries are highlighted, while character traits and imagination are presented as the main turning points in the young woman's life.
Non-Traveling ‘Best Practices' for a Traveling Population: The Case of Nomadic Education in Mongolia
Authors: Steiner-Khamsi Gita , Stolpe Ines
Published: November 2005

This article deals with a particular ‘best practice’ in Mongolia (boarding schools) that neither traveled elsewhere nor was rescued from the socialist past and adopted in the post-socialist present. The boarding schools accommodating children from nomadic herder families have experienced a long decade (1991–2003) of neglect. The boarding school system of the twenty-first century has ceased to be a universal institution catering to a nomadic population, and has been transformed into a socially stratified system that mostly attracts students from poor families (nomadic and otherwise) who could not afford to entertain alternative living arrangements for their school-aged children. The authors treat nomadic education in Mongolia as an interesting case of a ‘transfer vacuum.’ The authors investigate the political and economic reasons for this immunity towards ‘lessons from elsewhere’ or ‘lessons from the past,’ and draw conclusions for research on educational policy borrowing and lending.
Traveling Policies: Hijacked in Central Asia
Authors: Silova Iveta
Published: November 2005

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian education reform discourses have become increasingly similar to distinctive Western policy discourses traveling globally across national boundaries. Tracing the trajectory of ‘traveling policies' in Central Asia, this article discusses the way Western education discourses have been hybridized in the encounter with collectivist and centralist cultures within post-socialist environments in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. In the context of international aid relationships, the article considers different motivations and driving forces for reforms, the way pre-Soviet and Soviet traditions are affirmed within the reforms, as well as how these reforms speak back to Western reform agenda. Emphasizing the historical legacy of Soviet centralist traditions, this article reveals how traveling policies have been ‘hijacked’ by local policy makers and used for their own purposes nationally.
Travelling Policy and Local Spaces in the Republic of Tajikistan: A Comparison of the Attitudes of Tajikistan and the World Bank towards Textbook Provision
Authors: Bahry Stephen A.
Published: November 2005

For newly independent Central Asian republics a debate has arisen about how much of the aims, content and pedagogy of old Soviet-era curricula to retain, how much to revise or replace, and with what. There is a need to replace and revise textbooks, which are wearing out and outdated. Financial crisis has made the financial support of external funding agencies necessary to do so, allowing these agencies great influence on choice of appropriate aims, objectives and pedagogy to be embodied in new textbooks, and thus on educational change in Central Asia. However, attitudes towards strengths and weaknesses of the existing system, and thus the need for change, may differ between Central Asian educational authorities and external donors. Policies recommended by external agencies may be accepted, adapted, resisted or rejected by local educators for various reasons. This study compares attitudes towards textbook provision policy expressed in two normative texts on educational needs in Tajikistan: one produced by Tajikistan authorities and one by the World Bank. While both express the importance of textbook development for educational reform, clear differences in priorities for textbook development and attitudes towards existing aims, content and pedagogies are identified. These differences suggest the need for increased dialogue between local authorities and external donors. Further, such dialogue should be extended to other key stakeholders in the reform process.
An International Model for Developing Capacity for Addressing the Needs of ‘At Risk’ Youth: A French–English Affaire?
Authors: Maras Pam
Published: November 2005

This article describes a bi-national project planned with Interreg (European) funding involving communities in Kent and Nord Pas-de-Calais. The focus is on ‘at risk’ youth and training and supporting personnel, and action to address the needs of this client group. The differences in the two systems mean that the forms of the project are different on the two sides of the Channel and the ways of proceeding are necessarily dictated by local cultural imperatives and conditions; the French centralised system where core services are enhanced to deal with new or increasing problems confronts the English style of short-term projects made up of alliances of agencies and community groups working in partnership with schools.
A Case Study of a Lithuanian Foster Family
Authors: Bankauskiene Nijole , Staskeviciene Vilma
Published: November 2005

The authors discuss the problems of children's foster care in Lithuania in the context of European dimensions. The article consists of two parts. The first part presents the main changes in the children's care system in Lithuania. The first part reveals the discussion of the paradigm of children's foster care in both the Western and Lithuanian contexts. The design of the qualitative research into foster families and the data from the case study are presented in the second part. Here the authors also present the results of the case study of a Lithuanian foster family. The results of this research might be interesting and relevant at national and international levels, because countries in transition lack experience in the field of children's care and it could be useful for Western countries.
The Influence of Participation, Identification, and Parental Resources on the Early School Leaving of Boys in the Lower Educational Track
Authors: Beekhoven Sandra , Dekkers Hetty
Published: November 2005

Why do some students drop out while others do not? The role of participation and identification in the process of early school leaving is studied. In addition, the contributions of socio-economic background and available resources are assessed. Boys in the lower vocational track of education, which traditionally has a large number of early school leavers, were studied using the variables from a national cohort study and the responses to some additional questionnaires. The participation-identification model is not found to have much explanatory power. The determinants of early school leaving appear to be the cultural and social resources provided by the parents rather than participation, achievement or identification.
Enterprise Learning: A Challenge to Education?
Authors: Leffler Eva , Svedberg Gudrun
Published: November 2005

The northern part of Sweden is characterised by depopulation and relatively high levels of unemployment among young people. As a consequence, a number of projects have been established for the purpose of strengthening young people's creativity and spirit of enterprise. The aim of this article is to problematise the concept of ‘enterprise education’ as understood in Swedish schools. This is done by visualising the rhetoric that surrounds the effort of introducing Enterprise in Schools (‘Företagsamhet i skolan’) and by trying to understand what the concept means in practice from the perspective of apprenticeship theory. The authors' research involves classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students from different schools. The results show that the discourse about Enterprise in Schools is based on catchwords such as cooperation, power of initiative, creativity and activity. The authors' studies of the organisation and implementation of the teaching have visualised the collaborative aim and emphasis on learning through schoolwork.
Redefining Roles: University E-Learning Contributing to Lifelong Learning in a Networked World?
Authors: Hedge Nicki , Hayward Louise
Published: November 2005

Distance education enabled by e-learning is at the forefront of university participation in an increasingly connected world. Physical, temporal, cultural and educational borders are becoming both less rigid and less predictable than ever before. The authors suggest, in this article, that university distance e-learning could and should allow universities to make a major contribution to lifelong learning in this networked world. However, just as lifelong learning and distance e-learning are subject to multiple interpretations and realisations, the role that universities might play in contributing to global lifelong learning is currently far from clear. Both distance education, as a mode of learning and teaching, and lifelong learning, as an aspiration and a policy, bring issues pertaining to the roles and values of universities into sharp focus. On the fluid, unpredictable landscape of global higher education are traced the imperatives driving distance e-learning and lifelong learning in order to discern the redrawing of borders that appears to be emerging. The parallels between unsettled territories and unresolved tensions in distance e-learning and lifelong learning will be highlighted. The authors suggest that distance e-learning could enable lifelong learning and that lifelong learning, broadly interpreted, should be a cornerstone of university strategy and activity in a world that is increasingly networked.
Designs for Learning
Authors: Kalantzis Mary , Cope Bill
Published: November 2005

This article explores the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future – learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. Equally important, the challenge is to create learning environments which engage the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles – from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. The experimental work upon which this article is based is grounded in a philosophy of teaching and learning that values a variety of active ways of knowing. Teaching that harnesses diversity and leads to learner transformation involves a variety of knowledge processes that need to be made explicit and part of a teacher's pedagogical repertoire. The tools described in the article provide a way for educators to reflect on their choices, document their learning programs, map curriculum, share effective practice and write up learning community goals. They also allow students to build, share, collaborate upon and publish portfolios of the work they have created digitally. The result will be greater transparency and accountability amongst those who share responsibility for education.
Text-Made Text
Authors: Cope Bill , Kalantzis Mary
Published: November 2005

What is the nature of the change represented by digital communications technologies? How will the impact of the digital compare with the massive changes spawned in its time by print and books? These are the two key questions addressed in this article. The authors answer the first of these questions by comparing the emergence of the printed book with the emergence of the digital communications technologies. The next section of this article, ‘Transformations in Ways of Meaning: the case of print’, discusses the technological nature and textual consequences of the printing press. The following section, ‘Transformations in Ways of Meaning: designing text digitally’, does the same for digital connectivity. Several themes emerge.
The Concept of a ‘Networked Common School’
Authors: Waks Leonard J.
Published: November 2005

The current educational arrangements of advanced liberal democracies continue to isolate various ethnic and racial groups. Disadvantaged minority students attend inferior schools. The overreliance on the curriculum as a design for teaching and learning renders school learning less relevant for ‘knowledge work’ jobs in network societies. The concept of a ‘networked common school’ addresses these problems. It envisions linking local schools in a social network mediated by networked computers. Teaching and learning will continue to take place at local sites, but significant face-to-face, inter-group learning will take place at regional learning centers, to be followed up by virtual group learning at distributed local sites.
Imagine All That Stuff Really Happening: Narrative and Identity in Children's on-Screen Writing
Authors: Merchant Guy
Published: November 2005

In the world of work and in the social lives of many, new technology plays an important role in establishing and maintaining relationships and exchanging information. The school system varies in its response to this new technology and particularly to the popular communication of email and mobile phone users. In schools and classrooms, policies, practices and pupil cultures influence how on-screen writing is seen and used (Holloway & Valentine, 2003). Drawing on data from a series of school-based projects which have involved the use of interactive email, this article explores the relationship between narrative and identity in children's on-screen writing. Using archived emails, and story fragments, the article shows how children borrow and transform the writing practices and voices of others. The study illustrates how children draw on popular culture texts and blend them with classroom material to produce hybrid narratives. Children's agency is an important aspect of this work, which shows that, despite the institutional constraints of time and space, access to new technology can promote innovation and creativity.
Community Construction in the Virtual: Reconceptualizing Joint Action
Authors: Leander Kevin , Duncan Barbara
Published: November 2005

Analyzing the activity of a group of students involved in an online university course with a simulation environment, this article considers and problematizes the idea of online community and its relations to learning. The analysis builds upon Dewey's conception of organic community and related perspectives. In valuing ‘joint action,’ such perspectives bury the relational nature of community construction under more concrete and stable notions of common mediating artifacts, geographic locations and membership among diverse communities. When the held-in-common is destabilized in the virtual, relations of student learning to community construction must be significantly reconceptualized. Moreover, for participants the meanings of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ activities and communities are interwoven within the process of interpretation, and should be understood as developing through this tension. Students and instructors alike face significant challenges in forging new online democratic learning environments.
The Technical Codes of Online Education
Authors: Hamilton Edward , Feenberg Andrew
Published: November 2005

This article addresses an impasse in debates about online education in university education. One side presents a story of the progressive development of technology as it is applied to the organisation of higher education, leading to pedagogical advances and to the new forms of administration required for the realisation of the technology's full potentials, both pedagogical and economic. The other side views online education as a lever of neoliberal reform that extends to the university a capitalism that is now digital, global, and knowledge-based. Both sides of the debate share the same underlying philosophy of technology, according to which technology is a fait accompli with which the university must comply or which it must reject out of hand in defence of traditional academic values and priorities. The authors argue that critical theory of technology offers a way to redress this impasse by providing a philosophical orientation capable of widening the debate over online education and university restructuring through its emphasis on the dynamics of technological design and development as social and political processes. They examine the case of an early experiment in educational computer conferencing, drawing significant conclusions from it about methodology and policy in the online education debate.
No Straight Line: Wrinkling Binaries in Literacy and Technology Research
Authors: Cammack Dana
Published: November 2005

This article challenges some accepted binaries in literacy and technology research in order to explore the complex, multifaceted nature of literacy practices using a hypertextual multimedia study environment (MSE). Binary distinctions like literacy/illiteracy or online/offline are ‘wrinkled’ or complicated by introducing findings from an ethnographic study of the MSE in a graduate history of communication course.
Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis and Colin Lankshear. A Contemporary Project: An Interview
Authors: Cope Bill , Kalantzis Mary , Lankshear Colin
Published: November 2005

The first two issues of E-Learning featured monographs by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, which they generously made available for publication. Both of these works, Designs for Learning and Text-Made Text, are artifacts grounded in a larger shared project to which the two authors have been committed throughout more than two decades of sustained intensive activity as academics and public intellectuals. This interview by Colin Lankshear pursues an insider view of this larger project and how it relates to e-learning as an emerging theme of the present historical juncture.
Can Universities Solve the Problem of Knowledge in Society without Succumbing to the Knowledge Society?
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: November 2005

This article attempts to answer the knowledge management jibe that universities are ‘dumb organisations’ in need of restructuring or, worse, dissolution. In its place, the author proposes that the university is the original entrepreneurial organisation, one designed to engage in the ‘creative destruction of social capital’. Creation occurs as research gains one temporary advantage, while destruction occurs in teaching, which removes that advantage. However, this cycle is currently subject to severe disruption by such signature trends of our so-called knowledge society as credentials inflation and expanding intellectual property regimes. Contrary to the name ‘knowledge society’, knowledge functions more as a principle of social stratification or a source of capital development, but not a form of inquiry. Epistemology thus becomes what the author calls ‘phlogistemology’. This problem is diagnosed in terms of the emergence of ‘capitalism of the third order’. The author then shows how the welfare state temporarily reversed this tendency by institutionalising the university as a public good. However, with the decline of the welfare state, academic knowledge has now reverted to the status of a positional good. The author observes that the ultimate source of the university's identity crisis is the theory of value shared by the welfare state and contemporary neo-liberalism, both of which regard the university as a glorified short-term, client-centred service provider. In response, the author explores the consequences of taking seriously the idea that the university was one of the original chartered corporations, funded mainly by the alumni's lifelong financial commitment, not student fees or graduate taxes.
Value — The Life Blood of Capitalism: Knowledge is the Current Key
Authors: Rikowski Ruth
Published: November 2005

This article considers the knowledge revolution, the knowledge economy, knowledge, knowledge management and value within global capitalism. It argues that the knowledge revolution is the latest phase of capitalism and that the success of the knowledge revolution depends on the creation of value that is extracted from knowledge, and that this includes the knowledge that is in people's heads. It considers philosophical issues surrounding knowledge. It then considers the meaning of ‘value’, by first considering some of the current business and information literature, and second, returning to a Marxist analysis of value. It argues that we can only really begin to fully explain and understand the concept of value, as well as its significance within the knowledge revolution, by returning to a Marxist theoretical analysis. The article concludes by arguing that we need to become more conscious of the fact that ‘value’ is the essential ingredient upon which all forms of capitalism rest, and furthermore, that today value is being extracted from knowledge, particularly in the industrialised world. Once the human race becomes more conscious of this, it can then endeavour to create a better, kinder, fairer social and economic system that does not depend on the extraction of value from and exploitation of human labour.
Selling Out Higher Education
Authors: Giroux Henry A.
Published: November 2005

The expansion of neo-liberal capitalism globally suggests an especially dangerous turn at the current historical moment, one that threatens both the substance of democracy as fundamental to the most basic freedom and civil liberties, and the very meaning of higher education. As the power of nation states and civil society to impose or make corporate power accountable is reduced, politics as an expression of democratic struggle is deflated and ethical responsibility appears irrelevant. As neo-liberal capitalism substitutes market relations for the rule of justice and law, it becomes more difficult for educators, students, and citizens to address pressing social and moral issues in systemic and political terms. This article addresses the fundamental shift in society regarding how we think about the relationship between corporate culture, higher education, and democracy. Specifically, it argues that one of the most important indications of such a change can be seen in the ways in which we are currently being asked to rethink the role of higher education. Underlying this analysis is the assumption that the struggle to reclaim higher education must be seen as part of a broader battle over the defense of public goods, and that at the heart of such a struggle is the need to challenge the ever-growing discourse and influence of neo-liberalism, corporate power, and corporate politics. The article concludes by offering some suggestions as to what educators can do to reassert the primacy of higher education as an essential sphere for expanding and deepening the processes of democracy and civil society.
Education and the Knowledge Economy: A Response to David & Foray
Authors: Winch Christopher
Published: November 2005

Much has been written about the claim that contemporary developed economies are ‘knowledge economies’ in which education plays a key role in providing the human, knowledge-based resources necessary for success. David & Foray's article (2003) provides a useful survey, both of the most general features of what have come to be called ‘knowledge economies’, but also of some important issues that affect their development. In this article the author concentrates on the concept of a knowledge economy and its relationship with that of education. Of particular concern is the distinction between different kinds of knowledge, with a particular focus on applied theoretical knowledge and the concept of social capital. The author examines the connection between the development and support of applied theoretical knowledge and the maintenance of social capital. The article concludes with some thoughts on the implications of this connection for the role of education within a ‘knowledge economy’.
Geopolitics of Globalisation: A Re-Examination by Comparativists
Authors: Gupta Nina Dey
Published: November 2005

There has been a worldwide trend in changing strategies and strategic manoeuvres since September 11, 2001. The date is a definite watershed. The concepts of globalisation, liberalisation and internationalisation have undergone drastic changes since then, to suit the particular needs of the developed and the developing nations. The author feels that under these circumstances, the geopolitics of population will have an increasingly leading role to play in future. Many more states (countries) will desire to form alliances, unions, and associations to combat the localised geophysical economic factors that may be afflicting their regional growth. Thus educational planning will need comprehensive direction. The author reviews the role of the comparativists, who in turn need to re-examine the regional biases against/for globalisation in view of the voluminous growth in information, finance and technology involved in furthering the advance of globalisation.