Education & Pedagogy

Germany has recently gone through a fundamental process of reform of its higher education system. The last 15 years have been characterised by significant changes in virtually all aspects of the system. The impacts of the Bologna Process have been far reaching. The reform of the governance and funding systems in higher education has also been highly influential. This article reflects upon the increasing relevance of the concept of competition in higher education and how the realisation of more competitive elements was accomplished in a highly decentralised system of governance. The article also demonstrates the complex interplay between the public discourse regarding the need for more competitive approaches in higher education, legal reforms, changes in funding provisions for higher education and the transformation of rules for attracting human resources.

This article explores the role of the Korean government in expanding private higher education over time and attempts to examine the impact of such expansion on access to and equity in higher education. The enrolment rate in Korean higher education has increased to over 80% within the past 60 years. This can be attributed to two factors: the rapid expansion of private universities which currently enrol about 80% of undergraduates, and the Koreans' educational aspirations rooted in the cultural esteem for education. The government's role is also paramount in the expansion by deregulating private universities. However, higher education expansion, mainly led by private resources with minimal government funding, has resulted in educational inequity. The Korean case demonstrates the importance of maintaining a balanced act between regulating and promoting the expansion of private higher education for a developing economy. (Contains 2 notes, 6 tables, and 1 figure.)

This paper considers the complexity of learning and decision-making in modern society and argues that experiential education should embrace this complexity. It argues that experiential programmes should provide independent learning experiences that address the capacities of learners, the value contexts in which they learn, and that taking responsibility for actions should be an important programme focus. Furthermore, realising the limitations to learning through direct experience recognises the role of critical reflection on knowledge, understanding, and personal decision-making. To make experiential education relevant to the needs of modern society, a focus on education about and action on the big issues of the day, (e.g,, global climate change) is an imperative that outdoor educators are well equipped to address. However, action requires knowledge, and therefore programmes require content. Such an approach may prove attractive to educational policy makers and represents an opportunity for experiential education to contribute meaningfully to mainstream education. (Contains 2 figures and 7 footnotes.)

This article provides an overview of a 6-university collaborative project, "Roadmap to Effective Distance Education Instructional Design." This project developed instructional materials and innovative approaches to better prepare instructional designers at land-grant universities and other universities with agricultural academic programs to support their universities' distance education teaching programs. Previous studies indicate that distance education faculty training is conducted by staff instructional designers, and that a large percentage of these instructional designers do not have training or knowledge of distance education instructional design methods before being hired at their universities. The case study outlined in this article describes the process the project development team undertook, research results to date, and the collaboration process among partnering institutions. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

Higher education in Russia is experiencing changes in curriculum and in the specialization and function of institutions in the search for a better model for a post-Soviet society. The early 1990s saw the start of the reform of the system of education in Russia. However, problems of quality and of continuity with secondary education have still not been resolved. In this article, the authors analyze the current state and the problems of Russian higher education reform in the post-perestroika period. The authors point out that, by overcoming its own state of crisis, by transforming the content, forms, and methods of its organization, by creating a fundamentally new technological format of the teaching and learning process, and by improving its professional pedagogical culture, education will be able to meet the challenges of the time and serve as a resource for the stable development of Russian society. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Given Australia's diverse student population, the need for pre-service teacher education to prepare what is a predominantly Anglo-Australian and middle-class profession to be effective teachers of diverse students is critical. In Lortie's (1975) classic study, however, he argues that the predispositions of teacher education students are a much more powerful socialising influence than pre-service education. This article explores dispositions towards social justice in pre-service teachers from two teacher education programs within one Australian metropolitan university. Drawing on notions of distributive, retributive and recognitive justice (Gale & Densmore, 2000) as a way of making sense of socially just dispositions, interviews with four pre-service teachers--two beginning their Graduate Diploma in Education program (a one year program) and two beginning their final year of the Bachelor of Education program (a four year program)--are analysed. Differences in the dispositions of teachers from the two cohorts are examined and implications for teacher education discussed.

At the secondary school level, technical education programs serve numerous purposes ranging from narrow skill training to enhancing general education. However, implementation strategies may make the intended purpose of the educational program unclear. This study examined the purpose of technical education in Zimbabwe's high schools, as outlined in the official curriculum documents and perceived by the program implementers. Data were collected in Zimbabwe from policy documents and program implementers (technical teachers, teacher educators, and program managers) using a questionnaire. Lack of clarity and differences between the purpose as viewed by implementers and that in official documents were found. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education: a) take a position on the desired purpose of the technical education program, b) check and institute appropriate measures to correct mixed messages in the policy documents regarding the purpose of technical education, and c) direct adequate resources toward the desired purpose. (Contains 1 table.)

American public school education was founded, in large measure, on the ideals of Horace Mann's leadership of Massachusetts schools in the 1800s. Later in that same century, private schools began to emerge and serve those disaffected with Mann's "common schools," and tension between publicly funded and privately paid education arose. This perhaps inevitable friction continued throughout the 1900s and remains pronounced today. The author of this essay is director (superintendent) of an American/International school in Holland; he revisited this public versus private education debate as part of a Klingenstein Fellowship at Teachers College, Columbia University, January-February 2009. Through on-site visits to alternatives to traditional public schools--including charter schools, parochial schools, and schools-within-schools--the author considers whether these alternatives are threats to Mann's ideal and concludes with an examination of whether American/International schools such as his own support or undermine the goals of universal public education in a democratic society.

Higher Education is widely seen as a crucial ingredient in the regional economic development mix, and as fundamental to the development of the knowledge economy (Barclays, 2002). Indeed the Higher Education Funding Council for England has issued broad guidelines for benchmarking good practice in assessing regional development contribution of a higher education institution (HEFCE, 2002). However, there is a dichotomy between the view of higher education as an investment in regional development, and the common evaluative practice of simply assessing the cash-flow consequences of individual institutions. In contrast to the volume of standard impact assessments, there has been relatively little work that seeks to systematically evaluate the effect of higher education on regional development, or indeed to estimate either its net public purse impacts or its export value. This article draws on recent studies to seek to develop a realist evaluation framework that can provide the evidence-base to enhance both the higher education/regional development relationship, and policy making initiatives for the sector.

The benefits of bilingual education for a disadvantaged indigenous population as an investment in human capital are significant. Students of bilingual schools in Guatemala have higher attendance and promotion rates, and lower repetition and dropout rates. Bilingual students receive higher scores on all subject matters, including mastery of Spanish. The efficiency of bilingual education is confirmed by a crude cost-benefit exercise. A shift to bilingual schooling would result in considerable cost savings because of reduced repetition. The higher quality of education generating higher promotion rates will help students complete primary education and will substantially increase completion rates at low cost. The costs saving due to bilingual education is estimated at $5 million, equal to the cost of primary education for 100,000 students. (Contains 2 tables.)

Our purpose here is to discuss education policy issues in the context of empirical evidence. We note that many commonly held beliefs about Australian education such as, the relative performance and participation levels of Australian students; the importance of socioeconomic background on educational outcomes both relative to other countries and changes over-time; gender differences in mathematics and science; and the labour market situation of early school leavers; are not supported by empirical research. Such findings have implications for government policies. We also question current policy directions toward increasing Year 12 participation, expanding both secondary and post-secondary vocational education and reducing class sizes. It is hoped that the discussion will provide stimulus to evidence-based debates about Australian education. (Contains 8 notes.)

Faced with a complex set of state, territory and federal government policies and regulations, the recent history of education and training in the Australian context has been one of increasing cooperation to find some shared goals and action for the future. This came to a climax in April 1999, when state, territory and commonwealth Ministers of Education met as the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in Adelaide. At that meeting, ministers endorsed a new set of National Goals for Schooling in the 21st century, since known as "The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century." The focus of the declaration was on young people, their futures and their future roles as citizens. Excerpts from that statement are pertinent for the review of the role of geography in teacher education. This article attempts to describe the political context within which geographical education and teacher training operate within Australia.

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has more than 37,000 members and constitutes one of the largest single-theme scientific societies in the United States. Although many of its members are engaged in various activities that support their local science education programs, historically the society has not played a major role in shaping the national debate on science education. This posture changed with the adoption of a Strategic Plan in 2003 and revision in 2006 that defined a global mission and vision for the organization and its role in public education. The goals aligned with science education were taken up by the Committee on Neuroscience Literacy (CNL), which has recently merged with the Public Information Committee to become the Public Education and Communication Committee. A desired outcome is that the culture of conducting biomedical research will embrace public education as an integral component. The authors have set out to shift this culture and invest intentionally in supporting members to become engaged.

"Place" is an under-researched and poorly documented element of UK outdoor environmental education. In the international literature, North American and Australian researchers and practitioners show considerable attention to "place". Yet UK outdoor environmental educators and researchers seem to have neglected this area despite calls for increased attention to this element of education in the outdoors. This paper starts from an example of environmental education practice and develops various questions around the role of "place". Investigating the epistemology and ontology of place-based education, the paper draws on the considerable and diverse non-educational literature on "place". Action research is put forward as a suitable fit in the search for an appropriate research methodology for place-based education, and a further set of pressing questions are raised. (Contains 11 notes.)

In this second study of education schools, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) examines the mathematics preparation of America's elementary teachers. The impetus is the mediocre performance of American students in mathematics compared with their counterparts around the world. Mathematics relies heavily on cumulative knowledge. The link from there to the capability of elementary teachers to provide effective instruction in mathematics is immediate. This study evaluates the elementary education programs at a sample of 77 education schools located in every state except Alaska. This study showed that few education schools cover the mathematics content that elementary teachers need. In fact, the education schools in their sample are remarkable for having achieved little consensus about what teachers need. There is one unfortunate area of agreement: a widespread inattention to algebra.