Education & Pedagogy

A number of global discourses have gained currency in national education policies. The need to reform education systems is coated in economic terms, the rationale of which is efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. Education is assigned the task of producing a competitive workforce in the global market. In these reforms, education is commodified. It is no longer a service but is a cost. The basis of all these is neo-liberalism, an ideology and political system that has displaced welfarism associated with the economics of Keynes. Tertiary education is neither insulated against this markets tide nor is it immune to its processes. This tide has led to the convergence of education reform worldwide. The convergence equally extends to higher and tertiary education. While instigated by economic liberalism, it is also a product of the saleability of market ideals through "institutional capitalism" and their purchase by public policy makers and governments. In this article, I seek to explore these discourses in Botswana?s tertiary education reform, anchored on consultation. I argue that Botswana's tertiary education policy making reflects a global-local nexus in which the global sits on the local--the local is influenced and informed by the dominant global tertiary education reform agenda. The article draws on interview data of policy making elites and stakeholders. It also draws from the analysis of a corpus of key documents of this policy process. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

Further education (FE) colleges have long been regarded as the "Cinderella service" of English education. From their origins in the technical institutes of the nineteenth century, through the years of haphazard growth in the early twentieth century, and for most of the era of local authority control from 1944 until the early 1990s, FE tended to be underfunded, marginalised and overlooked by the state. This has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Successive waves of policy and "reform" have been imposed upon colleges, which are now forced to compete in a highly marketised and intensely performative environment. However, there was a brief, but now largely forgotten, moment when a radically different future for FE seemed possible. This article revisits the Macfarlane Report of 1980 and argues that, had its initial recommendations been accepted, the system of post-compulsory education in England could have been transformed. It is argued that the rejection of the proposal made in Macfarlane's first draft--that a national system of tertiary colleges be established--represents a key lost moment for FE. Had this been accepted, post-compulsory education in England could, potentially, have been re-formed according to the principles of comprehensive education; institutional collaboration rather than competition would have been encouraged; an enhanced service for both students and the wider community could have been created; and opportunities to break down, or at least reduce, the entrenched, long-standing and class-based barriers between academic education and vocational training would have been opened up.

The advent of a democracy in South Africa ushered in refreshing changes within the South African context. Given South Africa's dark apartheid history, every policy intervention had to ensure a human rights ethos prevails. Inclusive Education, through the publication of the policy document Education White Paper 6 on Special Needs Education: Building an Inclusive Education and Training System (2001) set out to create a single education system for all learners within a twenty-year period. The White Paper was launched in July 2001. Four years after the launch, policy developers and implementers have arrived at a realization that there are several challenges and possibilities associated with the implementation of Inclusive Education in South Africa. Whilst there is enough reason to be highly optimistic about the future of inclusive education in South Africa, the caveat is not to underestimate the challenges and complexities of developing a single education system for all learners. This article discusses the challenges by highlighting the following issues: (1) epistemology; (2) entrenched special education theory and practices; (3) curriculum 2005; and (4) ideological and political factors. The author concludes that for inclusive education to take hold in South Africa, the curriculum is the single most important vehicle since it was the traditional curriculum that alienated learners from mainstream classes. If frameworks of thinking are ruptured and alienated learners and other resources provided, an inclusive system is possible in South Africa.

This article considers the contrasting developments in the new Member States, namely the declining student participation in vocational training, and the marked increase in participation in higher education, as demonstrated by the latest Eurostat statistics. The reforms of the educational systems which are under way have led to an increase in the numbers undertaking general and higher education and to improvements in overall performances in secondary education. Nevertheless, the substantive reform of initial vocational training remains problematical, while shortages of skilled workers are being felt. However, the differentials in terms of earnings and job markets are such that they continue to encourage the rejection of vocational training and a flight to higher education. At the same time, developments in higher education primarily relate to courses of long duration and are accompanied by an increase in failure at school and graduate unemployment, while significant changes are taking place at post-secondary level calling for substantial development of short higher education courses. In this context, the messages of the World Bank proposing that vocational training should be moved to post-secondary level, and of the European Union calling for a relaunch of vocational education primarily through a closer link with higher education seem to be contradictory. Further reflection is called for, with a greater understanding of the diversity of the situations, in the context of implementation of the Copenhagen and Bologna processes. (Contains 2 figures, 5 tables, 10 footnotes, and a bibliography.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the new (comprehensive) concept of competence and the competence-based education approach are being used in, and perceived as being fruitful for, academic education. Design/methodology/approach: In this explorative and qualitative study individual interviews with representatives of study programs from eight universities in the Netherlands were held, and a participative case-study in one university was conducted, in which practices and perceptions from various stakeholder groups were triangulated. Findings: The opinions of the respondents on the usefulness of the competence-based education approach were quite positive. There is wide agreement on the necessity to align university curricula to the needs of society and of the labour market. University education can make effective use of the competence concept. Universities differ as to the extent to which they employ a competence-based education approach. Many hurdles exist for actually implementing this in university curricula. Research limitations/implications: Interpretations largely depend on the perceptions of the respondents in the study. For most university programs only one representative was included as respondent in the study. Practical implications: With some exceptions, the competence-based education approach is currently not much used in academic education. Possibilities and limitations of competence-based academic education should be identified in further case studies and strategies for actually implementing it should be developed. Further research should show differential relationships between the level of integration of the competence concept in higher education and the societal effects of the respective programs. Originality/value: The competence concept has been underexposed in university education practices and in research.

This article examines the ways in which the development of alternative initial teacher education programs in England and Canada over the last two decades serve to challenge some of the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying established models of initial teacher education in both jurisdictions, and also to broaden the pool of people who have access to the profession. The article offers a brief, initial account of the development of a standard model of initial teacher education in both countries that is characterized as being: university governed and university based; primarily full-time; incorporating a standard curriculum, with admission requirements that generally reflect the traditional academic expectations of the university; and which is funded jointly by the student and the state. Against this standard model the article examines the development of alternative or flexible models in both Canada and England. Three programs are described in some detail--The Brandon University Northern Teacher Education Program, The University of Manitoba's Weekend College Teacher Education Program, and The University of Nottingham's Flexible, Modularized Post-Graduate Certificate in Education Program--and each is examined in terms of the ways in which it challenges the assumptions embedded in traditional teacher education programs. At a time when attracting talented and committed teachers constitutes an important issue facing public education systems in both countries, the ability to construct high quality initial teacher education programs that can provide access to the profession to as wide a cross-section of the population as possible will be an important contribution to meeting this challenge.

The information age has changed the economic and social environment in such ways that countries are moving from being "traditional pull" to "technology push" societies. This makes technical and vocational education and training (TVET) policy especially significant as it seeks to promote specialized practical and professional skills for employability, as well as generic and adaptive life-skills for better citizenship. For developing countries, such as Myanmar, the question is how best to respond to the challenges in terms of re-engineering their education systems, since they have limited educational resources to achieve equal opportunities for all. They must also respond adequately to the growing demands of the information age. This article gives an overview of how TVET programmes are being harnessed in Myanmar in support of lifelong learning for all, and to enhance further social, cultural and economic development. It is difficult to draw any quantitative conclusions concerning the TVET system for all-around development due to an absence of reliable empirical studies and the limited availability of statistical information. Partly as a result, this study has focused on two main areas: technical education and agricultural education. Nevertheless, the experience of Myanmar demonstrates that this country has in recent years made significant progress in several important areas of TVET--following the 1998 education reforms. These reforms resulted in the restructuring of TVET by transferring the responsibility for TVET from the Ministry of Education to several different specialized ministries, and through stressing the social and vocational relevance of education in terms of "pre-vocationalization" in the basic education system. (Contains 2 tables and 4 notes.)

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2004), the United States is lacking 41,141 certified special educators. Texas is no exception to the national trend; in Texas alone, there is a shortage of 5,024 certified special educators (U.S. Department of Special Education). Any successful remediation of this shortage starts with the recruitment and education of special education college majors or other undergraduate majors that lead into teaching. Therefore, this study sought to analyze the effectiveness of recruitment methods implemented by eight Texas universities in order to focus a statewide recruitment agenda. Overall, this study identified the success or failure of recruitment strategies employed by eight Texas universities to increase interest in the major of special education at the undergraduate level. Analyses of student opinions indicated that contact with individuals with disabilities and participation in peer-support groups for individuals with disabilities were the most important determinants of their choice to pursue a major in special education. Results also indicate that recruiting already enrolled college students to transfer into the special education major should focus on media presentations that encourage education, business, and early childhood development majors to switch into special education. The survey results in this study are not unique to the eight universities and the Texas Regent's Initiative recruitment drive. Implementing the results of data driven decision-making based on the effectiveness of university recruitment practices is one way to combat the national shortage in certified special educators. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

Few concerned with educational theory and policy could have failed to notice the recent upsurge of interest in the notion of spiritual development as a possible aim or goal of public or common schooling. A more presently pressing question, however, is that of the pedagogical means by which theorists of spiritual education might cultivate any supposed spiritual qualities or benefits. An area of the school curriculum that seems to be a close runner-up to religious education (RE) in the spiritual education stakes is that of the arts. Moreover, if it is widely assumed that exposure to various arts can have real spiritual benefits, it has often also seemed natural to associate music, of all the different arts on offer, with spiritual experience or growth. It might therefore be held to follow, if spiritual education is indeed a proper aim of schooling, that music education is a prime vehicle of spiritual education, and that music teachers might include the promotion of spiritual qualities among their educational aims. In this article, the author discusses the conceptual links between music, spirituality, and education, which are all in need of further clarification. He proceeds to raise some--essentially skeptical--questions about any alleged connections between music education and spiritual education in the course of critical examination of a range of different possible arguments for the claim that music might be a source of educationally relevant spiritual experience. He also distinguishes a number of more or less plausible contexts and circumstances in which claims about the spirituality of music might be made. (Contains 22 notes.)

This paper presents a study of dominant educational discourses through textual critique and argues that such an approach enables education studies to preserve an important distinction from teacher training. The texts deconstructed here are specific to English education, but the discourses at work have international relevance as the rhetorics of accountability, performance and measurement (which we call cells of discourse) have global reach. Ward described a national picture in England whereby the great majority, if not all, of education studies undergraduate courses appear to be taught alongside, or within (through shared modules) teacher training programmes. But from a sociological position, these are two increasingly conflicting arenas--the study of education and the training of teachers. In response, Ward called for the subject to radicalize teacher education. The implications of this are significant if education studies is to retain a status as agent of critique. In this paper we return to the theme of education studies as a discrete practice from teacher training and suggest that any acceptance of a proximal relation to teacher education is counter-productive. In so doing we offer three contemporary examples of the subject at deconstructive work, scrutinizing the published standards for teacher training in England, employer discourse and the Tomlinson report (commissioned by the English government to offer proposals for the reworking of vocational education) and the new curriculum for adult literacy in England. Particular attention is given to analysing the ways in which such texts speak the currently powerful discourse of standards. (Contains 3 figures.)

Students in many countries face increased costs of education in the form of direct payments and future tax liabilities and, as a consequence, their education decisions have taken on a greater financial dimension. This has refocused attention on obtaining meaningful estimates of the return to education. Routinely these returns are estimated as the additional earnings derived by an individual following their acquisition of an additional one year of education. However, the use of earnings data in this context is not without methodological problems including likely attenuation and ability bias in measuring the earnings/education relationship, issues concerning the appropriate rate of discount to apply to observed earnings gains and the appropriateness of using years-of-education as the measure of educational attainment. In this paper we explore the use of an alternative means of assessing returns to education by examining shifts in the likelihood of gaining "labour market success" from various levels of educational qualification within the framework of an ordered logit model. This method offers three distinct advantages: it favours the use of data from the Sample of anonymised records of the 2001 Census for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which, in turn, allows the joint consideration of most of the control variables thought to influence returns to education; it focuses upon the prime source of pecuniary returns to education (labour market success); and it gives expression to the "screening device" and the "credentials" aspects of education by focusing upon the importance of qualifications gained rather than the number of years spent in education. (Contains 10 tables and 4 notes.)

Compulsory education in China's rural areas has come a long way since China adopted the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world toward the end of 1978. By 2004, compulsory education had become available and illiteracy had been eliminated among 93.6 percent of the nation's total population; the enrollment rate of school-age children had reached 98.6 percent, and the gross enrollment rate of junior middle school youngsters had reached 94.1 percent. In 2004, the Chinese government's budgetary appropriation for rural compulsory education totaled RMB132.6 billion, which was RMB79.3 billion more than in 1999 (the year prior to the rural tax reform), accounting for 76.6 percent of the nation's total spending on rural compulsory education at RMB164.5 billion, and an 18.8 percent increase over the 1999 figure. On December 23, 2005, the State Council issued the Circular on Reform of Rural Compulsory Education Assured Funding Mechanism. The circular stipulates bringing rural compulsory education entirely within guaranteed public finance mechanisms and establishing an assured funding framework whereby spending on rural compulsory education is shared between the central government and local authorities proportionately and by categories. This milestone decision is a major policy choice made after repeated changes have taken place in the rural compulsory education financing system in the fifty-seven-year history of the People's Republic and the thirty-year history of reform and opening up to the outside world. This article describes the development of rural compulsory education finance in China. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article uses feminist methodologies of critical and personal reflections to consider the contributions that feminist sociology and sociology of education have made to developments in the pedagogies and practices of higher education, particularly professional and postgraduate education. First, the article reviews the contributions of women and feminists to developing feminist theories and methodologies over the last three or four decades. It considers, in particular, the ways in which these developments around the notions of personal and political have become more complex as generations of women as academics and students have entered the academy. These complexities are linked to the wider social and economic transformations and especially changing forms of liberalism, from social democracy, through economic liberalism to neo-liberalism. These developments are spelled out briefly and linked to changing forms of higher education. The second half of the article concentrates on developments in higher education and the mystification of postgraduate and professional education under neo-liberalism. A case study of the developments in doctoral and professional education is provided, with an emphasis on how women have become engaged in these practices. Consideration is also given to changing pedagogies and the practice of more personal pedagogies in higher education and how this has developed with respect to a professional doctorate in education. In conclusion, consideration is given to the prospects for the future of these changing developments and the contribution of feminist pedagogies and practices for the renewal of sociology and the sociology of education a d forms of knowledge within the academy.

The importance of paying attention to the technology agenda in the educational policies of the United States was demonstrated by Cynthia Selfe (1999) in her analysis of the 1996 initiative "Getting America's Students Ready." Selfe showed how the technology literacy project enjoyed considerable public support induced by popular utopian narratives about technology as the harbinger of democracy, economic growth, and progress--despite having reproduced, if not exacerbated, inequities based on race and poverty. In this article, the author builds on Selfe's (1999) work of "paying attention" by conducting a critical rhetorical analysis of higher education policy discourse about the Internet. The author analyzes three sets of higher education policy documents in two countries, the United States and Germany. Specifically, the author selected policy documents at the national level that: (a) present visions or action plans for higher education; (b) directly address the role of the Internet or the changes to higher education that were presumed to result from the Internet; and (c) focus on higher education as a whole. Through this analysis, the author has found that higher education policy discourse about the Internet in the United States advances for-profit interests in the use of the Internet for market expansion and deregulation in higher education while de-emphasizing the public good of higher education. Similarly, concerned about the global market expansion in U.S. higher education, higher education policy discourse about the Internet in Germany combines traditional nation-building and hence public functions of higher education with business objectives, creating a tension between traditional public and emerging for-profit conceptualizations of higher education.

This paper works to shed light on challenges and possibilities of helping teacher education faculty to be competent as international teacher educators. This collaborative self study of a USA teacher educator's international experiences provides ideas that might be considered that will help support teacher education faculty in movement toward this competence. These experiences abroad must be of a quality (authenticity) and quantity (length of time) such that they provide teacher education faculty with opportunities to construct and re/construct understandings of phenomena, including how education is conceived of and carried out differently, so that it approximates a better understanding of the perspective of the international "Other" regarding education. Without this quality and quantity of experiences, the teacher educator risks completing the international education experience within the framework of the culturally insular wherein the perspective they attain is negative (reinforcing negative cultural stereotypes and misunderstanding the aims of education in that country) or superficial (having a general idea of how things work, such as cultures or schooling systems, but at such a superficial level as to be of little value upon return). These emerging themes suggest that the most robust experiences abroad must put the teacher education on a path toward (a) reflective practice as assumptions are reconsidered and expectations are clarified; (b) flexibility and creativity in acknowledging the always evolving identities as an open-minded perspective is formed; (c) understanding teaching as a political activity; and (d) seeking and strengthening authenticity without trivializing these experiences.