Education & Pedagogy

This article stems from recent policy research involving participants in an international higher education program. Story lines of the program from Thai and Australian policy makers and policy actors are interpreted from a poststructural stance. Through the multiple and shifting positionings of the participants, agency and identity within this globalised space is constructed and reconstructed. The study contributes constructions of the relationship between globalisation and international higher education previously obscured by the apparent domination of the neoliberal discourse. Possibilities for international higher education as constructive of globalisation are encountered in these policy readings. (Contains 1 note and 1 figure.)

This reflective article describes an international teacher education workshop in a Central American country. The process of designing a workshop based on critical pedagogy and multicultural education in an international setting is explained. An examination of the attitudes, actions, and assumptions of the Ministry of Education officials from the Central American country, the teachers attending the workshop, and the presenters of the workshops reveals the complex ways that oppression operates in a given society. Reflections from the presenters reveal the challenges and possibilities associated with international, multicultural teacher education. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

As one of the main disciplines, science is very important for people to make sense of their life. The appropriate use of the models in science classrooms to promote children's understanding, imagination and creativity definitely depends on the teachers who have experience of differentiating the scope and the limitations of the models. From this respect, the education given to pre-service student teachers in teacher education institutions as a base of the teaching profession should be considered carefully. Therefore, in this paper, the main aim is to indicate the importance of modelling in science education and in teacher education. (Contains 4 figures.)

In February 2006, Nellie Mae Education Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Blenda J. Wilson convened a roundtable discussion on trends in education philanthropy. Wilson's guests were Ron Ancrum, president of Associated Grant Makers, which serves grantmaking members in Massachusetts and New Hampshire; Nancy P. Roberts, president of the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy; and Wendy L. Ault, executive director of the MELMAC Education Foundation in Maine. This article presents excerpts of their conversation about barriers to increasing college education in New England, the role foundations play in addressing these barriers, and the means of tapping into the potential of philanthropy to increase college attainment.

The study assessed the views of 115 special education teachers. They reported demographic information, data related to who was attending and leading individualized education plan (IEP) meetings, and their views about the helpfulness/importance of school psychologists. Special education teachers considered the presence of school psychologists to be moderately important. School psychologists' participation and leadership at meetings was positively correlated with increased ratings of their helpfulness/importance by special education teachers. Thus the current study gives some insight into teachers' views related to school psychologists at IEP meetings. (Contains 3 tables.)

The failure of the Association for Education in Citizenship to gain official support for the secular and pedagogically progressive forms of education for citizenship that its founder members endorsed has previously been explained by the political impotence of the association's founder members and the professional conservatism of the educational establishment. However, this paper proposes that, as part of a wider cultural conservatism in England between 1935 and 1949, citizenship was recast in a Christian mould in response to foreign "secular" political ideologies and that this enabled religious education to gain official endorsement as an essential form of education for citizenship. (Contains 128 footnotes.)

The authors report on the implementation process of environmental education (EE) in two Flemish (Belgian) teacher education colleges. One college had a long history of cross-curricular education, whereas the other college did not. Initially the implementation processes in the two institutions stagnated because of personal and organizational obstructions. After inserting EE in the curriculum for preservice teacher education and in the job descriptions of the participating teachers, the implementation goals. The authors took initiatives and made progress toward the institutionalization of EE. Conflicting priority between mandatory and EE-course time was, however, experienced as a major dilemma in providing EE.

The aim of this paper is to present good educational practices from Bulgaria that relate to Roma education. In the so-called Years of Transition, educational conditions changed considerably. Non-governmental organizations have attempted to promote high-quality education for Roma children. The Bulgarian Ministry of Education has made various changes in legislation which now allow Roma children to receive mother tongue education as well as intercultural education with a focus on Romani language, culture and history. This paper provides a short overview of projects that have been implemented in kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, as well as adult literacy and education since the time of transition. (Contains 1 note.)

Using Castells' four principal functions of universities, this article examines several key dilemmas relating to governance of higher education in SE Asia, (specifically Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). While all five nations value universities highly, and aspire to widen access to higher education, none can provide public higher education to all who seek places. Hence, private higher education is growing apace, sharpening problems in sectoral governance systems that are, in several cases, already stretched to capacity. Trans-national developments are further complicating domestic regulatory demands. Issues of finance, devolution and transparency are particularly assessed as key challenges for SE Asian higher education. (Contains 8 tables.)

This article describes efforts at the University of California, San Diego in the Education Studies Program to develop and field-test a teacher preparation program that combines best practices in bilingual education and deaf education. The training curriculum designed for this program relies on research that finds a correlation between ASL fluency and English literacy. Also discussed is a collaborative project between training faculty and K-12 partners to transition between more traditional deaf education practices and new teaching and assessment practices focused on ASL literacy development as well as development in other languages.

Teacher education programs have been slow in responding to the increasing diversity in education systems and tertiary institutions. This article focuses on the development of teacher education programs for immigrant teachers, drawing on interview and other data from a study of 110 teachers in programs at the Faculty of Education, University of Sydney, Australia. It argues that for teacher education programs to respond to the growing diversity they need four components: (1) ways to increase access for students from minority backgrounds; (2) appropriate delivery modes and structures; (3) inclusive curriculum along with a range of support programs for students; and (4) incorporation of equity provisions into institutional structures.

Although university-level distance education often sets itself up in contradistinction to conventional educational provision, the thinking most distance educators is framed by a set of un-stated axioms that derive from the conventional system. This axiomatically framed approach to university education at a distance may well blunt the potential for distance education to achieve its true potential. This paper describes the axioms and attempts to explain their continuing power to constrain education thinking in the light abundant evidence that such thinking flies in the face of the facts. It uses Athabasca University, a free-standing distance education university located in Alberta Canada, as a case in point.

The educational history of the Sultanate of Oman has undergone rapid development. In 1970, there were three primary schools. Today, there is universal education, with modern public and private institutions. In 1985, the first teacher education institutions offered a diploma programme. In 1994, six Colleges of Education, offering a degree, were established. Recently, the Directorate General-Colleges of Education, Ministry of Higher Education, introduced a quality assurance process in these colleges based on self-assessment, external review, feedback, and monitored change. This paper outlines how the process was established, the challenges it presented, and the solutions that have been developed.

Further education has very different accreditation arrangements than the higher education sector. There are no convincing rationales for these differences; they stem from history, and have often arisen as a result of other decisions on the organization and funding of the two sectors. The overlapping territory between further and higher education is examined, and a gradual shift to HE modes of accreditation is noted. It is suggested that this may be a result of a tendency to put a higher premium on lateral stratifications between levels of education, and less on vertical organizations by discipline, styles of education or occupational sector. However, there are some countervailing tendencies in both sectors. (Contains 13 notes.)

In this article, the authors discuss the small learning community or small high schools literature and the issues surrounding the dismantling of large high schools. Next, the authors describe inclusive education and its apparent relationship to the creation of small learning communities. The authors bridge the gap between the intent of small learning communities and secondary inclusive education. Then, the authors delineate the possible benefits of explicitly linking special education (i.e., secondary inclusive education) and small learning communities. Finally, several research implications of making a link between inclusive education and small learning communities are discussed.