European Educational Research Journal |
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] |
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Sami Hautakangas & Tomi Kiilakoski.
The Information Society: towards an iron cage of e-learning? pages
1‑13 1. Jaap Scheerens. Perspectives on Education Quality, Education
Indicators and Benchmarking, pages 115-138 VIEW
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The Information Society: towards an iron cage of e-learning? |
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The purpose of this article is to analyse the meaning of different cultural paradigms in the development of educational technology. The article analyses technology critically from the perspective of the philosophy of technology, examines the manifestations of instrumentalism in the curriculum theory and analyses its effects on the different levels of decision-making relative to the design processes of educational technology. It is claimed that instrumental rationality may increase if common curricular models are used when engineering technology. One major problem that affects the development is that instrumentalism and its manifestations on different levels of design and application of educational technology excludes alternatives by its internal logic, while it provides a general problem-solving model which is justifiably rational. The essential feature of educational technology in relation to the topic of the article is the underlying logical framework in which every feature that is to be supported by technology must be given a quantifiable description. |
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Trends in the Patterns of Tertiary Entrance in Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland |
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In recent decades the proportion of people entering tertiary education has grown considerably in all western European countries. Common factors (economic, political and social) have contributed towards this expansion. There is considerable debate about whether these common pressures have led to similar changes across countries in the structure, content and student composition of tertiary education. This study aims to analyse changes over time in the patterns of tertiary entrance in Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland, and to explore whether a process of convergence is emerging despite the institutional differences which characterise the national educational systems of these three countries. The results show that the extent and the modalities of tertiary expansion in the three countries have been different. Moreover, changes in the effect of ascriptive factors (gender and social class) on tertiary entrance also appear to have followed different patterns in each country. The conclusion therefore suggests that, although there is a general increase in entry to tertiary education in all three countries, there is little evidence at present of convergence. |
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On the Possibilities of Educating Active and Reflective Teachers |
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Education is working with language. As teacher educators, this is the authors’ main theory. They present one way of working with language through language-games. The article is constructed in three sections. The first part presents the method, stating what concepts are essential in order to understand both this way of working with student teachers and the structure of the article. Two concepts are brought to the fore, that is; teacher identity and teacher knowledge. In the second section the authors introduce their way of working with cases. They briefly present what they mean by case-work, how cases are constructed and how they work with them. In the final section they theorise about some key aspects of education. They present two concepts for understanding individual learning processes. These concepts are embedded in the philosophy of ethics. Thus, their theoretical outline moves the origin of learning from the knowledge of subjects to the learning self. |
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Designing Artefacts for Inquiry and Collaboration When the Learner Takes the Lead |
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The availability of user-friendly tools for designing learning environments resulted in an innovative shift of design focus. This shift has been noticed from a user-centred, although passive and reactive, design approach to a participatory, at responsibility and self-directedness directed, design approach. This latter innovative and promising approach empowers co-designers (teachers and even learners) to actively participate in designing learning environments leading to higher learning outcomes. New pedagogical perspectives and approaches in which teachers (as domain experts) and learners are assumed to cooperate on a basis of equity and mutual responsibility will be offered a practical context for the implementation in powerful learning environments. In this article the potentials of learners as designers of their own learning environments are discussed. Support tools needed to play this role appropriately are discussed as well. |
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Benchmarking the Quality of Education |
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Presently, the idea of benchmarking educational quality is one of the corner stones of the EU’s education agenda (EU, 2002). Interest in education indicators has taken a high flight in recent years. Publications like Education at a Glance by the OECD and EURYDICE’s ‘Key Data’ stimulate a lot of attention in the public media, and at first sight are also frequently used in policy documents. An interesting phenomenon is that many countries publish national interpretations of the international publications. In these national publications there is of course room for highlighting those elements that are of particular interest to the country, but also for providing background information that ‘contextualises’ the information and may give explanation for certain figures. The ultimate purpose of education indicators can be described as providing a basis for monitoring the quality of education. Even though the current indicator sets have become quite comprehensive, and there are clear signs of their use in policy-debates, there are still some important aspects in which their impact on educational policy and practice could be strengthened. Addressing this issue appeared to be extremely timely in terms of informing developments of evidence based policy and practice (e.g. in the DfES, UK) and was the main motive to carry out this study. Our objectives were concerned with several conceptual issues, with more theme-based ways of reporting indicators and gearing them to policy issues and with feedback to lower level units of education systems, notably schools. The overall purpose of this study can be seen as learning from national use and application of educational indicators to provide suggestions for enhancing the supra national effort. In addition the aim was also to provide suggestions for the improvement of national applications through the mechanism of international exchange and countries learning from one another. |
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Comparative and International Perspectives on Educational ‘Spaces’ |
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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’. |
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