Policy Futures in Education

ISSN 1478-2103

Volume 7 Number 3 2009

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Catherine Scott. The Culture of Teaching, pages 275‑283
Tim Vorley & Jen Nelles. Building Entrepreneurial Architectures: a conceptual interpretation of the Third Mission, pages 284‑296
Nils Lindahl Elliot. New Labour’s Skills Policy at the Intersection of Business and Politics, pages 297‑312
Charmaine Brooks. Teaching in Full View: GLA as a mechanism of power, pages 313‑320
Michael A. Peters & Ruyu Hung. Solar Ethics: a new paradigm for environmental ethics and education?, pages 321‑329
Vance S. Martin. Digital Systems Analysis, pages 330‑339
Robert Shaw. The Phenomenology of Democracy, pages 340‑348

OBAMA’S AMERICA
Michael A. Peters. Obama’s ‘Postmodernism’, Humanism and History, pages 349‑355 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.349 VIEW FULL TEXT

OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS
Henry A. Giroux. Ten Years after Columbine: the tragedy of youth deepens, pages 356‑361 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.356 VIEW FULL TEXT

BOOK REVIEW
Marx and Education (Robin Small), reviewed by Ergin Bulut, pages 362‑363 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.362 VIEW FULL TEXT

The Culture of Teaching

CATHERINE SCOTT Swinburne University, Camberwell, Australia

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.275

Education is characterised by marked and damaging schisms among its specialties, especially between classroom practitioners and academic members of the profession. While many or most commentators accept this rift as arising from real and significant differences between the groups, this article argues that the schism can be seen as the consequence of the reduced status of education as an institution. Mary Douglas’s cultural theory is utilised to explore ways in which low status pushes any institution, education included, towards the world-view of a cult or sect. The origins of aspects of contemporary educational thought that attract considerable criticism from ‘outside’ are traced to thought styles that are typical of a cult. The suggestion is made that continuing criticism that further erodes education’s status will not lead to desired change but instead entrench practitioners’ stance of resistance to demands that originate from outside the profession.

Building Entrepreneurial Architectures: a conceptual interpretation of the Third Mission

TIM VORLEY Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
JEN NELLES Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.284

Universities are increasingly being challenged to become more socially and economically relevant institutions under the guise of the so-called ‘Third Mission’. This phenomenon, articulated in policy, has prompted the emergence of a growing literature documenting the evolution of the contemporary university, and specifically addressing the Third Mission and university entrepreneurship; however, it remains at once both too broadly conceptualised and overly fragmented. Thus, as the scope of university entrepreneurship widens to include ever more forms of engagement, the Third Mission remains under-theorised. Drawing together these streams of literature on the contemporary university, the concept of ‘entrepreneurial architecture’ is employed to develop a more nuanced perspective. Based on a study of UK higher education institutions, this article builds on Burns’s (2005) notion of ‘entrepreneurial architecture’ to understand the internal dynamics that underpin the coordination and consolidation of the Third Mission. The Third Mission has been politically created through numerous (prescriptive) funding programmes; however, the next phase of the Third Mission demands an understanding beyond prescription. The concept of entrepreneurial architecture provides a grounded theoretical contribution to the study of university entrepreneurship, while also offering institutions and policy makers a pragmatic approach to institutional development in the context of the Third Mission.

New Labour’s Skills Policy at the Intersection of Business and Politics

NILS LINDAHL ELLIOT Centre for Media, Culture and Environmental Education, Bristol, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.297

This article offers a critical analysis of the New Labour government’s skills policy, with special reference to its impact on higher education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is argued that, as developed by the Leitch Review of Skills, and by advocates of the discourse of ‘Knowledge Exchange’, the policy engages in the ‘skillification’ of higher education. The concept of skillification refers to the reduction of education to a matter of economically valuable skills. This reduction is the equivalent, in the sphere of adult education, of Margaret Thatcher’s famous claim that ‘there is no society’. As such, it is likely to undermine the New Labour government’s objective of using the policy ‘to maximise economic prosperity, productivity and to improve social justice’.

Teaching in Full View: GLA as a mechanism of power

CHARMAINE BROOKS University of Alberta, Canada

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.313

Foucault’s concept of governmentality frames a critical discourse analysis of Grade Level of Achievement (GLA) Reporting in Alberta. GLA requires teachers to report to the provincial government a whole number that represents their judgment of each student’s achievement in meeting the mandated curricular outcomes in grades 1 to 9 language arts and mathematics. Foucault’s notion of governmentality guides the analysis as results are illuminated within three prominent themes: homogeneous, efficient effects of power; visibility; and identity. GLA is of interest and import due to the scope of the project, the unique requirements, not solely test-based, and the myriad of ways the data gathered could be used to influence future directions. GLA is significant, micropolitically, in the way it distributes power by involving the subjects directly. The results of this analysis will serve to provide teachers, administrators and policy makers with a way to reconsider their professional agency and identity within a culture of accountability.

Solar Ethics: a new paradigm for environmental ethics and education?

MICHAEL A. PETERS University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
RUYU HUNG National Chiayi University, Taiwan

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.321

This article provides grounds for a new paradigm of environmental ethics and education based on the centrality of the sun and solar system – a shift from anthropocentrism to solar systemism. The article provides some grounds for this shift from the physical sciences that considers the planet Earth as part of a wider system that is dependent upon the star at its center. The article reviews the critcisms of anthropocentrism in the literature on environmental ethics and advances a set of cosmological arguments for considering the term ‘environment’ to include ‘beyond Earth’. Solar ethics is a frame that will help to re-position humans within nature and lead to a more sustainable world view.

Digital Systems Analysis

VANCE S. MARTIN University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.330

There have been many attempts to understand how the Internet affects our modern world. There have also been numerous attempts to understand specific areas of the Internet. This article applies Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Analysis to our informationalist society. Understanding this world as divided among individual core, semi-periphery, and periphery members adds greater clarity to studies of subsections of the world, digital and otherwise.

The Phenomenology of Democracy

ROBERT SHAW The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.3.340

Human beings originate votes, and democracy constitutes decisions. This is the essence of democracy. A phenomenological analysis of the vote and of the decision reveals for us the inherent strength of democracy and its deficiencies. Alexis de Tocqueville pioneered this form of enquiry into democracy and produced positive results from it. Unfortunately, his phenomenological method was inadequate and he missed the essential core of his ‘associative art’. The frequent association of democracy with rationality misleads us about its nature and its requirements. The phenomenology of democracy aligns with the governance concept of democracy. Many attempts to reform democracy, or impose it on others, are misplaced because they do not attend to the essence of democracy.

© SYMPOSIUM JOURNALS
Symposium Journals is the trading name of wwwords Ltd
PO Box 204, Didcot, Oxford OX11 9ZQ, United Kingdom
info@symposium-journals.co.uk
www.symposium-journals.co.uk