Policy Futures in Education

Outlook on Research in Education for Sustainable Development

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Outlook on Research in Education for Sustainable Development
Author: CORNELIA GRÄSEL; INKA BORMANN; KERSTIN SCHÜTTE; KATI TREMPLER; ROBERT FISCHBACH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 115-127
ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of current research on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). It shows a lack of correspondence between ESD research and recent debates in educational research. Research on ESD has established as a field of research with insufficient relations to other fields in educational research. Based on the overview the article suggests an outlook on prospective topics and methods in ESD research.

Racism, the Left and Twenty-first-century Socialism: some observations on the Gur-Ze'ev/McLaren interchange

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Racism, the Left and Twenty-first-century Socialism: some observations on the Gur-Ze'ev/McLaren interchange
Author: MIKE COLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 128-136
ABSTRACT The Gur-Ze'ev/McLaren interchange covered a wide range of issues that are important for twenty-first century socialists. In this article, the author concentrates on two of them: first, Gur-Ze'ev's charge that critical pedagogy is part of the 'new anti-Semitism'; second, his critique of McLaren's support for Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian model of twenty-first century socialism.

Roles for Educators in Helping the USA Form a Real Global Society

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Roles for Educators in Helping the USA Form a Real Global Society
Author: RUBEN GENTRY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 137-144
ABSTRACT By not properly addressing economic issues, health care, and educational needs, the United States of America was on the verge of financial collapse and people had to choose between having food or medicine. President Barack Obama emerged with a broad-based plan of change for the country which impacts every major sector of society. He wants peace to replace war, an economy that provides jobs, health care that brings relief to all Americans and education that is effective from preschool to college. This article moves from Obama's general vision for the country to his detailed plan for education. First, a review of literature is conducted to validate the merit of his plan. With a refined agenda, educators are challenged to embrace it and make ready for its implementation. The final charge is to focus attention on strategies for imparting quality education to students around the world.

Can Market Capitalism Be Greened? Environmental Education Revisited

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Can Market Capitalism Be Greened? Environmental Education Revisited
Author: DEB J. HILL; LYNLEY TULLOCH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 145-153
ABSTRACT Widespread recognition of the detrimental effects that human activities have had on nature and its ecosystems can now be found in every domain of public policy. Since the inception of international accords in the 1970s provoked greater engagement by nations in environmental amelioration measures, 'education' has been lauded as an important panacea to promote a generational shift in attitudes and actions towards the conservation and protection of the environment. Using 'environmental education' as a backdrop for our discussion, our intention in this article is to apply the important insights of the Italian Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) to an analysis of educational concerns. Although much existing radical environment theory involves acknowledgement of the complex and dynamic way in which civil society and the political economy are interconnected, Gramsci's historical, dialectical, and materialist worldview brings to light the extent of the hold that the prevailing forces of capitalism exert on those subjected to its valuations. The dynamics of attitudinal change are complex. Gramsci's work provides us with a richer understanding of the depth of the workings of power generated through the nexus of the cultural bulwarks of capitalist 'production'. This is an interrogation of curriculum theory of a deeper kind.

Neoliberalism, Policy Reforms and Higher Education in Bangladesh

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Neoliberalism, Policy Reforms and Higher Education in Bangladesh
Author: ARIFUL HAQ KABIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 154-166
ABSTRACT Bangladesh has introduced neoliberal policies since the 1970s. Military regimes, since the dramatic political changes in 1975, accelerated the process. A succession of military rulers made rigorous changes in policy-making in various sectors. This article uses a critical approach to document analysis and examines the perceptions of key stakeholders to explore how the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and the economic and political interests of the ruling civil-military elites, worked together to consolidate power and adopt neoliberal policy in various sectors. Moreover, the democratic regimes, since the 1990s, have continued to implement neoliberal policies with support from the IFIs. As part of neoliberalism, the democratic regimes initiated a market-driven economic policy in the higher education sector in the 1990s. The neoliberal transformation of policies has brought major changes in the higher education sector in recent times. This article aims to examine and report on these changes.

Getting Past the Gatekeeper: safeguarding and access issues in researching HIV+ children in Jamaica

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Getting Past the Gatekeeper: safeguarding and access issues in researching HIV+ children in Jamaica
Author: PAUL MILLER; KEMESHA KELLY; NICOLA SPAWLS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 167-174
ABSTRACT This article is derived from a recently completed research study on the 'Schooling Experiences of HIV+ Children in Jamaica'. It is written against the background of researching children generally, and also in the context of researching vulnerable children, specifically those who are HIV+. Research carries with it various notions of power and ethics, often manifested in terms of researchers gaining access to participants, researchers' positionality (i.e. whether they are an insider or outsider) and the intended use of the research findings. As regards the field experiences being reported in this article, researcher positionality was of only limited consequence. However, the intended use of the output of the research was central to gaining access to the key participants (namely children who are HIV+), since overriding issues for 'gatekeepers' (namely state officials and partners) included safeguarding children and the protection of their right to privacy and confidentiality.

On the Need to Ask Educational Questions about Education: an interview with Gert Biesta

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: On the Need to Ask Educational Questions about Education: an interview with Gert Biesta
Author: HERNER SAEVEROT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 175-184
ABSTRACT This interview attempts to articulate what it might mean to speak for 'Pädagogik' in an era where new trends in education run the risk of marginalizing 'Pädagogik' as an independent academic discipline. This trend can be found in several European countries and is judged by Herner Saeverot and Gert Biesta to be a development that is cause for concern.

Local Knowledge Brokerage for Data-Driven Policy and Practice in Education

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Local Knowledge Brokerage for Data-Driven Policy and Practice in Education
Author: JAN VANHOOF; PAUL MAHIEU
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 185-199
ABSTRACT The concept of 'knowledge brokerage' focuses on promoting the integration of the best available evidence into policy and practice-related decisions. In this study, emphasis is put on the knowledge brokerage role of cities. The study aims at finding similarities and differences in existing educational knowledge brokerage initiatives, at exploring the effectiveness of knowledge brokerage initiatives, and at explaining differences in the effectiveness of educational knowledge brokerage initiatives. Four medium-sized cities were investigated using a case study methodology. During the case studies a qualitative approach using document analysis and in-depth interviews was adopted. The article firstly describes the existing knowledge brokerage initiatives. The descriptive part also looks at the effectiveness of the studied knowledge brokerage initiatives by describing their (un)intended results. Afterwards three clusters of factors are introduced that can explain differences in the success of brokerage initiatives of cities: the policy context, the users and their organisation, and the knowledge brokerage system. The article stresses the importance of a context of trust, and a context that stimulates data use, and elaborates on findings regarding the impact of data literacy, data culture, the organisations' policy-making capacities, and a sense of urgency.

Existential Thoughts in Fanon's Post-colonialism Discourse

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: Existential Thoughts in Fanon's Post-colonialism Discourse
Author: CHUAN-RONG YEH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 200-215
ABSTRACT Frantz Fanon, a pioneer of post-colonial theory, attempted to seek some unbeknown possibilities through a Sartrean existentialism thought toward ethnic liberation and the fighting against imperialism. This article tries to enter Fanon's short life that was full of humanism and existentialist thought and to explore the hidden theoretical context when he was speculating the ethnic liberation movement and overturning imperialism. The article also tries to find a whole new vision and direction of thought about Fanon and his anti-colonial theory.

European Higher Education and Corporate Designs of Utopia

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:12:02 GMT

Title: European Higher Education and Corporate Designs of Utopia
Author: Ricardo D. Rosa
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Pages: 216-222
ABSTRACT Not available

To be Accountable in Neoliberal Times: an exploration of educational policy in Ecuador

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: To be Accountable in Neoliberal Times: an exploration of educational policy in Ecuador
Author: ENMA CAMPOZANO AVILES; MAARTEN SIMONS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-12
ABSTRACT The ascendancy of neoliberal modes of governing has caused a shift in accountability practices in the public sector, including in the field of education. This shift can be observed in the accountability regimes introduced into education systems around the world. They reflect a strong focus on quality assurance/control and efficiency in order for countries to be able to survive in a global competitive environment. Increasingly operating in a global context, Ecuador also engaged in a series of policy initiatives to restructure accountability in its educational system. Based on a critical analysis of recent accountability policies in Ecuadorian education, this article determines the regime of accountability that is promoted in Ecuador today and discusses the emerging tensions.

Three Methods of Enhancing Global Educational Awareness for Future Teachers

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Three Methods of Enhancing Global Educational Awareness for Future Teachers
Author: IRIS HAAPANEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 13-18
ABSTRACT Teachers can echo the ethnic diversity of students in simulation trips to achieve an appreciation of globally indigenous education practices for future teachers. This article explores the three methods of achieving this, consisting of technology, acting out, and simulated trips, as they may be used by teachers to blend the more salient characteristics of various cultures into the existing curriculum without jeopardizing the intended student learning outcomes. The most likely result of using these methods will be to enrich the standard curriculum, accomplished through the use of technology and acting-out activities. Technically, this involves applying critical hermeneutics to globally indigenous education, but in this article the author will simply refer to it informally as a pedagogical awareness of 'collective individual differences' in the teaching-learning process. This application works at all levels: elementary, secondary, and university level.

Biotechnology Education in India: an overview

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Biotechnology Education in India: an overview
Author: KIRTI JOSHI; KAVITA MEHRA; SUMAN GOVIL; NITU SINGH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 19-36
ABSTRACT Among the developing countries, India is one of those that recognises the importance of biotechnology. The trajectory of different policies being formulated over time is proof that the government is progressing towards achieving self-sufficiency. However, to cater to the ever-growing biotech industry, skilled manpower is required. This article therefore brings together reflections on the evolution of biotech education in India with the aim of giving an exposition on the diversity of issues concerning its growth and expansion within the country.

Dissolving the School Space: young people's media production in and outside of school

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Dissolving the School Space: young people's media production in and outside of school
Author: REIJO KUPIAINEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 37-46
ABSTRACT Young people bring their own media and literacy practices to school as an important part of their identity, taste and social life. These practices are changing the media ecology of schools, making the physical boundaries of schools more permeable and creating new, unofficial spaces at school. During peer-based learning, the enhanced media practices of students often get incorporated into the school environment and the learning process in different ways. In this article the author especially highlights youth media production practices, which may relate to school in three different ways: they may be school community-based practices, curriculum-based practices or out-of-school practices. This study shows how these practices create a dialogue between informal and formal learning and make space-time at school more dynamic and hybrid.

Creativity and the Biopolitical Commons in Secondary and Higher Education

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Creativity and the Biopolitical Commons in Secondary and Higher Education
Author: ALEXANDER MEANS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 47-58
ABSTRACT This article draws on autonomist theory in order to examine the role of creativity in educational policy and governance. Drawing examples primarily from the North American context, it suggests that extant efforts to manage creativity in secondary and higher education are ultimately unstable, revealing what the Edu-factory collective has referred to as the 'double crisis' in education. This refers to the erosion of the social democratic purposes of education conjoined with emergent conflicts over knowledge and immaterial labor. Ultimately, the article suggests that creativity rests at a key axis of contestation between state-corporate power and the possibility of imagining alternative democratic and sustainable futures rooted in the common.

Pedagogical Systems and the Construction of the Primary School Teacher in the Teachers' Training Institution (Didaskalio) in Greece (1830-1933): issues of power and governmentality

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Pedagogical Systems and the Construction of the Primary School Teacher in the Teachers' Training Institution (Didaskalio) in Greece (1830-1933): issues of power and governmentality
Author: MARIA NIKOLAKAKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 59-73
ABSTRACT This article investigates the governmentality in the pedagogical systems through the teachers' mission and the corresponding teachers' education in Greece from the construction of the nation/state and for about a century, according to the socio-economical conditions that emerged. It does so in order to analyse the relation of society, the educational system and teachers' education. To this end, it decodes, through discourse analysis among other means, the state's official texts, the pedagogy applied, the teachers' tasks and position in teaching, and the impact of the above on teachers' education. It discerns three reform periods of teachers' education in Greece from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and explores how teachers were prepared in the Didaskalio (teachers' education institution) in each period. It concludes that power relations determine the construction of the teacher's soul in order to construct the child's soul.

Using Political Metaphors to Understand Educational Policy in Developing Countries: the case of Ghana and informal communities

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: Using Political Metaphors to Understand Educational Policy in Developing Countries: the case of Ghana and informal communities
Author: JOHAN NORDENSVARD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 74-88
ABSTRACT This article suggests that one needs to consider education as inherently political to better understand some of the problems in education policy in developing countries. It suggests that using political metaphors as a discursive framework can enhance the understanding of some of the limitations of formal schooling in developing countries. Political metaphors can be an alternative approach to the predominant market metaphors in education policy and can provide valuable insights for future research and policy that go beyond current approaches. By using Ghana as an example, this article focuses on the implications that strong informal communities and markets can have for formal schooling in developing countries.

The Philosophy of Turkish National and Higher Education

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: The Philosophy of Turkish National and Higher Education
Author: ERDAL TOPRAKÇI; SERKAN BULDU ; EBRU BOZPOLAT; GÜLÇİN OFLAZ; İCLAL DAĞDEVİREN; ERSİN TÜRE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 89-99
ABSTRACT This study aims to establish whether the Basic Law of National Education and the Law of Higher Education, both of which give direction to the Turkish educational system, are based on any educational philosophy trends, and to what extent. For this purpose, both laws were investigated using the ‘document analysis’ method. All the data obtained were interpreted through the content analysis process. The results of the survey found that neither law feeds on any educational philosophy but that both were mainly based on the ‘progressive’ trend. In addition, it was shown that each law also represents different philosophical trends when studied individually and therefore it was concluded that the Turkish educational philosophy does not show a combined characteristic.

On Science, Ecology and Environmentalism

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:42:06 GMT

Title: On Science, Ecology and Environmentalism
Author: LYNLEY TULLOCH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2013 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Pages: 100-114
ABSTRACT Using ecological science as a backdrop for this discussion, the author applies Michel Foucault's historical genealogical strategy to an analysis of the processes through which sustainable development (SD) gained hegemonic acceptance in the West. She analyses some of the ideological mutations that have seen SD emerge from an environmentalist ideology based on ecological science to that of a mainstream market-oriented ideology for global economic development. This involves canvassing the voices of early environmental authors and ecologists, whose ideas such as 'carrying capacity', 'limits to growth' and 'finite resources' have been co-opted by the 'sustainable development' movement. It is argued that a discursive political and philosophical conservatism has muted the potential for a truly radical ecological approach.

Introduction. Why Read Giroux?

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Introduction. Why Read Giroux?
Author: Tina (A.C.) Besley
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 594-600
ABSTRACT Not available

Recuperating Democratic Spaces in an Age of Militarisation and a 'New Fascism'

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Recuperating Democratic Spaces in an Age of Militarisation and a 'New Fascism'
Author: PETER MAYO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 601-615
ABSTRACT This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Henry Giroux's contribution over the years to critical thinking in education and beyond. It focuses primarily on Giroux's recent works concerning the changing nature of the State (from the social to the carceral and neoliberal state), the war against youth and children, the culture of militarisation, torture, the emergence of a 'new fascism', the corporatisation of schools and higher education and the need for intellectuals to extend their work beyond the confines of academia to engage as public intellectuals, as well as the roles of critical pedagogy and cultural studies in this regard. The article draws on a range of writings, including both academic and more 'public' writings from such outlets as Truthout and Counterpunch. While much of what is written presents a bleak picture of the current international socio-economic scenario, Giroux's work is infused with a sense of hope and agency. It is inspired by a view of a world not as it is now but as it can and should be.

Henry Giroux and the Arts

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Henry Giroux and the Arts
Author: DAVID TREND
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 616-621
ABSTRACT Henry A. Giroux is well known for pushing the definitions of education. From his early forays into what has been termed the 'New Sociology of Education' in the early 1980s to his more recent discussions of 'public pedagogy', Giroux has methodically challenged existing orthodoxies. This essay will focus on the interdisciplinary broadening of Giroux 's work in the early 1990s, especially his scholarship on the arts as it reflects the inclusive thinking that subsequently drove his contributions to critical theory, cultural studies, media, and radical democracy, as well as the field of education. In a period fraught with controversies over the role of teachers and artists in public life, Giroux forged new connections between these two embattled groups. Advancing the common figure of the 'cultural worker' as a facilitator of change, Giroux argued for 'Artists as Teachers' and 'Teachers as Artists'. This work inspired many in the arts and education, especially those with activist leanings, to see beyond definitions and conventions that had confined or isolated their efforts.

The Transformative Intellectual: an examination of Henry Giroux's ethics

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: The Transformative Intellectual: an examination of Henry Giroux's ethics
Author: TONY KASHANI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 622-626
ABSTRACT This article explores Henry Giroux's contributions to critical pedagogy. The author demonstrates how Giroux, as a public intellectual, has found his Ethics in the right place. The author further argues that Giroux's Ethics of virtue are present not only in the public person but also in his transformative writing.

Disposable Youth/Damaged Democracy: youth, neoliberalism, and the promise of pedagogy in the work of Henry Giroux

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Disposable Youth/Damaged Democracy: youth, neoliberalism, and the promise of pedagogy in the work of Henry Giroux
Author: CHRISTOPHER G. ROBBINS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 627-641
ABSTRACT Perhaps more extensively and provocatively than any other contemporary theorist, Henry Giroux has theorized the relationship between youth and democratic public life. Beginning arguably with his first book, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling (Temple University Press, 1981), and continuing across a number of critically acclaimed works in the 1980s and early 1990s, Giroux uncompromisingly theorized the relationship between schooling and democracy, implicitly registering the importance of youth to a vibrant, radical democracy. Giroux redefined and expanded his analytic in the early 1990s with forays into postmodern theory, critical feminism, and media and cultural studies, among many other fields. With this redefined (and to this day evolving) analytic frame came an intensified effort to explicitly theorize the category of youth and analyze the broad socio-political, cultural and economic shifts that simultaneously transformed everyday life for youth and the 'image' - or figure - of youth across a range of sites, including policy discourse, news reportage and popular film. Yet, unlike other scholars and critics who considered youth in the 1990s (and today), Giroux also situated youth in relationship to the intellectual and her/his re-articulation amid these shifts. Giroux's contributions in this regard are singular and predictably compelling. In this article, the author considers the underlying method by which Giroux has theorized the relationships between youth, the intellectual, and democratic public life, while highlighting the contemporary relevance of this aspect of Giroux's massive body of work by appropriating it in an analysis of one intensification of the current war on youth found in the increasing use of tasers on children and youth in schools.

'Young People are No Longer at Risk - They are the Risk': Henry Giroux's Youth in a Suspect Society

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: 'Young People are No Longer at Risk - They are the Risk': Henry Giroux's Youth in a Suspect Society
Author: SOPHIA A. McCLENNEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 642-646
ABSTRACT This article analyzes Henry Giroux's recent book Youth in a Suspect Society: democracy or disposability? (Palgrave, 2009) and situates it within his post-9/11 critical interventions. Giroux has focused his recent work on theorizing, critiquing and challenging the confluence of militarization, corporatization and right-wing ideology that has characterized US society post 9/11. Giroux's post-9/11 books take up a central concern - higher education, raced biopolitics, media spectacles, neoliberalism - but that central concern is understood within a larger matrix of interconnected forces that have all combined in recent years to create a major threat to the future of democracy in this nation. To that end, this essay surveys how Youth in a Suspect Society analyzes the ways that post-9/11 US society has transformed its understanding of youth from promise and potential to suspect and commodity.

Pedagogy in Catastrophic Times: Giroux and the tasks of critical public intellectuals

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Pedagogy in Catastrophic Times: Giroux and the tasks of critical public intellectuals
Author: DOUG MORRIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 647-664
ABSTRACT This article reflects on Henry Giroux's work as a critical public intellectual and the important role his work plays in fostering educated hope and insurgent possibilities during our present times of daily and longer term catastrophes. In addition to attempting to capture the experience of what it means and how it feels to read Giroux along with what Giroux is working to accomplish, the piece reflects on various forms of public pedagogy (anti-public and 'public' public), and the interpenetrating relationships between knowledge, power, politics and pedagogy. Furthermore, it examines the stepping in/stepping out nature of the approaches to theorizing and practicing, proposing and activating, and reflecting and insurrecting that inform Giroux's ongoing critical project. The piece includes a postscript: 'Blues for Giroux'.

The New Taylorism: hacking at the philosophy of the university's end

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: The New Taylorism: hacking at the philosophy of the university's end
Author: ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 665-673
ABSTRACT This article looks at the critical writings of Mark C. Taylor. It suggests that Mark C. Taylor is rewriting a global imaginary devoid of the kind of citizenship that Henry Giroux claims as the basis for public education. Instead, Taylor wants to see the university take shape as profit-generating. According to Taylor, in lieu of learning to take positions in relation to the historical understanding that constitutes them, students are to be fitted into their identities as technology-users, directing their knowledge acquisition towards fulfilling contemporary corporate demand. This article places Taylor's op-ed positions on universities in the context of his writings in his fields of specialization, philosophy and religion, to show how he has manipulated the key terms of critical theory against critical theory's emphasis on critique and citizenship. Taylor twists the ideas of Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel, and the Frankfurt School to show how the market must be thought of as God.

Why Henry Giroux's Democratic Pedagogy is Crucial for Confronting Failed Corporate School Reform and How Liberals Like Ravitch and Darling-Hammond Are Making Things Worse

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Why Henry Giroux's Democratic Pedagogy is Crucial for Confronting Failed Corporate School Reform and How Liberals Like Ravitch and Darling-Hammond Are Making Things Worse
Author: KENNETH J. SALTMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 674-687
ABSTRACT Progressive media and the academic community outside of education has largely embraced liberal criticisms of corporate school reform or neoliberal educational restructuring, typified by the highly publicized writing and speaking of Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling-Hammond. Despite offering valuable policy information, the liberal view is grounded in a number of indefensible positions with regard to the politics of knowledge and curriculum, neoliberal globalization, and the relationship between the political economy of schooling and broader economic and political questions. The article juxtaposes the ethical, political and cultural thought of Henry Giroux against the liberal position. It suggests that those committed to educational justice ought to re-evaluate political and cultural values in the struggles against corporate school reform so as not to follow the mistaken liberal thought and collude with the neoliberal ideology and economic doctrine that animates these destructive policies.

Henry Giroux on Democracy Unsettled: from critical pedagogy to the war on youth - an interview

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Henry Giroux on Democracy Unsettled: from critical pedagogy to the war on youth - an interview
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 688-733
ABSTRACT This interview conducted with Henry Giroux begins by probing Henry's childhood, upbringing and undergraduate years to discover where his sense of social justice took hold. It also questions Henry about his working-class background and the major influences on his thought, including his relationships with Paulo Freire and Howard Zinn. The interview follows an autobiographical path to trace career highlights and contemporary interests.

Challenging the Neoliberal Global Minotaur (Henry A. Giroux: Education and the Crisis of Public Values: challenging the assault on teachers, students and public education)

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Challenging the Neoliberal Global Minotaur (Henry A. Giroux: Education and the Crisis of Public Values: challenging the assault on teachers, students and public education)
Author: Joao M. Paraskeva
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 700-716
ABSTRACT Not available

Santorum and God's Will: the religionization of politics and the tyranny of totalitarianism

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Santorum and God's Will: the religionization of politics and the tyranny of totalitarianism
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 717-719
ABSTRACT Not available

The Scorched Earth Politics of America's Fundamentalisms

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: The Scorched Earth Politics of America's Fundamentalisms
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 720-727
ABSTRACT Not available

Gated Intellectuals and Fortress America: towards a borderless pedagogy in the Occupy Movement

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Gated Intellectuals and Fortress America: towards a borderless pedagogy in the Occupy Movement
Author: Henry Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 728-733
ABSTRACT Not available

Limits to Stability

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 12:18:22 GMT

Title: Limits to Stability
Author: ALAN COTTEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 6 Pages: 734-736
ABSTRACT The author reflects briefly on what limited degree of global ecological stability and human cultural stability may be achieved, provided that humanity retains hope and does not give way to despair or hide in denial. These thoughts were triggered by a recent conference on International Stability and Systems Engineering.

Introduction. The School in the Plural and Divided Society

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Introduction. The School in the Plural and Divided Society
Author: Joanne Hughes; Caitlin Donnelly
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 496-499
ABSTRACT Not available

Faith Schools: democracy, human rights and social cohesion

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Faith Schools: democracy, human rights and social cohesion
Author: GERALD GRACE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 500-506
ABSTRACT This article argues that faith-based schools are a necessary feature of democratic and pluralistic societies and a legitimate expression of human rights as constituted in the European Convention in Human Rights (2000). It further argues that if the rights of parents to have a real choice for faith-based schools (regardless of ability to pay) are to be actualised, then state funding for such schools is required. The article concludes by saying that current arguments that faith-based schools are generative of social or community conflict have no basis in existing empirical research. These arguments, when examined, are not evidence based but rather based upon polemical and prejudiced assertions which give a superficial reading of the causes of community conflict, as in the case of Northern Ireland.

Catholic Schools and Sectarianism in Scotland: educational places and the production and negotiation of urban space

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Catholic Schools and Sectarianism in Scotland: educational places and the production and negotiation of urban space
Author: JOHN FLINT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 507-517
ABSTRACT This article explores the role of state-funded Catholic schools in debates about the causes and manifestations of sectarianism in Scotland. It suggests that debates between proponents and opponents of state-funded Catholic schools (and indeed faith schools more generally) have been largely aspatial, focusing on the teaching ethos within schools - empirically weak conceptions of the impacts of segregated schooling on social networks, and abstract national-level accounts of religion, ethnicity, identity and belonging. The article argues for a focus upon the productive power of schools as place nodes within a network of urban spaces and the agency of pupils in identity and friendship construction. It suggests the need to recognise the specifics of the social, spatial and political national and local contexts within which faith schools are situated. It concludes with an examination of educational policy responses to sectarianism in Scotland, arguing that they have focused on disrupting the spatial ordering of faith schools in an attempt to realign the physical boundaries of segregation and the visibility of difference in urban space.

Faith Schools and the Plural Society: exploring notions of diversity in school provision in England

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Faith Schools and the Plural Society: exploring notions of diversity in school provision in England
Author: ANDREW B. MORRIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 518-527
ABSTRACT Around thirty per cent of all schools in England have a religious character. The author argues that the current 'faith schools debate' is more about the nature of its 'plural society' than about the place of such schools within the state-maintained sector. He suggests that to assume we are, in fact, living within a determinedly plural society is not as clear-cut as one might suppose, and that the very existence of the current 'faith school debate' in England is an indication that we are not as committed to pluralism as we might like to think. First he sets out two differing conceptions of the plural society - one strong, one weak. Then he sketches the historical and legislative backdrop to the present English state-maintained educational system. His third objective is to chart, briefly, the development of the educational system since the 1980s and to describe how it corresponds to changes from a strong to a weak concept of a plural society in which societal attitudes which once championed legislation supporting minority communities now seem to be leaning towards marginalising or even suppressing the contribution of such groups to the common good. Finally, he argues that the continuing existence of a distinctive dual system of educational provision in England, of which the Catholic sector is a paradigm, provides a bulwark against a creeping tide of weak pluralism, which has been likened to a form of damaging totalitarianism.

Sharing Classes between Separate Schools: a mechanism for improving inter-group relations in Northern Ireland?

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Sharing Classes between Separate Schools: a mechanism for improving inter-group relations in Northern Ireland?
Author: JOANNE HUGHES; SIMON LOLLIOT; MILES HEWSTONE; KATHARINA SCHMID; KAREN CARLISLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 528-539
ABSTRACT One manifestation of division and the history of conflict in Northern Ireland is the parallel education system that exists for Protestants and Catholics. Although recent decades have seen some advances in the promotion of integrated education, around 95% of children continue to attend schools separated on ethno-religious lines. In 2007 a programme for sharing education was established. Underpinned by intergroup contact theory, and reflecting educational priorities shared by all school sectors, the programme seeks to offer children from different denominational schools an opportunity to engage with each other on a sustained basis. In this article the authors adopt a quantitative approach to examining the impact of participation in the Sharing Education Programme on a range of outcomes (out-group attitudes, positive action tendencies and out-group trust) via, first, intergroup contact (cross-group friendships) and, second, intergroup anxiety. Their findings confirm the value of contact as a mechanism for promoting more harmonious relationships, and affirm the Sharing Education Programme as an initiative that can help promote social cohesion in a society that remains deeply divided.

Defending Identity and Ethos: an analysis of teacher perceptions of school collaboration in Northern Ireland

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Defending Identity and Ethos: an analysis of teacher perceptions of school collaboration in Northern Ireland
Author: CAITLIN DONNELLY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 540-551
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to examine the process of collaborative working between teachers located in separate faith-based schools in Northern Ireland. Drawing on theories of intergroup relations, and with reference to in-depth interviews with teachers in post-primary schools, the article shows that despite earlier research which identified a reluctance amongst teachers in the different sectors to work together, most Catholic and Protestant teachers are motivated to collaborate to develop a more broadly based curriculum for pupils. However, it has also been shown that teachers tend to studiously avoid discussing their differences in mixed-faith contexts, and it is argued that this may have the potential to constrain collaborative relations. It is concluded that without strategic direction from policy makers to assist teachers in negotiating and exploring their differences it will be difficult to build the trust which is likely to sustain collaborative relations.

Teachers' 'Contact' at the Integrated Bilingual Schools in Israel

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Teachers' 'Contact' at the Integrated Bilingual Schools in Israel
Author: ZVI BEKERMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 552-562
ABSTRACT This article is about teachers working at the bilingual integrated schools in Israel. The study allows us to problematise and critically approach cross-cultural encounters on the basis of contact theory, which posits understandings regarding social interaction across cultural-political boundaries. It exposes potential differences between the outcomes of educational-initiated contact (as the ones initiated for students in the schools) and contact as this occurs in more natural/real settings, such as the workplace (in our case, the school setting as the workplace of the teachers). In the 'real' life of the integrated schools, teachers are learning something about the need to accommodate ideological issues to achieve some practical gains. They seem to grasp in some way that ideology sets the human condition upside down, as in a camera obscura. It is as if real-life situations and their practices put the real as a limit to the ideological and set the school in a journey whose end we do not know and which may surprise us. The arguments presented are an attempt to move towards a better understanding of the complexities of the construction and crossing of social borders as well as the practices which might be open to transaction/ negotiation in social encounters and those which might not.

Anger and Political Culture: a time for outrage!

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Anger and Political Culture: a time for outrage!
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 563-568
ABSTRACT This article examines the role of political anger in democracy. It reviews the work of Stéphane Hessel before examining the role and reception of anger in classical and modern thought. The author identifies two main traditions within which the concept of political anger can be located: revolutionary violence of the Marxist tradition and the peaceful, nonviolent tradition of civil disobedience initiated by Gandhi. The culture of anger going back to the ancients is examined, followed by a review of the 'angry young men' culture of a group of authors around John Osborne and his famous play Look Back in Anger. The author insists that the culture of political anger is an essential set of readings, techniques and skills that are indispensable in the neoliberal age.

Complementary Evaluation: the development of a conceptual framework to integrate external and internal evaluation in the New Zealand school context

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: Complementary Evaluation: the development of a conceptual framework to integrate external and internal evaluation in the New Zealand school context
Author: CAROL MUTCH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 569-586
ABSTRACT One of the themes of current school evaluation research and debate is the extent to which it is possible to integrate internal and external evaluation and accountability and improvement. In this article, the author outlines how New Zealand has attempted to reconcile these differing perspectives and aims. New Zealand has a national system of school evaluation which has been in place since the education reforms of the 1980s. The Education Review Office (ERO) evaluates the quality of education in all pre-tertiary educational institutions and services. The ERO has adapted its approach over the years as it has been subject to external review, as government priorities have changed and as the process has become embedded in regular school planning and evaluation cycles. The ERO's current strategic focus is on building schools' confidence and competence in conducting self-evaluation as part of an ongoing focus on continuous improvement. This article reports on the iterative development of the Building Capacity in Evaluation (BCiE) project, with particular reference to developing the underpinning conceptual framework - complementary evaluation. The framework aims to bring together the strengths of internal and external evaluation and the ERO's focus on school accountability and improvement in a complementary manner.

The Wisdom of Sages: nuclear physics education, knowledge-inquiry, and wisdom-inquiry

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:20:15 GMT

Title: The Wisdom of Sages: nuclear physics education, knowledge-inquiry, and wisdom-inquiry
Author: ALAN COTTEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 587-593
ABSTRACT This article addresses the difference between knowledge-inquiry and wisdom-inquiry in nuclear physics education. In the spirit of an earlier study of 57 senior-level textbooks for first-degree physics students, this work focuses here on a remarkable use of literary quotations in one such book. Particles and Nuclei: an introduction to the physical concepts, by B. Povh et al, opens with an epigraph from Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz which has been rendered, in the celebrated translation by C.T. Brooks, as 'Not alone to solve the double/Rule of Three shall man take trouble;/But must hear with pleasure Sages/Teach the wisdom of the ages.' What the student gets, however, is technical material followed abruptly at the very end by the following biblical advice, from the Book of Jeremiah: 'And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates.' From a study of these and other quotations and other features of the book the present author infers a strong desire to express something important about wisdom, which is, however, even more powerfully suppressed by the ideology of knowledge-inquiry. The article ends with a brief discussion of 'wisdom of the ages' and 'wisdom for our age'.

Current Trends and Future Tendencies: developing sustainable assessment cultures

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Current Trends and Future Tendencies: developing sustainable assessment cultures
Author: STEPHEN DOBSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 366-373
ABSTRACT Schools and their development as sustainable assessment cultures requires insight into the interests and role of different stakeholders: school policy makers, teachers and their teaching teams, principals, parents, pupils and the local community. Researchers are not immediately included in this list, but as external advisers they can play a pivotal role as catalysts or as the advocate for the actions or informed reflections of stakeholders. A stakeholder approach can easily draw support from rational choice theory or the perhaps more fashionable systems approach. In the opening article to this special issue, the authors are less interested in adopting and defending a single theoretical perspective and seek, instead, to highlight and provide an overview of a number of debates and approaches that seek to understand the study and practice of developing sustainable assessment cultures in schools. In the course of this article, the contributions of this special issue will be positioned in what is, in many respects, a global dialogue, where different researchers are keen to draw upon the experience and conceptual resources of colleagues located around the world.

Assessment for, of and as Learning: developing a sustainable assessment culture in New Zealand schools

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Assessment for, of and as Learning: developing a sustainable assessment culture in New Zealand schools
Author: CAROL MUTCH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 374-385
ABSTRACT In line with international trends, assessment policies and practices have increased in importance in New Zealand over the last two decades. The focus in this article is on examining the contested nature of the development of an assessment culture in New Zealand - one that meets the needs of the government by providing information on school accountability and yet maintains the autonomy of schools to continue school-based decision-making. The article begins by providing background to the New Zealand context and a brief description of current policies. The main emphasis, however, is on three companion themes in the development of assessment policy - assessment and improvement, assessment and accountability, and assessment and sustainability. These themes were drawn from an analysis of key documents and aligned with a conceptual framework drawn from the schooling effectiveness literature to provide a lens to examine the past, present and possible future of assessment policy and practice in New Zealand.

A Systems-Level Approach to Building Sustainable Assessment Cultures: moderation, quality task design and dependability of judgement

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: A Systems-Level Approach to Building Sustainable Assessment Cultures: moderation, quality task design and dependability of judgement
Author: PETA COLBERT; CLAIRE WYATT-SMITH; VAL KLENOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 386-401
ABSTRACT This article considers the conditions that are necessary at system and local levels for teacher assessment to be valid, reliable and rigorous. With sustainable assessment cultures as a goal, the article examines how education systems can support local-level efforts for quality learning and dependable teacher assessment. This is achieved through discussion of relevant research and consideration of a case study involving an evaluation of a cross-sectoral approach to promoting confidence in school-based assessment in Queensland, Australia. Building on the reported case study, essential characteristics for developing sustainable assessment cultures are presented, including: leadership in learning; alignment of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; the design of quality assessment tasks and accompanying standards; and evidence-based judgement and moderation. Taken together, these elements constitute a new framework for building assessment capabilities and promoting quality assurance.

Teamwork to Enhance Adapted Teaching and Formative Assessment

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Teamwork to Enhance Adapted Teaching and Formative Assessment
Author: HALVOR BJØRNSRUD; ROAR ENGH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 402-410
ABSTRACT This article has as its main focus the contextual factors connected with teachers' teamwork. Firstly, it deals with the question of how to create reflections among teachers on the topic of teamwork. Their written answers function as empirical data for researchers and also as contributions to the further professional development of teamwork. Secondly, the authors discuss the content of teamwork in the sense of how teachers as a community might support the individual teacher's work with both adapted teaching and formative assessment.

Self-assessment of Schools and Teachers as a Road to Transforming Schools from Teaching to Learning Organisations

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Self-assessment of Schools and Teachers as a Road to Transforming Schools from Teaching to Learning Organisations
Author: HANS-WERNER FRANZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 411-420
ABSTRACT This article explores the manner in which self-assessment in schools can play an integral role in the transformation of schools into learning organisations. The perspective adopted is based upon European experiences and describes and analyses the sociological constructs and bases supporting the process of transformation.

Assessment with Distinctly Defined Criteria: a research study of a national project

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Assessment with Distinctly Defined Criteria: a research study of a national project
Author: THERESE N. HOPFENBECK; INGER THRONDSEN; SVEIN LIE; ERLING LARS DALE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 421-433
ABSTRACT This article explores changes in teachers’ beliefs and practice concerning assessment after participating in a project for improving assessment practices in Norwegian schools. The project was initiated by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training in 2008, and included a total of 77 schools, more than 600 teachers and a sample of their students. The main idea was to develop formative assessment practices in the classroom in the form of distinct criteria for clarification of how to reach curriculum goals. Furthermore, the project intended to increase students’ motivation by using such formative assessment practices. The data presented in this article is from the research evaluation of the project. So far, the main challenge seems to be how to develop assessment criteria and how to use them in practice.

Cross-Sector Moderation as a Means of Engaging Staff with Assessment and Teaching Pedagogy

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Cross-Sector Moderation as a Means of Engaging Staff with Assessment and Teaching Pedagogy
Author: LYNNE GRANT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 434-446
ABSTRACT This article investigates the benefits that cross-sector moderation events can bring to school staff and individual teachers. It focuses on a series of events held in one education authority over a period of four years. These events involved staff from every primary and secondary school within the authority and took the form of social moderation. The aim of moderation in the context of this article was to bring groups of teachers from each sector together and encourage them to discuss various pieces of pupil work and to award a curricular level to this work. It should be noted that the pupil work had already been awarded a curricular level by the class teacher, although this was not shared with the teacher moderators. From this research it can be seen that the benefits of cross-sector moderation include an increased trust from staff between and across the sectors in not only their own judgments, but the judgments of other staff in regard to assessing pupil work. Cross-sector moderation alone cannot raise achievement or attainment, but it can aid the development of a learning community amongst individual schools and clusters of schools that does appear from staff comments to have an impact on schools and teachers. The impact of this learning community extends to include discussions on teaching pedagogy employed, as well as resources used. This was not happening prior to this cross-sector approach to moderation and demonstrates how moderation can aid the development of a learning community.

Building Teacher Capacity within the Evolving Assessment Culture in Canadian Education

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Building Teacher Capacity within the Evolving Assessment Culture in Canadian Education
Author: DON A. KLINGER; LOUIS VOLANTE; CHRISTOPHER DeLUCA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 447-460
ABSTRACT Lost in the focus on large-scale educational assessments for accountability purposes is the important role of teachers' classroom assessment practices. Teachers must understand the use of both large-scale and classroom assessment practices and theories, and professional development remains the primary method to develop these assessment capacities. However, traditional models of professional development typically have little, if any, effect. In recognition of the importance of building teachers' assessment capacity, and the limitations of traditional professional development, the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, Canada, developed a Classroom Assessment Workshop Series to begin to build a systemic assessment framework for teachers. Through pre- and post-series surveys with 300 participants, and interviews and focus groups with facilitators, the authors' review and research explored the impact of the series on teachers' beliefs, self-efficacy, and knowledge of assessment practices and theory. The authors also explored the challenges that teachers experienced as they worked to understand and implement current conceptions of assessment. While teachers certainly valued the community created through the series and the opportunities to share their experiences, the findings found that teachers struggled to understand the theoretical foundations and use these foundations to further develop their own assessment practices. The research highlights the need for teachers to embrace a philosophy that integrates formative assessment practices and theories into their teaching and learning while also identifying the challenges associated with creating such an assessment culture. Current models of professional development may be more aligned with principles of effective professional learning, but truly changing teachers' classroom assessment practices may require a much more prolonged effort than those being provided.

School Development as Communication Processes

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: School Development as Communication Processes
Author: LENE NYHUS; LARS MONSEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 461-474
ABSTRACT This article offers a contribution to a better ontological clarity in the field of school development, including development of an evaluation culture. Research reveals that it is difficult for schools to live up to the ideas and ideals for school development such as the development of an evaluation and assessment culture, establishing learning organisations and furthering professional learning communities. Studies in the field now emphasise the need to understand the complexity of school systems, recognising system-environment interaction and that one 'shoe' does not fit all sizes. This knowledge calls attention to a need for reflection on the ontology of school development processes, and to frameworks which are capable of dealing with the complexity. As such, this article offers new conceptual explorations into school development. Drawing on critical realist metatheory and on meta-perspectives from different disciplines, the article suggests that communication and interaction constitute the processes of evaluation and learning in schools. It also suggests that attention has to be paid to the mechanisms and structures supporting the emergence of an evaluation and learning culture.

Do It with Joy, and You Are the Solution: practical philosophy as conversations about assessment in school

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Do It with Joy, and You Are the Solution: practical philosophy as conversations about assessment in school
Author: ANNE-BEATE REINERTSEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 475-486
ABSTRACT This article is about assessment, school reform and research considered in a simultaneous and integrated manner. The goal is, through deconstruction and deconstructuralist methods, to develop a more open and nuanced education language for use in assessment, in the school and in research into assessment practices. In conversations about quality in both education and research, language might become that quality of turning pedagogy or research into a discursive field and, ultimately, school into a discursive institution. Hopefully and happily lost, it might then be possible to close the door to authoritative words, thoughts, knowledge, methods, reforms, models, systems and/or institutions, not to forget them but to avoid being captured by them. Knowledge production is regarded as a reflexive and circular inter- or intrasubjective activity through language and a view of school as an institution primarily educating subjects.

Objection Sustained: revolutionary pedagogical praxis as an occupying force

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:36:48 GMT

Title: Objection Sustained: revolutionary pedagogical praxis as an occupying force
Author: PETER McLAREN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Pages: 487-495
ABSTRACT On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of 'war criminal' and 'torturer'. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can't Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: 'Aren't you glad this lady lives in a democracy where she can express her opinion?' She also threw in another line that's become de rigueur since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, an argument that's used when all other arguments fail: 'The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein, thank God.' My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it was that 'you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.' ... The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem. (Blum, 2011)

Towards a Non-deterministic Reading of Pierre Bourdieu: habitus and educational change in urban schools

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Towards a Non-deterministic Reading of Pierre Bourdieu: habitus and educational change in urban schools
Author: BRIAN D. BARRETT; CAMILLE ANNE MARTINA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 249-262
ABSTRACT Building on the social reproduction theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study examines the impact of school context and institutional agency on shaping urban students' access to social and cultural capital resources, which are selectively valued and rewarded by the education system, in two schools across two high-poverty, intensely segregated urban districts in the United States. These resources are linked in turn to students' habitus: their educational expectations and the orientations and practices they generate. Although the concept of habitus is often conceptualized as a durable product of socialization within families, we present findings to suggest conditions in schools under which it can be altered. This study elucidates key conceptual frameworks within institutional contexts that can be operationalized in shaping students' habitus and facilitating positive educational outcomes.

Public Policy and Teacher Education in Brazil after 1990

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Public Policy and Teacher Education in Brazil after 1990
Author: SELVA GUIMARÃES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 263-273
ABSTRACT The present research investigates public policy concerning teacher education in Brazil. It is a critical rereading of historical documents focusing on laws, legal documents, projects, institutional and public policies and teaching careers developed by the Brazilian state, as well as social and scientific organisations. Emphasis is given to current political, social and economic change and educational reform implemented since 1990 as well as to the effects of international decisions on the implementation of policies in Brazilian public education.

Transnational Higher Education and Sustainable Development: current initiatives and future prospects

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Transnational Higher Education and Sustainable Development: current initiatives and future prospects
Author: PETER H. KOEHN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 274-282
ABSTRACT Tertiary educational institutions increasingly are relied upon for sustainable development initiatives. This policy research note analyzes newly available data regarding seven key dimensions of 295 transnational sustainable development projects involving US universities. Comparative regional analysis of the projects profiled in the APLU/AAU database indicates that US universities engage in substantially fewer development projects in Central/Eastern Europe and the Middle East relative to other regions in the South. Further, these projects tend to be short term in duration, with a smaller proportion continuing to be active in 2011 and beyond. Donors or other external sources tend to be the principal impetus for projects in both regions, rather than campus faculty members. The findings suggest that one path to increasing higher education development initiatives in the Middle East and Central/Eastern Europe would center on providing opportunities and incentives for faculty at US and overseas partner institutions to build transnational contacts that lead to joint proposal initiation and submission. The future policy implications of these research findings highlight the importance of increased funding by government agencies, international organizations, NGOs, foundations and corporations for sustainable development projects undertaken through transcontinental higher education linkages of ten years' duration or longer. By expanding direct awards to higher education institutions for collaborative transnational initiatives, donors can further empower universities to address sustainable development challenges of the twenty-first century.

Imagining a Socialist, Democratic and Secular Society through Possibilities of a Common School System in India

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Imagining a Socialist, Democratic and Secular Society through Possibilities of a Common School System in India
Author: RAVI KUMAR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 283-296
ABSTRACT A Common School System (CSS) had been a long-standing demand in Indian educational discourse since it was recommended in 1966 by the Education Commission. Those who saw the state as an agency of welfarism invoked its implementation on the grounds that it would have allowed equity in education and would have taken care of inequity in the larger society, apart from ensuring a more democratic society and polity. However, recent neoliberal policy changes in the country have demolished even that welfarist imagination of a capitalist state. The article is of the view that it is the rule of capital which is at the heart of injustice and inequality in contemporary Indian education. It also argues that democracy and socialism through a Common School System can be achieved only when there is a radical social transformation, but that it does not allow us to cease efforts towards making education more equitable and accessible for all.

Peer Pressure: comments on the European educational reform

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Peer Pressure: comments on the European educational reform
Author: ANDREA LIESNER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 297-301
ABSTRACT This article reports on the growing influence of informal and not democratically legitimised authority within the educational field in Europe. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Bologna Process and the European Qualifications Framework are discussed as instances of neoliberal strategies of modernisation that change the European idea and institutional practice of education dramatically.

Education and the Labour Market in Brazil

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Education and the Labour Market in Brazil
Author: ALBERTO DE OLIVEIRA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 302-314
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to compare the schooling levels of individuals with the demands of the Brazilian labour market. The results demonstrate the high probability of compatibility between occupation and schooling levels. But high propensities for under-education were identified associated with skin colour and position in family. The results are consistent with Brazilian social inequality. In conclusion, although there is a dearth of qualified labour in specific segments, the widespread existence of compatibility between workers' occupations and their schooling levels suggests that companies have adapted themselves to the educational deficiencies of their workers.

Open Source in Higher Education: towards an understanding of networked universities

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Open Source in Higher Education: towards an understanding of networked universities
Author: MIA QUINT-RAPOPORT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 315-327
ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of understanding more about networked universities by looking at open source software developers working in academic contexts. It sketches their identities and work as an emerging professional community that both relies upon and develops digitally mediated networks and contributes to the progress of academic knowledge and scientific discoveries. The data for this study revolve around questionnaire responses from developers working on two open source software projects, one from the field of biology, the other from education. It provides a rare glimpse into a highly specialised social world. The study demonstrates how the commitments and ideals of open source software developers not only contribute to universities as digitally network institutions, but are foundational to their very constitution.

The Problem of the Welfare Profession: an example - the municipalisation of the teaching profession

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: The Problem of the Welfare Profession: an example - the municipalisation of the teaching profession
Author: JOHANNA RINGARP
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 328-339
ABSTRACT As an answer to the welfare state's transformation and increased focus on goal- and result-oriented regulation, Swedish educational policy is in a state of change. The matter of the teaching profession's aspirations with regard to professionalisation has come up once again: reminders that reference the introduction of teacher certification in order to guarantee the quality of education have emerged from political quarters, while union quarters are pleading for greater status for the teaching profession. The article discusses whether the municipalisation of the teaching profession in 1989 was a break with the goal of Sweden's previous political debate on education - namely, a comprehensive school for all - and whether the increased control over the work of the teachers can be said to be a consequence of the reform.

The Deep Politics of War and the Curriculum of Disillusion

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: The Deep Politics of War and the Curriculum of Disillusion
Author: DAVID GEOFFREY SMITH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 340-351
ABSTRACT This article examines the historic uses of the phenomenon recently defined as 'Deep Politics' to shed light on the underlying realities of the contemporary War on Terror. Deep Politics describes the multiple uses of misinformation to marshal public sentiment in directions desired by dominant political and economic forces. Facing the reality of Deep Politics today can be a disillusioning experience for those wedded to the rhetorical tropes of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. However, as the article attempts to illustrate, drawing on indigenous knowledge practice, disillusionment can be the first step in a longer process of cultural healing, away from naïve realism to an appreciation of the sacredness, or wholeness, of life, and the courage to face and deal with the broader truth of things.

The Old Deluder, Educational Salvation, and the Limits of Distributive Justice

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: The Old Deluder, Educational Salvation, and the Limits of Distributive Justice
Author: JAMES STILLWAGGON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 352-361
ABSTRACT The first piece of educational legislation in the American colonies divides neatly into two parts: a local school funding policy that is familiar as the basis of current public school funding in the United States; and a preamble that identifies Satan as the enemy of the community and the justification for common schools. In this article, the author explores the relationship between a public enemy and public schools in the United States, demonstrating the continued influence of the Old Deluder Satan Act even as the relationship it proposes between access to schools and educational salvation has unraveled. While the Puritans based their distributive model of schooling on the formative power of the divine, the formative task of contemporary schooling remains dimly defined. In order to address the formative function of schooling, the author turns to Robbie McClintock's concept of 'formative justice' as a possible supplement to discussions of distribution.

Clean People in a Clean World

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:52:09 GMT

Title: Clean People in a Clean World
Author: ALAN COTTEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Pages: 362-365
ABSTRACT Bathing is here treated as an exemplar of the widespread profligacy of prosperous people and of the continually expanding expectations for all on this overloaded planet. The author places cleanliness in a wider context, not merely of animals but of all living organisms. With this in mind, it is possible to consider, in a wider than usual manner, our responses as the possessive market society turns into something else.

Neoliberalism, Education and the Crisis of Western Capitalism

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Neoliberalism, Education and the Crisis of Western Capitalism
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 134-141
ABSTRACT This article introduces the Policy Futures in Education special issue on neoliberalism, reviewing its origins in the founding of the Mt Perelin Society at the beginning of the Cold War and its political phase with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's policies in the 1980s. It sets the scene for the rest of the issue and investigates the financial collapse and its consequences in terms of the decline of a US-centric world.

Democratic Shortfalls in Privatized Curriculum Policy Production: silencing the 'potted plants' and politicizing 'quick fixes'

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Democratic Shortfalls in Privatized Curriculum Policy Production: silencing the 'potted plants' and politicizing 'quick fixes'
Author: LAURA ELIZABETH PINTO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 142-154
ABSTRACT Democratic policy production requires the input of citizen voices, ideally through a process that actively engages a broad range of stakeholders in decision-making. This article describes Ontario's curriculum policy formulation process during the 1990s, based on archival documents and interviews with 16 policy actors. The privatization of curriculum policy production resulted in a politicized environment that silenced citizens' voices. Though contracting writers through a bidding process allowed the government to produce a vast amount of policy in a relatively short period of time, findings reveal how policy actors' roles were reduced to 'potted plants' charged with carrying out a predetermined agenda rather than active participants in a robust democratic process.

What of the Future for Academic Freedom in Higher Education in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: What of the Future for Academic Freedom in Higher Education in Aotearoa New Zealand?
Author: NICK ZEPKE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 155-164
ABSTRACT A major challenge facing higher education is balancing two competing discourses. One sees higher education as a place of learning and teaching in academic freedom, a place to enable staff and students to research and learn without restrictions, a place in which to be able to critique the status quo. The other discourse is rooted in neo-liberalism. This has imposed on institutions a regime of economic efficiency in a global marketplace, a regime that advocates cognitive capitalism and is kept in place by an accountability culture. This article first traces the influences of these discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand; second, it uses data from document analyses and fieldwork to make a judgement about which influence is dominant; and third, it uses this to preview the future of the two discourses using causal layered analysis (CLA), a method for analysing futures.

Education for Y'all: global neoliberalism and the case for a politics of scale in sustainability education policy

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Education for Y'all: global neoliberalism and the case for a politics of scale in sustainability education policy
Author: MARCIA McKENZIE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 165-177
ABSTRACT This article addresses the effects of neoliberalism as it operates through global and local educational policy, and in particular in relation to the United Nations' Education for Sustainable Development initiatives. It examines how a politics of scale is necessary in enabling critique and in rearticulating forms of education policy-making and practice that prioritize interscaler local 'good sense' over neoliberal global 'common sense'. The article closes with examples of interscaler data from a participatory research project on youth orientations to place and sustainability that aims to use practice to generatively examine sustainability education policy.

UK Higher Education Institutions and the Third Stream Agenda

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: UK Higher Education Institutions and the Third Stream Agenda
Author: STEPHEN CLOUGH; CARL A. BAGLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 178-190
ABSTRACT This article focuses upon the adoption and implementation of United Kingdom government support for third stream business-facing activities in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). The article, concerned with income generation and the creation and application of knowledge beyond the confines of the academy, draws on policy literature and qualitative data from research conducted in three contrasting HEIs. It reflects critically on the policy embrace of the third stream agenda in the UK, to suggest that despite increased UK government funding and policy pronouncements in support of such activities, the take-up and operationalisation at institutional level remains variable and piecemeal.

The World Bank's Shift away from Neoliberal Ideology: real or rhetoric?

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: The World Bank's Shift away from Neoliberal Ideology: real or rhetoric?
Author: RINO WISEMAN ADHIKARY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 191-200
ABSTRACT Some literature on World Bank education policies after 1999 tries to project a shift away of the Bank from its 1980s neoliberal mandate. This article argues that the shift is only in the form of rhetoric, which facilitates a hidden agenda of creating a worldwide higher education market, leaving the poor with primary education only. At the rhetorical level there is a greater concern for poverty and equity, showing the importance of primary education for the poor, but at an operational level the policies still are conducive to a market-driven approach to higher education.

Traveling Policies: mobility, transformation and continuities in higher education public policy

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Traveling Policies: mobility, transformation and continuities in higher education public policy
Author: RODRIGO G. BRITEZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 201-218
ABSTRACT This article presents an assessment of the impact and implications of the international mobilities operating in the national public policy environment. In fact, patterns of transformations that take place in national higher education systems are generating diverse and complex outcomes in different countries, in ways that may preclude a simple relation between international policy prescriptions and communication and policy change in higher education. In this way, the different processes that constitute globalisation within local spaces demand recognition of the importance of specificities in their constitution. In short, the starting point to understanding these processes seems to require detecting the specificity of complex dimensions in which the dynamic interaction between global and local takes place. In order to illustrate this point, the author presents the case of policy developments related to the dramatic private expansion of Paraguay’s higher education sector since the 1990s.

Neoliberal Education and Student Movements in Chile: inequalities and malaise

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Neoliberal Education and Student Movements in Chile: inequalities and malaise
Author: CRISTIAN CABALIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 219-228
ABSTRACT This article examines the major consequences of the neoliberal education system implemented in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and how two important student movements contested this structure. In 2006 and 2011, thousands of students filled the streets to demand better public education, more social justice and equal opportunities. They rejected the free-market fundamentalism in education that has generated segregation, stratification and inequalities. Students have become important political actors who re-evaluated the discussion on education in Chile. By doing so, they are rejecting the competitive and privatized nature of the current system, which is lacking in quality and equity, and they are demonstrating that new 'social imaginary' in Chilean education is possible.

The Parable of the Physicist and the Postmodernists

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: The Parable of the Physicist and the Postmodernists
Author: DAVID WILSON; BILL COPE; MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 229-233
ABSTRACT This reproduces, for fun, a conversation between three professors at the University of Illinois, that originated at a dinner party over a couple of bottles of good red wine.

Logarithmic Time: its role in current culture and education

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: Logarithmic Time: its role in current culture and education
Author: ALAN COTTEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 234-236
ABSTRACT The timescales relevant for human culture cover a very wide range. A better appreciation of these timescales would facilitate an adequate response to humanity's ecological 'slow reckoning'. This article discusses the use and presentation of simple logarithmic timescales and advocates their widespread use in education.

WikiLeaks and the Authority of Knowledge

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:14 GMT

Title: WikiLeaks and the Authority of Knowledge
Author: ANDY VALERI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Pages: 237-248
ABSTRACT This article outlines how providing accessible transparency to information controlled by institutions of power and suppressed from public view is both similar in purpose to, as well as an essential component of, the pedagogical processes promoted by Paulo Freire, which are necessary for the establishment of a truly just and non-oppressive society. It asserts fundamental philosophical, instrumental, and ethical connections between organizations such as WikiLeaks and Freire's program of dialogic education towards undermining the foundations of societal-based ignorance, upon which the maintenance of structures of oppression are dependent.

Introduction. Education and Scenarios for a Post-Occidental World

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Introduction. Education and Scenarios for a Post-Occidental World
Author: Michael A. Peters; Michael Baker
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-3
ABSTRACT Not available

Modernity/Coloniality and Eurocentric Education: towards a post-Occidental self-understanding of the present

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Modernity/Coloniality and Eurocentric Education: towards a post-Occidental self-understanding of the present
Author: MICHAEL BAKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 4-22
ABSTRACT This article sketches a post-Occidental interpretation of the historical/conceptual relationships between modern western education and European civilizational identity formation. Modern western education will be interpreted as a modern/colonial institution that emerged along with the sixteenth-century responses to the questions provoked by the breakup of medieval Christendom and the discovery of the Americas: What is man? Where does he come from? Where is he going? Modern western education and European civilizational identity, as distinct from Christendom, emerged together (simultaneous and interrelated) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the initial formation of a global structural dynamic designed for governing the social world, both within and beyond Europe. Modern western education is a central institution within the ongoing disciplinary projects of modernity and its differentiated reproduction of particular subjectivities. This perspective problematizes the Euro-American historiography of modernity along with the contemporary historical self-understanding of modern western education. From this perspective, the self-understanding of modern western education (both metropolitan and colonial) emerged and remains largely embedded within the conceptual and historical framework identified here as Occidentalism. This article concludes with a proposal for rethinking education within an ecology of knowledges, articulated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Post-Occidental reasoning contributes to the recognition and inclusion of the multiplicity of knowledge systems occluded by the hegemony of western epistemology and Eurocentric education.

Postmodern Educational Capitalism, Global Information Systems and New Media Networks

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Postmodern Educational Capitalism, Global Information Systems and New Media Networks
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 23-29
ABSTRACT This article reinterprets Lyotard's argument in The Postmodern Condition as a basis for a radical political economy approach to knowledge capitalism focusing on post-industrialism in order to put the case that education and knowledge are increasingly becoming part of a globally integrated world capitalism (IWC) that is structured through emerging global information systems and new media networks. The article embraces the possibility of 'open knowledge production' as an area of intellectual activity driven by an ethic of collaboration as a basis for a reconstituted public sphere.

Dialogue on Modernity and Modern Education in Dispute

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Dialogue on Modernity and Modern Education in Dispute
Author: MICHAEL BAKER; MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 30-50
ABSTRACT This is a dialogue or conversation between Michael Baker (MB) and Michael A. Peters (MP) on the concept of modernity and its significance for educational theory. The dialogue took place originally as a conversation about a symposium on modernity held at the American Educational Studies Association meeting 2010. It was later developed for publication in this form.

Culture, Power, and the University in the Twenty-First Century

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Culture, Power, and the University in the Twenty-First Century
Author: PETER MURPHY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 51-58
ABSTRACT Powerful nations have influential systems of higher education. The article explores the possible pattern of geopolitics in the twenty-first century, and the competing prospects of America and its rivals in higher education and research. Pressures on both the American and non-American worlds are evaluated, along with relative economic strengths, and how factors such as these translate into intellectual prowess. The article suggests that peak intellectual and research achievement is dependent on cultural factors, and that America remains well positioned as an intellectual nation despite fierce competition from rivals because of unique cultural characteristics.

Understanding the Sources of Anti-Westernism: a dialogue between Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Michael A. Peters

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Understanding the Sources of Anti-Westernism: a dialogue between Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Michael A. Peters
Author: Jan Nederveen Pieterse; Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 59-69
ABSTRACT Not available

A Post-Occidental Globe?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: A Post-Occidental Globe?
Author: HÜSEYIN ESEN; ALEJANDRA SANCHEZ; DANIEL ARAYA; DREA GALLAGA; FUNGAI KANOGOIW; HÜSEYIN ESEN; JAMES GEARY; KEECHENG CHOE; KHAN GROGAN ULLAH; LISA CARBAJO; MARGARET FITZPATRICK; MERCEDES POUR-PREVITI; MICHAEL A. PETERS; MOUSUMI MUKHERJEE; RODRIGO BRITEZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 70-77
ABSTRACT This is an experiment in conversation on the topic of ‘a post-occidental globe’. It emerges from a moderated discussion group where members of a class – master’s and PhD students – reflected upon a set of resources provided as part of a course in Global Studies in Education at the University of Illinois. The conversation threads were moderated and edited by Huseyin Esen.

Chinese Nation-Building and the Rethinking of Globalization and Education

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Chinese Nation-Building and the Rethinking of Globalization and Education
Author: ANDREW KIPNIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 78-80
ABSTRACT Social, educational and political theorists increasingly portray today's world as one in which the globalization of Western forms dominates social, political and educational processes everywhere. According to this view, nation-building, though important in the West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is no longer an important social process. This view elides the recent importance of Chinese nation-building to both contemporary and future global trends. With a focus on educational phenomena, this article explores the ways in which Chinese nation-building is being globalized and coming to influence non-Chinese actors.

US Study Abroad from the Periphery to the Center of the Global Curriculum in the Information Age

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: US Study Abroad from the Periphery to the Center of the Global Curriculum in the Information Age
Author: MOUSUMI MUKHERJEE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 81-89
ABSTRACT The Higher Education Act of 1965 for the first time gave discretionary authority to campuses to use federal financial aid in support of students studying abroad. Thereafter, US study abroad has thus evolved from the periphery to the center of the global curriculum. In 2005 the Lincoln Commission report proposed an ambitious goal of sending one million students abroad each year to promote educational and cultural exchange for intercultural understanding, peace and global citizenship. Following this recommendation a legislative and federal policy, the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, was approved in June 2009 by the US House of Representatives authorizing generous funding for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 to the US Department of State and Peace Corps for innovative new programs that would enhance US capacity to engage with the world. The article traces this historic expansion effort, its link with the current pedagogical discourse on global citizenship and reflects on its relation to the ideology of curriculum to highlight the need to develop more critically reflexive curricula and pedagogy. The article also reflects critically on the empirical research literature to highlight the gaps between the assumptions driving investment in study abroad and its learning outcome.

Using Vignettes as Self-reflexivity in Narrative Research of Problematised History Pedagogy

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Using Vignettes as Self-reflexivity in Narrative Research of Problematised History Pedagogy
Author: PHILIPPA HUNTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 90-102
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the use of vignettes as an emergent dimension of narrative research writing. The author draws on doctoral research that problematised history curriculum and pedagogy with pre-service teachers in the context of secondary teacher education in New Zealand. Pedagogic crossings of history education sites, and negotiation of disciplinary boundaries were storied in the narrative research. A lived experience of curriculum continuity and change had shaped a critical pedagogy orientation in the author's theorising and practice. This featured a self-reflexivity of pedagogic identities including those of student, practitioner, and researcher. The narrative writing was conceptualised as a layered bricolage of academic socialisation, engagement with theory, and practitioner work. Accordingly, it proved unworkable to distance the author's lived experience and pedagogic identities from the narrative, for these lay at the heart of the research. Therefore, the styling of vignettes became a creative way to story self-reflexivity within academic writing. Vignettes were conceived as inside stories that recalled pedagogic voices and evoked themes of curriculum disturbance as transgression, and desire as re-imagined history curriculum.

Examining Mathematics Teacher Content Knowledge: policy and practice

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: Examining Mathematics Teacher Content Knowledge: policy and practice
Author: PAMELA ESPRÍVALO HARRELL; COLLEEN McLEAN EDDY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 103-116
ABSTRACT This study examines mathematics teacher content knowledge in terms of state and national policymaker recommendations, college coursework and the Mathematics Texas Examination of Educator Standards (TExES) score. Results indicate differences between state and national policy recommendations and college degrees in mathematics. A statistically significant negative relationship between college coursework and the test domains was found for Algebra (p = -.456), Geometry (p = -.442), Probability and Statistics (p = -.421), and Discrete Mathematics (p = -.674). Although teacher candidates completed many mathematics courses, the fail rate for the Mathematics TExES was a quarter of teachers. Policymakers are asked to consider the validity for contents test which align poorly with college degrees in mathematics.

The Narrative Turn and the Poetics of Resistance: towards a new language for critical educational studies

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: The Narrative Turn and the Poetics of Resistance: towards a new language for critical educational studies
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS; TINA (A.C.) BESLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 117-127
ABSTRACT This article argues for the adoption of a new language in critical educational studies through the 'narrative turn', a turn that politicizes knowledge by drawing attention to questions concerning the meaning, construction and authorship of narratives. In the authors' interpretation going back to the poetics of early narrative forms they development the argument that there is an ancient history of the form that privileges it as a means and form of resistance. The article tracks the adoption of narrative in the human sciences and details the development of narratology as the scientific study of narrative by such luminaries as Paul Ricoeur, and describes the 'crisis of narrative' in the postmodern condition by reference to the work of Lyotard, who begins to problematize the 'metanarrative' and its role in legitimation processes. This political understanding of narrative is further explored in relation to 'narrative identity' through the work of Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha and Charles Taylor and their emphasis on social imaginaries.

BOOK REVIEWS

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:59:02 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 128-134
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. The Art of Public Pedagogy: should the 'truth' dazzle gradually or thunder mightily?

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Introduction. The Art of Public Pedagogy: should the 'truth' dazzle gradually or thunder mightily?
Author: Brian McKenna; Antonia Darder
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 670-685
ABSTRACT Not available

Breaking into the Movies: public pedagogy and the politics of film

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Breaking into the Movies: public pedagogy and the politics of film
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 686-695
ABSTRACT This article argues that how we think about education must extend far beyond matters of schooling and include those spaces, practices, discourses and maps of meaning and affect produced through a range of cultural and pedagogical technologies. We live at a time in which the educational influence of the larger culture has become the major force in producing subjectivities, desires and modes of identification necessary for the legitimation and functioning of a neoliberal society. If pedagogy has become central to creating particular modes of agency, public pedagogy represents a new cultural politics in which pedagogy has become central. One such mode of public pedagogy is film. As a form of public pedagogy, film combines entertainment and politics, and a claim to public memory, though in contested ways given the existence of distinctly varied social and cultural formations. In this article, I argue that films not only provide a pedagogical space that opens up the 'possibility of interpretation as intervention', they also make clear the need for forms of literacy that address the profoundly political and pedagogical ways in which knowledge, practice, discourse, images and values are constructed and enter our lives. Central to this article is the belief that the decline of public life demands that we use film as a way of raising questions that are increasingly lost to the forces of market relations, commercialization and privatization. As the opportunities for civic education and public engagement begin to disappear, film may provide one of the few mediums left that enables conversations that connect politics, personal experiences and public life to larger social issues. Not only does film travel more as a pedagogical form compared to other popular forms such as television and popular music, but film carries a kind of pedagogical weight that other mediums lack. As a quintessential element of a screen culture, film offers a way to rethink both the importance of cultural politics and public pedagogy as central to what it means to make the political more pedagogical and the pedagogical more political.

Radio and the Art of Resistance: a public pedagogy of the airwaves

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Radio and the Art of Resistance: a public pedagogy of the airwaves
Author: ANTONIA DARDER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 696-705
ABSTRACT The politics of the airwaves should be of vital concern to critical democracy, given the expanding realm of neoliberalism and its deeply homogenizing impact on social, political and economic relations everywhere. In light of the privatizing forces that control the media today, the article considers the manner in which community radio can provide public pedagogical spaces for often marginalized community voices to challenge the official public transcript of social life dictated, more times than not, by the powerful and wealthy leaders who shape public discourse. Here independent radio production is discussed as an important tool for building community relationships and as a viable alternative for supporting civic participation and critical forms of public engagement.

Mascot Politics, Public Pedagogy, and Social Movements: alternative media as a context for critical media literacy

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Mascot Politics, Public Pedagogy, and Social Movements: alternative media as a context for critical media literacy
Author: JOE FERIA-GALICIA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 706-714
ABSTRACT Within the culture of central Illinois, mascot politics has been a hugely contentious issue. Since 1926, the university employed the use of the fabricated 'Chief' Illiniwek to motivate and entertain fans at athletic events. Since the late 1980s, Native American students began a campaign to end this 'tradition'. This article examines the critical narratives of independent media producers who utilized a variety of public art forms to contest and help to finally eliminate this racist practice. Their narratives illuminate the strategic role of public pedagogy in the process of social struggle and provide an example of how the production of alternative media content can be critically appropriated in ways that help mobilize, sustain, and build collective actions for social justice.

Public Anthropology as Public Pedagogy: an autobiographical account

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Public Anthropology as Public Pedagogy: an autobiographical account
Author: SAM BECK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 715-734
ABSTRACT This autobiographical account provides a historical map of landmarks in the author's personal and professional life that led him to his present understanding of public anthropology as public pedagogy and vice versa. He indicates that his experiences led him to study sociocultural anthropology to investigate learning from experience, a foundational method in anthropology that this discipline describes as participant observation. While not completely rejecting participant observation, he asserts that objective and value-free anthropology is not viable, and hence an activist approach may not only support research agendas but also support the needs of the people and communities under study. He explains some of the issues that are related to making this approach work and the ethical elements involved in an approach that is mutually advantageous. As an anthropologist, he became more involved in the political engagement of the people who were the subjects of his investigation. His position is that at this time in human history anthropology must become more activist, given that the vulnerable of the world are subjected to conditions that are increasingly more exploitative and oppressive. Public pedagogy developed out of his research experiences, and as his activist orientation grew, he found that his anthropological engagement was also an in-context and in-process pedagogy. Not only was he teaching, but he was also learning dialogically, as Paulo Freire might do.

Staging a Christopher Columbus Play in a Culture of Illusion: public pedagogy in a theatre of genocide

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Staging a Christopher Columbus Play in a Culture of Illusion: public pedagogy in a theatre of genocide
Author: BRIAN McKENNA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 735-746
ABSTRACT In the foreword to The Politics of Genocide, political theorist Noam Chomsky writes that denial of the American Indian holocaust is a potent force in the United States. He argues that 'the most unambiguous cases of genocide' are often 'acknowledged by the perpetrators, and passed over as insignificant or even denied in retrospect by the beneficiaries, right to the present'. That is very true in the United States, where the author of this article discovers that few of his college students know much, if anything, about the capacious genocide of North American Indians. In this article, Brian McKenna explores the power of aesthetic theory and praxis to help overcome the rigid psychological defenses of besieged students. He carefully informs students about the genocide spawned by Columbus and the Spanish, and then draws connections between that history and the history of US Indian genocide and imperialism, up to the present day in Iraq and around the globe. The article presents a five-part exercise, refined over seven years, that shows how McKenna lets the 'truth' dazzle gradually and then thunder mightily in revealing students to themselves. He requires students to imagine themselves as high school teachers where they must produce the written outlines of a play that is based, in part, on the truths of the Spanish genocide as depicted by America's first de facto cultural anthropologist, Father Bartolomé de las Casas. The ultimate aims of the exercise are threefold: (1) Will students, in the politically charged setting of a high school, construct a Theatre of Genocide about the Arawak Indians and the Spanish? (2) Will students draw the educational links between the Spanish and the theatres of war and genocide associated with the United States? And (3) How will students grapple with the pedagogical relationships between knowledge and power; censorship and self-censorship; truth and art? The article also asks, 'Who controls the play curriculum? How can critical public pedagogues challenge the ubiquity of high school productions such as Oklahoma! and Hello, Dolly! to create forms of drama that speak directly to the issues of the day?

A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation
Author: NATHALIA E. JARAMILLO; PETER McLAREN; FERNANDO LÁZARO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 747-758
ABSTRACT Using the term 'recuperation' from their experiences working alongside activists in the 'occupied factories' of Argentina, the authors illustrate how 'occupied spaces' were transformed into 'recuperated' sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production. Focusing on the IMPA factory (Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas Argentina) located in Buenos Aires, this article examines how the unique visions and alternative arrangements created by workers, intellectuals and artists became reality and how such visions and arrangements were indivisible from the struggle for worker self-determination. The authors note that the pedagogy of recuperation, while drawing its inspiration from the struggles of the occupied factories, schools and cultural centers of Argentina, is in the last instance a transnational pedagogy of resistance, one that is multi-voiced, epistemologically decolonized and decolonizing, and dedicated to fostering oppositional and alternative spaces of reciprocity and struggle.

Project-Based Learning: a critical pedagogy for the twenty-first century

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Project-Based Learning: a critical pedagogy for the twenty-first century
Author: CARL A. MAIDA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 759-795
ABSTRACT John Dewey's notion of the school as a 'social laboratory' influenced educational policy a century ago when the United States underwent a 'great transformation' in its educational history toward mass schooling, resulting partly from the 'high school movement', where the focus was on 'schooling for life'. Project-based learning, which builds on Dewey's work on experiential, hands-on, student-directed learning, is ultimately delivered within a student-teacher relationship, and the structure of this relationship and that of the school itself were shaped by an industrial culture that developed during a period of rapid industrialization when the dual revolutions of technology and information processing were transforming the country. During the earlier transition from craft to mass production, schools provided a social context for the task of renegotiating and reframing occupational techniques and world orientations in light of dramatic technological changes. So, too, have the challenges of the current technological revolution shifted the emphasis of education toward students actively using what they know to explore, negotiate, interpret, and create. As a potentially 'disruptive innovation' to the traditional schooling model, project-based learning challenges students by acknowledging their roles as participants engaged in producing knowledge. Students also perceive the value of project-based learning, experience this form of learning, and are rewarded through the responses of others to their projects within a community of practice.

Embodiments of Public Pedagogy: the art of soulful resistance

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Embodiments of Public Pedagogy: the art of soulful resistance
Author: ANTONIA DARDER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 780-801
ABSTRACT This article provides a space to explore, through artistic representations and the words of artists themselves, the manner in which politically engaged artists use their visual art, poetry, music, dance, and theatre performances as an effective tool for public pedagogy. In turn, these artists provide those who enter into their cultural production a place of interrogation, affirmation, political critique, and solidarity, as they contend skillfully with issues of oppression, resistance, and the daily struggles to survive in a world of inequalities.

Improvisational Theatre as Public Pedagogy: a case study of 'aesthetic' pedagogy in leadership development

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: Improvisational Theatre as Public Pedagogy: a case study of 'aesthetic' pedagogy in leadership development
Author: JEN KATZ-BUONINCONTRO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 796-779
ABSTRACT How does improvisational theatre promote aesthetic learning in leaders, emphasizing emotion and somatic, or sensory, knowledge? While improvisational theatre has been used in organizational settings, there is little empirical research describing the aesthetic learning process geared towards preparing educational leaders. Based on a case study of an educational leadership institute using grounded theory to investigate the use of improvisational theatre, four learning conditions emerged for promoting the phenomenon of the aesthetic learning process. The article describes key features of this process - catharsis, empathy, and heightened sensory perception - as compared to works by Dewey, Greene, and Freire. These aesthetic aspects challenge the traditional role of leadership 'trainer' and leadership 'student' and reflect a more collaborative conception of leadership development as conveyed in public pedagogy literature.

BOOK REVIEW

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:08:44 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Pages: 802-804
ABSTRACT Not available

A Manifesto for Education

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: A Manifesto for Education
Author: GERT BIESTA; CARL ANDERS SÄFSTRÖM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 540-547
ABSTRACT In November 2010 the authors finished the writing of a manifesto for education. The manifesto was an attempt to respond to a number of issues concerning education, both in the field of educational research and in the wider socio-political environment. This is the text of that manifesto followed by two commentaries in which the authors try to highlight some of the reasons that have led to the writing of the manifesto, and in which an attempt is made to situate the manifesto in a number of discussions and debates.

Living in the Age of Imposed Amnesia: the eclipse of democratic formative culture

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Living in the Age of Imposed Amnesia: the eclipse of democratic formative culture
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 548-552
ABSTRACT This article argues that under neoliberal casino capitalism there has been a wholesale attack not only on the social state but also on those public spheres that enable the formative cultures necessary to produce critical agents, engaged subjects, and the literacies necessary to make power and authority accountable. In this instance, the struggle to develop counter-narratives to challenge the normalization of neoliberal ideology and values must be accompanied by the development of public spheres that enable such narratives to develop. This suggests that the struggle against the moral coma induced by neoliberalism is as much a pedagogical struggle as it is a struggle over power, politics, and sovereignty.

Business Culture and the Death of Public Education: Mayor Bloomberg, David Steiner, and the politics of corporate 'leadership'

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Business Culture and the Death of Public Education: Mayor Bloomberg, David Steiner, and the politics of corporate 'leadership'
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 553-559
ABSTRACT This article provides a case study of how a business culture imposes modes of educational leadership on a public school system in New York City that has little if any concerns for empowering children, teachers, and the communities. The article provides a counter-narrative that serves to dispel the notion that the culture of educational empowerment is synonymous with a corporate model of leadership and education and that the latter is the best ideological and political template for understanding and governing public schools. In fact, the article attempts to make clear that the culture of business largely functions both to disempower students and teachers and to undercut the ability of schools to connect learning to social change, the power of the imagination, civic courage, and intellectual growth.

Repoliticizing Higher Education Assessment within Neoliberal Globalization

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Repoliticizing Higher Education Assessment within Neoliberal Globalization
Author: DAVID HURSH; ANDREW F. WALL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 560-572
ABSTRACT This article shows how universities, like education and social services in general, are increasingly pressured to adopt neoliberal principles that encourage privatization, entrepreneurship, standardization, assessment, and accountability. The authors examine recent efforts in the United States to develop measurement and accountability systems that commodify higher education, and show how they reflect a neoliberal rationale that undermines the historical purposes of higher education, reduces faculty autonomy, and harms the common good. However, they propose ways in which assessment and accountability might be implemented in higher education so as to promote teaching and learning responsive to the interests of students, faculty, the university, and wider communities.

A Path Analysis Study of School Culture and Teachers' Organisational Commitment

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: A Path Analysis Study of School Culture and Teachers' Organisational Commitment
Author: ENGIN KARADAG; NURI BALOGLU; ABDULLAH ÇAKIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 573-584
ABSTRACT In this study, the direct and indirect relations between school culture and the organisational commitment of primary school teachers were analyzed. The subjects of the research consisted of primary school teachers who worked at a district in Istanbul in the academic year 2007-2008. The sampling group was defined by the cluster sampling method. In total 200 teachers participated. Two scales were used to collect data, the organisational commitment scale (OCS) and the school culture scale (SCS). Linear regression and path analysis were used to explain the influence of school culture on organisational commitment, and LISREL 7 was used as a structural equation model. The findings indicated that although there was a positive correlation between school culture and organisational commitment, the direct effect of school culture on organisational commitment was not meaningful.

Education and the Labour Market in Brazil

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Education and the Labour Market in Brazil
Author: ALBERTO DE OLIVEIRA; GILBERTO ABRANTES FILHO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 585-597
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to compare the schooling levels of individuals with the demands of the Brazilian labour market. The results demonstrate the high probability of compatibility between occupation and schooling levels. But high propensities for under-education were identified associated with the skin colour and position in the family. The results are consistent with the Brazilian social inequality. In conclusion, although there is a dearth of qualified labour in specific segments, the widespread existence of compatibility between workers' occupations and their schooling levels suggests that companies have adapted themselves to the educational deficiencies of their workers.

Field/Work, Site, and Other Matters: exploring design practice across disciplines

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Field/Work, Site, and Other Matters: exploring design practice across disciplines
Author: ANNE PIRRIE; JAMES BENEDICT BROWN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 589-607
ABSTRACT This article explores educational research and theory in the area of the built environment by reflecting on the challenges of interdisciplinary enquiry and the prerequisites for successful interdisciplinary practice. The genesis of a particular example of interdisciplinary collaboration is explored, and the authors come to the deceptively simple conclusion that taking time is the sine qua non for engaged and reflective collaborative practice. The article draws upon a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and architecture, to elaborate a set of distinctions that are then explored in relation to two specific examples from architectural education. The distinctions are between wayfaring and travelling and their epistemological analogues, namely inhabitant and occupant knowledge. To return to territory more familiar to those engaged in education in the built environment, we also explore the differences between sketches and plans. The authors reconsider Polyark (an educational initiative in which students from the Architectural Association in London took to the road in a decommissioned London bus) and its successor, Polyark II, in terms suggested by these distinctions. These examples illustrate the difficulty designers, educators and researchers face when they attempt to move away from normative design practice. However, they also open up new prospects for an elaboration of wayfaring practice across disciplines.

Awakening to White Privilege and Power in Canada

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Awakening to White Privilege and Power in Canada
Author: KHALIDA TANVIR SYED; ANNE HILL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 608-615
ABSTRACT In this article two narratives are used to illustrate how self-awareness of 'White' as skin colour reveals associated subtle aspects of power and privilege and with that, an ethic of personal and professional responsibility. The narratives connect experience and action with the conceptual framework of a third, liminal space, demonstrating an opportunity for the respectful expression of multiple interpretations of experiences and thus, positive personal and institutional change. John Dewey's classic work and recent research and writing by scholars such as Melanie Bush, Paul Carr and Darren Lund, Benedicta Egbo, and Maxine Greene offer additional insight and directions for exploration. The conclusion of the article suggests that beyond the initial experience of awareness and reflection, an ethical response demands a presence and collaborative action. It is hoped that this research will provoke invitations for dialogue across and within boundaries that have been less visible.

European Policy of Career Guidance: the interrelationship between career self-management and production of human capital in the knowledge economy

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: European Policy of Career Guidance: the interrelationship between career self-management and production of human capital in the knowledge economy
Author: ANKI BENGTSSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 616-627
ABSTRACT 'Everyone has a career to be managed' is the simple message in new policy strategies for career guidance in Europe. In this article, the promotion of career management for 'all' will be unsettled by analysis of career self-management put in relation to rationalities of government and self-government. We are governed to self-manage our career and at the same time govern ourselves to do that. European policy documents on career guidance and career development produced from 2000 to 2008 are analysed from the Foucauldian governmentality perspective. From the starting point that re-shaping of career guidance is part of human capital strategies in the knowledge economy of Europe, the author argues that policy of career guidance aims to shape not only a competitive workforce, but in addition entrepreneurial and responsible citizens. In political strategies of career guidance, the competences of career management skills work as a technology to govern the individual to participate in inventing human capital by capitalising oneself to manage the career in working life as well as in social life. The author discusses what desirable subjectivities government of career self-management constructs in relation to re-regulated responsibility of the individual and the state.

Non-formal Education and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Russia: what is the relationship?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Non-formal Education and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Russia: what is the relationship?
Author: W. JOHN MORGAN; GRIGORI A. KLIUCHAREV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 628-630
ABSTRACT The article describes collaborative research into the relationship between non-formal education and civil society in post-Soviet Russia. It shows how through social survey data and case studies of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society organisations (CSOs), using a combination of social science perspectives, much can be learned about the current condition and democratic potential of Russian civil society.

The Rhetoric of a Reform: the construction of 'public', 'management' and the 'new' in Norwegian education reforms of the 1990s

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: The Rhetoric of a Reform: the construction of 'public', 'management' and the 'new' in Norwegian education reforms of the 1990s
Author: TOM ARE TRIPPESTAD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 631-643
ABSTRACT This article presents a critical rhetorical analysis of the governing and reform ideology of the Norwegian school system of the 1990s. It uses Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies as a critical resource in the reading of the reforms, and discusses some of the consequences of the regime's models of leadership and public management for important pedagogical qualities of the school system.

Improving the Professional Knowledge Base for Education: using knowledge management and Web 2.0 tools

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: Improving the Professional Knowledge Base for Education: using knowledge management and Web 2.0 tools
Author: MARILYN LEASK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 644-660
ABSTRACT Improving education systems is an elusive goal. Despite considerable investment, international studies such as the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) project of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the McKinsey Report, How The World's Best Performing Schools Come Out On Top, indicate that improving teacher quality is more important than increased financial investment. Both reports challenge governments, academics and practitioners to adopt new ways of sharing and building knowledge. This article makes the case for national education systems to adopt tried and tested knowledge management and Web 2.0 tools used by other sectors, and highlights the neglected potential of teacher educators as agents for improvement.

OBITUARY Dr Paula Allman

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Title: OBITUARY Dr Paula Allman
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 5 Pages: 661-662
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. The 'Untimely' Deleuze: some implications for educational policy

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Introduction. The 'Untimely' Deleuze: some implications for educational policy
Author: Inna Semetsky; Diana Masny
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 447-453
ABSTRACT Not available

Deleuze's Pedagogies as a Theory of 'Bildung': becoming-pedagogue and the concept of a new school

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Deleuze's Pedagogies as a Theory of 'Bildung': becoming-pedagogue and the concept of a new school
Author: OLAF SANDERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 454-464
ABSTRACT This article argues that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari's later works can be read as a theory of 'Bildung' with Deleuze's three pedagogies as important 'knots'. 'Bildung' happens in refrains. The article finally sketches the outline of an imaginary school based on Deleuzian philosophy. The discussions with local politicians regarding the founding of this school are now in progress.

'Pedagogy of Perception': notes on Film-Bildung with Deleuze

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: 'Pedagogy of Perception': notes on Film-Bildung with Deleuze
Author: MANUEL ZAHN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 465-473
ABSTRACT If one looks at the German educational debate on media, one can find a broad interest in film and its implicit formative (bildenden) effects on its spectator. But despite this increased awareness of the importance of audiovisual media arrangements for individual formation (Bildung), almost all of the theoretical perspectives on this phenomenon still argue in a 'Kantian tradition' with a given and autonomous subject. In this article the author suggests another, aesthetic, perspective that focuses on the complex relations between the film and its spectator, listener or 'reader'; namely, the film experience. The research questions are: what are the pedagogical implications of film? Or is there something like a filmic 'pedagogy of perception' as Deleuze claims? Which kinds of perception, affection, thinking or action are offered by the film experience? Or, which individuation generates the film experience? The article also presents a short outline of the author's current research project, where I am thinking about Bildung, in reference to Gilles Deleuze, as Film-Bildung, which is a becoming concept of Bildung that draws a line of flight between an encyclopaedic and a technical conceptualisation of Bildung.

Babies, Music and Gender: music playschools in Finland as multimodal participatory spaces

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Babies, Music and Gender: music playschools in Finland as multimodal participatory spaces
Author: TARU LEPPÄNEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 474-484
ABSTRACT Studies of education and childhood studies in general tend to focus on the experiences and cultures of toddlers and school-age children. The experiences and cultures of babies and infants are often excluded from the scope of the studies of children. In Gilles Deleuze's (and Félix Guattari's) thinking, a child, and especially a baby or an infant, is essential in the processes of becoming. This article explores the concept of musicking to grasp the lines of flight and ruptures at music playschool lessons for babies, aiming to rethink and reconceptualise the meanings of music in this setting. Theoretically and methodologically, the article is situated within Deleuzian feminisms. Enjoyment is possible for babies and adults at music playschool lessons, when the lines of flight release the participants from conventional ways of experiencing and making music. These lessons allow babies and adults to take pleasure in the form of musicking. At these lessons, the concept of music is deterritorialised, because musicking creates a space that includes multiple senses.

Bringing Deleuze's Philosophy into Discourse on Values Education and Quality Teaching: an Australian model

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Bringing Deleuze's Philosophy into Discourse on Values Education and Quality Teaching: an Australian model
Author: INNA SEMETSKY; TERENCE LOVAT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 485-493
ABSTRACT The article examines the Australian national program of values education via the lens of Deleuze's philosophy. It argues that it is teachers with a genuine level of self-knowledge who can create the conditions conducive to best practice in schools. Both theoretically and empirically, quality teaching has demonstrated the power of the affective dimension exceeding cognitive knowledge of facts alone. Through an experiential approach to self-formation, we understand that values are implicit in practical life and that our knowledge of them - the core of values-education - lies in the ability to participate in the unfolding experiences.

Multiple Literacies Theory: exploring futures

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Multiple Literacies Theory: exploring futures
Author: DIANA MASNY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 494-504
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the contributions of philosophy, art and science to education through the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological usefulness of a Deleuze-Guattarian conceptual framework that informs multiple literacies theory (MLT). Education lends itself to Deleuze's notion of connecting and creating through philosophy, art and science. How do they come together and connect in education and with MLT? Accordingly the first part focuses on some key concepts related to MLT. The second part presents MLT. The third part centres on vignettes from a two-year study involving multilingual children acquiring multiple writing systems simultaneously. The fourth part brings together possible lines of flight as rhizomatic connections in order to consider what MLT offers as a concept for educational future.

Deleuzian Experimentations in Canadian Immigrant Language Education: research, practice, and policy

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Deleuzian Experimentations in Canadian Immigrant Language Education: research, practice, and policy
Author: MONICA WATERHOUSE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 505-517
ABSTRACT Undertaking Deleuzean experimentations in educational research requires a transformation of what it is to do research. After describing one such becoming, this article considers the potentialities of Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT), which draws on concepts created by Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari, for thinking differently about policy and practice in a federally-funded adult immigrant language program in Canada. A rhizoanalytic cartography of vignettes selected from a qualitative study conducted in two immigrant language classrooms focuses on teacher and student perceptions of being and becoming-Canadian in a multicultural context. Viewed through the lens of MLT, this rhizoanalysis suggests that there is much more going on in the program than its mandate to 'orient newcomers to the Canadian way of life' might imply. The article goes on to discuss potential lines of flight in adult immigrant language programs for the transformation of policy and practice.

Educating Gnosis/Making a Difference

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: Educating Gnosis/Making a Difference
Author: INNA SEMETSKY; JOSHUA A. DELPECH-RAMEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 518-528
ABSTRACT The emergent field of Educational Futures has its beginning in futurology as a relatively new constellation of disciplines having a strong impact on policy in the form of foresight, scenario planning, and new utopian thinking. This article specifically focuses on Gilles Deleuze's unorthodox approach to epistemology as future-oriented and creative and emphasizes his attention to experimental and experiential becomings. While educational system is traditionally limited to acquiring the factual knowledge of the external world, inner knowledge or Gnosis is not addressed in a habitually secular context. In contrast to the prevailing episteme, this article positions Gnosis within the universal science of life, mathesis. The political impulse of Deleuze's thoughts on mathesis is related to new educational leaders as 'people to come'.

In conversation with Jacques Daignault and Diana Masny

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:10:49 GMT

Title: In conversation with Jacques Daignault and Diana Masny
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Pages: 528-539
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial. Politics, Pedagogy and Practice in School Health Policy

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Editorial. Politics, Pedagogy and Practice in School Health Policy
Author: Carolyn Vander Schee; Michael Gard
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 307-314
ABSTRACT Not available

Back to the Future: reoccurring issues and discourses in health education in New Zealand schools

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Back to the Future: reoccurring issues and discourses in health education in New Zealand schools
Author: MARGARET SINKINSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 315-327
ABSTRACT A key function of health education in New Zealand schools has always been to educate individuals to be responsible and accountable for their own health status. Educational, economic and political stances on what best constitutes effective health education, however, shift over time. The outcome of these shifts is that a multiplicity of disciplines and theoretical frameworks has informed pedagogical practices in this subject area, and continues to do so. Psychology, sociology, philosophy and biological sciences are all visible in school health education syllabuses. Currently a range of concepts and theories underpin the subject, ranging from critical theory and post-structuralism to cognitive behavioural theory and behaviour change models. Although various disciplines, concepts and theories have fashioned the delivery and content of past and present school health education, none have proved particularly effective in moving it away from pervasive and enduring discourses of individualism. Examined in this article are socio-political influences on curriculum directions and discourses over the last century, including the part played by external bodies in determining health education subject matter and health behaviour emphases.

Health Imperatives, Policy and the Corporeal Device: schools, subjectivity and children’s health

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Health Imperatives, Policy and the Corporeal Device: schools, subjectivity and children’s health
Author: JOHN EVANS; LAURA DE PIAN; EMMA RICH; BRIAN DAVIES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 328-340
ABSTRACT ‘Health’ has become a major concern of policy makers internationally in recent years, especially where and when it is reduced to a measurable and, therefore, comparable commodity/’quality’: weight and obesity levels. Schools in many countries have increasingly been charged with responsibility for safeguarding children’s health, ensuring that they eat the right foods, exercise sufficiently, and either lose or maintain ‘ideal weight’. The authors are concerned to highlight that the success of any educational strategy is likely to depend as much on what schools or teachers do, as on what students themselves bring to the ‘learner encounter’ in the way of cultural predispositions and levels of socio-economic, financial and political resource. Drawing on data from research examining the impact of new ‘health imperatives’ on schools within the United Kingdom, they explore connections between the corporal and corporeal, and the recontextualising processes that occur as health imperatives flow across and within multiple sites of discourse and are translated into pedagogies and school policies which may have impact upon the subjectivities of young people. Concepts drawn from Bernstein and others that have become central to the authors’ work illustrate how individual pupils’ needs, interests, abilities and desires are interrelated with, and affected by, the various cultural settings and pedagogies they experience at home, at school, in their peer groups and other social settings.

'I'm Proud to Be Me': health, community and schooling

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: 'I'm Proud to Be Me': health, community and schooling
Author: LISETTE BURROWS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 341-352
ABSTRACT Health reportage in New Zealand's popular and professional media regularly features large, avowedly inactive, indigenous and/or 'poor' people failing to nurture their children properly on account of their size. While well-meaning government and school-based initiatives explicitly target these so-called 'high-need' communities, seldom is there any considered understanding of what the young people consigned to these groupings understand as good 'health' nor the variety of ways in which they take up imperatives designed for them. Drawing on ethnographic work across two New Zealand school sites I explore the ways children are making sense of and responding to new health imperatives, given the very different material conditions and interests that contour their positions within cultural and class groupings. Analysis suggests that children can and do critically interrogate the veracity of dominant discourses, reassess them, reconstruct existing knowledge and read corporeality and admonishments to move and eat in particular ways through cultural lenses that, in some cases permit them to retain some sense of themselves as 'well', and in other cases, do not. Some 'youth' (cultures and class positions) are 'abjectified' while others are empowered and endorsed by prevailing healthscapes and their recontextualisation though the practices of schooling and family life.

Obesity, Health and Physical Education: a Bourdieuean perspective

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Obesity, Health and Physical Education: a Bourdieuean perspective
Author: KATIE FITZPATRICK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 353-366
ABSTRACT Assumptions and interventions about the so-called 'obesity epidemic' pervade health and physical education classrooms and national policy agendas in New Zealand, as they do elsewhere in the Western world. In contrast, critical scholars in these subjects advocate an active deconstruction of the tenets and presumptions underpinning public and media conceptions of obesity, related body norms and physical activity and nutrition interventions. This article employs Bourdieu's notions of field, capital and habitus to argue that each of these approaches emanates from a different field of cultural production. Drawing on a critical ethnographic study of a low socioeconomic school in South Auckland, New Zealand, I also argue that acknowledging students' own cultural fields might offer a way forward.

The Production, Communication, and Contestation of Physical Education Policy: the cases of Mississippi and Tennessee

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: The Production, Communication, and Contestation of Physical Education Policy: the cases of Mississippi and Tennessee
Author: BEN DYSON; PAUL M. WRIGHT; JOHN AMIS; HUGH FERRY; JAMES M. VARDAMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 367-380
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the production, communication, interpretation and contestation of new physical education (PE) and physical activity (PA) policy initiatives introduced in Mississippi and Tennessee for the academic year 2006?2007. These states provide a relevant context to study such issues, since Mississippi has the highest and Tennessee has the fifth-highest rate of childhood obesity in the United States (Trust for America’s Health, 2009). The social-ecological model was used as a theoretical framework to interpret the social, economic, temporal, and political interactions that shaped the development, interpretation, and implementation of these policies (Stokols, 1992). A multiple-level case study design (Yin, 2003) was adopted in which the policy process was analyzed and compared across eight high schools. Four high schools were purposefully selected in each state that provided a broad range of contextual differences and collected data in real-time during a one-year period. We conducted 73 interviews with key stakeholders, including policymakers, school administrators, teachers and students, and observed PE lessons and school-based activities. The researchers identified themes from the data: Policy process; Expectation of compliance; Unfunded mandate; Problematic policy enactment; Academic pressure; Marginalized status of PE; Narrow PE curriculum; and Dislike of PE. Even though new PE and PA legislation had been passed in both states, no substantive change occurred in any of the schools during our study. This work moves beyond a superficial understanding of how policy initiatives impact PA and PE provisions within schools, particularly at the secondary level. We recommend the development of support systems within the school through the creation of clear goals, strategic plans, and professional development to implement new policy initiatives.

The Body Politic: childhood obesity as a symbol of an unbalanced economy

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: The Body Politic: childhood obesity as a symbol of an unbalanced economy
Author: CRYSTAL KRONER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 381-391
ABSTRACT As society's novices, children are becoming more susceptible to advertisers who target them as a profitable demographic. This creates an alarming trend of obesity and exacts a considerable financial, physical and ethical toll on the community. To view obesity as concurrent with malnourishment seems counter-intuitive, this study uses Butler's description of the body as the enactment of hegemony, in order to reveal a tension between our cultural and economic ideologies manifesting in children's bodies. To come closer to this, the social context of food is examined; its production and distribution in light of today's overabundance of mass-marketed low-quality foods, to show how this state of unbalance affects children's bodies. Next, literature from the health-related fields regarding the negative impact of advertising directed at children is examined, to support the argument for educational policies tailored to the current political context. As the ideology of consumerism becomes increasingly connected to children's bodies, intervention strategies must begin teaching them how to navigate this complex political landscape in order to inculcate a more balanced and alternative perspective on accountability and consumption.

Privileged Advocates: disability and education policy in the USA

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Privileged Advocates: disability and education policy in the USA
Author: COLIN ONG-DEAN; ALAN J. DALY; VICKI PARK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 392-405
ABSTRACT Since the establishment of educational rights for children with disabilities in the 1970s, special education in the US has included a growing share of students and has constituted an ever-growing share of education budgets. Previous research has focused on the disproportionate assignment to special education of low-income and minority students, concluding that special education mainly reproduces social disadvantages. This article argues that privileged parents - by virtue of their ability to navigate complex legal and scientific practices and discourses that are seen as guarantees of fairness and neutrality in special education - are able to secure advantageous resources for their children through special education. Through analysis of the distribution and content of 'due process' hearing requests in the California special education system, this article shows how advocacy in this part of the system depends on parents' cultural and economic capital. Specifically, reimbursement claims in due process hearings show how having economic capital can be used to leverage public education resources, while parents' testimony in hearings shows the importance of having cultural capital. In concluding, the emphasis on parental involvement in both regular and special education is discussed and alternatives to the individualized system of rights in special education are considered.

Sexuality Education Policy and the Educative Potentials of Risk and Rights

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Sexuality Education Policy and the Educative Potentials of Risk and Rights
Author: CRIS MAYO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 406-415
ABSTRACT This article argues that institutions need to take more risks to improve sexuality education. Understanding how risk structures sexuality may help make sexuality education more attuned to the needs of diverse students. Situating sexuality in the context of human rights can help to demonstrate the kinds of social and institutional risks that are created by limiting sexuality education. In addition to contributing to high rates of HIV and unwanted pregnancy, insufficient sexuality education augments conditions for expressions of gender-based violence that harm young people in general but also more specifically impede young women's educational attainment. By limiting information and deliberation on desire, risk and culturally based gender inequities, sexuality education in its current state continues to limit health and life options for all people.

More than Bodies: protecting the health and safety of LGBTQ youth

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: More than Bodies: protecting the health and safety of LGBTQ youth
Author: DARLA LINVILLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 416-430
ABSTRACT This article presents data from a six-month participatory action research project. Researchers included one doctoral student and eight high-school students in New York City, all of whom identified as non-heterosexual and/or gender non-conforming. The research analyzed language and behavior in school, as well as state anti-bullying and sex education policies, and found their application to be mixed, with high-school students not receiving even HIV/AIDS lessons in some cases, even though they are mandated by the state. Young people speaking in the research presented in this article ask for a consideration of safety that includes their need for accurate and comprehensive information about sex, sexuality and gender - not just for themselves but also for their peers, teachers and school authorities. They request that consideration of the health and safety of LGBTQ youth needs to include more than just anti-bullying protections and HIV/AIDS materials, and that biological arguments about sexuality and gender roles should be called into question by curricular materials in favor of a fuller history of sexual and gendered identities. These changes, they suggest, may improve their level of belonging in their schools - a key factor in their physical and mental health and safety during adolescence.

Expanding School Improvement Policy to Better Address Barriers to Learning and Integrate Public Health Concerns

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:23:20 GMT

Title: Expanding School Improvement Policy to Better Address Barriers to Learning and Integrate Public Health Concerns
Author: HOWARD S. ADELMAN; LINDA TAYLOR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Pages: 431-446
ABSTRACT This article stresses that current school improvement policy in the USA marginalizes development of the type of system of student support necessary for enabling student success and well-being at school. Then we discuss how education policy can be expanded and operationalized to correct this deficiency. Finally, we explore the implications of the expanded policy for connecting overlapping public education and public health concerns.

Reflecting on Writing Autobiography

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Reflecting on Writing Autobiography
Author: ANDY BEGG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 145-150
ABSTRACT The following reflections relate to the reasons for and an approach to an autobiographic task, the notions that underpin it, and some thoughts about the quality and value of such a project. The focus was on the ways one views curriculum change over time; and the intention was to provide an example that others may sense as either familiar or at least reasonable. The task began without data in the form of diaries or similar records, thus the first step was to build up a time line with remembered incidents to highlight themes that might be important. From this a selection of themes emerged. The themes, incidents, reflections on them, and relevant literature read at the same time, formed the basis of the autobiography. Notions of complexity, and of plateaus, mini-plateaus, and connecting rhizomes all influenced the structure of the work. The purposes for undertaking the task included: understanding self, enriching understanding of self and others, sharing experiences, and exploring new possibilities and connections. With these purposes to the fore, the quality criteria were not usefulness, reliability, validity, authenticity, or trustworthiness - what was sought was resonance. Overall, the autobiography was seen as having a nomadic nature, an emergent rather than a planned mission, and hopefully it will lead to others seeing new alternatives in their work.

Shaping the Responsible, Successful and Contributing Citizen of the Future: 'values' in the New Zealand Curriculum and its challenge to the development of ethical teacher professionality

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Shaping the Responsible, Successful and Contributing Citizen of the Future: 'values' in the New Zealand Curriculum and its challenge to the development of ethical teacher professionality
Author: LEON BENADE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 151-162
ABSTRACT The revised New Zealand Curriculum became mandatory for use in New Zealand schools in February 2010. The ongoing reform agenda in education in New Zealand since 1989 and elsewhere internationally has had corrosive effects on teacher professionality. State-driven neo-liberal policy and education reforms are deeply damaging to the mental and moral conceptions teachers have of their work. This article contemplates one aspect of The New Zealand Curriculum - its focus on values - and the way it challenges the development of ethical teacher professionality. It also considers the prospect of reclaiming some of that lost moral ground through critical implementation of the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum, a claim that rests on an argument that this policy breaks with neo-liberal reform by its identification with third way political ideology.

The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 163-171
ABSTRACT Anti-intellectualism and political illiteracy are sweeping across the American media and cultural landscape, giving rise to discourses that are unabashedly nativist, racist, and reactionary. Populist sentiments drive the rabid individualism and anti-government rhetoric of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party movement. Underlying these sentiments is not simply religious or libertarian ideology, but an insidious neoliberal, pro-corporate agenda that supports deregulated capitalism and the demise of the social state. As anti-intellectualism spreads in the media and political spheres, Americans increasingly accept as a principle of governance the reality of living in a Darwinist, survival-of-the-fittest world. If democracy is going to have a future in the United States, critical education and universities as democratic public spheres need to be defended and expanded in order to resist a growing wave of anti-intellectualism that heralds the disappearance of the critical intellectual, the depoliticization and reduction of civic responsibility to banal acts of production and consumption, and the rise of the punishing state and a culture of cruelty that abandon racial minorities, the unemployed, sick, elderly and poor to lives of violence, hardship, despair, and insecurity.

Citizenship with/in or without Lifeworld? A Critical Review of the Contemporary Perspectives of Citizenship

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Citizenship with/in or without Lifeworld? A Critical Review of the Contemporary Perspectives of Citizenship
Author: RUYU HUNG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 172-182
ABSTRACT This article aims to propose the idea of citizenship with/in lifeworld. The author argues that most approaches to the conception of citizenship fail to pay fair attention to and include differences at the individual level. By exploring the meaning of the mainstream conceptions of citizenship, this article identifies the implied deficits as homogenisation and disembodiment. Homogenised and disembodied citizenship is 'citizenship without lifeworld'. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of body, this article suggests that the understanding of citizenship cannot be separated from lifeworld. The notion of citizenship with/in lifeworld brings more potential for imagining a civic society welcoming differences.

Leisure, Government and Governance: a Swedish perspective

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Leisure, Government and Governance: a Swedish perspective
Author: LISBETH LINDSTRÖM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 183-192
ABSTRACT The leisure sector has witnessed a tremendous expansion since 1960. The purpose of this article is to analyse the decisions and goals of Swedish government policy during the period 1962 to 2005. The empirical analysis covers government Propositions and governmental investigations. The fields covered are sports, culture, exercise, tourism and recreation. The article concludes that during the last ten years the private sector, led by companies, economic associations and foundations, has expanded its involvement in the leisure sector. Whereas the state used to control all parts of the leisure value chain, it is now possible to distinguish between those who produce, arrange and finance leisure services.

Market Competition in Upper Secondary Education: perceived effects on teachers' work

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Market Competition in Upper Secondary Education: perceived effects on teachers' work
Author: ULF LUNDSTRÖM; ANN-SOFIE HOLM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 193-205
ABSTRACT The development and expansion of market solutions is one of the most important changes in Swedish education in the last 30 years. The aim of the article is to describe and analyse how students and staff in upper secondary schools perceive the impact of market competition on teachers' work. Three groups of actors in two Swedish regions were interviewed: students, teachers and principals. The interviews were carried out at eight schools in five municipalities, at both public and independent schools. The results show that competition relations are more complex than is often assumed. Intensification of teachers' work is a common theme in the interviews. Traditional professional values and identities are challenged by the market competition and a market-oriented teacher is shaped - whether the teachers like it or not. The extension of teachers' tasks is increasingly about marketing. A new type of service-minded and flexible teacher is created. Regarding the effects of competition on teacher performance, the results are contradictory. The quality discourse is problematised as there is no evident link between winners in the school competition and the quality of teaching and student outcomes. The Swedish case is interesting in the international literature as an example of a rapidly growing upper secondary school market which is closer to the logic of the market than many other nations' school systems.

New Anti-Semitism as the Meta-narrative of the New Progressive Thinking and Critical Pedagogy Today

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: New Anti-Semitism as the Meta-narrative of the New Progressive Thinking and Critical Pedagogy Today
Author: Ilan Gur-ze'ev; Peter McLaren
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 206-247
ABSTRACT Not available

The Future of Muslim Youth: interview with Linda Herrera

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: The Future of Muslim Youth: interview with Linda Herrera
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 248-257
ABSTRACT Not available

Neo-liberalism in Crisis? Educational Dimensions

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Neo-liberalism in Crisis? Educational Dimensions
Author: DAVID SMALL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 258-266
ABSTRACT Until the global financial crisis, neo-liberalism had appeared invincible. This article examines the global rise of neo-liberalism and its impact on education, particularly its treatment of the social democratic ideal of equality. Drawing on examples from education and other socio-political factors, it considers whether the financial crisis is putting neo-liberalism's dominant position at threat. It argues that despite the existence of some elements of a crisis in neo-liberalism, the conditions do not exist for the changes of the magnitude of those that emerged either at the time of the birth of social democracy or when neo-liberalism replaced it.

New Public Management in Educational Reform in Norway

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: New Public Management in Educational Reform in Norway
Author: TROND SOLHAUG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 267-279
ABSTRACT The article focuses on the similarities and differences in using new public management (NPM) administrative arrangements in educational policy as they have been presented in the educational reform process carried out this millennium by two governments in Norway: the Centre-Conservative government and the current Red-Green coalition government. First, key elements in the reform process are identified. The methods applied are selective studies of documents and speeches by policy actors (ministers), and an examination of the implemented policy. Personal communication with the Ministry of Education's Communication Centre and the Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training has provided some additional information. The findings are that there is an overall consensus on the primacy of economic values (at the level of ideas), management by output control, explicit standards, a test system (implemented at the policy level) and an accountability system (implemented at the policy level). Consensus between the two governments on these new institutional arrangements in education seems to be the major trend. However, disagreements over new free/private schools and markets in education are important. It is concluded that there are two versions of NPM policies present - a liberal one advocated by the Centre-Conservative government and a communitarian version advocated by the Red-Green government - and that the major consensus trend between the governments may imply steps towards an ideological hegemony of ideas related to the NPM tradition.

Controversial Issues: identifying the concerns and priorities of student teachers

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Controversial Issues: identifying the concerns and priorities of student teachers
Author: RICHARD WOOLLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 280-291
ABSTRACT The theoretical framework of this article considers the significant place of education in the socialisation and enculturation of children. This requires that student teachers develop critical pedagogies as a means of promoting equity, pupil voice and democratic structures in schools. Key to this is Cole's concept of 'isms' and 'phobias', and the need to prepare student teachers to address them, and to evaluate both formal and hidden curricula. This article outlines the findings of a small-scale study that explored student teachers' views on elements of issues-based education, the content of their training courses, and their personal priorities and apprehensions. It involved student teachers in eight universities in England during 2008-09. This article outlines the full range of responses to the survey and students' reasons for their priorities. The findings provide a context for providers of initial teacher education to consider the content and focus of their programmes.

The Egyptian Revolution 2011

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: The Egyptian Revolution 2011
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 292-295
ABSTRACT Not available

Racialised Memories and Class Identities: thinking about Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's America

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: Racialised Memories and Class Identities: thinking about Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's America
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 296-302
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEW Out of the Frame: the struggle for academic freedom in Israel (Ilan Pappe)

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:45:34 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW Out of the Frame: the struggle for academic freedom in Israel (Ilan Pappe)
Author: Keith Hammond
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Pages: 303-306
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. Interculturalism, Ethnocentrism and Dialogue

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Introduction. Interculturalism, Ethnocentrism and Dialogue
Author: Tina Besley; Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-12
ABSTRACT Not available

The Council of Europe's White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: an analysis using the ethic of care

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: The Council of Europe's White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: an analysis using the ethic of care
Author: MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS; VIVIENNE BOZALEK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 13-21
ABSTRACT This article examines what an ethic of care could offer to discussions about Europe's increasing cultural diversity by analyzing the important White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue published by the Council of Europe in 2008. The authors consider the White Paper from the perspective of the political ethic of care and thus examine its adequacy in dealing with issues of care. Their point of departure is that policy texts display normative ways of speaking about certain issues - in this case, issues of diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship in Europe. They first contextualize the discussions for promoting intercultural dialogue in the Council of Europe and analyze the normative framework of the White Paper. Then, they use the care perspective as a lens to comment on notions of diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship. Finally, they discuss how the notion of care as a citizenship issue could contribute towards further development of discussions on citizenship education and intercultural dialogue in Europe.

The Paradox of Dialogue

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: The Paradox of Dialogue
Author: PETER MURPHY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 22-28
ABSTRACT The Council of Europe's 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue signalled - with a measure of deep concern - the limits of multiculturalism and its attendant problems of identity politics, communal segregation, and the undermining of rights and freedoms in culturally closed communities. The White Paper proposed the replacement of the policy of multiculturalism with a policy of intercultural dialogue. The article in response reflects on the paradoxical nature of all discursive models of dialogue, including that of the Council of Europe, and suggests in its place a dramaturgical model of dialogue. All forms of dialogue that rely on discursive interaction run into the problem of incommensurable values, principles and ultimate authorities. From Weber and Kelsen to Castoriadis and Lyotard, this problem has been well assayed. It is not surmountable by the length, relative intensity or presumptive civility of a dialogue. Neither 'willingness to listen' nor 'open-mindedness' - let alone 'debate' and 'argument' - can solve the deep, difficult aporias of fundamental value conflicts. Nor can appeals to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, though the Council of Europe believes otherwise. We live in a world where liberal values of these kinds are routinely contested by militant pre-enlightenment communities. Dialogue can make no substantive difference to this. What then can? Historically and structurally, patrimonial cultures are only transformed under dramaturgical conditions. The article explores how the modern society of strangers mobilizes role playing, public acting, dramatic dialogism and various types of social dramaturgy (afforded especially by the anonymous theatre of its cities, markets and publics), and causes thereby the ironic incorporation or else the gradual withering-away of patrimonies, patriarchies and other kinds of pre-enlightenment communities.

Dialogue as Moral Paradigm: paths toward intercultural transformation

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Dialogue as Moral Paradigm: paths toward intercultural transformation
Author: J. GREGORY KELLER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 29-34
ABSTRACT The Council of Europe's 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: 'living together as equals in dignity' points to the need for shared values upon which intercultural dialogue might rest. In order, however, to overcome the monologic separateness that threatens community, we must educate ourselves to recognize the dialogism of our humanity and to engage in deep encounters with others with a mature skepticism of all dogmatisms, including our own. In order to aid us in reaching the necessary insight, the author calls upon Bakhtin's ideas of the dialogism of every utterance and of the unity and heteroglossia of language, Gadamer's hermeneutical experience that shakes us loose from what we think we know, and Levinas's description of that transcendent ideal of a dialogue beyond reciprocity. These perspectives break open our certainty that tribalism and individualism are fundamental, placing them instead as secondary phenomena that, though powerful, pronounce neither the initial nor the final word on our life together.

Ethnographic Research in Multicultural Educational Contexts as a Contribution to Intercultural Dialogue

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Ethnographic Research in Multicultural Educational Contexts as a Contribution to Intercultural Dialogue
Author: FRANCESCA GOBBO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 35-42
ABSTRACT In this article, the author argues that the Council of Europe White Paper's invitation to intercultural dialogue is certainly to be welcomed and pursued, but that its focus on 'managing' diversity should be complemented by the concern for understanding how diversity can be represented, negotiated and treated by the different actors in multicultural educational contexts. After pointing out that intercultural education has been chosen by Italian educational authorities to respond to the unforeseen prospects and challenges of multicultural classrooms, the author illustrates how ethnographic research is not only relevant for acknowledging and interrogating diversities but also for problematizing the conceptual foundations of educational policies and aims. She further argues that ethnographic research provides fieldworkers and the subjects of research with an effective opportunity to engage in an intercultural dialogue.

Dialogue and Its Conditions: the construction of European citizenship

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Dialogue and Its Conditions: the construction of European citizenship
Author: NAOMI HODGSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 43-56
ABSTRACT The Council of Europe's White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue provides an example of the way in which dialogue has become part of the current mode of governance in Europe. Throughout current policy, the terms 'dialogue' and 'voice' inform the introduction of practices and tools that constitute the citizen, or active learning citizen. Notions of voice and dialogue operate through educational and social practices today that are constitutive of a particular mode of subjectivation that renders the individual - through their freedom to speak, to participate and to be critical - governable. Current policy frames citizenship as a learning problem. In order to facilitate the development of competences for lifelong learning and active citizenship such policy seeks to establish 'a common language'. The concern with seeking a common language in respect of education and of citizenship is taken up in the discussion in this article, which places the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue into the context of current related European policy, and indicates how dialogue operates in the current mode of governmental subjectivation. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Stanley Cavell, this article draws attention to the governance of dialogue itself - the inculcation of the individual in to a language of culture, citizenship and democracy that is depoliticised and which, it is argued, denies disagreement and conflict as central aspects of political life.

Intercultural Dialogue: cultural dialogues of equals or cultural dialogues of unequals?

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Intercultural Dialogue: cultural dialogues of equals or cultural dialogues of unequals?
Author: JOHN IGBINO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 57-65
ABSTRACT This article has two aims. The first aim of the article is to show some emerging problems and questions facing intercultural dialogue. This involves a critique of intercultural dialogue by situating it within emerging models of cultural change. The second aim of the article is to show alternative approaches to cultural dialogues. This involves the description of some of the factors that might be useful to equal and dignified cultural dialogues.

Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies: a global network advancing dignity through dialogue

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies: a global network advancing dignity through dialogue
Author: EVELIN G. LINDNER; LINDA M. HARTLING; ULRICH SPALTHOFF
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 66-73
ABSTRACT Human rights are universally based on the concept of human dignity. Various international organizations are developing the theoretical, legal, and political framework for human rights. The underlying concept of human dignity is less disputed, but also receives less attention. This shortcoming is addressed by a worldwide group of scholars and practitioners dedicated to examining and understanding the many aspects of human dignity, as well as its violation - humiliation. This article describes the efforts of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) network. The network is a global transdisciplinary fellowship of individuals dedicated to advancing research, education, and interventions to end humiliating practices and promote human dignity around the world. The HumanDHS community strives to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, opening space for mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow, thus ending humiliating practices and breaking cycles of humiliation. This article describes the efforts of HumanDHS to encourage practices that lead to equality in dignity through dignifying dialogue and collaborative action.

Intercultural versus Interreligious Dialogue in a Pluralist Europe

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Intercultural versus Interreligious Dialogue in a Pluralist Europe
Author: JAMES ARTHUR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 74-80
ABSTRACT Intercultural dialogue, as currently theorized and practised by the Council of Europe, is limited in its capacity to contribute to social cohesion in and among religious communities who differ fundamentally from each other. Adherents of the major religions believe that their religion is uniquely true and consequently feel that their religious beliefs and values are misrepresented if public bodies in the name of 'neutrality' or secular principles imply or affirm the equal truth of all religions. They conclude from this approach that there is no real respect for religious difference. The Council of Europe's remit and practices harbour many explicit and implicit secular assumptions and commitments which, for now, decline to assess religious claims to truth and therefore refuse to decide between rival doctrinal positions. This article argues that only interreligious dialogue takes religions and religious difference seriously and is able to develop respect and lead potentially to 'shared values' between rival ways of religious thinking.

Reason and Revelation for an Averroist Pursuit of Convivencia and Intercultural Dialogue

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Reason and Revelation for an Averroist Pursuit of Convivencia and Intercultural Dialogue
Author: DRISS HABTI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 81-87
ABSTRACT Throughout medieval thought, a major issue raised was that of the relationship between religion and philosophy. Alternative frameworks see the problem as a conflict between faith and reason, tradition and speculation, mysticism and rationalism. The medieval Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, (1126-98), who lived in medieval Spain, attempts in his philosophy to reconcile philosophy with religion. This article probes into an 'Averroist dialogue' through his rationalist philosophy. Meanwhile, al-Ghazali (1058-1111), from Persia, tends towards an Islamic philosophy based on cause and effect and determined by God. Ibn Rushd's retaliation to al-Ghazali was his defence of the primacy of philosophy and reason, and a call for diversity of knowledge. Ibn Rushd explicates the relation between religion and philosophy as two different ways of reaching the same truth, and clarifies the connection between Islamic law and Greek science, striving for a rapprochement between the Islamic 'I' and the European 'Other' through his epistemological principles of dialogue in a time of convivencia (coexistence) in medieval Andalusia.

Uneven Equity and Italian Interculturalism(s)

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Uneven Equity and Italian Interculturalism(s)
Author: MONICA E. MINCU; MAURIZIO ALLASIA; FRANCESCA PIA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 88-95
ABSTRACT This article proposes a brief investigation of Italian interculturalism(s) as documented by scholarship, relevant policy documents and teaching textbooks, and presents some key practical issues relating to the integration of students of immigrant origin. The authors then analyse the 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue's core concepts and their possible illumination of Italian educational discourses and practices. The authors' analysis of different versions of Italian interculturalism(s) confirms the prominence of culture as its main pillar, while the issue of equity and equality is clearly neglected. The argument here is that a balanced conception of interculturalism, which recognises the 'second pillar' of equity, may prove to be a clearer message for teachers and practitioners. An equity-focused interculturalism will also fully acknowledge the right to education in all its practical forms. In addition, a policy of recognition based on both culture and class dimensions would prove more coherent and efficient in strengthening processes of integration.

A Cooperative School Model to Promote Intercultural Dialogue between Citizens-to-Be

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: A Cooperative School Model to Promote Intercultural Dialogue between Citizens-to-Be
Author: DANIELLE ZAY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 96-103
ABSTRACT This article introduces the European comparative results of the national report written by the author for the international project supported by the European Commission, 'Strategies for Supporting Schools and Teachers in Order to Foster Social Inclusion', It focuses on one of the main issues and the specific methodology of the French report. The development of international exchanges has led to both growing inequality between citizens from the same country and a growing number of new immigrant populations arriving for economic or political reasons. No European Union member state can be quite as irrational as to ignore them or to neglect the debate on how we can live together on the same soil. Although European countries have chosen the same type of market economy and democratic society, they do not have the same view about the kind of society and schools that will best serve their goals. In particular, their education and social policies are not inspired by the same paradigms and concepts with regard to social exclusion, education or citizenship within the state. Through research results and case studies, this research develops a cooperative school model based on teachers' initiatives and 'community development' to prepare citizens-to-be to support citizens in a free and equal community. Intercultural dialogue is a key factor for achieving such a target.

A Pedagogy for Global Understanding - intercultural dialogue: from theory to practice

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: A Pedagogy for Global Understanding - intercultural dialogue: from theory to practice
Author: NINA L. DULABAUM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 104-108
ABSTRACT Given the current tensions and animosities between people of varying cultural and ethnic groups, intercultural dialogue, rooted in Europe's humanist tradition, offers a concrete strategy for fostering understanding, promoting tolerance and breaking down barriers based on stereotypes and xenophobic violence. As the world's population increases each year, so does the significance of peaceful coexistence. It is important for people to develop a sense of community and a desire to communicate non-violently with each other. Though the theory may appear simple, practical application is complex. This article explores the challenges of implementing intercultural dialogue in educational settings, referencing current research in higher education.

Possible Orientations of the European Dimension in Romanian Educational Policy

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Possible Orientations of the European Dimension in Romanian Educational Policy
Author: ROXANA ENACHE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 109-113
ABSTRACT Curricular reform in any educational system should be to balance national, European or international elements and should integrate diversity. European education calls for a democratic citizenship education that includes a political, cultural, social and economic education - an overall European dimension, which implies an awareness of the drive and diversity of European culture and to learn to live in a European context. This type of education is characteristic of a special category of strategies - namely, partnership strategies. Other educational strategies that are supported to achieve the European dimension may be based on the ability to adapt to a particular context, the transfer of knowledge and experience, participation, and the ability to anticipate and to innovate. The author reviews evidence (the curriculum, syllabi, textbooks, etc.), the intended curriculum and implemented and effective strategies in order to highlight the Romanian education policy to implement and achieve the European dimension in the Romanian curriculum. Obviously, the role of education is very important in the transmission and cultivation of values that determine, in turn, the behaviours, attitudes and specific reactions of responsible citizens, for Europe needs such people. Romanians, who have a sense of social responsibility, but in a latent form, should leave, on the one hand, the old values, which discourage initiative and free expression of opinions and effective involvement, and, on the other, learn to become responsible, to engage socially and to implement those values that are identified with the psycho-moral characteristics of the Romanians themselves: altruism, tolerance, innovation, honesty and fairness.

Fostering Intercultural Dialogue in Tourism Studies

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Fostering Intercultural Dialogue in Tourism Studies
Author: INETA LUKA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 114-122
ABSTRACT One of the key issues that higher education has to face nowadays is how to educate versatile, creative and knowledgeable specialists who are able to work in the modern multicultural environment. The present study was conducted from May to December 2009 in the fourth-largest tertiary education institution in Latvia providing higher education in tourism. The quantitative and qualitative research was in two parts and included the analysis of theoretical literature and sources, a survey of 262 tourism students and 192 employers, as well as an in-depth survey of 61 tourism students regarding the development of intercultural competence. This article analyzes the development of students' intercultural competence and reveals how it may be promoted in English-language lessons by applying specially designed teaching-learning aids and tasks, and methods that foster intercultural dialogue.

The Nature of Democratic Decision Making and the Democratic Panacea

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: The Nature of Democratic Decision Making and the Democratic Panacea
Author: ROBERT K. SHAW
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 123-129
ABSTRACT 'Democracy thrives because it helps individuals identify with the society of which they are members and because it provides for legitimate decision-making and exercise of power.' With this statement, the Council of Europe raises for us some fundamental questions: what is the practice of democracy, its merits and its limitations? A phenomenological insight into democracy as it displays itself indicates that its essence is decision making by vote. The strength of this mechanism is that it operates without a requirement for rationality on the part of the participants, and its imperative is always to achieve a decision - any decision. Thus, the mechanism enables decisions in situations of incommensurable choice. The history of the engagement of Maori with local government in Aotearoa New Zealand makes apparent the limitations of democracy and challenges democracy itself. Maori have no tradition of democracy and they aspire to the exercise of their traditional decision-making practices. As a minority in a democratic country, Maori find themselves always at the mercy of the vote. Democracy is a tool of colonisation. The situation of Maori provides lessons for those who would applaud the Council of Europe and their belief in coexistence by way of democratic decision making.

Responsibly Competent: teaching, ethics and diversity

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Responsibly Competent: teaching, ethics and diversity
Author: JULIE ALLAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 130-137
ABSTRACT This article reports on a Council of Europe project, Policies and Practices for Teaching Sociocultural Diversity, undertaken between 2006 and 2009. The project was undertaken in three phases and involved a survey of teacher education policies and practices in relation to sociocultural diversity across Europe, a conceptual analysis and the development of a framework of teacher competences for sociocultural diversity. The article charts the process of developing the framework and reports on the engagement with the key stakeholders - policy makers, teachers and students. The features of the competence framework, informed by Levinas and emphasising the teacher's responsibility to the Other, are discussed.

Becoming-Other: developing the ethics of integration

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 16:23:01 GMT

Title: Becoming-Other: developing the ethics of integration
Author: INNA SEMETSKY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2011 Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 138-144
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the philosophy of French post-structuralist Gilles Deleuze in the context of post-formal education. The article specifically focuses on Deleuze's unorthodox approach to epistemology and ethics as future-oriented and creative, and lays down the foundations for a new ethics of integration in education derived from Deleuze's conceptualizations of 'becoming'; specifically 'becoming-other'. The call for 'a new ethic' was originally made by Erich Neumann in the troubled time of the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe. Contemporary conditions of cultural diversity point to the inadequacy of old ethical theories. The future form of educational philosophy encompasses not only resistance to the present but both the diagnosis and prognosis (creative, even if uncertain) for our actual multiple becomings in terms of becoming-revolutionary, becoming-democratic, becoming-pedagogical and becoming-ethical. The role of an educational philosopher becomes one of the clinician of culture; the latter described by Deleuze as an inventor of new immanent modes of existence that encompass critical, clinical and creative dimensions. The article's conclusion is that achieving genuine intercultural dialogue demands putting into practice a particular educational theory, which is defined in this article as an ethics of integration.

An Analysis of the Relationship between the Quantity and Quality of Education: focusing on Korea and OECD countries

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: An Analysis of the Relationship between the Quantity and Quality of Education: focusing on Korea and OECD countries
Author: JOO HYUN-JUN; OH BEOM-HO; YUN CHUNG-IL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 607-618
ABSTRACT Quantity and quality have long been recognized as primary factors to explain educational development. However, our understanding of the relationship between quantity and quality of education is quite limited and unclear. In this context, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between quantity and quality of education. To achieve the objective, it draws on the longitudinal empirical analysis of statistical reports officially issued by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Korean government. As a result, a positive correlation is clearly found between quantity and quality of education. Based on the synthesis of findings, the authors conclude that investment for education plays an important role in determining the quantity and quality of education and each nation has different policies depending on their level of development. Implications and suggestions of this study are as follows: 1. establishment of plans for expanding educational opportunities by stages, 2. inducing national motivation for education, 3. institutionalization of teacher evaluation and school evaluation.

Neoliberal Policy in the Higher Education Sector in Bangladesh: autonomy of public universities and the role of the state

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Neoliberal Policy in the Higher Education Sector in Bangladesh: autonomy of public universities and the role of the state
Author: ARIFUL HAQ KABIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 619-631
ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, enormous changes have been made in the higher education sector in Bangladesh. The government promulgated the Private University Act in 1992, and formulated a 20-year Strategic Plan for Higher Education: 2006-2026 (SPHE). A critical review shows that the objective of the plan is to connect education with market-driven economic forces. This article argues that such a neoliberal policy in the higher education sector will have far-reaching socio-economic consequences in Bangladesh. With a critical investigation of the SPHE, this article explores how the autonomy of public universities is threatened, and how the role of the state is redefined through withdrawing government grants in the higher education sector. By providing three case studies, this article exposes the marketising nature of higher education in contemporary Bangladesh. This article also argues that the resistance against neoliberalism in higher education is another aspect which is organised by different socio-political groups in the higher education institutions.

Transmorphosis: negotiating discontinuities in academic work

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Transmorphosis: negotiating discontinuities in academic work
Author: ZANE MA RHEA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 632-643
ABSTRACT The idea of 'transmorphosis' will be used in this article to discuss the impact of new teaching and learning environments on the highly mobile global academic pedagogue. 'Trans-' implies 'movement across', whether it be space, time, place, culture, or institution. '-morphosis' evokes the possibility/requirement to shapeshift one's pedagogical presence and performance in new and previously unimaginable ways. This article begins by positing that the traditional pedagogue, the one charged with the responsibility of leading the child to learn, no matter what the community, was able to prepare the future generation to maintain and develop the society in which they were to live. The pedagogue was recognised as having an understanding of what needed to be taught, how to teach it, and what a 'good' future would be. One of the noted impacts of globalisation is that we are educating for an uncertain future where local certainty has been replaced by clashes of a global magnitude about what are legitimate lifeways. Increasingly, the learners are adults coming into higher education. Drawing on a range of scholars who have examined the global diffusion of new knowledge, through imitation, innovation, using complex exchange logic, the 'transmorphing' pedagogue will be foregrounded in a discussion of everyday discontinuities that the academic travelling pedagogue is challenged to solve.

Franchising Education: challenges and opportunities for coping with the economic recession and the provision of higher education in the United Kingdom

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Franchising Education: challenges and opportunities for coping with the economic recession and the provision of higher education in the United Kingdom
Author: PAUL MILLER; GERTRUDE SHOTTE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 644-652
ABSTRACT When the global economic recession hit the world some 18 months ago, very few could predict the impact this would have on government spending on higher education. Higher education institutions in the United Kingdom face spending cuts. Notwithstanding, they are expected to deliver quality education with fewer resources. This article discusses challenges associated with the proposed funding cuts but also explores opportunities open to higher education institutions such as franchising and various forms of integration.

Present Nightmares and Realizable Futures

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Present Nightmares and Realizable Futures
Author: DOUG MORRIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 653-670
ABSTRACT The article reflects on the work of Henry Giroux, focusing on his latest book Youth in a Suspect Society. It attempts to capture the experience of reading Giroux and what Giroux's critical engagements across a wide array of cultural and pedagogical formations provide in terms of assisting us in articulating substantive criticisms of and insights into current crises, burdens and challenges. Additionally, it examines the force of Giroux's insistence on pedagogies of hope and possibility that offer tools for meaningfully intervening in the world in order to awaken and develop our critical individual and social agency directed toward modes of transformation necessary in this time of creeping neoliberal cynicism and pessimism, a prowling global fatalism, and a growing contentment with the malaise. In reading Giroux we will be disturbed; it is this creative disturbance, roiling indignation and enlivened action of an awakened public that will provide us grounds for hope that new modes of resistance emergent with humanizing forms of pedagogy, struggles for internationalist solidarity and global justice, and announcements of a dignified world meriting human habitation will open up the pathways to transformation we so urgently require if we are going to save rather than lose the future.

The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage
Author: MATTEO PASQUINELLI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 671-682
ABSTRACT Bringing post-Operaismo into network culture, this text tries to introduce the notion of surplus in a contemporary media debate dominated by a simple symmetry between immaterial and material domain, between digital economy and bioeconomy. Therefore a new asymmetry is first shaped through Serres' conceptual figure of the parasite and Bataille's concepts of excess and biochemical energy. Second, the crisis of the copyright system and the contradictions of the so-called Free Culture movement are taken as a starting point to design the notion of autonomous commons against the creative commons. Third, a new political arena is outlined around Rullani's cognitive capitalism and the new theory of rent developed by Negri and Vercellone. Finally, the sabotage is shown as the specular gesture of the multitudes to defend the commons against the parasitic dimension of rent.

Education Policymaking for Social Change: a post-humanist intervention

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Education Policymaking for Social Change: a post-humanist intervention
Author: HELENA PEDERSEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 682-696
ABSTRACT The humanist tradition in Western education systems is increasingly coming under critical scrutiny by posthumanist scholars, arguing that Enlightenment humanism accommodates a number of serious shortcomings such as being essentialist, exclusive, and unable to meet its own criteria of value pluralism, tolerance, and equity for all. This article formulates some challenges posed to formal education by posthumanist theory, addressing international education policymaking for social change. Based on an analysis of a number of education policy documents produced by UNESCO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, it elicits five pervasive ideas about the relationship between education and social change that are frequently appearing in contemporary rhetoric of education policymaking: 'the knowledge society'; 'the democratic society'; 'the multicultural society'; 'the globalized society' and 'the sustainable society'. Inspired by critical discourse analysis, the article identifies a number of research questions focused on each of these five ideas and explores possible responses, inflected by a range of recent cross-disciplinary posthumanist scholarship, that deconstruct conventional assumptions about the idea of education in general and of education policymaking in particular. It concludes with a discussion of what subject positions and repertoires are, or are not, allowed to emerge in education policymaking for social change.

Building 'Special Capital' for Entrepreneurial Development: special populations as human capital in the context of global development

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Building 'Special Capital' for Entrepreneurial Development: special populations as human capital in the context of global development
Author: GABRIELA WALKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 697-708
ABSTRACT Ten to twelve percent of the world population is identified as having one or more types of disability. This ecodeme has been historically known to be discriminated, marginalized, and disempowered by the lack of access to resources and to education. This article discusses the importance of adding special capital to the global human capital in the context of today's demanding contexts. Nevertheless, people with disabilities have the potential to be entrepreneurs in different ways: firstly, as entrepreneurs of the self, and, secondly, as economic and social growth agents, and thus directly or indirectly contributing to various innovations and discoveries. The need for inclusive development, ecological education, ecoducation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development calls for changes in the make-up and education of global biopower.

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 709-714
ABSTRACT Not available

Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 715-721
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEW

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:23:34 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 6 Pages: 722-723
ABSTRACT Not available

In Search of Affective Citizenship: from the pragmatist-phenomenological perspective

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: In Search of Affective Citizenship: from the pragmatist-phenomenological perspective
Author: RUYU HUNG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 488-498
ABSTRACT This article aims to explore the meaning of the concept of affective citizenship and its educational implications. The author defines the concepts of citizenship and citizenship education by three types: the conventional, the critical rational and the affective. The article argues that conventional citizenship has been the mainstream concept and implies deficiencies. Critical rational citizenship is thus proposed to solve the problems by incorporating the values of modern liberalism and democracy. Yet the critical rational concept might still involve the difficult notion of oppression and domination over the otherness. Therefore, the author proposes that affective citizenship could be more inclusive and tolerant than the alternatives in terms of improvement, in the light of the philosophies of pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty and phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Affective citizenship may point towards a more inclusive and more open public sphere and enable citizens to think and act rationally as well as be caring, sensitive and perceptive.

'You Can Only Get a Degree!' Theoretically Situating the Alterations to the Back to Education Allowance Welfare to Education Programme of 2003/04

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: 'You Can Only Get a Degree!' Theoretically Situating the Alterations to the Back to Education Allowance Welfare to Education Programme of 2003/04
Author: MARTIN J. POWER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 499-512
ABSTRACT This article critically examines the Back to Education Allowance (BTEA) as a mechanism of social inclusion for Irish welfare recipients through participation in third-level education. The article is based on empirical data from focus group and in-depth qualitative interviews with third-level students on the BTEA, and key informants. The article adopts a strong 'structural' position, situating the source of social exclusion in the structured inequality of the labour market and the state, which disadvantages particular groups in society. In an era of unprecedented growth in Ireland, the first signs of a fiscal crisis saw cuts made to welfare programmes in 2003/2004. The article examines the resultant changes made to the BTEA, utilising Mutch's adaptation of Bourdieu's field theory to form a theoretical understanding of how and why these restrictive changes to the BTEA occurred.

Reconceptualising Access in Education Policy: method and mindset

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Reconceptualising Access in Education Policy: method and mindset
Author: ATHENA VONGALIS-MACROW
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 513-527
ABSTRACT Enhancing access to education and knowledge is a long-held principle enshrined in education policy. Access to education offers leverage for educational attainment and achievement, at the individual and social levels. In policy, the term equates with concepts of inclusion, social justice and equity. Over the last decades, as education policy has responded to global social, cultural and economic reforms, concepts such as access have also undergone revision. This article revisits the relationship between access, education and knowledge-making, in order to clarify the meaning of access in current education policies by re-evaluating how access is constructed in policy and how the concept associates with other aspects of education. The research examines the concept of access in order to improve the efficacy of policy, opening the way for more systematic and transparent policy analysis and policy making centred on defining and delineating conceptual meanings such as access, as a basis for more targeted policy. Using evidence-based policy research, the article proposes a research process model based on the hierarchy of abstraction, to show that education policy requires systematic examination of key concepts as a fundamental step towards more clearly defined policy postulates that recognise and deal with contextual complexity of education policy. Defining and delineating the meaning of concepts such as access can help in the way that education policy contributes to guiding innovative knowledge construction.

Governmentality of Youth: managing risky subjects

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Governmentality of Youth: managing risky subjects
Author: TINA A.C. BESLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 528-547
ABSTRACT This article poses the question: How do understandings of governmentality play out in discourses of youth? In the twenty-first-century neoliberal contexts of consumer capitalist societies, discourses of youth need now to move beyond the valuable earlier understandings based on psychological and cultural/subcultural studies to harness Foucault's notion of governmentality. In terms of governmentality, if youth cannot or will not control their conduct, they cease to be 'docile bodies' and 'useful' to the state. If their behavior becomes unacceptable and criminal, the state will intervene, administering its biopower in the form of the youth justice system - governmentality in action, which is probably the biggest risk of all for youth, especially in the disciplinary, punitive way it is formulated in much of the USA, where it totally ignores the theoretical findings of youth development that have been established in psychological discourses. The first section of the article briefly discusses the emergence of Foucault's notion of governmentality. The second section examines a dominant discourse of youth - youth 'at risk'. It starts with definitions, and then covers therapeutic and economic aspects of risk management. These include technologies of the self via a range of voluntary and community-based socio-psy programs and interventions; and social security, risk assessment, risk management and insurance. The third section, 'Beyond Cultural Studies', analyzes the importance of changing economic conceptions of the self which demand something more than perspectives garnered solely from cultural studies. The author argues that a Foucauldian history of homo economicus, as in the last four lectures of The Birth of Bio-politics (2008), and a critical engagement with the economics of the self where the dominance of pure rationality models have given way to a consideration of a range of psychological attributes that influence our economic decision-making, are valuable additions to traditional cultural studies of youth.

Teaching Racial Literacy: challenges and contributions of multiculturalism

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Teaching Racial Literacy: challenges and contributions of multiculturalism
Author: ANA CANEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 548-555
ABSTRACT Building on a critical post-colonial multicultural perspective and on whiteness studies that go beyond recognising cultural diversity towards challenging narratives that construct and exclude the other, the present article outlines impacts and challenges of the enactment of a recent Brazilian government educational law to combat racism in education, which makes it compulsory for schools to include black African history and culture in the curriculum. It analyses the underpinnings and the challenges within that policy. The article suggests that contradictory discourses, such as racial blindness, essentialisation of race identities, and the use of miscegenation as 'evidence' of racial democracy, are powerful lenses and cultural signifiers that have deeply polarised the way race has been addressed in Brazil. The study is relevant comparatively in that it provides illustrations of an official national anti-racist pedagogic experience taken as a case study, in the context of a highly inter-racial society, suggesting that anti-racist pedagogies are more likely to have positive impacts when they take into account cultural hybridisations and the provisionary nature of identity constructions.

Link or Breach? The Role of Trust in Developing Social Capital within a Family Literacy Project

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Link or Breach? The Role of Trust in Developing Social Capital within a Family Literacy Project
Author: BETH CROSS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 556-566
ABSTRACT This article examines survey and focus group transcripts of a well-established early years literacy project in Scotland in light of contextual information about changing local authority policy in order to look at the gains in social capital identified by participants and the extent to which these indicate lasting durable change that will reap later benefits for both individuals and the community in which they are situated. Contextual information provides the basis to examine the interlinking dynamics and resources of a network of volunteer and statutory organisations that support the project and raises questions about how its benefits will be sustained should that network be seriously undermined by the changing policies of local and national government authorities. In analysing the issues at stake in sustained empowerment, a comparison is made with Bagley's work in a contrasting early years project in England. The article questions the appropriation of the metaphor of capital to the dynamics of social relations, particularly when issues of trust are at stake. Trust, it is argued, is of particular importance in decisions about how linking capital can be said to be reinvested. By looking at layers of data the conclusions that might be reached relying on statistical measures alone are problematised.

Openness, Web 2.0 Technology, and Open Science

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Openness, Web 2.0 Technology, and Open Science
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 567-574
ABSTRACT This article begins by examining the dimensions of open science including the ethics of science and the peer review system before defining open science in terms of 'wiki science' or 'science 2.0'. The article then briefly scrutinizes the future of open science, commenting upon the nature of open distributed knowledge systems and new models of production and innovation based on peer-to-peer systems.

Interrogating the University as an Engine of Capitalism: neoliberalism and academic 'raison d'état'

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Interrogating the University as an Engine of Capitalism: neoliberalism and academic 'raison d'état'
Author: ADAM DAVIDSON-HARDEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 575-587
ABSTRACT In the era of knowledge capitalism, universities are consistently regarded as potential 'engines' of capital accumulation and state prosperity. This article arguee that as regards their teaching and research functions - but with specific attention to the research function - universities can be seen to be enacting a type of neoliberal discourse/discursive practice that corresponds to the particular notion of 'raison d'état' raised by Foucault in his 1978-79 Collège de France lectures on neoliberalism. The positioning of monetary accumulation and expansion in the rawest sense as the ultimate desirable goal of universities serves to enact the type of 'limitation of self-regulation' which Foucault describes as a function of the (new) liberal state, conditioned as it is to build itself, and condition all of its behaviour, on the principal goal of economic growth and accumulation, enacting a form of neoliberal governmentality, in Foucault's (and others') terms. Subsequently, a neoliberal conception of science as necessarily wedded to a narrow instrumental-economic idea of technology continues to animate public discourse both at the government and university levels, resulting in a complex - and at times contested - political terrain which revolves around a particular economic regime of truth predicated in growth and accumulation before any other consideration. In this context, universities must grow and expand, but particularly in the ways that are demanded by the particular regime of truth which is hegemonic at the time, which revolve around what is understood here as the neoliberal discourse of knowledge capitalism. This argument is offered with the example of Canada in mind in particular, but with cognizance of related trends active in other countries impacted by the 'knowledge economy' discourse in the OECD group of countries, for instance, and beyond.

New Worlds Rising?

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: New Worlds Rising?
Author: Andrew Stables
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 588-596
ABSTRACT Not available

New Worlds Rising? The View from the Sustainable School

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: New Worlds Rising? The View from the Sustainable School
Author: William Scott
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 597-599
ABSTRACT Not available

New Worlds Rising? The View from Transdisciplinary Lifelong Learning

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: New Worlds Rising? The View from Transdisciplinary Lifelong Learning
Author: John Blewitt
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 600-602
ABSTRACT Not available

Tortured Memories and the Culture of War

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 13:00:36 GMT

Title: Tortured Memories and the Culture of War
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 5 Pages: 603-606
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Ilan Gur-Ze'ev
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 258-270
ABSTRACT Not available

The Nomadic Existence of the Eternal Improviser and Diasporic Co-poiesis in the Era of Mega-Speed

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: The Nomadic Existence of the Eternal Improviser and Diasporic Co-poiesis in the Era of Mega-Speed
Author: ILAN GURZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 271-287
ABSTRACT The history of transcendence and nomadism in face of the call for 'home-returning' is marked figuratively by four milestones: (1) the 'era' of immanence and dwelling in total harmony as a manifestation of self-sustained holiness; (2) the 'era' of relating to holiness by mediation of God, especially in the monotheistic religions; (3) the 'era' of killing-God-each-moment-anew as a path for regaining contact with holiness in Enlightenment's progress and the deification of humanity; and (4) the 'era' of the exile of the killer of God and the forgetfulness of the holy imperative of the progressive deification of humanity and the sacred work of killing-God-each-moment-anew. These four milestones are paralleled by growing changes and speeding of (de)constructions as part of the de-positioning of the human as dweller of this world or, alternatively, as a genuine Diasporic nomad. The current change in the history of human's search for itself, its meaning and its telos is realized in an historical moment of change: from rapid changes into an arena of mega-speed, an era in which the sacred work of killing-God-each-moment-anew is replaced by the exile of the killer of God and the forgetfulness of the humanist's telos within the immanence of the present dull anti-metaphysical moment within which the relations between space and time are transformed; both the quest for redemption/home-returning and the call for revolutionary progress and human's self-edification are forgotten, ridiculed, deconstructed and swallowed into the postmodern-neo-liberal system. Linear time and the quest for transcendence are overwhelmed by punctual time, end of historical consciousness, quasi-nomadism and the possibility to solve all human responsibility and shortcomings by plugging in to the pleasure machine. In face of this reality Diasporic philosophy and its improvised co-poiesis become relevant for the possibility of counter-education.

Diasporic Philosophy, Homelessness, and Counter-Education in Context: the Israeli-Palestinian example

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Diasporic Philosophy, Homelessness, and Counter-Education in Context: the Israeli-Palestinian example
Author: ILAN GUR-ZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 288-297
ABSTRACT Under current historical conditions, as Israelis, Jews are structurally almost prevented from facing the possibility of living in light of the Messianic impetus, as the world's universal moral, intellectual, and creative vanguard. This special Jewish mission was made possible by the Jews' unique homelessness - a Diasporic existence as a realized ideal of a community that is not a collective. Diasporic life is ultimately a kind of life in which the yahid (individual, not found in liberal terminology) is afforded, as an ecstatic way of moral life, an existence that allows a universalistic moral responsibility and intellectual commitment to overcome any dogma and content with the world of 'facts' and to reject the promises of mere power, glory, and pleasure. All this has changed in face of the successes of Zionist education and its political realizations. Unreserved siding against injustice inevitably endangers the very existence of Israel, not solely its current policies. As a genuine dialectical realization of Diasporic philosophy, counter-education in Israel cannot become instrumentalized, cannot become a collective self-imposed mass immigration. It is not solely a moral-political concrete dilemma facing us nowadays; it is fundamentally a philosophical and existential antinomy. Ultimately, it begins and ends in and by the individual, who is willing to overcome his or her self and to open the gates to the nomadic existence of a brave lover of Life and creativity. The new exodus is from Israel and the Zionist nation-building project as a present-day 'Egypt' as a home. It is an exodus from a distorted concept of Diasporic life, from the concept of 'Egypt' in the form of all versions of 'homecoming' and a monotheistic way, to rebuild or go back to the Garden of Eden. In the face of the new anti-Semitism as the meta-narrative of the new progressive thinking there is a special role to the present challenge of the unification of an ongoing moral struggle for the realization of the essence of Judaism, and transcending it into a universal alternative human existence.

Adorno and Horkheimer: Diasporic philosophy, Negative Theology, and counter-education

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Adorno and Horkheimer: Diasporic philosophy, Negative Theology, and counter-education
Author: ILAN GUR-ZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 298-314
ABSTRACT The later Horkheimer presents mature Critical Theory as a Jewish Negative Theology. This change carries major educational implications hegemonic critical pedagogy has not yet dared to address until now and much less in the present era of the new anti-Semitism as the meta-narrative of the progressive circles. In Horkheimer's work the change from a Marxian Critical Theory to a Diasporic philosophy is paralleled by an articulation of Critical Theory as a new, Jewish, Negative Theology. Adorno's Negative Dialectics follows the same path, attempting to present 'counter-education' as a worthy addressing of the present absence of the quest for transcendence and meaning, and as a Diasporic form of awaiting as a self-education for the human stance of readiness to be called upon. The refusal to dwell in peace in the present order of things, the negation of the 'facts' of the actuality, are but a manifestation of the rejection of metaphysical violence and of all kinds of 'homes', dogmas, and self-satisfaction in a world of pain, injustice, ugliness, and betrayed love. Since Adorno and Horkheimer refused a positive Utopia, their mature thought could not promise a better world as a justification for resistance to normalizing education and the quest for pleasure, 'success', and hegemony. Homelessness and the moral importance of suffering are here grounded ontologically and become a religious way of life. In this the Frankfurt School thinkers followed Benjamin's lead: it is a kind of religiosity which is Messianic without a Messiah. As a counter-education it holds out no promise of salvation or of redemption. But it might offer a Messianic moment, which will overcome the violence of the governing 'now-time' and open the gate to an alternative way of life. Adorno's and Horkheimer's later work offers a framework for counter-educational praxis whose religiosity is fertilized by the alarming resistance to educational optimism in light of an alternative, Diasporic co-poiesis and enduring responsible improvisation.

Beyond Peace Education: toward co-poiesis and enduring improvisation

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Beyond Peace Education: toward co-poiesis and enduring improvisation
Author: ILAN GUR-ZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 315-339
ABSTRACT Is it possible that the essence of peace is negated in peace education? And is it possible that even against its own will peace education calls for the negation of its negation? In peace education no serious attempts have been made to elaborate its most central concepts. 'Pacifism', 'violence', 'counter-violence' and 'emancipation', 'culture of peace', among others, have still not been probed. Peace education, actually, is a serious threat to human edification. Peace for the eternal Jew, for the enduring improviser, is a condition of the one who found his way: an endless path of a nomad that has Love but no other 'home', dogma or quest for 'home-returning' into thingness, the continuum or the Same. He will never find and never search for 'peace' as an end of Diasporic existence and terminality of the suffering of the nomad. He will be at peace with his mission of avoiding history within history, of overcoming the temptation to be part of the collective 'I'/consensus/pleasure machine/truth, and often he will be tired, ridiculed, punished or executed. But he will be also rewarded, each moment anew, for being at peace with his refusal of 'peace': he will be a freer and a richer improviser that his co-poiesis with the world, the Other, and he himself gives birth to Love. As such, the eternal improviser is mature enough to meet the alterity of other free nomads and Diasporic humans, as well as the gifts of other free-minded spirits. They too, as Nietzsche tell us, feel at home on the mountain, in the forest, and within their loneliness. But for the eternal improviser there is more and there is less than the rewards of the eternal Nietzschean nomad. This is so since the Nietzschean nomad is rewarded with presents and finally finds harmony in himself and the right path to the freedom of reason. The eternal improviser, however, is a more consistent Nietzschean than the Nietzschean nomad and is never appeased, domesticated or rewarded by any 'home'. Homelessness, eternal Diaspora and improvisation worthy of the name cannot offer any 'reward' or rest in the (right) paved way, be it 'external' or 'internal', transcendent or immanent. Here counter-education reintroduces peace as a realization of Love and worthy togetherness with the cosmos, with the Other, with worthy suffering and with one's self.

Diasporic Philosophy, Counter-Education and Improvisation

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Diasporic Philosophy, Counter-Education and Improvisation
Author: ILAN GUR-ZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 340-345
ABSTRACT Counter-education that addresses seriously the challenge of loss, exile, and the deceiving 'home-returning' projects accepts that no positive Utopia awaits us as 'truth', 'genuine life', 'worthy struggle', 'pleasure' or worthy self-annihilation. Loss is not to be recovered or compensated; not for the individual nor for any kind of 'we'. And yet, Love of Life is the home of the Diasporic in the Socratic sense of Eros as an attracting absence of the beautiful. Counter-education should invite the Diasporic to the hospitality of Love of Life. Such hospitality calls for overcoming conventional morality and the other imperatives of the ethnocentric 'we', its self-evidence, its normality, the counter-violence of the oppressed and its normalized patriotic citizenship. The determination for Diasporic life and the possibilities opened by Diasporic counter-education is always ironic. It is never at home. The heart of improvisation is this movement within co-poiesis as a togetherness offered by Love of Life. It gives birth to the totally new. To the wholly unexpected that the Diasporic human faces its hospitality as alterity and togetherness symbolized by the Orcha; a form of non-instrumental nomadic playfulness that manifests erotic responsibility to Life at its best. Improvisation manifests the dialectics of response-ability and respond-ability. It is not 'constructive' nor is it merely 'negative'. It is far from a manifestation of 'resistance' to oppression or suffering and loss. In the context of Diasporic counter-education it plays a special role as part of Love of Life and co-poiesis that challenges the matrix of whose manifestations traditional critical pedagogy is part and parcel.

Judaism, Post-colonialism and Diasporic Education in the Era of Globalization

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Judaism, Post-colonialism and Diasporic Education in the Era of Globalization
Author: DANIEL BOYARIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 346-357
ABSTRACT Diaspora is a cultural situation in which a group of people have a dual cultural alliance, dual cultural allegiance - to a cultural or cultures in the place where they are and to a culture or cultures in another place to which they are related by etiological memory, other strategies to read the past like shared values, shared religion, and so on. So Diaspora is a very precise term to describe a particular kind of culture in synchronic time. It does not necessarily have to be based on a particular history. The sense of dual cultural allegiance and dual cultural alliance - before a person, yes, there was a language and history and praxis in the place where he or she is and also an alliance with others somewhere else. That particular dual cultural situation is what can be understood as Diaspora. It produces double consciousness, it is the first of the fruits: the ability to be critical. Critical not necessarily in a formal manner like the Frankfurt School but some sense of distance or some sense of reflection that comes between a human and his or her identity.

Diaspora, Philosophy and Counter-Education in the face of Post-colonial Reality

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Diaspora, Philosophy and Counter-Education in the face of Post-colonial Reality
Author: CORNEL WEST
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 358-380
ABSTRACT Human life begins in the middle, in the midst, and sometimes in the darkness. Or even in the woods. In the woods - you're in the middle and if you are always in the middle there is no home, or refuge or cave - a sure space that you have access to. It means then that the best we can do is to somehow try to strengthen our armor on the Socratic level - which is we must have courage to engage in critical reflection on being in the middle, knowing that there is always a remainder for Adorno the stuff that theories can't catch. It is the blind spots, the wasted material. Blind spots and wasted material that the dialectics cannot catch, which is the saying that there is a humility in being in the middle and to think you gain access to pure spaces of intellectual arrogance, which is blinding all the time and misleading. So, if you have a humility, which is not so much to come to skepticism, it is simply to say you would resist, you would transgress, you would continually try to transcend, you will fail, you will fall on your face, you would be inadequate, you won't have the conceptual clarity and transparency associated with pure spaces - you are a bluesman. There is no way out.

The Possibility of a New Critical Language from the Sources of Jewish Negative Theology

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: The Possibility of a New Critical Language from the Sources of Jewish Negative Theology
Author: JONATHAN BOYARIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 381-397
ABSTRACT A new critical language is possible yet its becoming is not guaranteed. Its roots and sources should be diverse, universal and Diasporic. Jewish negative theology is ultimately Diasporic and could become one of its edifying sources. Diaspora is not only an intellectual state, not necessarily collective but communal. One of the things that makes the notion most vital is the possibility and the cultural technology of generational continuity in the absence of a majority. It is true that there is always a danger of sentimentalism. A great deal of post-Enlightenment terror, both in the sense of individual terror, and eventually organized violence, has to do with the inability of an isolated organism that is aware of its own mortality to achieve some kind of equanimity with the fact of its own mortality. One of the key driving forces of the symbolic aspects of almost all human cultures until now has been to strengthen a real, not just a sentimental force, in structuring identificatory practices such that the organism does not, in the first instance, understand existence as starting with its birth and ending with its death, but almost in the first instance understands existence as being a continuity and a cycle, inflected by its own mortality. This mortality and the endurance of Life in face of the prospects of worthy life is the gate for a new understanding of transcendence, critique and emancipation. Today the most vital power of enriching the critical language is the new anti-Semitism. The prospects of an alternative revitalization of the critical language and the possibility of a language that challenges the exile of holiness and transcends critique is here addressed in light of the Jewish tradition.

Education in the World of Diasporas

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Education in the World of Diasporas
Author: ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 398-408
ABSTRACT Today's culture consists of offerings, not norms. Liquid-modern culture, unlike the culture of the nation-building era, has no 'people' to 'cultivate'. The solid-modern policy of dealing with difference, the policy of assimilation to the dominant culture and stripping the strangers of their strangehood, is no longer feasible. For the young, the main attraction of the virtual world derives from the absence of contradictions and cross-purposes that haunt the off-line life. Unlike its off-line alternative, the online world renders the infinite multiplication of contacts conceivable - both plausible and feasible. It does it through the weakening of bonds - in a stark opposition to its off-line counterpart, known to find its bearings in the continuous effort to strengthen the bonds by severely limiting the number of contacts while deepening each one of them. It is the quantity of connections rather than their quality that makes the difference between chances of success or failure. A crisis, however, may linger just after the next corner. So it is too early to decide how the ingrained world-views and attitudes of the present-day young will eventually fit the world to come.

Nomadism: against methodological nationalism

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Nomadism: against methodological nationalism
Author: ROSI BRAIDOTTI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 408-418
ABSTRACT This article is inspired by Gilles Deleuze's philosophical nomadology and stresses the idea of subjectivity. It stresses the non-unitary, complex and inter-relational structure of the process of subject-formation and explores some of the implications of this structure for ethical relations, politics and for pedagogical practice. As for ethical relations, the emphasis falls on the ethics of affirmation and the extent to which they inform the practice of nomadic, transversal subjectivities. Great value is given to anti-nationalism, anti-racism and resistance to fixed and essentialized cultural or national identities. The article then explores the methodological implications of nomadic subjectivity: the rejection of the classical equation between rational consciousness and universal values; extensive trans-disciplinarity and the practice of non-linearity. The main argument is that, by defending an open-ended and relational vision of the subject, philosophical nomadic thought contributes to cosmopolitan community building against narrow nationalistic practices and it sustains multiple ecologies of belonging.

The Coexistence of Cultures

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: The Coexistence of Cultures
Author: TZVETAN TODOROV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 419-426
ABSTRACT Traditional links are being erased. When one lacks positive elements in order to build one's collective identity the temptation is strong to hook on to negative elements - I am not like these immigrants who are physically different from me, who speak another language, and who have strange customs. My identity lies in rejecting them. Thus, the apocalyptic vision of a homogeneous humanity is faced with a no-less-threatening vision - that of a planet inhabited by tribes at war with each other. While the benefits of the legalization of groups, in accordance with the communal or with the multicultural model, are problematic, its perverse effects are easy to foresee. Nationalism, or other forms of particularism, can serve towards fulfilling some generous goals, on a punctual scale, but it is dangerous in its principle. Universalism can be punctually misled and used to fulfill unacceptable goals; however, its principle remains liberating. It is for this reason that it has also been able to serve in order to eliminate its own perversions, such as in the ancient colonies' struggle for independence or in women's fight for equal rights. The author's conclusion is that, on a political level, the preference granted to collective belonging over individual freedom is poorly justified.

Vignettes of Ambiguity

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Vignettes of Ambiguity
Author: IGNACIO L. GÖTZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 427-339
ABSTRACT This article is an exploration of ambiguity as it appears in various guises in philosophical, social, political, and educational situations. Among these situations is the experience of exile. The exploration is conducted by means of literary anecdotes and real-life instances, hence the use of vignettes. The suggestion is made that ambiguity can be conquered only in the concrete, through a life stamped by justice and solidarity with other fellow human beings.

Language, Identity, and Exile

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Language, Identity, and Exile
Author: DAPHNA ERDINAST-VULCAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 440-445
ABSTRACT The exilic mode of being, a living on boundary-lines, produces a constant relativization of one's home, one's culture, one's language, and one's self, through the acknowledgement of otherness. It is a homesickness without nostalgia, without the desire to return to the same, to be identical to oneself. The encounter with the other which produces a 'transvaluation' of one's own culture is also the ultimately ethical experience of reading oneself in quotation marks. Yeshurun's work - fragmented, broken - is exilic in its bifurcation, or multifurcation of consciousness, the superimposition of the language of 'there' over the language of 'here'. His descriptions of Tel-Aviv, the white, modern, energetic emblem of the thrust to 'make it new' are oddly and imperfectly plastered over by images of dilapidated buildings, uprooted trees and rusty, dripping faucets. It is as though the poverty of a diasporic, displaced existence has crept in and coloured over the façade of the new which, torn from within, is already showing its fault-lines and cracks. Avot Yeshurun's longing for home does not yield to the consolations of kitsch or the retrospective colourings of an idealized 'before', and the anguish of guilt is its motor force. Yeshurun's hybrid poetry with its bricolage of linguistic fragments and shards finds its materials in the debris of a dead culture. Enacting the return of the culturally repressed, the ghostly return of the sacrificed mame-loshn with all the pain, the love, and perhaps the inevitability of the repression, it does not seek to go back, to offer a remedy, or mend the rift (more bottomless than the eponymous Syrian-African geological one) with the exilic home-language. Rather more modest and infinitely more difficult, it is the labour of mourning that it undertakes.

Wittgenstein as Exile: a philosophical topography

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Wittgenstein as Exile: a philosophical topography
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 446-456
ABSTRACT Exilic thought is a kind of uprooted thought developed away from 'home' under conditions of displacement and uncertainty, often in a different mother tongue, language tradition and culture. Exilic thought is sometimes the self-imposed discipline of the 'stranger' who develops his or her identity as an 'alien' or immigrant against the conventions of a host culture and from the perspective of an outsider. The motif OF? the exile-stranger in a foreign land finding his or her way about for the first time is fable-ized in ancient accounts of 'first contacts' and early cultural exchanges. 'Exile' often marks a complex ambivalence to one's own home culture and, therefore, also to questions of one's own national, cultural and personal identity. Exile is one of the central and most powerful motifs of the intellectual in the twentieth century: it describes a profound existential condition of cultural estrangement, and sometimes alienation, that defines identity in terms of migration, movement, departure, homelessness. It prefigures a notion of thought that is 'nomadic', formed in a different context, and laced with observations that at once make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Exile was a condition that Wittgenstein thought necessary to a form of life as philosopher. This idea took on a particular hue when Wittgenstein 'returned' to philosophy (at least in a formal sense) to focus upon cultural questions. It is as though Wittgenstein's focus on cultural questions - on questions that stand at the heart of human culture - rather than questions of strict logic, required a simulation of the anthropologist's 'observer-participant' attitude and sense of detachment in order to analyze 'language-games' and develop 'perspicuous representations'.

Diaspora as Catastrophe, Diaspora as a Mission and the Post-colonial Philosophy of Edward Said

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Diaspora as Catastrophe, Diaspora as a Mission and the Post-colonial Philosophy of Edward Said
Author: ILAN PAPPE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 457-466
ABSTRACT Edward Said the refugee could not easily allow himself to join in the celebration of demythologizing nationalism. His Palestinianism had to coexist, uncomfortably, with his universalism. Time made this necessary coexistence an asset, not a liability, and this in fact was his political legacy for the future: Jews and Palestinians would have to reconcile to a similar existence as does the national intellectual in exile. Like Said himself, future society in Palestine would have to live on the border between two and more cultures (including national ones), a society that would represent alternative narratives to reality - instead of or next to the master national narratives - as part of a process of restitution. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari defined these as 'deterrritorialized' societies built on the collapse of master narratives. Said would probably have lived more comfortably with a less postmodernist approach to deterritorialization, such as the one offered by Henry Giroux in his pedagogic attempt to reconcile modernist and postmodernist critique as part of what he termed the pedagogy of 'Border Crossing': one could chart in post-conflictual Palestine a society in which identity is fragile, dynamic and moves easily between origins, spheres and languages.

Homelessness, Restlessness and Diasporic Poetry

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Homelessness, Restlessness and Diasporic Poetry
Author: ARIE KIZEL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 467-477
ABSTRACT Can poetry be Diasporic? Can poetry free itself from the shackles of conformism? Can it be independent and divergent, and not seek a home? Is it capable of mustering its inner strengths and living without being enlisted by a collective that accords it power? This article argues that poetry is essentially dialectic. It has little vitality without the presence of the Other, without interaction with him. However, it also contains independent, personal elements and reaches its peak through the individual's anti-conformist activity and expression. Poetry, like language, enables us to view ourselves from outside, thereby fulfilling an important role, similar to language itself, and it is created by the individual's alienation even from himself. Poetry may provide one of the most creative potential tools of Diasporic philosophy, love and creativity being its cornerstones, but it can also be a destructive factor seeking to imprison the creative soul within a home with the solid walls of a rigid community.

Ecology and Pedagogy: on the educational implications of postwar environmental philosophy

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:41:10 GMT

Title: Ecology and Pedagogy: on the educational implications of postwar environmental philosophy
Author: YOTAM HOTAM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Pages: 478-487
ABSTRACT Environmentalism, an ethical imperative to preserve and protect nature, has become in the last decade a central ethical, political and pedagogic theme. Against this background, this article focuses on the postwar philosophy of the German-Jewish scholar Hans Jonas (1903-93). It points to Jonas's radical theory of pedagogic responsibility, and to the manner in which this theory advocated conciliation between ecocentric and anthropocentric ecological approaches. The article further shows how this theory was informed by Jonas's theological reflections on a God who is concurrently transcendent and immanent - a God who is both 'exiled' from the world and 'at home' within the world. Jonas's specific approach demonstrates the manner in which theology informs eco-pedagogy; ecological education is thus demonstrated as secular-theological phenomena.

Introduction. Challenges and Possibilities for Today's University

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Introduction. Challenges and Possibilities for Today's University
Author: Garett Gietzen
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 148-1150
ABSTRACT Not available

Re-imagining the University in the Global Era

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Re-imagining the University in the Global Era
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 151-165
ABSTRACT This article charts the crisis of the modern university using Bill Readings' (1996) The University in Ruins. Readings distinguishes three principal ideas underpinning the concept of the modern university: the Kantian idea of reason, the Humboldtian idea of culture, and the technological idea of excellence. The article reviews these three motivating ideas to focus on the last one under the description of the 'post-historical university'. It investigates this idea giving two examples based on the United Kingdom's Dearing report, The Global Service University, and Australia's West report, The Hollowed-Out University. On the basis of this examination, the article re-imagines the idea of the university in the postmodern condition when metanarratives have lost their narrative unifying power by employing the concept of openness as developed by Wittgenstein.

Jean-François Lyotard and the Question of Disciplinary Legitimacy

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Jean-François Lyotard and the Question of Disciplinary Legitimacy
Author: GARETT GIETZEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 166-176
ABSTRACT The modern university developed as an institution legitimated by external referents, including national culture and its emancipatory potential. Today's university, however, has been largely destabilized as these referents have become, at the very least, significantly less compelling relative to larger concerns about economic competitiveness and, more extremely, met with incredulity within the context of postmodernity. This article examines the current state of the university through a consideration of Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, particularly Lyotard's ideas of performativity and language games. This analysis demonstrates the tenuous position of those disciplines that have not been reconciled to the logic of performativity. Using the example of the humanities, it is argued that endangered disciplines must become re-referentialized in order to survive.

From the Positivist to the Hermeneutic University: restoring the place of meaning and liberal learning in higher education

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: From the Positivist to the Hermeneutic University: restoring the place of meaning and liberal learning in higher education
Author: STEPHANIE MACKLER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 177-190
ABSTRACT This article argues that the university must shift from a positivist model, which emphasizes knowledge production and job training, to a hermeneutic one, which emphasizes understanding and meaning. Such a shift would be a response to two interrelated problems. First, the university suffers from an identity crisis in that it no longer holds a monopoly on the production and dissemination of knowledge. Second, Western culture at large suffers from a crisis of meaning both in a visceral sense and in the use of language to express meaning. Both of these crises are related to the increasing access to information and globalization. This article endeavors primarily to understand and assess these interrelated crises, but it also concludes with preliminary suggestions for how to begin to think about reformulating higher learning in hermeneutic terms.

The Cosmopolitan University: the medium toward global citizenship and justice

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: The Cosmopolitan University: the medium toward global citizenship and justice
Author: CASEY E. GEORGE-JACKSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 191-200
ABSTRACT This article promotes the idea of universities adopting cosmopolitanism as a way to manage the changing demands on the system of higher education in the USA, namely to improve the inclusion of international students, minority students and other historically underrepresented groups, often referred to as the 'Other', which will in turn improve the quality of their experience in college. The population of college students served by these institutions, both on American soil and abroad, has undergone serious transformations in recent decades as a result of internationalization, globalization and increased access to a more diverse group of students. Universities should seek to be respectful and inclusive of these cultures via cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitan universities can and should become a medium from which to promote global citizenship and global justice. This article also addresses the challenges and limitations associated with a cosmopolitan university.

Internationalization and the Cosmopolitical University

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Internationalization and the Cosmopolitical University
Author: RODRIGO BRITEZ; MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 201-216
ABSTRACT This article discusses some of the issues that surround the internationalization of higher education as a way to open discussion about the construction of an alternative cosmopolitical vision of the university, necessary if the university is to fulfill any historic tasks concerning the creation of globally aware citizens. The authors indicate that economic and technological globalization has resulted not only in the growth of international education, but also in the increasing significance of transnational spaces. In this environment, the internationalization of higher education refers to strategies to attract students and also to specific patterns of movement. The authors maintain that the neo-liberal metanarrative informing strategies of internationalization not only ignores the complexity of those patterns of interaction, connectedness and movement, but also implies modes of insertion of higher education into transnational spaces, as receptors or senders of certain flows. The way in which students' movements are managed by university institutions and systems leads the authors to reflect about the cosmopolitical project of the university implicit in those strategies. The article presents different concepts of cosmopolitanism linked to projects of political integration in transnational spaces influencing university institutions and brings forward the argument that cosmopolitical neo-liberalism looks at the cultivation of students as consumers, ignoring the potential social and cultural disjunctures in current globalization projects. Moreover, it maintains that this neo-liberal project essentially ignores the potential contributions of university institutions to the creation of public transnational spaces. Finally, against this, the article presents a vision of a cosmopolitical project of the university as an alternative to the one implicit in neo-liberal internationalization strategies.

Cultural Democracy: universities in the creative economy

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Cultural Democracy: universities in the creative economy
Author: DANIEL ARAYA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 217-231
ABSTRACT The influence of globalization on institutions of higher education is one of the leading topics in educational policy today. As the nexus of innovation increasingly moves from labor-intensive ‘smokestack industries’ to ‘mind work’, education is becoming critical to policy discussions on economic growth. Tracing current discourse on the ‘corporatization’ of higher education, this article suggests that the challenge for reconceptualizing the university today is linked to changes in the global economy. Alongside discourse on a global knowledge economy, many scholars now point to the increasing importance of creativity and a creative economy. Examining higher education from the perspective of a creative economy, the author explores the need to better understand the linkages between democracy and innovation.

BOOK EXCERPT. Challenging the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex after 9/11. Introduction to University in Chains: confronting the military-industrial-academic complex (Paradigm Publishers, 2007)

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: BOOK EXCERPT. Challenging the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex after 9/11. Introduction to University in Chains: confronting the military-industrial-academic complex (Paradigm Publishers, 2007)
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 232-237
ABSTRACT Not available

The Evolution of the Modern University: from scholarship to disenchanted economic handmaiden

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: The Evolution of the Modern University: from scholarship to disenchanted economic handmaiden
Author: Eugenie A. Samier
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 238-247
ABSTRACT Not available

Economics Trumps Politics; Market Trumps Democracy: the US Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: Economics Trumps Politics; Market Trumps Democracy: the US Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 248-253
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEWS

Thu, 6 May 2010 13:20:53 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Pages: 254-257
ABSTRACT Not available

Zombie Politics and Other Late Modern Monstrosities in the Age of Disposability

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Zombie Politics and Other Late Modern Monstrosities in the Age of Disposability
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-7
ABSTRACT At present Americans are fascinated by a particular kind of monstrosity, by vampires and zombies condemned to live an eternity by feeding off the souls of the living. The preoccupation with such parasitic relations speaks uncannily to the threat most Americans perceive from the shameless blood lust of contemporary captains of industry, which Matt Taibbi, a writer for Rolling Stone, has aptly described as 'a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money'. Media culture, as the enormous popularity of the Twilight television franchise and HBO's True Blood reveals, is nonetheless enchanted by this seductive force of such omnipotent beings. More frightening, however, than the danger posed by these creatures is the coming revolution enacted by the hordes of the unthinking, caught in the spell of voodoo economics and compelled to acts of obscene violence and mayhem. They are the living dead, whose contagion threatens the very life force of the nation.

Did Educational Expansion Trigger the Development of an Education Society? Chances and Risks of a New Model of Society

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Did Educational Expansion Trigger the Development of an Education Society? Chances and Risks of a New Model of Society
Author: SIGRID HAUNBERGER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 8-21
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the question of whether educational expansion leads to a new type of society, the education society. Taking into consideration the combined elements of three models of society (the post-industrial society, the knowledge society and the information society) - the chances and risks of an educational society will be elicited and, subsequently, confronted with an empirical validation. It turned out that modern societies are not education societies. Only a society which reflects upon the difficulty of the unfair distribution of opportunities through the differential access to knowledge and institutional obstacles of the educational system can become an actual education society.

Exposing Environmental Health Deception as a Government Whistleblower: turning critical ethnography into public pedagogy

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Exposing Environmental Health Deception as a Government Whistleblower: turning critical ethnography into public pedagogy
Author: BRIAN McKENNA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 22-36
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the author's applied anthropological work with the Ingham County Health Department between 1998 and 2001. Government administrators were reflexively aware that nobody had ever stepped back to assess the area's overall environmental health and rank the issues according to some criteria, such as by the 'most urgent problems', and then help resolve them. They requested a holistic analysis. The author, an anthropologist, was hired to investigate virtually all of the environmental health problems in the region. This initiative, as originally conceived, was envisioned as a challenge to traditional ways of doing business at the Environmental Health Bureau of the Health Department. The Health Department leadership explicitly sought to create a model that turned the 'public's health into the 'People's Health'. Paradoxically, after several disturbing findings became apparent, Health Department officials began to work diligently to prevent the impending publication of the first report, 'The Story of Water Resources at Work' in August 2000. The article describes how the author used the methodology of critical ethnography to chronicle the processes of hegemony in the work environment, and how he acted as a critical public pedagogue by employing extant cultural forms to communicate these corruptions to citizens at large. In so doing it charts the surprising contingencies that resulted from his resistance.

Managing Reward in Developing Economies: the challenge for multinational corporations

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Managing Reward in Developing Economies: the challenge for multinational corporations
Author: JOHN OPUTE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 37-47
ABSTRACT Reward has been, and continues to be, subject to significant changes in developing economies; the industrial relations model prevalent being driven by the complex socio-economic and cultural paradigms and the increasing demands of globalisation. The issue of reward in developing economies is therefore central and dependent on numerous contextual factors. The research presented in this article focuses on emerging trends in reward management practices in a developing economy, like Nigeria. Nigeria, with a population of about 140 million people and the economic opportunities derivable from its oil wealth, provides substantial opportunities for industrialisation. Consequently, the country continues to attract investment by multinational corporations. However, because of its evolving industrial relations setting, reward management is complex. This can be seen in the context of the interlocking roles of national institutions, culture, socio-economic factors and employee engagement in developing an appropriate framework. The framework of the research is based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected from 11 companies, through interviews and questionnaires. The conclusion points at the significant role industrial relations must assume. In particular, it highlights how essential contextual factors and employee engagement are in generating a supportive framework for the challenges facing multinationals in reward management.

Assessing the Debt: George W. Bush's legacy and the future of public education under Barack Obama

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Assessing the Debt: George W. Bush's legacy and the future of public education under Barack Obama
Author: ALEX MEANS; KENDALL TAYLOR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 48-60
ABSTRACT This article utilizes Gloria Ladson-Billings' notion of educational debt in order to explore the historical, economic, and cultural politics of education reform under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It tracks the No Child Left Behind Act across a number of fields in order to claim that Bush's expansion of the educational debt should be understood as both an exacerbation of systemic inequality as well as the erosion of the democratic purposes of public education. In conclusion, the article forecasts ahead to the future of the educational debt under the Obama administration by looking at the policies implemented in Chicago under former Chicago Public Schools chief executive, and now current secretary of education, Arne Duncan. The authors contend that the sociopolitical infrastructure of Bush's No Child Left Behind presents a fundamental challenge to progressive educational reform under an Obama administration.

After Pell Grants: the neoliberal assault on prisoners

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: After Pell Grants: the neoliberal assault on prisoners
Author: MARK T. YATES; RICHARD D. LAKES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 61-70
ABSTRACT The number of prisoners in the United States has accelerated over the past thirty years, giving it the highest incarceration rate in the world. The rise in the prison rate has coincided with the ascendancy of neoliberal policies of governance. These include, deregulation of markets, reduction of welfare services, and harsh punitive measures for those who transgress social mores. Contained within neoliberal criminal policy is the proclivity to utilize prisons as a means to maintain societal inequities. This article examines the link between prisoner education policy and wider social and economic policies that disproportionately affect people of color and the poor. Neoliberal prisoner education is predicated, in part, upon the privileging of vocational training over liberal, higher learning. Current policy, typified by the recently passed Second Chance Act, reinforces hierarchies both in education and in the workplace by narrowly defining prisoners as human capital within the market.

Storied Understandings: bringing Aboriginal voices to Canada's multicultural discourse

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Storied Understandings: bringing Aboriginal voices to Canada's multicultural discourse
Author: KHALIDA TANVIR SYED
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 71-81
ABSTRACT This article discusses the implications and complexities of Canada's multicultural policies for aboriginal students in its post-secondary education systems. The author, a Pakistani-Canadian multicultural educator, interviewed an Aboriginal-Canadian multicultural educator, to discuss the cultural differences, divisions, and resistances between immigrant and aboriginal perspectives on multiculturalism. What emerged was an examination of belonging, of cultural identity, and of learning and sharing through stories, which is presented here in narrative form. Rather than offering solutions of suggestions for change, this attempts to offer a bridge of understanding - so that Canada's immigrant and aboriginal cultural minorities can learn together, how to support each other's voices in the multicultural discourse that informs political and educational policies.

Learning to Plunder: global education, global inequality and the global city

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Learning to Plunder: global education, global inequality and the global city
Author: STUART TANNOCK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 82-98
ABSTRACT Most research and policy discussions of education in the global city have focused on the ways in which globalization and the emergence of global or globalizing cities can create social, economic and educational inequality locally, within the global city itself. Global cities, however, are, by definition, powerful places, where the core institutions, structures and processes of the global economy are constituted and controlled; as such, they are places where decisions and actions taken locally can have significant and often destructive effects all over the globe. This article presents a case study of a series of partnerships between public institutions of education and the global corporate mining sector in Toronto, Canada to serve as both example and metaphor of how global city education often helps to create, exacerbate and legitimate inequalities and injustices, not just locally, but regionally, nationally and globally, between the city and the rest of the world.

'Literacies' in the Arts: a new order of presence

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: 'Literacies' in the Arts: a new order of presence
Author: JANET MANSFIELD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 99-110
ABSTRACT Through a somewhat interruptive analysis, this article argues that the arts 'literacies' policy strategy which has become a feature of curriculum policy in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework since the year 2000, presents and promotes a new hegemonic strategy of normalization and reduction. Policy language is an ideologically loaded language, and in a sense, the article attempts, through critical philosophical post-structuralist discourse, what could be considered as a decolonization of the ideologically loaded language of curriculum policy for the arts in education. Paradoxes, contradictions and power politics abound within policy, which can often lean upon assumptions, apparently 'natural' and rational thinking. By resisting these paradoxes we may extract the rhetorics and codes of such modes of representation to reveal inadequacies. In the case of the arts, this article challenges the application of 'literacies' to the arts as an economically expedient strategic act that promotes diminishing arts as normative practice.

Trends in Governance and Decision-Making: a democratic analysis with attention to application in education

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Trends in Governance and Decision-Making: a democratic analysis with attention to application in education
Author: D. BRENT EDWARDS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 111-125
ABSTRACT Recent decades have witnessed the rise in popularity of a handful of related yet distinct approaches to governance and decision-making in many different contexts that either relocate the level and location at which decisions are made or how they are made, or both. True for developing as well as developed countries, and for both the public and private spheres, this article explicates four of these trends (decentralization, democratic decentralization, deliberative democracy, and empowered participatory governance) in terms of their theory and definition, goals, and implementation - with particular attention to their application in education. Furthermore, the article invokes a framework for analysis that permits an assessment of the extent to which each approach to decision-making facilitates participation along four dimensions: breadth, depth, range, and control. Lastly, this article discusses weaknesses in theory and practice across all four decision-making variations and proposes areas for further research. The results of this inquiry are relevant for theorists and practitioners given the fact that many policies and reforms - often incorrectly - are lumped under the term decentralization.

Digitized Youth: constructing identities in the creative knowledge economy

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Digitized Youth: constructing identities in the creative knowledge economy
Author: TINA A.C. BESLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 126-141
ABSTRACT The article elaborates on the notion of building knowledge cultures and the creative knowledge economy, referring largely to work jointly written with Michael A. Peters. It then discusses some of the recent research findings about US youths' engagement and identities in the digital world that have become available since 2007. It examines the creativity of youths and the constructive means they use to develop new identities and subjectivities that resist the worst excesses of the market while engaging and negotiating the emergent social media and developing their own hybridized sense of style in music and culture. Finally, the article looks at youth and creativity-the implications for the creative knowledge economy with this new generation of digital natives and how education might finally take an active role rather than banning children's participation.

Torturing Children: Bush's legacy and democracy's failure

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 12:12:52 GMT

Title: Torturing Children: Bush's legacy and democracy's failure
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 142-147
ABSTRACT Nowhere is there a more disturbing, if not horrifying, example of the relationship between a culture of cruelty and the politics of irresponsibility than in the resounding silence that surrounds the torture of children under the presidency of George W. Bush - and the equal moral and political failure of the Obama administration to address and rectify the conditions that made it possible.

Introduction

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Aharon Aviram; Igal Dotan
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 581-586
ABSTRACT Not available

Information Technology and Educational Amnesia

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Information Technology and Educational Amnesia
Author: LANGDON WINNER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 587-591
ABSTRACT Waves of enthusiasm for technological innovations that promise to revitalize teaching and learning are at least a century old. Unfortunately, the record of accomplishment for the many varieties of hardware and software introduced into schools over the decades is remarkably thin. Today's promoters of technology in education tend to forget similar efforts in the past, launching forth with initiatives that use the latest hardware and software, as if such projects were unprecedented. While initiatives like the iClass network in Europe show considerable promise, their development would benefit from recalling the history of earlier attempts to develop and market sophisticated technical instruments for the schools. Reflection up basic philosophical questions about teaching and learning can help us decide which technical devices are of genuine value and which are not.

The Need for Strategic Thinking on ICT and Education

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: The Need for Strategic Thinking on ICT and Education
Author: AHARON AVIRAM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 592-600
ABSTRACT Despite the absence of sufficiently systematic and comprehensive studies concluding that information and communications technology (ICT) can significantly improve learning, the assumption that it can has been mostly taken for granted throughout the history of the computerization of education. This article briefly presents three moments in this short history of uncritical adoption of ICT into the educational system. It then outlines a fourth desired moment which is about mindfully controlling technology in the service of educational change and strategically harnessing it to the enhancement of desired educational and social humanistic goals. The guiding questions facilitating such strategic thinking are outlined in a three-step process: formation of 'framework knowledge'; summary of past experiences; and policy formation.

E-learning: is technology the lighthouse?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: E-learning: is technology the lighthouse?
Author: YAIR AMICHAI-HAMBURGER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 601-606
ABSTRACT E-learning is becoming increasingly prevalent in educational institutions throughout the world. There is a growing awareness of the need to assess the impact of this new type of learning on the educational system and on the students who participate in these programs. In May 2008, following 4 years of research, iClass held a conference to discuss their conclusions and work on future directions. In the opening panel, several leading scholars analyzed the negative impact computers and the Internet may have on learners. In his role as a commentator on this panel, the author raised a wider challenge - that of the relationship between technology and society. In the article below, he describes his ideas.

Shifting Focus: from books to laptops to face-to-face discussion

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Shifting Focus: from books to laptops to face-to-face discussion
Author: MICHAEL HEIM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 607-615
ABSTRACT Contemporary innovations in education tend to be information based or computer driven. A complete curriculum, however, needs flexibility in order to foster skills for shifting from one context to another. Face-to-face skills play an important role in the governance of democratic societies, and 'having a good understanding' of something involves the ability to communicate what is known. The dominant cognitive model of information (information and communications technology) should not weaken the human skills that belong to a full education. Computers need to be seen in a broad educational context. The iClass project and the No-Laptop policy described in this article show two different but related ways of acknowledging the limitations of the modern information paradigm. These two postmodern approaches share a critical distance from computers so as to customize information for specific learning situations. While engaging with computers, educators should weigh specific practices and ask how, and under what circumstances, computers actually contribute to a learning situation.

Personalization, Personalized Learning and the Reform of Social Policy: the prospect of molecular governance in the digitized society

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Personalization, Personalized Learning and the Reform of Social Policy: the prospect of molecular governance in the digitized society
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 615-627
ABSTRACT This article argues that personalized learning has emerged in the last decade as a special instance of a more generalized response to the problem of the reorganization of the State in response to globalization and the end of the effectiveness of the industrial mass production model in the delivery of public services. The article examines personalization as one of a number of strategies for overcoming the bureaucratic State and then provides a discussion of 'mass customization' as the discourse from which personalization emerged. Finally, there is an analysis of the policy discourse of personalization in the United Kingdom, including a focus on personalizing learning as the model of future public sector reform.

Habermasian Reflections on the Question of Educational Technology

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Habermasian Reflections on the Question of Educational Technology
Author: ARIEL SARID
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 628-635
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to provide a Habermasian-inspired approach to the application of educational technologies. Such an approach is advocated here in order to counter voices that are critical of the idea of applying technology in the classroom, as well as current (instrumentalist) views that uncritically and unreflectively embrace technology. The author claims, based on Habermas's analytic division between lifeworld and system, that the circular process between social values and technological development must be maintained if the malaises of instrumentalism can be confronted. The author also shows that applying educational technologies towards the development of autonomous communicative competences reinstates this circular process and supports the development of a vibrant democratic culture.

Adaptivity and Autonomy Development in a Learning Personalization Process

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Adaptivity and Autonomy Development in a Learning Personalization Process
Author: D. VERPOORTEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 636-644
ABSTRACT Within the iClass (Integrated Project 507922) and Enhanced Learning Experience and Knowledge Transfer (ELEKTRA; Specific Targeted Research or Innovation Project 027986) European projects, the author was requested to harness his pedagogical knowledge to the production of educational adaptive systems. The article identifies and documents the pitfalls of such interdisciplinary joint work. It suggests that the pedagogical added value of adaptive tools is more likely to be found in the support of human decision making regarding personalization strategies, autonomy development and metacognitive training than in the provision of highly technical automatic customization devices.

Supporting Self-Regulated Personalised Learning through Competence-Based Knowledge Space Theory

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Supporting Self-Regulated Personalised Learning through Competence-Based Knowledge Space Theory
Author: CHRISTINA M. STEINER; ALEXANDER NUSSBAUMER; DIETRICH ALBERT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 645-661
ABSTRACT This article presents two current research trends in e-learning that at first sight appear to compete. Competence-Based Knowledge Space Theory (CBKST) provides a knowledge representation framework which, since its invention by Doignon & Falmagne, has been successfully applied in various e-learning systems (for example, Adaptive Learning with Knowledge Spaces [ALEKS] and Enhanced Learning Experience and Knowledge Transfer [ELEKTRA]), providing automated personalisation to learners' current knowledge and competence levels. Principles of self-regulated learning (SRL), pioneered by, for example, Zimmerman, however, argue for increased learner control, thus resulting in giving learners greater responsibility over their e-learning. The research presented in this article shows that skill-based visualisations in the tradition of CBKST and SRL-based autonomy are in no way conflicting but rather complement each other towards an integrated approach of self-regulated personalised learning. The research has been carried out and technologically translated into a set of visual tools for supporting the whole learning cycle within the scope of the iClass project.

Enhancing Teachers' Motivation to Apply Humanist Information Technology Innovations

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Enhancing Teachers' Motivation to Apply Humanist Information Technology Innovations
Author: AVI ASSOR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 662-669
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the following issue: How can we build a training and support system that would enhance the motivation and capacity of teachers for high-quality implementation of information technology innovations guided by humanist ideas? That is, a system that would not only increase teachers' motivation to apply Humanist Information Technology Innovations (HITI), but would also enhance their capacity and will to apply the program in a way that is true to its spirit and does not neglect its more challenging and complex goals. First, the author presents basic obstacles that are likely to undermine the motivation of many teachers to learn and apply the HITI approach. Second, the author presents two principles of interventions addressing these obstacles. Third, the author presents the actual plan and structure of a training and support system that would enhance the motivation and capacity of teachers for high-quality implementation of the HITI. Fourth, the author presents evidence from an intervention utilizing the training and support system described above. The article ends with some thoughts on the type of relationship the author develops with teachers during his work with them. This part is mainly descriptive, but also has some normative implications.

Education, Identity and iClass: from education to psychosocial development

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Education, Identity and iClass: from education to psychosocial development
Author: JAMES E. MARCIA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 670-677
ABSTRACT At first consideration, the worlds of the classroom, the psychotherapy office and the experimental psychology laboratory may seem disparate settings with no obvious connection among them. In this article, the author would like to draw such a connection and to suggest the relevance of psychosocial developmental theory and research to self-regulated personalized learning in general and to iClass in particular. The foundation for this connection lies in Erik Erikson's theory of ego development. Psychosocial development will occur for all persons within a school setting, whether or not that setting takes such development into consideration or furnishes optimal conditions for it. It is better to consciously structure the school environment to provide optimal conditions than to ignore the inevitability of such development and, by default, provide a non-optimal or even inhibitory environment. The author first describes Erikson's theory, then discusses its relevance to the school setting, and moves on to a focus on identity development in late adolescence. In particular, the author emphasizes a kind of truncated identity formation known as 'foreclosure'. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of iClass to identity development in particular and psychosocial development in general.

Children of the Recession: learning from Manchild in the Promised Land

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Children of the Recession: learning from Manchild in the Promised Land
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 678-680
ABSTRACT Not available

Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the New Racism: getting beyond the politics of denial

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:10:01 GMT

Title: Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the New Racism: getting beyond the politics of denial
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Pages: 681-684
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. Higher Education Policies in Latin America: changes and continuities

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Introduction. Higher Education Policies in Latin America: changes and continuities
Author: Viviana O. Pitton; Rodrigo G. Britez
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 455-462
ABSTRACT Not available

Macrotendencias y Macrotensiones: las encrucijadas de la educación superior en América Latina

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Macrotendencias y Macrotensiones: las encrucijadas de la educación superior en América Latina
Author: CLAUDIO RAMA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 463-472
ABSTRACT This article is in Spanish. Higher education systems in Latin America are undergoing changes of great dimension. This is a transition between the old working models of higher education that characterized the systems for decades towards a new scenery of massive, differentiated, commercial, complex and global models. These are changes in the historical trends of higher education institutions in Latin America towards the development of new university paradigms in the framework of the knowledge society.This article is focused on the central nodes where those changes occur and on the tensions that those changes generate. The prefix 'de' is used in the article with the intention of opening up the academic debate on polemic concepts that contribute to the discussion on the future of higher education and public policy.

New Demands and Policies on Higher Education in the Mercosur: a comparative study on challenges, resources, and trends

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: New Demands and Policies on Higher Education in the Mercosur: a comparative study on challenges, resources, and trends
Author: ENRIQUE MARTINEZ LARRECHEA; ADRIANA CHIANCONE CASTRO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 473-485
ABSTRACT This article attempts to analyze the main tendencies of the higher education systems and policies within the Mercosur, a regional bloc composed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The article discusses some global trends and describes the process of educational integration in the Mercosur as well as the higher education systems of each of these countries. In the Mercosur, as in many other parts of the world, there has been a shift from elite to mass higher education systems. At the same time, these higher education systems have become more complex in terms of their institutional differentiation, legal frameworks and structures. In line with this, these systems have developed new approaches regarding regionalization, internationalization, post-graduation and new technologies. Their main challenges, however, come from the need to establish new and stronger links to knowledge production and knowledge management. In this sense, the article concludes by pointing out a complex pattern of challenges and tasks that need to be addressed by Mercosurian higher education systems in order to support broader efforts made in other levels of the integration process (infrastructure, energy, trade and institutions).

Higher Education Quality Assurance Processes in Latin America: a comparative perspective

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Higher Education Quality Assurance Processes in Latin America: a comparative perspective
Author: NORBERTO FERNÁNDEZ LAMARRA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 486-497
ABSTRACT The article first considers a characterization of higher education in Latin America, the principal problems and the scenarios that have led to the inclusion of quality assessment and accreditation processes in higher education as a priority in the regional agenda. The following aspects are then developed from a comparative perspective: the main current conceptions in the region concerning quality and its assurance; current regulation of evaluation and accreditation, with a detailed description; the quality assurance organizations and a comparative approach to their institutional functions and characteristics; and the main methodological approaches to quality assessment and accreditation. For each of these topics the article gives a resumé of the regional situation with, if necessary, a description of the most representative national situations. Finally, the main trends and achievements are analyzed, along with the challenges to regional quality assurance, with a special focus on the Latin American experience.

Thinking about Flexibility

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Thinking about Flexibility
Author: MARIO DÍAZ VILLA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 498-512
ABSTRACT This article emphasizes the complexity of the term flexibility and discusses its meanings and political dimensions, along with its expressions or realizations within the field of higher education. It proposes a new principle of flexibility that overcomes an understanding of flexibility within higher education as the mere ability or versatility to adapt itself to the demands of a life regulated by the technological, organizational and economic contingencies of the labor market. Instead, the author suggests a new way of conceptualizing and organizing academic work. This implies redefining the rigid limits within and between teaching and research and between these two practices and their social contexts.

Debates y Desafíos: reformas de la educación superior en bolivia, una sociedad multicultural

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Debates y Desafíos: reformas de la educación superior en bolivia, una sociedad multicultural
Author: GUSTAVO RODRÍGUEZ OSTRÍA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 513-531
ABSTRACT This article is in Spanish. The objective of this article is to analyze from a critical perspective the changes in Bolivian university higher education policies in the last two decades. The 1990s were characterized by neoliberal policies of educational reform in Bolivia. However, a reform perspective from a populist national vision framed by an indigenist ideology has emerged since 2005. The administration of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first aboriginal president, is offering a new discourse on educational reform. However, it is still debatable whether the government is indeed accomplishing the transformations in eduation that its post-neoliberal indigenist discourse promises.

Two Different Organizational Reactions: the university sector in Argentina and Colombia and the neoliberal proposal

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Two Different Organizational Reactions: the university sector in Argentina and Colombia and the neoliberal proposal
Author: MARCELO RABOSSI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 532-543
ABSTRACT The neoliberal reform arrived at the market of higher education with the intention of introducing private dynamics into public organizations. Through this strategy, the objective was to improve efficiency by promoting intra- and intersectoral competition. The introduction of performance funding shifted the concept of accountability for expenditures, and now public universities will be accountable for results. The expansion of the private sector as a complementary service to public higher education, and the introduction of tuition fees in non-private institutions, implied a shift of the higher education cost burden that now is shared by parents and students. Argentina and Colombia are two cases that show that not all university sectors in South America have reacted alike when the neoliberal recipe proposed this 'paradigm shift'. Even when the reform was formally declared in both countries, organizational forces inside the national university in Argentina prevented an in-depth reform. On the other hand, Colombia behaved as one of the best disciples of the neoliberal proposal, where the 'privatization' of the university sector found a better place to flourish.

Teletechnology and Higher Education: does the approach matter?

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Teletechnology and Higher Education: does the approach matter?
Author: ROSA NIDIA BUENFIL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 544-554
ABSTRACT This article discusses how international and national understandings of information and communication technology (ICT) and the knowledge economy inform contemporary higher education policies. Acknowledging that national educational policies in Latin America are increasingly influenced by the recommendations of international organizations (e.g. the World Bank, UNESCO, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the article provides a clear example of the logics of policy transfer operating in the region. Challenging the interpretations that have tended to stress either the imposition and domination of international meanings and recommendations onto national policies or the total indifference of national reforms vis à vis those international views, this article contends that international policy narratives are locally appropriated and resignified. Specifically, the article deals with the ways in which higher education policy narratives on knowledge and information found in UNESCO's publications are appropriated and reconstituted in Mexico's policy documents.

A Review of Online Learning and its Evolution in Latin America

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: A Review of Online Learning and its Evolution in Latin America
Author: NORMA SCAGNOLI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 555-565
ABSTRACT The integration of some form of online learning in higher education and its adoption in distance and continuing education has increased exponentially in the last decade. This growth has been consistent in different parts of the world, although its implementation in mainstream educational systems varies according to the economic development of the region. But what is 'online learning' and why is it used as a synonym of distance education? This article presents a review that goes through the last 10 years of literature on online learning. It presents the definitions by different authors, and describes its evolution, characteristics, benefits, and use and implementation in education and training. The review concludes with a summary of the development of online learning in Latin America.

Obama's Health Reforms and the Limits of Public Reason

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Obama's Health Reforms and the Limits of Public Reason
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 566-569
ABSTRACT Not available

Hard Lessons: neoliberalism, education, and the politics of disposability

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Hard Lessons: neoliberalism, education, and the politics of disposability
Author: Henry Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 570-573
ABSTRACT Not available

Youth and the Myth of a Post-Racial Society Under Barack Obama

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: Youth and the Myth of a Post-Racial Society Under Barack Obama
Author: Henry Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 574-577
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEWS

Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:21:25 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 Pages: 578-580
ABSTRACT Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: science, education, and making society by making the child (Thomas S. Popkewitz), and Labor of Learning: market and the next generation of educational reform (Alexander Sidorkin), reviewed by David J. Ondercin

Editorial. Applications in Data Analysis for Educational Research

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Editorial. Applications in Data Analysis for Educational Research
Author: Guy Tchibozo
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 364-367
ABSTRACT Not available

Educational, Economic and Social Influences on Cultural Heritage in Trinidad

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Educational, Economic and Social Influences on Cultural Heritage in Trinidad
Author: BÉATRICE BOUFOY-BASTICK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 368-378
ABSTRACT This research presents traditional cultural heritage (CH) as a dynamic social process - a positive feedback loop enhancing cultural identity and institutional authority through a contested authoritative inclusion of the 'objects' it comprises. It then focuses on one part of that process, the individuals' construction of their CH, and defines CH as the 'transgenerational component of identity'. Research is cited to support a postmodernist and radical constructivist perspective of CH and to show how this definition evolves from such a perspective. This study qualitatively tests this perspective by using a representative household survey of Trinidadian respondents (n = 348) and showing economic, educational and social (EES) differences in how EES groups construct their CH. Also, interviews illustrate different personal constructions of CH. Four contributions of this research are its illuminating and applicable dynamic of traditional CH, its postmodern perspective and radical constructivist definition of CH, formally aligning it with current scientific discourse, and operationalising measurement of CH through authoritative inclusion of the 'objects' it comprises.

Life Satisfaction Depending on Socio-Economic Status and Gender among Turkish Students

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Life Satisfaction Depending on Socio-Economic Status and Gender among Turkish Students
Author: SUSRAN ERKAN EROGLU; HASAN BOZGEYIKLI; VAHIT ÇALISIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 379-386
ABSTRACT This research was carried out using the survey method in an attempt to find out the relationship between the life satisfaction and socio-economic status (SES) of adolescents. The research was conducted among 275 young Turkish people chosen by the random sampling method. The research findings determined that there was a significant difference between the life satisfaction and SES of the respondent students. On the other hand, contrary to expectations, there was no significant difference according to the gender variable.

Perception or Confidence? Self-Concept, Self-Efficacy and Achievement in Mathematics: a longitudinal study

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Perception or Confidence? Self-Concept, Self-Efficacy and Achievement in Mathematics: a longitudinal study
Author: HSIN-YI KUNG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 387-398
ABSTRACT The Third International Mathematics and Science Study research of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement reported in 2003 that Taiwanese fourth- and eighth-graders' mathematics performance exceeded the international average; both groups ranked fourth from among all the participant countries. However, the Index of Students' Self-Confidence in Learning Mathematics was below the international average for both these groups. This study, coming at the end of the first year of a three-year project, explored Taiwanese students' mathematics learning at the high school level from a social cognitive perspective. Utilising structural equation modelling, it examined the relationships among mathematics self-concept, mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement using a longitudinal design. The subjects included 2198 seventh- and tenth-graders from Taiwan. The results indicate a significant correlation between mathematics self-concept and mathematics self-efficacy as well as significant longitudinal effects. Mathematics achievement at Time 1 significantly predicted the mathematics self-concept, mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement at Time 2, while mathematics self-concept and mathematics self-efficacy at Time 1 significantly predicted mathematics achievement at Time 2. The implications of these findings are discussed from the viewpoint of cultivating the students' interest and confidence in learning mathematics, and suggestions are provided for further research.

Predictors of Academic Achievement and their Possible Applications

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Predictors of Academic Achievement and their Possible Applications
Author: JEFFREY LOCKSHIN; OLEG ZAMKOV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 399-409
ABSTRACT A significant amount of attention has been given to the predictors of academic achievement in higher education. However, the vast majority of articles have centred on entrance criteria and the learning approaches or personal habits of students. Investigations into how achievement depends on student efforts, being almost invariably based on subjective and unavoidably imprecise student self-evaluations, do not generally help the university determine how it can actually promote academic achievement. In this article, the authors construct models for the academic achievement of economics students in various subjects at their institution. These models include students' previous scores and objective information about their studies during the year, including marks for home assignments and tests; subjective information from the students is not used. The predictive power of these models is high, and the authors use them to formulate how the university can enhance academic achievement and improve the quality of studies: for example, improving student feedback; tailoring subjects to complement each other; determining the need for additional classes; identifying students who are in danger of failing; and giving instructors feedback on the efficacy of activities such as home assignments or the format of examination papers and marking.

Cheating Tendency in Examinations among Secondary School Students in Nigeria: a case study of schools in the Odukpani Local Government Area, Cross River State

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Cheating Tendency in Examinations among Secondary School Students in Nigeria: a case study of schools in the Odukpani Local Government Area, Cross River State
Author: NONSO NGOZIKA BISONG; FELICIA AKPAMA; PAULINE B. EDET
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 410-415
ABSTRACT This study is designed to examine cheating tendency among secondary school students in Nigeria, with evidence from schools in the Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State. A total of 331 respondents in Senior Secondary 3 classes were randomly selected from 10 post-primary schools in the area. A survey questionnaire was used to elicit information on cheating tendency, the level of supervision, forms of cheating behaviour, and gender influence on cheating tendency. The data were analysed using percentages and chi-square statistics to highlight mean differences with respect to the identified variables. The results revealed some levels of statistically significant differences in respect of cheating tendencies on the identified variables. Based on these findings, it is recommended that an ethical reorientation programme, combined with the implementation of a stiff penalty, will reduce cheating tendency in all levels of the Nigerian educational system.

Equity Education: a longitudinal study comparing multicultural knowledge and dispositions of field-based and campus-based teacher candidates

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Equity Education: a longitudinal study comparing multicultural knowledge and dispositions of field-based and campus-based teacher candidates
Author: JOHNNIE THOMPSON; LINDA BAKKEN; WEI-CHENG MAU
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 416-422
ABSTRACT Two groups of teacher candidates, enrolled either in a field-based or campus-based program, were measured before and after their first semester of teacher education courses and again at the end of their student teaching semester. The two groups were compared regarding their knowledge of multicultural education issues, dispositions towards diverse populations, and their perception of confidence in teaching in diverse classrooms. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) with repeated measures indicated that there was a significant increase for both groups in multicultural knowledge after the first semester and that this knowledge was maintained throughout their program. Results also indicated that there was a significant increase in a positive attitude toward multicultural education for both groups after their first semester; however, this positive attitude was not maintained. In terms of perceived confidence in teaching, both groups increased after the first semester, and the field-based group continued to increase until the end of their undergraduate program. The findings suggest that the field-based experience continues to impact students' multicultural knowledge and their perceived self-efficacy.

Examination of the Professional Self-Esteem of Teacher Candidates Studying at a Faculty of Education

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Examination of the Professional Self-Esteem of Teacher Candidates Studying at a Faculty of Education
Author: NERIMAN ARAL; FIGEN GÜRSOY; REMZIYE CEYLAN; MÜDRIYE YILDIZ BIÇAKÇI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 423-429
ABSTRACT This study aims to determine the professional self-esteem levels of teacher candidates studying at the Faculty of Education, Ahi Evran University, Kirsehir, Turkey, to examine whether certain variables create any differences in their professional self-esteem levels and to propose suggestions in accordance with the results. The study was conducted among first- and fourth-year students. Data about the participants was collected through the use of a general information form, and their self-esteem levels were evaluated through the Scale for Professional Self-Esteem developed by Aricak. The results reveal that gender, grade level, credit given to the importance of teaching as a profession, the ranking of choosing teaching as a profession at university and participating in professional activities in teaching do not cause any differences in teacher candidates’ self-esteem levels, yet the activities of lecturers with regard to the reputation of teaching cause differences in their self-esteem levels.

Generic Skills and Collaborative Learning in Tertiary Education: an empirical examination of student perceptions

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Generic Skills and Collaborative Learning in Tertiary Education: an empirical examination of student perceptions
Author: GORDON BROOKS; ELIZABETH MORE; JULIAN LESLIE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 430-438
ABSTRACT Cooperative and collaborative learning - learning in small groups - is generally considered an effective learning approach with benefits including learning gains and personal enhancement. Successful group activities, however, assume competence in a number of skills. Identification of the particular skills that students need to successfully negotiate collaborative learning is imperative in preparing students for these activities. However, the contemporary student body in many developed countries is becoming increasingly diverse. This empirical article seeks to identify whether undergraduate students from different countries and language backgrounds have different perceptions of the relative importance of Ehrman & Dornyei's generic sub-skills. A cohort of students who completed a first-year undergraduate management subject were surveyed. Analysis of 266 responses identified the skills that students consider most important and demonstrated that the different student groups held the same perceptions of the importance of the 25 skills considered. The implications and benefits for preparing students for group work are considered.

Using a Computerised Graphics Package to Achieve a Technology-Oriented Classroom

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Using a Computerised Graphics Package to Achieve a Technology-Oriented Classroom
Author: FRANCISCA ALADEJANA; LANRE IDOWU
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 439-444
ABSTRACT The present situation in Nigeria involves students of fine arts, a practical-oriented subject, being exposed to poor methods of teaching with consequent poor performances. This study examined the extent to which the use of a computerised graphics package could make the classroom technology-oriented and affect the performance of learners. This is predicated on the theoretical frameworks of constructivism and Gagne's learning theory. The research design is the pretest-posttest control group design. The research instruments are the Graphic Design Achievement Test designed from the Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board Test and CorelDraw 10. They were administered to 60 junior secondary school students selected using stratified random sampling. The results show a significant difference in the performance of students exposed to the computerised graphics package as those exposed to the computerised graphics package performed significantly better in graphics than those exposed to the conventional teaching methods.

The Effects of Statistical Analysis Software and Calculators on Statistics Achievement

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: The Effects of Statistical Analysis Software and Calculators on Statistics Achievement
Author: EDWIN P. CHRISTMANN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 445-449
ABSTRACT This study compared the effects of microcomputer-based statistical software and hand-held calculators on the statistics achievement of university males and females. The subjects, 73 graduate students enrolled in univariate statistics classes at a public comprehensive university, were randomly assigned to groups that used either microcomputer-based statistics software or hand-held calculators in performing their statistical calculations. The effects of the independent variables of microcomputer-based statistics software and hand-held calculators on the dependent variable of statistics achievement were analyzed with a two-way analysis of variance that revealed no significant difference on the basis of gender (p = 0.622). However, the two-way analysis of variance revealed a significant difference between the achievement of students who used the microcomputer-based statistics software and those who used hand-held calculators (p = 0.024), with those students who used microcomputer-based statistical analysis software scoring higher. Additionally, a significant interaction effect was disclosed (p = 0.027), with an effect size of 0.621, indicating that, on average, those males who used microcomputers outperformed 73% of the females who used microcomputers in performing their statistical calculations; while the females who used hand-held calculators outperformed 71% of the male users of calculators, on the basis of an effect size calculation of 0.545.

Educating Obama: a task to make democracy matter

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:31:37 GMT

Title: Educating Obama: a task to make democracy matter
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Pages: 450-454
ABSTRACT Not available

The Culture of Teaching

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: The Culture of Teaching
Author: CATHERINE SCOTT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 275-283
ABSTRACT 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: Building Entrepreneurial Architectures: a conceptual interpretation of the Third Mission
Author: TIM VORLEY; JEN NELLES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 284-296
ABSTRACT 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: New Labour's Skills Policy at the Intersection of Business and Politics
Author: NILS LINDAHL ELLIOT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 297-312
ABSTRACT 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: Teaching in Full View: GLA as a mechanism of power
Author: CHARMAINE BROOKS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 313-320
ABSTRACT 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?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: Solar Ethics: a new paradigm for environmental ethics and education?
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS; RUYU HUNG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 321-329
ABSTRACT 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: Digital Systems Analysis
Author: VANCE S. MARTIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 330-339
ABSTRACT 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

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: The Phenomenology of Democracy
Author: ROBERT SHAW
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 340-348
ABSTRACT 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.

OBAMA'S AMERICA. Obama's 'Postmodernism', Humanism and History

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: OBAMA'S AMERICA. Obama's 'Postmodernism', Humanism and History
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 349-355
ABSTRACT Not available

OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS. Ten Years after Columbine: the tragedy of youth deepens

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS. Ten Years after Columbine: the tragedy of youth deepens
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 356-361
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEW. Marx and Education (Robin Small), reviewed by Ergin Bulut

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:59 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW. Marx and Education (Robin Small), reviewed by Ergin Bulut
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 3 Pages: 362-363
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. Contesting Identities, Contesting Nation

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Introduction. Contesting Identities, Contesting Nation
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 138-144
ABSTRACT Not available

Reading against the Grain: examining the status of the categories of class and tradition in the scholarship of British cultural studies in light of contemporary popular culture and literature

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Reading against the Grain: examining the status of the categories of class and tradition in the scholarship of British cultural studies in light of contemporary popular culture and literature
Author: CAMERON MCCARTHY; JENNIFER LOGUE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 145-160
ABSTRACT This article addresses the turbulent relationship that British cultural studies scholars have with the concepts of 'class' and 'tradition' and the problematic status of these key terms within the cultural studies literature. The authors maintain, in part, that these concepts have been deployed within a center-periphery thesis and a field-bound ethnographic framework by cultural studies scholars pursuing a sub-cultural studies approach. Within this framework, 'Britishness' has been the silent organizing principle defining metropolitan working-class traditions and forms of cultural resistance. British cultural studies proponents have therefore pursued the study of class and culture as a localized, nation-bound set of interests. This has placed cultural studies in tension with post-colonial subjectivities. The authors write against the grain of the textual production of the working class within cultural studies scholarship, insisting that recent films and literary works offer a more complex story of class identities in the age of globalization and transnationalism.

Metaphor and the Work of Cultural Studies

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Metaphor and the Work of Cultural Studies
Author: SUSAN HAREWOOD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 161-171
ABSTRACT This article examines the political project of Cultural Studies by calling for a re-examination of the cultural studies research practices. The metaphors used by cultural studies researchers are explored, as these demonstrate the ways in which researchers have sought to emphasize openness and fluidity. However, it is argued that the desire for openness is not enough; that without rigorous consideration of methodology Cultural Studies lays itself open to many of the academic research problems it seeks to challenge. The article therefore offers a rethinking of the metaphors of cultural studies research.

Flexibly Global? Performing Culture and Identity in an Age of Uncertainty

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Flexibly Global? Performing Culture and Identity in an Age of Uncertainty
Author: MICHAEL D. GIARDINA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 172-184
ABSTRACT Presented as a symbolic interactive messy performance text, Michael Giardina sutures himself into and through the landscape of global social relations, including his own interpretive interactions of disconnection and reconnection with place, home, and nation. In so doing, and in these collages of lived textuality, he examines the complex, conflictual, and continually shifting identity performances revealed in and through our fleeting experiences with one another. Whether brushing up against the hyphenated spatial histories of British colonialism and Asian diaspora in London and Manchester or witnessing the rampant expressions of xenophobic nationalism pervading the US popular public sphere in sites ranging from Yankee Stadium in New York to a fast food restaurant in Champaign, Illinois, each narrative turn brings us into head-on collisions with each 'Other'.

The King of the Damned: reading lynching as leisure

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: The King of the Damned: reading lynching as leisure
Author: RASUL MOWATT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 185-199
ABSTRACT The racial domination that is showcased in the spectacle of lynching leads to an intersection of discourse, critique, and reflection on identity. Utilizing visual methodologies along with a critical theory focus, the documented history in photographic images and textual accounts provides a window to human leisure behavior as it is situated in a setting through displays of power. Tortured black bodies are situated in a reversed position of authority with those in power that have condemned them through a Foucault perspective, and the role of the 'king' or figure of authority that places judgment withi these leisure festivals of racial violence. The discussion of lynchings as violent acts of leisure in various settings creates a vehicle for the field of leisure studies to contribute to dialogues on meaning(s) of place and the significance of race, more specifically.

Discourses of Legitimacy: a love song to our mongrel selves

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Discourses of Legitimacy: a love song to our mongrel selves
Author: ALICE A. FILMER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 200-216
ABSTRACT In an intervention that blurs methodological boundaries traditionally separating the researcher from the researched, history from poetry, and the personal from the political, the author weaves a narrative account of her Euro-American family's early history in California into a larger set of social and historical events taking place during the nineteenth century. She employs the metaphor of 'legitimacy' to trace her growing awareness of the physical, psychological, and political parallels at work in the colonization of lands, cultures, and bodies in the 'New World'. Providing context for the mid-nineteenth century war between the USA and Mexico, she analyzes discursive constructs such as hybridity, impurity, and 'mongrelization' as they are evoked in the legend of Malinche - the sixteenth-century, indigenous translator and lover of the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortés. Four centuries later, echoes of that 'intermarriage' and the transgression of many other kinds of boundaries can be heard in the author's unconventional relationship with her son's Mexican father. She offers a 'post-critical' perspective in the conclusion by bringing her own voice into dialogue with those of several post-colonial theorists. This ethnography integrates autoethnography, voices from history, and textual analysis into seldom-heard conversations about the conventional and unconventional workings of power and identity. In so doing, both the fixity and fluidity of concepts such as culture, nation, family, language, social class, race, and gender are revealed.

Behind Beats and Rhymes: working class from a Hampton Roads hip hop homeplace

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Behind Beats and Rhymes: working class from a Hampton Roads hip hop homeplace
Author: AISHA S. DURHAM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 217-229
ABSTRACT The film documentary titled Hip Hop: beyond beats and rhymes captures ongoing conversations among scholars, cultural critics, and hip hop insiders about the state of African Americans by interrogating distinct expressive forms associated with hip hop culture. Durham draws from two scenes to describe her memories as the researched underclass and as the graduate researcher returning to her childhood public housing community to explore the shifting discursive terrain of hip hop as a struggle over meaning waged through class performances. Class is articulated through taste values and notions of respectability. Durham connects the hip hop mantra emphasizing lived, embodied culture with bell hooks' description of a homeplace to recount her researcher/ed self during the Virginia Beach Greekfest race riots and her visit home where she talks about hip hop feminism with a group of African American women from the Norfolk public housing community. By recalling autoethnographic encounters of hip hop at home, Durham calls attention to the politics of class that echoes behind beats and rhymes.

Moving Beyond the Wall(s): theorizing corporate identity for global cultural studies

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Moving Beyond the Wall(s): theorizing corporate identity for global cultural studies
Author: C. MICHAEL ELAVSKY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 230-243
ABSTRACT This article examines the set of research considerations that went into investigating the relationship between the Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and Czech music culture as a means of exploring alternative avenues and frameworks for understanding and doing global cultural studies. Outlining the theoretical and methodological trajectories, as well as some of the findings, underscores the necessity for both the field of cultural studies and us as scholars to reconfigure conceptions for investigating the complexities of global phenomena. More important, it seeks to draw attention to how we might construct new alliances, stimulate new forms of activism, and enact new engagements with the logics and reality of global capital, such that the project of cultural studies can be reinvigorated within our global age.

Writing Queer across the Borders of Geography and Desire

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Writing Queer across the Borders of Geography and Desire
Author: MIGUEL A. MALAGRECA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 244-256
ABSTRACT In this article, the author merges biographical notes, autoethnography and experimental writing to situate his migrant self as a self that performs through writing, i.e. planned, experimental writing that subverts the centrality of the monolingual heterosexual identity. He explores the intersections of time, desire, and power across time and space, crossing national and linguistic borders and changing legal, 'marital' and work status in Argentina, the United States and Italy. In particular, in addressing the exclusion of immigrants from the current Italian Civil Union law project (written and presented to parliament by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender [GLBT] political representatives), his presentation criticizes any romanticized version of a homogeneous queer community. This is a piece that questions the existence of regular, pre-existing identities that are distributed within the space of the nation. An interpretive perspective like this one criticizes the reification of the nation as an object or essence, inhabited by groups of people whose nationality defines their cultural identities (e.g., the Italians) or groups of people whose sexual choices define who they are (e.g. the homosexuals). Against this view, the author explores personal and political contexts where the self performs a critique of national, sexual and ethnic boundaries. This writing choice is a political one, for it makes audible subjectivities that escape the historic or current distribution of roles and identities imposed by multicultural politics or academic impositions.

Re-locating the National: spatialization of the national past in Seoul

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: Re-locating the National: spatialization of the national past in Seoul
Author: SOOCHUL KIM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 256-265
ABSTRACT This article is an attempt to make sense of the emerging culture of mobility in Seoul in the 1990s. The 1990s in a South Korean context is emblematic of a changed social reality and transformation. Grand narratives of development, anti-state democratization activism and Cold War politics were losing their effect and authority. Meanwhile, new forces of consumption, individualism, westernization and globalization were increasingly claiming a central presence in society and accentuating the crisis of identification and representation in cultural life and production. Looking at this particular historical situation, this article argues that the culture of mobility, in terms of the reorganization of mobility and visuality, interrupted the existing norms and mode of national identity and culture in South Korean society. The article focuses upon a new socio-cultural phenomenon known as 'Yu Hong Jun Syndrome', which emerged in the early and mid 1990s. It asks how a culture of mobility, while providing cues for ways of experiencing and seeing national landscapes and cityscapes, makes Seoulites rediscover the nation and locality as a potential space of belonging and, further, allows them to renegotiate alienated forms of social relations and everyday experiences in a globalizing metropolitan city.

OBAMA'S AMERICA. Automobilism, Americanism and the End of Fordism

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: OBAMA'S AMERICA. Automobilism, Americanism and the End of Fordism
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 266-270
ABSTRACT Not available

OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS. Beyond the Audacity of Hope: the promise of an educated citizenry

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Title: OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS. Beyond the Audacity of Hope: the promise of an educated citizenry
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Pages: 271-274
ABSTRACT Not available

Beyond Bailouts: on the politics of education after neoliberalism

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Beyond Bailouts: on the politics of education after neoliberalism
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX; SUSAN SEARLS GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-4
ABSTRACT The Obama presidency has been premised on a commitment to progressive social change in its a repudiation of unfettered free-market capitalism. It also signals the end of an era in which privatization, deregulation, and cut throat competition combined with a massive assault on the social state. While such reforms are welcome, they do not as yet go far enough in articulating economic change with an equally transformative cultural politics. This article seeks to broaden the parameters of the kind of 'change' that must be sought in relation to the current financial and credit crisis. We argue for the necessity of not only dismantling neoliberal economic policies and the shocking levels of inequality they have produced, but also for the necessity of transforming the culture of neoliberalism - the ideologies, values, identifications, and modes of consent - that enabled the ascendancy of market sovereignty. We seek to explore the pedagogical implications of such a project.

The New Zealand Draft Curriculum 2006: a policy case study with specific reference to its understanding of teaching as an ethical profession

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: The New Zealand Draft Curriculum 2006: a policy case study with specific reference to its understanding of teaching as an ethical profession
Author: LEON BENADE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 5-19
ABSTRACT The New Zealand Draft Curriculum was released in mid-2006 and intended for final implementation in September 2007. This draft policy document serves as a useful model for analysis employing a method of policy analysis proposed by Bell & Stevenson. Additionally, this article specifically asks to what extent the Draft Curriculum advances a concept of teaching as an ethical profession. Conceptions of the kind of profession teaching has become in New Zealand in the twenty-first century will be considered, and this article will attempt an account of what it might be to conceptualise teaching as an 'ethical profession'. Against this conceptual backdrop, the New Zealand Draft Curriculum will be asked to provide its account of the teaching profession.

Space, Time, History: the reassertion of space in social theory

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Space, Time, History: the reassertion of space in social theory
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS; FABIAN KESSL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 20-30
ABSTRACT The reassertion of space is discussed as an analytical awareness of the past obsession with temporal logics. Theorists now understand that social sciences discourses were shaped by a preoccupation with the temporal scales and logics of development considered as natural processes. The spatial turn in social theory is often seen to be a process of de-naturalizing space. The article argues that not only space, but 'spacetime' has to be de-naturalized. On that background the current debate between a humanist Marxism and poststructuralism is discussed. To overcome the founding distinctions a number of scholars are trying to model a relational idea of spacetime. With regard to David Harvey's current work and the work of the Swiss geographer Benno Werlen and the German sociologist Martina Löw, the scope of such an approach in humanities is discussed.

Rethinking the Role of Elite Private Schools in a Neoliberal Era: an example from Chile

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Rethinking the Role of Elite Private Schools in a Neoliberal Era: an example from Chile
Author: EDUARDO CAVIERES FERNÁNDEZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 31-43
ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has brought a privatization trend that has deeply affected the structure of the educational system of countries. While public schools lag behind, new forms of private schooling have arisen creating different forms of inequality. Nonetheless, in Chile the major inequality exists between schools attended by low and middle income students and those schools that have traditionally served students coming from the economic elite of the country. In a period when Chilean educational policies do not mention this issue at all, this article presents an example from a traditional private school in Chile that helps both to pay attention to this phenomenon as well as to seek ways to address the consequences brought about by the logic of the privatization wave that affects the educational system.

Insider Perspectives vs. Public Perceptions of ICT: toward policy for enhancing female student participation in academic pathways to professional careers in ICT

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Insider Perspectives vs. Public Perceptions of ICT: toward policy for enhancing female student participation in academic pathways to professional careers in ICT
Author: LYN COURTNEY; COLIN LANKSHEAR; NEIL ANDERSON; CAROLYN TIMMS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 44-64
ABSTRACT This article reports findings of a national online survey of Australian women employed in Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related careers. The Women in ICT Industry Survey was the culminating stage of a larger Australian Research Council Linkage Grant project investigating factors associated with low and declining female participation rates in professional-level ICT pathways. The survey comprised a mix of forced-choice and open-ended short-response items, and was completed by 272 Australian women. Application of K-means cluster analysis to forced-choice item responses revealed three discrete groupings of female ICT professionals. Overall, respondents reported that their ICT career was rewarding, provided opportunities and challenges, and was beneficial to society. Respondents generally disagreed with Queensland high school girls’ perceptions that ICT is boring, sedentary, and not relevant to their future career directions. They also disagreed that the industry fits the prevailing negative stereotype of being populated by ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’. Divergent opinions centered mainly around participants’ confidence in their own technical ability, whether they would encourage young women to enter the ICT industry, and how they perceived and responded to industrial issues of equality and management approachability. These findings support suggestions for a range of policy and curriculum initiatives designed to enable more positive experiences of computing in school, and to optimize ICT career pathways in tandem with furthering wider educational ends.

Technology, Utopia and Scholarly Life: ideals and realities in the work of Hermann Hesse

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Technology, Utopia and Scholarly Life: ideals and realities in the work of Hermann Hesse
Author: PETER ROBERTS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 65-74
ABSTRACT This article considers the relationship between technology, utopia and scholarly life in Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game. In the first part of Hesse's book, the Glass Bead Game and the society of which it is a part, Castalia, are portrayed in idealistic terms. The second part of the novel chronicles the educational life of Joseph Knecht, who progresses through Castalia's elite schooling system, learns to play the Glass Bead Game, and is eventually appointed to the supreme position of Magister Ludi (Master of the Game). Knecht's words, thoughts, relationships, and deeds pose a challenge to the narrator's idealistic portrait, with important implications for scholars and educationists. It is argued that The Glass Bead Game combines utopian and dystopian elements. The book shows why it is necessary to hold on to scholarly ideals while also recognising educational and social realities.

How the Ghosts of the Nineteenth Century Still Haunt Education

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: How the Ghosts of the Nineteenth Century Still Haunt Education
Author: CATHERINE SCOTT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 75-87
ABSTRACT Research evidence has demonstrated that pedagogical techniques variously known as discovery learning, problem-based learning and constructivism are less effective than explicit instruction, especially when applied to the teaching of novice learners. Nonetheless these ineffective techniques have many devotees and re-enter the educational arena 're-badged' after each empirical revelation of their deficiencies. This article argues that constructivism and its pedagogical relatives are continually 'rediscovered' because they accord with deeply held beliefs about the nature of human beings. The origins of these ideas are traced to the writings of Rousseau and the Progressivist thinkers of the nineteenth century and the ways in which the misreading of theorists, such as Piaget, provide 'scientific support' for these is explored.

An Educational Revolution to Support Change in the Classroom: Colombia and the educational challenges of the twenty-first century

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: An Educational Revolution to Support Change in the Classroom: Colombia and the educational challenges of the twenty-first century
Author: DANIEL LIGHT; MICAELA MANSO; TERESA NOGUERA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 88-101
ABSTRACT As developing countries strive to strengthen their educational institutions to meet the challenges of the economic and social demands of globalization, tension often arises between providing more access to traditional public education and reforming the quality of the education provided. With its Revolución Educativa, Colombia offers an interesting case study of comprehensive education reforms that are grounded in a shared vision of quality and that make skillful use of information and communication technology to meet their goals. In designing the reforms, the Colombian Ministry of Education identified a series of complementary strategies that attempt to address five critical policy dimensions that keep the drive towards quality in the forefront. This article describes these strategies: Local Capacity Building; Enrollment and Efficiency; New Technologies; Curricular Reform; Improving Teacher Quality; and the Assessment System.

Teething Problems of Market Entry: the Swedish tuition fees dilemma

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Teething Problems of Market Entry: the Swedish tuition fees dilemma
Author: SOWARIBI TOLOFARI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 102-111
ABSTRACT From the autumn of 2008 Sweden is billed to introduce fees for non-EEA (European Economic Area) students. Two commissions set up by the Social Democratic government studied the question and the enabling legislation was issued in March 2006. Now, however, the Conservative coalition government shows no interest in giving the universities the executive directive on fees. More problematic is the confusion at the arena of implementation. Though a majority of universities supported the idea at the consultation stage, none of them is ready to implement the policy. Following up questionnaires and studies of commission reports and reactions by various interest groups, this writer conducted interviews on the issue towards the end of 2007 with Swedish vice-chancellors and members of the Parliamentary Committee on Education. Three revelations of the research are the impact of China's growing demands for qualified manpower, the pressure of the global education market and diminishing solidarity thinking.

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM Marxism and Educational Theory: origins and issues, (Mike Cole)

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: REVIEW SYMPOSIUM Marxism and Educational Theory: origins and issues, (Mike Cole)
Author: Judith Baxter; Samuel Fassbinder; Ravi Kumar
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 112-124
ABSTRACT Not available

Renewing the American Dream: Obama's political philosophy

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Renewing the American Dream: Obama's political philosophy
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 125-128
ABSTRACT Not available

Global Recession, Unemployment and the Changing Economics of the Self

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Global Recession, Unemployment and the Changing Economics of the Self
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 129-133
ABSTRACT Not available

Killing Children with Impunity: from Mississippi to Gaza

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:10:02 GMT

Title: Killing Children with Impunity: from Mississippi to Gaza
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Pages: 134-137
ABSTRACT This article situates the recent killing of children in Gaze by Israeli forces with images of racial violence and neglect that extend from the murder of Emmett Till to the Bush government's failure to care for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The article argues that all three events are held together by racialized logic of disappearance and disposability implemented under the logic of the modern racial state. It poses the question of why the images of suffering against innocent children in Gaza have not provoked the same public outcry as did the representations that followed the Till and Katrina events.

Introduction. European Educational Futures

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Introduction. European Educational Futures
Author: Palle Rasmussen
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 662-664
ABSTRACT Not available

The Growing Supranational Impacts of the OECD and the EU on National Educational Policies, and the Case of Finland

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: The Growing Supranational Impacts of the OECD and the EU on National Educational Policies, and the Case of Finland
Author: RISTO RINNE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 665-680
ABSTRACT The trends of globalisation have had unavoidable impacts in steering and guiding the decisions of national policy-makers and the direction of national education policies. In the obscuring processes of supranational homogenisation of education and educational policy, supranational regimes, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU), play a significant role. The traditional idea of meritocratic competition is challenged by globalisation and by the new standard setting of the supranational organisations, and nation-states are losing their power to define standards and to control the key features of educational selection. The process is proceeding particularly in the field of higher education, where the stakes to win reputational capital are at their highest. The message, objectives and language of those organisations are cast in the same mould. They have started to speak in the same words with the same stress, repeating the same phrases about globalisation, economic efficiency and productivity, and swearing that globalisation is inevitable in the name of progress. In this article, historical change in the educational policies of the OECD and the EU and the implication of these policies for national education policies are studied. Special emphasis is laid on the field of higher education and the national case of Finland.

Education in the Learning Economy: a European perspective

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Education in the Learning Economy: a European perspective
Author: BENGT-ÅKE LUNDVALL; PALLE RASMUSSEN; EDWARD LORENZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 681-700
ABSTRACT Innovation is crucial to the competitiveness of the economies of Europe, and learning is crucial to innovation. The most important trend shift is not that knowledge is becoming more important but that it is becoming obsolete more rapidly than before, so that firms and employees constantly have to learn and acquire new competencies. This involves different types of knowledge of which the less formalised, learnt through experience, are often just as important as the formalised, learnt through exposure to teaching. The article opens with a presentation of different categories of knowledge, their consequences for approaches to education and the concept of the learning economy. Drawing on cross-national data it is then shown how European economies are characterised by dramatic differences in work organisation and learning at the workplace. The authors illustrate how such differences are linked not only to inequality of access to workplace learning but also to institutional and cultural differences between different national school systems in Europe. They argue that traditional schooling, isolated from society and organised according to traditional disciplines and educational methods, is insufficient in the context of the learning economy. Educational principles and cultures focusing on collaboration, interdisciplinarity and engagement with real-life problems are needed to prepare people for flexible and innovative participation in the economy and society.

Globalisation, Southern Europe and European Adult Education Policy

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Globalisation, Southern Europe and European Adult Education Policy
Author: CARMEL BORG; PETER MAYO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 701-717
ABSTRACT In this article, the authors define some of the most evident features of globalisation from below, which they distinguish from hegemonic globalisation, and draw out its implications for adult education. They draw out the implications for European adult education that emerge from the different features of these two types of globalisations. They then refer to the history of and contemporary provision in adult education in southern Europe and argue that there are elements there that can serve the purpose of a revitalised counter-hegemonic adult education approach. They then explore whether this thinking makes its presence felt in two major European documents, the EU Memorandum on Lifelong Learning and a recent report on adult education, carried out for the European Commission, provided by the European Association for the Education of Adults. They do this given that the international literature on adult education is dominated by ideas and experiences emerging from the central European states and Nordic countries. They highlight the recurrence in the Memorandum of the tendency to vocationalise adult education at different stages of a person's life. They consider the EAEA report to be more expansive and representative than the Memorandum but they also argue that there is a tendency to uncritically accept the vocationalisation of older adulthood. The issue of migration from south-of-the-equator populations to Europe, and especially southern Europe, is also considered, given that it is a prominent feature of the intensification of globalisation. Its implications for adult education practice are also considered, also and mainly in light of the situation obtaining in the frontier countries of southern Europe.

'Europe/Asia' Regionalism, Higher Education and the Production of World Order

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: 'Europe/Asia' Regionalism, Higher Education and the Production of World Order
Author: SUSAN ROBERTSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 718-729
ABSTRACT From the early 1990s onwards, various European Union (EU) reports have commented on the low level of European exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Asian region, and the invisibility of Europe in the Asian imagination in comparison with the United States. To overcome this problem, a series of policy and programme initiatives have been launched that include higher education as a platform, that are funded by the EU's development agency EuropeAid, and that use the inter-regional institutional structures of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Initially, the focus for higher education was on generating European visibility and Asian capacity through the creation of networks and curricular initiatives. However, since 2000 the higher education initiatives in the successive Asia-Europe inter-regional policies have been reoriented towards realising the Lisbon 2000 Agenda of developing a globally competitive European knowledge-based economy. Asia-Europe inter-regionalism is now being used to facilitate an explicit competitiveness agenda for Europe through (i) prioritising the development of a European market in higher education that is attractive to Asian students; (ii) synchronising Asian higher education structures with those that have developed in Europe as a result of the Bologna Process; (iii) recruiting 'talent' from within the Asian region; and (iv) the development of research collaborations, such as funded research institutes. Whilst funded by the EU's development agency EuropeAid, these initiatives have as their target not the very low-income countries in ASEAN and ASEM, but China and India. This generates tensions in the foreign-policy mix of education, trade and development, making the EU vulnerable to charges of imperialism and neo-colonialism, whilst the inter-regional structures themselves carry their own politics which in turn shape the terrain of higher education.

Islam, Christianity and Secularism in European Education

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Islam, Christianity and Secularism in European Education
Author: HOLGER DAUN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 730-743
ABSTRACT At a very general ('civilisational') level, compulsory and upper secondary education in Europe is based in the Christian tradition and does not easily tolerate other types of education. Europe is the only continent that has been able to combine modernisation and secularisation, and this has continuously favoured religious schools of the Christian type but disfavoured Muslim initiatives. Also, during the past decade all the education systems have been required to produce competitiveness and social cohesion. The first requirement has made education more focused on intellectual, technical and cognitive features and less on values and morals. The second requirement derives from the cleavages resulting from the drive for competitiveness as well as flows of immigrants and minority demands for their rights. However, none of the pressures, drives and requirements has resulted in any deep-going change in the multicultural direction of European education.

Adult Education and European Identity

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Adult Education and European Identity
Author: OSKAR NEGT
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 744-756
ABSTRACT Europe is coming together. This is a historic project; for the first time in modern history, will and consciousness are used for bringing political, social and cultural unity to the European continent. In this process lifelong learning and hence adult education are gaining in importance. The European project takes place in an age characterised by radical changes and crises in work, civil society and the human existence as such. In this situation citizens need new key skills to cope. Also, identities need to be strengthened and reshaped and new types of solidarity need to be developed. Learning must not be restricted to the acquisition of technical and vocational skills, but will increasingly become learning to cope with the world and to establish new hierarchies of values which enable individuals to create a democratic Europe. To achieve this goal adult education must cease to be the responsibility of the individual and rather become an institutionalised and shared responsibility.

Academic Entrepreneurship vs. Changing Governance and Institutional Management Structures at European Universities

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: Academic Entrepreneurship vs. Changing Governance and Institutional Management Structures at European Universities
Author: MAREK KWIEK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 757-770
ABSTRACT This article discusses academic entrepreneurship in the context of ongoing changes in university management and governance in European universities. The comparative perspective is provided by the European Union (EU) research project 'European Universities for Entrepreneurship: Their Role in the Europe of Knowledge' (EUEREK) comprising seven European countries, and it draws heavily from ideas and research results of Burton Clark, Michael Shattock and Gareth Williams. It views transformations in university governance and management in the context of the recent emphasis by the European Commission (EC) on the vital role of changes in institutional governance and its 'modernisation agenda for universities'. The article presents a general discussion of the EC's prioritisation of areas of transformation of European universities in which governance structures figure prominently, discusses the role of risk-taking at entrepreneurial institutions and shows the role of risk management. It also discusses the clash of old academic and new managerial values at entrepreneurial universities and the traditional academic idea of collegiality. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the future of public institutions in Europe.

The European Commission Stepping Up Both the Efficiency and Equity of Education and Training Systems

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:51:14 GMT

Title: The European Commission Stepping Up Both the Efficiency and Equity of Education and Training Systems
Author: ARIANE BAYE; MARC DEMEUSE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 6 Pages: 771-780
ABSTRACT This article analyses the Communication of the European Commission (EC) devoted to efficiency and equity of European education systems. It shows the Commission's difficulties in integrating the multiple dimensions of education equity and the confusion between pedagogical and economical notions of efficiency. The authors also analyse the means proposed by the Commission to foster equity and efficiency at different education levels. Under the guise of a specific interest in pre-schooling, the arguments concerning compulsory education were rather lightweight and incomplete, and those on higher education worrying. This article raises the concerns and questions that remain after the reading of this Communication

Introduction

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Ka Ho Mok
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 528-531
ABSTRACT Not available

Higher Education Transformation: some trends in California and Asia

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Higher Education Transformation: some trends in California and Asia
Author: JOHN N. HAWKINS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 532-544
ABSTRACT This article discusses higher education transformation in California, the wider USA, and Asia. It touches on several sensitive topics, including the relationship between higher education and the public good versus commodification, privatization, and centralization versus decentralization, as well as others. In the USA and California, this has led to questions of whether historic conceptions of the 'public good' can be sustained within the policy frame it has created. The notion of higher education as a public good, especially for the large public research universities, is also being challenged in the Asia region as the state withdraws from maintaining the levels of financial support it has provided in the past. The author suggests that scholars and practitioners in both Asia and the USA should remain engaged with each other and continue to share policies and practices as their respective higher education institutions seek to develop and grow in the increasingly global knowledge society.

The Quest for World Class Universities in China: critical reflections

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: The Quest for World Class Universities in China: critical reflections
Author: KINGLUN NGOK; WEIQING GUO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 545-557
ABSTRACT Building world-class universities has become a national policy priority in China since then-President Jiang Zemin announced in May 1998 that China must have several world-class universities of international advanced level. This article aims to offer critical reflections on the policy in relation to building world-class universities in China. It begins by introducing the policy context of China's world-class universities initiatives. Then, it examines Chinese perceptions of world-class universities, and assesses the related policy options adopted by the government and universities. It concludes that the formation and implementation of the policy of building the world-class universities in China reflects the ambition of both the Chinese government and Chinese universities to develop high quality higher education in the context of globalization and the knowledge-based economy.

Higher Education Reforms in South Korea: public-private problems in internationalising and incorporating universities

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Higher Education Reforms in South Korea: public-private problems in internationalising and incorporating universities
Author: TERRI KIM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 558-568
ABSTRACT This article analyses the policy and practices of restructuring higher education in South Korea in light of the distinctive characteristics of Korean higher education development and government-higher education relations. The role of government in the development of higher education in Korea has been typically as a direct regulator rather than a coordinator. However, the global trend towards neo-liberal policies, such as privatization and a 'lean' state which coordinates market competition, began to be influential in Korea during the 1990s, which eventually led to a shift in higher education policies. There is a public rhetoric about neo-liberal public sector reforms and restructuring; and policy implementations are being made accordingly. The article critically reviews the current government's political rationale for restructuring higher education against the backdrop of 'globalization'. It is suggested that despite such influences, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has not yet shifted its role in regulating the higher education sector: the fundamental relations of the MOE and the higher education sector have not changed. This article discusses why and how the relations of government to higher education are, in fact, unchanging in Korea.

University Restructuring in Singapore: amazing or a maze?

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: University Restructuring in Singapore: amazing or a maze?
Author: MICHAEL H. LEE; SARAVANAN GOPINATHAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 569-588
ABSTRACT The Singapore government has put forward a comprehensive restructuring program of university education since the 1990s. Public universities in Singapore are going to be developed as world-class universities through a series of university education policies and reforms. This article reviews major developments of university education policies and reforms in Singapore since the mid-1990s and examines critically the impact of the restructuring policies and reforms on the university system in Singapore. It is argued that universities in Singapore can enjoy a higher degree of institutional autonomy within a more stringent framework of public accountability. The university restructuring policy is not only aimed at transforming Singapore as a regional education hub, but also developing public universities in the island-state as world-class higher education institutions. Singapore's universities have to cope with many unprecedented changes and challenges amidst the restructuring process.

Higher Education Restructuring and Academic Freedom in Hong Kong

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Higher Education Restructuring and Academic Freedom in Hong Kong
Author: CAROLE J. PETERSEN; JAN CURRIE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 589-600
ABSTRACT A former British colony, Hong Kong was reunited with the People's Republic of China in 1997 under the 'one country two systems' model. The Hong Kong Basic Law contains detailed provisions for academic freedom, ensuring that local academics enjoy far greater freedom than their counterparts in mainland China. Hong Kong academics and the broader community have also publicly supported academic freedom when they perceived it to be under threat. The authors argue, however, that the recent restructuring of Hong Kong's universities may ultimately pose a greater threat than any explicit interference from the local or national governments.

When Socialism Meets Market Capitalism: challenges for privatizing and marketizing education in China and Vietnam

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: When Socialism Meets Market Capitalism: challenges for privatizing and marketizing education in China and Vietnam
Author: KA HO MOK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 601-615
ABSTRACT China and Vietnam have experienced drastic social, economic and political changes, especially when these two socialist regimes have started economic reforms in the last few decades. In order to create more opportunities for higher education with limited national resources, both Chinese and Vietnamese governments have adopted strategies along the lines of marketization and privatization to reform their higher education systems. The major objective of this article is to critically examine how the market transition taking place in China and Vietnam has led to changes in education governance, particularly examine how these two governments have approached the challenges of global capitalism by transforming the socialist education model into a more market-oriented one. This article also discusses the major challenges and policy implications when education is increasingly privatized and marketized in China and Vietnam.

Incorporation of National Universities in Taiwan: challenges for the government and the academics

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Incorporation of National Universities in Taiwan: challenges for the government and the academics
Author: FLORA F. TIEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 616-628
ABSTRACT The Council of Education Reform of the Executive Yuan in Taiwan raised the issue of incorporating national universities in 1996. After that initial effort, the Ministry of Education in 2000 revealed its proposal to incorporate national universities in a White Paper on higher education policy. In 2003-2006 the government has tried at least twice to sell the policy to legislators in Taiwan's parliament (the Legislative Yuan). The first attempt was made in 2003 when the government submitted its bill to revise the University Act. In the bill, a whole chapter was devoted to regulations concerned with the incorporation of universities. The proposal promised university corporations autonomy, and, in particular, more flexible personnel and accounting systems. The bill, however, failed to pass the Committee of Education and Culture in the Legislative Yuan. In October 2005, the Ministry of Education tried again by including only one article related to the incorporation of universities in the bill. That article was to provide universities with a legal foundation for incorporation, but the Legislative Yuan passed the bill without including that particular article. It thus failed again. The Ministry of Education has not, however, given up on its policy of incorporating universities. In a special NT$50 billion dollar aid package to universities, the government required that all recipients include a plan for incorporation. In order to receive the special assistance, most universities have chosen not to resist. The incorporation of national universities in Taiwan is an issue that needs to be closely watched in the future.

Creating World-Class Universities in Japan: policy and initiatives

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: Creating World-Class Universities in Japan: policy and initiatives
Author: JUN OBA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 629-640
ABSTRACT For a very long time the Japanese government concentrated its higher education investment on a handful of national institutions, until the policy came to be called into question in the late 1980s in the face of globalisation and other factors. Higher education reform was significantly accelerated in the 1990s: the government has continuously deregulated the higher education system including the incorporation of national universities, and has brought more and more competition through diverse competitive funding schemes. Some policies - not only higher education policies but also science and technology ones - were explicitly designed to develop 'world-class' education and research centres, such as the 21st COE programme. This article suggests that although a funding policy based on competition, with a strict evaluation, seems to be a move in the right direction, a right balance of budget allocation between competitive funds and basic education-research funds should be sought. Furthermore, the programmes of the government have to be offered in a more consistent manner, and more concerted and integrated efforts will be required, to address the critical problem of building world-class universities.

University Restructuring in East Asia: trends, challenges and prospects

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: University Restructuring in East Asia: trends, challenges and prospects
Author: DAVID CHAN; WILLIAM LO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 641-652
ABSTRACT This concluding article aims to pull together the analysis undertaken in the preceding articles in this special issue. By sketching an overview of the university reforms and developments revealed in the sectoral articles, it draws out the trends of university restructuring in East Asia. It then projects the significances of these trends in terms of cautions to be raised. Finally, the article provides some comments on the ways the university sector in East Asia moves forward.

On Marx: an introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:37:26 GMT

Title: On Marx: an introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx
Author: Ruth Rikowski
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 5 Pages: 653-661
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Chris Armbruster
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 371-371
ABSTRACT Commercialisation, internationalisation and the Internet have affected the research university, higher education, academic careers, scholarly communication and scientific publishing over the past decades and will continue to do so. Crucial to debate and policy are issues of funding and finance. The world over, new models are being sought to diversify and increase university income, share the cost of higher education and reduce the adverse effects of rapidly rising prices for journal subscriptions. Key debates are on the entrepreneurial university, tuition fees, junior academic careers, online scholarly communication and the reform of scientific publishing.

Research Universities: autonomy and self-reliance after the Entrepreneurial University

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Research Universities: autonomy and self-reliance after the Entrepreneurial University
Author: CHRIS ARMBRUSTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 372-389
ABSTRACT The Entrepreneurial University is a failed idea. This is not to disparage the entrepreneurial activities of faculty, graduates and students. Neither is it to criticise industry-sponsored research and co-authorship. University research and higher education have a role in innovation. However, if entrepreneurialism is institutionalised as a policy of governments and universities, all manner of things start to go wrong. Not only do participants suffer from disappointed expectations, as expected returns fail to materialise, but also, more importantly, universities that 'go entrepreneurial' ultimately destroy the science commons essential to the university's continued existence. A systematic critique of the concept of the Entrepreneurial University is offered and key data is reviewed. Simultaneously, a broader research programme on university autonomy and finance is advanced.

On Cost-Sharing, Tuition Fees and Income-Contingent Loans for Universal Higher Education: a new contract between university, student and state?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: On Cost-Sharing, Tuition Fees and Income-Contingent Loans for Universal Higher Education: a new contract between university, student and state?
Author: CHRIS ARMBRUSTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 390-408
ABSTRACT In the search for a viable twenty-first century cost-sharing contract between university, student and state, the issues of rising participation and student demand, functional differentiation, institutional competition and stratification and social inequality are systematically discussed. The argument develops through, firstly, a critical appraisal of the genre of elite, mass and universal higher education; secondly, a discussion of the consequences of US institutional stratification; and, thirdly, an assessment of national tuition fee systems as a way of sponsoring mass and universal participation. The Ivy League and the California Master Plan as well as the tuition fee systems in Australia, New Zealand and England have addressed rising participation and relative declining state funding (per full-time equivalent tertiary student) while seeking to preserve and enhance quality by mobilising and concentrating resources. Yet, the accumulated unintended consequences of these systems are undermining their very foundations, making none of these a suitable candidate for emulation in the twenty-first century. Moreover, the conceptual distinction between elite, mass and universal higher education is flawed and not suitable for guiding further reform initiatives. Consequently, it is submitted that the financing of state-funded undergraduate degrees (BA) be decoupled from postgraduate degrees (MA, PhD). The rise of the European Higher Education Area with 46 member states, and more expected to join, serves as a vantage point from which to critique the legacy of the twentieth century and develop preliminary policy recommendations for the twenty-first century.

The Rise of the Post-doc as Principal Investigator? How PhDs May Advance their Career and Knowledge Claims in the New Europe of Knowledge

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: The Rise of the Post-doc as Principal Investigator? How PhDs May Advance their Career and Knowledge Claims in the New Europe of Knowledge
Author: CHRIS ARMBRUSTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 409-423
ABSTRACT The European Research Area and the European Higher Education Area are still under construction. Their foundations, however, are visible and already affect what the next generation of researchers can and cannot do. While it is unclear when, and to what standard, construction will be completed, the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers clarify the expectations of policy makers and major stakeholders. One significant scenario is the rise of the post-doc as principal investigator. This would signal profound change in the governance and funding of research since hitherto the post-doc has been understood primarily as an assistant (to a professor's chair or on a research project). It is outlined which new knowledge and skills PhDs and post-docs need to advance their career and projects more independently - in science and engineering as well as the social sciences and humanities. Potential changes in funding and status are discussed as well as changing relations with supervisors and mentors. Because of European flagship awards for post-docs as well as mobility fellowships, a significant number of post-docs are already principal investigators. Details of these flagship post-doc awards and fellowships are outlined. The report then discusses what doctoral students and post-docs might do individually and collectively to follow in the footsteps of the pioneers. A list of the most valuable online resources is provided.

Open Access in the Natural and Social Sciences: the correspondence of innovative moves to enhance access, inclusion and impact in scholarly communication

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Open Access in the Natural and Social Sciences: the correspondence of innovative moves to enhance access, inclusion and impact in scholarly communication
Author: CHRIS ARMBRUSTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 424-438
ABSTRACT Online, open access is the superior model for scholarly communication. A variety of scientific communities in physics, the life sciences and economics have gone furthest in innovating their scholarly communication through open access, enhancing accessibility for scientists, students and the interested public. Open access enjoys a comparative advantage across the sciences and humanities and it is therefore only logical that functional innovation and structural improvements should be similar in the natural and social sciences. A variety of innovative moves in the natural and social sciences are portrayed and analysed, demonstrating correspondence of the innovative logic across the disciplines even as solutions vary. Open access is technologically feasible and economically efficient. Moreover, open access has become vital to secure the continued advancement of knowledge. It may be expected that public and philanthropic funding will flow in the future only if public visibility and academic impact of the research results can be demonstrated.

Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy. Open Access and Trade Publishing: from contradiction to compatibility with non-exclusive copyright licensing

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy. Open Access and Trade Publishing: from contradiction to compatibility with non-exclusive copyright licensing
Author: CHRIS ARMBRUSTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 439-452
ABSTRACT Open source, open content and open access are set to fundamentally alter the conditions of knowledge production and distribution. Open source, open content and open access are also the most tangible result of the shift towards e-science and digital networking. Yet, widespread misperceptions exist about the impact of this shift on knowledge distribution and scientific publishing. It is argued, on the one hand, that for the academy there principally is no digital dilemma surrounding copyright and there is no contradiction between open science and the knowledge-based economy if profits are made from non-exclusive rights. On the other hand, pressure for the 'digital doubling' of research articles in open access repositories (the 'green road') is misguided and the current model of open access publishing (the 'gold road') has not much future outside biomedicine. Commercial publishers must understand that business models based on the transfer of copyright have not much future either. Digital technology and its economics favour the severance of distribution from certification. What is required of universities and governments, scholars and publishers, is to clear the way for digital innovations in knowledge distribution and scholarly publishing by enabling the emergence of a competitive market that is based on non-exclusive rights. This requires no change in the law but merely an end to the praxis of copyright transfer and exclusive licensing. The best way forward for research organisations, universities and scientists is the adoption of standard copyright licences that reserve some rights, namely Attribution and No Derivative Works, but otherwise will allow for the unlimited reproduction, dissemination and re-use of the research article, commercial uses included.

Learning Without Limits: a Marxist assessment

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Learning Without Limits: a Marxist assessment
Author: MIKE COLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 453-463
ABSTRACT In this article, the author begins by outlining the main features of the Fixed Ability paradigm and the Learning Without Limits paradigm (developed in the book of the same name) respectively. It is argued that the Fixed Ability paradigm must be contested if we are to realise the unlimited potential of the working class, a basic premise of Marxism. The author goes on to suggest that while the LWL paradigm is a considerable advance on the Fixed Ability paradigm, and that it accords with this basic premise of Marxism, it is lacking in two respects: first, its inherent social democratic politics, and second, its lack of concern with the emancipatory potential of content in the curriculum. The author concludes by suggesting some spaces within the English National Curriculum where discussions about global capitalism, and its only humane alternative, international socialism, might take place.

Learning Without Limits - a Marxist assessment: a response to Mike Cole, with a reply from Mike Cole

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Learning Without Limits - a Marxist assessment: a response to Mike Cole, with a reply from Mike Cole
Author: PATRICK YARKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 464-469
ABSTRACT Mike Cole argues in his article (Policy Futures in Education, 6(4), 2008) that the Learning Without Limits (LWL) paradigm of transformability manifests 'inherent social democratic politics', offering merely a reformist rather than a revolutionary outlook. The LWL paradigm is further hamstrung, in his view, by a 'lack of concern with the emancipatory potential of content in the curriculum'. Patrick Yarker tries to argue that the potential of 'transformability' is inherently revolutionary, and that while the relationship between pedagogical form and curriculum content is important (and a more fully-worked-out socialist approach to education would no doubt want to address this issue in some of the ways put forward in Mike Cole's article), the issue of content arises tangentially in a text whose chief aim is to offer the detailed outline of an alternative (and in the author's view oppositional) way of teaching within contemporary (English) schools, based on 'actually-existing' transformability practices.

Towards an Understanding of Educational Indicators

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Towards an Understanding of Educational Indicators
Author: DAVID RUTKOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 470-481
ABSTRACT The role of international organisations (IOs) in educational policy making at all levels of governance has increased in recent history due in part to the creation and dissemination of educational indicators. It is the purpose of this article to introduce the concept of indicators, briefly explain indicators' history and how IOs are involved with indicator collection, and propose one theory toward explaining the increased use of indicators within IOs. In order to facilitate this understanding, the article first attempts to define indicators. It then moves to a brief history of the social and educational indicator movement. This will allow for a better understanding of where education indicators are placed in time and their connection to economic policy knowledge and utility. Finally, the article explores possible motivations for IOs to collect indicators and promote them as valid sources of understanding. While not an exhaustive account, the basis to collect and disseminate indicators includes a desire for comparative information, an aspiration to establish benchmarks, and an ambition to become the sole collectors of information. This list collectively suggests a culture of performativity as described by Lyotard.

Computers/Information and Communications Technology, the Information Profession and the Gender Divide: where are we going?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Computers/Information and Communications Technology, the Information Profession and the Gender Divide: where are we going?
Author: RUTH RIKOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 482-506
ABSTRACT This article examines the gender inequalities in computing, with a particular emphasis on these inequalities within the library and information profession. This includes, discrimination against women in academia; socialisation processes; issues around women's confidence in computing; the male-dominated environment in the computing industry; female isolation in the computing world; females providing ICT support and training (rather than being the main decision-makers); computer programming and screen design and layout; presenteeism and flexible working and social networking. It also notes, in particular, the fact that the number of females in computing continues to fall. Furthermore, there is a section on gender and ICT in Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and developing countries. Consideration is given to a number of issues here, such as some of the ways in which the new technologies can empower women in these countries, but how women are hampered by a lack of resources, education, poor literacy levels and domestic responsibilities. The author suggests that we should seek to find ways to improve this situation, and that social networking could be beneficial here on a short-term basis, but that to find lasting solutions, we should seek to move beyond capitalism itself.

Post-structuralism, Realism and the Question of Knowledge in Educational Sociology: a Derridian critique of social realism in education

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:30:07 GMT

Title: Post-structuralism, Realism and the Question of Knowledge in Educational Sociology: a Derridian critique of social realism in education
Author: MARIA BALARIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 507-527
ABSTRACT This article engages with a current debate in the sociology of educational knowledge which seeks to dispel the alleged relativism of social constructivist influences in education. While supporting the claim that the sociology of education needs to bring knowledge 'back in' to its understanding of school processes and policies, the author contends the necessary relativism that proponents of such efforts often attribute to some of the philosophies that have inspired constructivism. To support this, the article explores the compatibility of some of the realist tenets of post-empiricist philosophy with those of post-structuralism, especially as seen in the work of Jacques Derrida. It is suggested that if the latter's thought does not necessarily shun the connection between knowledge and reality, its contributions towards an ethical understanding of knowledge can be positively incorporated in current debates about the role of knowledge in education.

Overseas Trained Teachers in England: a policy framework for social and professional integration

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: Overseas Trained Teachers in England: a policy framework for social and professional integration
Author: PAUL WASHINGTON MILLER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 280-285
ABSTRACT Overseas trained teachers (OTTs) have become an important part of the make-up of England's primary and secondary education system. Through inadequate, and in some cases a lack of, initial induction and support for professional development, many are at risk of performing sub-optimally and some have become an endangered species. Failure to integrate OTTs in the norms, customs and nuances of the United Kingdom's (UK) system and teaching culture is tantamount to professional neglect and has, in certain cases, led to adjustment problems. With an ageing UK population and more skilled professionals moving abroad, the UK's dependency on OTTs is set to continue. After almost a decade of using the services of OTTs, the government remains non-committal in establishing a framework for effective integration. The expedient use of OTTs must give way to an inclusive and multifaceted integration approach involving governmental and non-governmental organisations and institutions, at all levels of society.

Tenure or Permanent Contracts in North American Higher Education? A Critical Assessment

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: Tenure or Permanent Contracts in North American Higher Education? A Critical Assessment
Author: SIMON BATTERBURY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 286-297
ABSTRACT This article offers a critical perspective on the academic tenure system in the USA. Academic tenure is most frequently defended for the protection it affords freedom of speech in higher education, and it is attacked for its cost and lack of flexibility in a rapidly changing sector. The paper makes a third argument, that tenure sustains an unhealthy divide between tenured, untenured, and non-tenure-track staff members. It leads to differences in status, income, and job satisfaction that are inimical to basic principles of social justice. While financial considerations are a powerful factor in university efforts to constrain or challenge tenure, the maintenance of the tenure system and its use to control entry to permanent employment needs further examination. The author explores the system of 'permanent' contracts common in British and Australasian universities as an alternative for the USA - not because it benefits entrepreneurial university managers and administrators, but for its potential to offer a greater range of career positions for actual and potential staff members.

Envisioning the Classroom as a Social Movement Organization

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: Envisioning the Classroom as a Social Movement Organization
Author: ROB VANWYNSBERGHE; JANET MOORE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 298-311
ABSTRACT This article describes the impact of an innovative higher education initiative called the Learning City Classroom, a project based on the presupposition that the classroom can raise awareness, foster solidarity and construct a collective identity consistent with being part of the sustainability movement. The Learning City Classroom is portrayed as an organizing, designing and implementation entity and as having all the qualities of an emerging social movement organization. The Learning City acts as a social movement organization by identifying shared objectives as critical to the sustainability movement. The outcome of this research shows not only that the university can support the sustainability social movement in concrete and tangible ways, but also, that it can do this in ways that are empowering for grassroots community groups as well as for students.

Hegel's Hold on Conceptions of Human Development

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: Hegel's Hold on Conceptions of Human Development
Author: SEAMUS MULRYAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 312-322
ABSTRACT The use of development is ubiquitous in everyday language, and theories regarding it can be found in the social sciences and humanities. Although much work has been done to examine the meaning of development and its history, little attention has been paid to Hegel's role as the philosophical anchor for the modern life of development. By revisiting Hegel's Philosophy of History and analyzing some of the most influential thinkers in modern theories of human development - spanning economic, social, cognitive and moral - the author argues that these theories are far from escaping the Hegelian logic of Development. Furthermore, he warns of the potential violence necessarily assumed in such theories, and that revolutionizing the philosophical framework upon which developmental theories rest would be a worthwhile endeavor.

The TRIPS Agreement: challenges and possibilities in the negotiation of justice at the transnational level

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: The TRIPS Agreement: challenges and possibilities in the negotiation of justice at the transnational level
Author: PHILLIP KALANTZIS-COPE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 323-330
ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the ideal of justice and institutional 'structures' administering justice/injustice within the contemporary international system through a study of the Trade Related Aspects of Property Right agreement specific focus is the question of 'who counts' in the negotiation of global justice, and the relationships between those affected by the global economic, political and social forces emanating from the agreement. The article problematises the territorial boundedness of questions of justice within a Westphalian horizon of political community. It also seeks to address the challenges that emerge through the example of the TRIPS agreement, and the possible trajectory of political community in a post-Westphalian world.

'Emergency!' Or How to Learn to Live with Neoliberal Globalization

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: 'Emergency!' Or How to Learn to Live with Neoliberal Globalization
Author: CHRISTOPHER G. ROBBINS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 331-350
ABSTRACT The author explores the cultural politics of neoliberal globalization, its deformations of critical facets of public culture as it has returned home, and he explores the politics of emergency. Rather than seeing the politics of emergency as something indicative of an emerging 'emergency regime' attendant to the terror war, he argues that the current politics of emergency is rooted in neoliberal globalization more generally, especially in terms of the need for powerbrokers to institutionalize insecurity and anxiety as central facets of a 'new normal.' He then turns to the criminalization and militarization of schools as examples of how the process of institutionalizing insecurity has unfolded in the last decade, suggesting that public schools are an ostensible and crucial site (being the one of the last sites to be precaritized) because the types of subjects and agents required for neoliberal globalization must learn how to live (in fear) with neoliberal globalization. Without an understanding of how schools are being leveraged to produce a 'new normal,' strategies for engaging schools as democratic public spheres will be potentially under-developed or mis-directed.

Political Economies of Health: a consideration for international nursing studies

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: Political Economies of Health: a consideration for international nursing studies
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS; JOHN S. DRUMMOND
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 351-362
ABSTRACT This article introduces and explores the concept of political economy. In particular it focuses upon the political economy of health while also considering the implications for international nursing studies in the context of health care more generally. Political economy is not only about budgets, resources and policy. It is also about particular kinds of political power that can be difficult to grasp. Often, analyses of power in the nursing literature relate to power at the interpersonal level between say nurses and patients, the interprofessional level between nurses and medics, or at the institutional level between managerial policy and actual practice that often, if not always, relates also to national issues in health care. While acknowledging the value of these analyses, this article seeks to add the dimension of the power of political economy of health at both the national and global level. No political economy is without its underlying political philosophy or ideology which defines the means-end rationality of both desired outcomes and financial pragmatism. This is particularly the case in services such as education and health, in which the differences between various ideological approaches can often be quite remarkable, and not without impact on actual services. The purpose of this article therefore is to firmly place the concept and practice of political economy into international nursing studies by giving examples of its changing nature, its various manifestations and the challenges they present.

BOOK REVIEWS

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 363-369
ABSTRACT Impossible Bodies, Impossible Selves: exclusions and student subjectivities (Deborah Youdell) reviewed by Kalervo N. Gulson and Mary Lou Rasmussen

Haunting the Knowledge Economy (Jane Kenway, Simon Robb, Johannah Fahey & Elizabeth Bullen) reviewed by Daniel Araya

ANNOUNCEMENT

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:28:27 GMT

Title: ANNOUNCEMENT
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Pages: 370-370
ABSTRACT University of Illinois College of Education Masters Degree Program

SYMPOSIUM The Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler) discussed by Philippe Aigrain, Leslie Chan, Jean-Claude Guédon, and John Willinsky, with a response by Yochai Benkler

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: SYMPOSIUM The Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler) discussed by Philippe Aigrain, Leslie Chan, Jean-Claude Guédon, and John Willinsky, with a response by Yochai Benkler
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 152-175
ABSTRACT Not available

Popularising the 'New International Political Economy': the ATTAC movement

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Popularising the 'New International Political Economy': the ATTAC movement
Author: ROXANA BOBULESCU
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 176-186
ABSTRACT Born in France in 1997, the ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens) movement is popularising IPE (international political economy), the interdisciplinary field of study born in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. The affinity between the ideas and main concerns of ATTAC and IPE can be clearly stated. ATTAC is a popular education movement, promoting a critical reading of globalisation. It uses critical pedagogy and is largely supported by 'resisting intellectuals', who are the newborn 'organic intellectuals' once envisioned by Antonio Gramsci.

Language Skills and Economic Returns

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Language Skills and Economic Returns
Author: CHRISTELLE GARROUSTE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 187-202
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the contributions from the emerging positivist epistemological approach, endorsed by the economics of language and the economics of education, to study the returns to language skills, assuming that language competencies constitute key components of human capital. It presents initial results from a study on economic returns to language skills in eight countries enrolled in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) - Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Norway and Italian-speaking Switzerland. The study shows commonalities between countries in terms of language skills valuing, beyond the type of language policy applied at the national level. In each of the eight countries compared, skills in a second language are estimated to be a major factor constraining affecting wage opportunities.

Education and Civic Engagement among Norwegian Youth

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Education and Civic Engagement among Norwegian Youth
Author: JON LAUGLO; TORMOD ØIA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 203-223
ABSTRACT What role does formal education play in the political socialization of youth? The article presents findings from a national survey in 2002 of more than 11,000 youths aged 13-19 in Norway. Indicators of political socialization are: an index of expressed interest in politics and social issues, participation in membership organizations of a political kind, political activism, and unlawful forms of political protest. Except for unlawful forms of protest, interest in politics and social issues, and actual participation, increase with educational achievement and especially with ambition for higher education. But all forms of political participation (but not mere interest in politics) increase with greater than average conflict with teachers and school authority. These findings persist after controls for social class, parental education, and political socialization in the family.

Educational Technology in Crisis

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Educational Technology in Crisis
Author: BEATRIZ FAINHOLC
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 224-234
ABSTRACT The presentation of the historical epistemological path is needed to understand and reconsider the discipline of Educational Technology in articulation to contributions of rupturistic theorists in order to reach to a critical proposal and a revision of its field. This field is facing a deep crisis within a time of world crisis, specially in the southern hemisphere and in contexts of migration of nomad or poor users. The technology should be 'appropriate', socially grounded and culturally adequate in its pedagogical mediations depending on diverse scenarios and actors, who will select and combine traditional elements with virtual ones to be delivered in an electronic formats. Appropriate and Critical Technology is a special technological discipline and a knowledge field where we cultivate open and reflexive special knowledge, towards research and contrast at socio-educational practices, mediated by pedagogical projects and materials articulated with ICT. Its study objects are the educational-technological mediations as historical - cultural - semiologic and didactic environments and tools in diverse formats, which provoke different domains of the socio - cognitive structuring of learners in a situated and distributed way, inscribed within formal and non- formal, face-to-face and distance teaching practices.

Neo-liberalism and Change in Higher Education Policy: England and Japan

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Neo-liberalism and Change in Higher Education Policy: England and Japan
Author: KEIKO YOKOYAMA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 235-256
ABSTRACT The study scrutinizes the rationale behind higher education policy change in England and Japan, giving attention to stakeholders' perspective and legitimacy, policy network, and policy sphere. It argues that change in higher education policy in England and Japan towards being more market-oriented in the 1980s (England) and the 1990s (Japan) can be commonly explained by the government's application of neo-liberal policy. The details in the political rationale for such policy change differ between the two. In England, change in the Government's values and perspective caused the policy change, while in Japan, enlargement of the policy sphere by incorporating non-education sub-government in the policy-making structure and the conflict and compromise between neo-liberal and anti-neo-liberal groups resulted in the Government's policy change. The methods of data collection applied in the study were documentation and semi-structured interviews with selected stakeholders involved in the two higher education systems. The study suggests that not only change in the main stakeholders' values but also that in the policy network is significant in policy change.

Autonomy of (Vocational) Schools as an Answer to Structural Changes

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Autonomy of (Vocational) Schools as an Answer to Structural Changes
Author: GEORG SPÖTTL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 257-264
ABSTRACT In Europe a very intensive discussion is in full swing as to whether vocational schools should in future be guided and monitored by the state or whether they should be freed from state dependency. Within the framework of a number of pilot projects in German-speaking countries, vocational school centres are currently testing their autonomy. This article sketches out the discussion on a way forward.

Adopting a learner-centred perspective showed that formal education and training provide only a small part of what is learned at work. Most of the learning described by the interviewees was non-formal, neither clearly specified nor planned. It arose naturally out of the demands and challenges of work, solving problems, improving quality and/or productivity, or coping with change - and out of social interactions in the workplace. The outcome of such 'learning from experience' was the development of knowledge, skills and understanding, although this was difficult to explain to others. Effective learning was, however, dependent on confidence, motivation and capability - prerequisites for employees' self-management of much of their learning. (Michael Eraut et al, 1998, p. 10ff)

Staging the Performances of the Privileged Social Group (PSG): expanding the philosophical foundation of critical pedagogy

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:10:49 GMT

Title: Staging the Performances of the Privileged Social Group (PSG): expanding the philosophical foundation of critical pedagogy
Author: SCOTT GRAHAM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Pages: 265-279
ABSTRACT Contemporary efforts to rethink the philosophical foundation of critical pedagogy are part of the ongoing project to make the field relevant to current struggles against oppression. Inherent to this project is an invitation to account for the plurality of ways and spaces in which privilege is performed in North American society and the troubling relations between privilege and oppression. The author employs Iris Young's social group concept to frame the construction of the Privileged Social Group (PSG), which, he contends, is a collectivity that has and continues to create relations to Others that systematically result in a range of social benefits for PSG members. The author defines the PSG through an analysis of its social position and the relational performances that it enacts to claim and maintain privilege. Three distinct social contexts in which the PSG is active are also examined, as well as two group control techniques through which PSG members influence one another's beliefs and behaviour for the purpose of claiming privilege as a group.

Introduction: a library revolution of digital proportions

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Introduction: a library revolution of digital proportions
Author: Isaac Hunter Dunlap; Ruth Rikowski
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-4
ABSTRACT The often heard declaration that a revolution is taking place in any certain field has become a tired and much abused practice. Indeed, much of what passes for being truly momentous or indicative of sweeping change is often little more than an unconventional or unfamiliar approach that has been successfully transmigrated from one arena to the next (per Ecclesiastes, 'there is nothing new under the sun'). While the observed effect may seem sensational and striking at first glance, deeper reflection often reveals the change to be transient, one-dimensional or lacking in transformative vitality.

Digital Libraries and Digitisation: an overview and critique

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Digital Libraries and Digitisation: an overview and critique
Author: RUTH RIKOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 5-21
ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of some of the main areas surrounding the broad topic of 'Digital Libraries'. This includes the advantages and costs of digitisation; the traditional and digital library; the library community and digitisation; and an examination of various digital library projects. It is not exhaustive, but hopefully, it provides some general information and guidelines for the reader. The article concludes with a critique within a social and political angle, including a consideration of the gender issue.

Digital Knowledge Resources

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Digital Knowledge Resources
Author: M. PAUL PANDIAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 22-38
ABSTRACT Technology has revolutionized the concept of libraries. Networking and computing technologies have now become sufficiently advanced to support the design and deployment of large digital libraries which are capable of supporting the conventional end-user functions. Digital libraries are a natural extension of the evolution in which libraries have been involved for centuries. They represent a fundamental leap forward in the provision of services for, and partnership with, information communities. Because of the 'digital' nature, information resources can be shared over the powerful network. With the innovative use of information technology and the integration of many tools and techniques developed thus far and in the foreseeable future, information provision can be more complete, faster, and broad-based. Digital Libraries can be accessed anywhere, any time, by anyone who needs them. Thus, the potential should be great. This article provides an overview of digital and other electronic information resources, their characteristics, growth and developments, and their impact on information access and use. It also deals with issues relevant to building digital library collections and systems.

SPARC: creating innovative models and environments for scholarly research and communication

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: SPARC: creating innovative models and environments for scholarly research and communication
Author: HEATHER JOSEPH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 39-42
ABSTRACT The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a strategic initiative founded by the Association of Research Libraries, is a catalyst for promoting a scholarly communication environment that is more open, financially tenable, and supportive of the current research and information needs of academe. Established in response to imbalances in the scholarly publishing system and the skyrocketing costs of commercial peer-reviewed journals, SPARC is successfully leveraging digital technology and collaboratively finding ways to facilitate the access, sharing and use of scholarly information. This article explores three of SPARC's major programmatic areas (education, incubation, advocacy), and examines how the organization is playing an active role in developing alternate scholarly communication models while constructively influencing public policy in the service of libraries and university communities.

Meeting and Serving Users in Their New Work (and Play) Spaces

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Meeting and Serving Users in Their New Work (and Play) Spaces
Author: TOM PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 43-48
ABSTRACT This article examines the public services component of digital and virtual libraries, focusing on the end-user experience. As the number and types of 'places' where library users access library collections and services continue to expand (now including cell phones, iPods, and three-dimensional virtual reality environments populated by avatars), librarians and educators need to examine the key components of these experiential environments, then establish and deploy service programs and underlying policies and procedures that exploit the affordances offered by these new usage environments. Several of the characteristics of these new service environments (e.g. the competition - or conflation - between learning and entertainment, the competition between various libraries and information services in the same space, the read-write participatory nature of many of these environments, and the arrival in a big way of multimedia - both concurrent and serial) are explored.

Virtual Libraries and Education in Virtual Worlds: twenty-first century library services

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Virtual Libraries and Education in Virtual Worlds: twenty-first century library services
Author: LORI BELL; MARY-CAROL LINDBLOOM; TOM PETERS; KITTY POPE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 49-58
ABSTRACT As the use of the Internet and time spent on the Internet by individuals grows, and the use of virtual worlds like Active Worlds and Second Life increases, the library needs to have an interactive place and role in these worlds as well as a bricks and mortar space. This article provides an overview of what some libraries are doing in these worlds, especially on a collaborative library project in Second Life that was set up by two of the authors, Bell and Pope. The authors discuss and share successes and challenges with the project, how libraries are very relevant in these worlds, and how they can create partnerships with educators.

Digital Library and Digital Reference Service: integration and mutual complementarity

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Digital Library and Digital Reference Service: integration and mutual complementarity
Author: JIA LIU
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 59-76
ABSTRACT Both the digital library and the digital reference service were invented and have been developed under the networked environment. Among their intersections, the fundamental thing is their symbiotic interest - serving the user in a more efficient way. The article starts by discussing the digital library and its service and the digital reference service and its collection. Then, based on a series of case studies, the article explores the necessity of their three-dimensional integration, i.e. the completely parallel integration, the digital reference service affiliated with a digital library and a digital library integrated into the reference service. It is proposed that the two communities could achieve improvement simultaneously through mutual complementarity.

The New Generation of Citation Indexing in the Age of Digital Libraries

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: The New Generation of Citation Indexing in the Age of Digital Libraries
Author: MENGXIONG LIU; PEGGY CABRERA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 77-86
ABSTRACT As the Web is becoming a powerful new medium in scientific publication and scholarly communication, citation indexing has found a new application in the digital environment. The authors reviewed the new developments in Web-based citation indexing and conducted a case study in three major citation search tools, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Based on the evaluations and comparisons of citing reference searches, the authors concluded that there is no single solution for a complete citing reference search without a Universal Citation Digital Library.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations: promoting 'hidden' research

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Electronic Theses and Dissertations: promoting 'hidden' research
Author: SUSAN COPELAND
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 87-96
ABSTRACT Since the mid 1990s an increasing number of higher education institutions and organisations have been encouraging the production and submission of theses and dissertations in electronic format. Where access to electronic theses and dissertations is available via the Internet, usage figures indicate that this is a much consulted resource. However, until recently, only a small percentage of the theses produced internationally have been mounted on web pages. The situation is now changing as efforts to promote 'open access' are leading many universities to develop institutional repositories which contain the full text of theses and dissertations alongside journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, reports and associated research data sets, etc. Attention is now being directed towards the identification and dissemination of examples of good practice, and attempts are being made to coordinate activities across institutions both nationally and internationally (to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort and encourage developmental work in areas where this will be beneficial). This article highlights key issues associated with the creation, management and use of electronic theses and dissertations and provides information about organisations that are actively working to promote this useful source of research data. Information is provided on topics such as training, technical and administrative requirements, and the issues to address, whether adopting a local, institutional, approach or participating in a national level service.

Learning Systems in Post-statutory Education

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Learning Systems in Post-statutory Education
Author: PAUL CATHERALL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 97-108
ABSTRACT This article examines the broad scope of systemised learning (e-learning) in post-statutory education. Issues for discussion include the origins and forms of learning systems, including technical and educational concepts and approaches, such as distributed and collaborative learning. The VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) is defined as the prevalent form of e-learning, including the use of related systems within the MLE (Managed Learning Environment) such as CMS (Content Management Systems) and learning repositories. Challenges in the delivery of systems and software to facilitate learning in a digital context are described, including system selection issues, system configuration, project deployment, system management and integration with other library systems; consideration is also given to user support and training. Accessibility requirements within VLEs are briefly described, including a definition of web standards required for accessibility compliance. Trends in e-learning are also explored, including future technologies such as m-learning (mobile learning). The article concludes with a discussion on the emergence of the global market in education and critical perspectives on learning systems.

Building the Virtual Scriptorium

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Building the Virtual Scriptorium
Author: TATIANA NIKOLOVA-HOUSTON; RON HOUSTON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 109-121
ABSTRACT Manuscripts, archives, and early printed books contain a documentary record of the foundations of human knowledge. Many elements restrict access to this corpus, from preservation concerns to censorship. On the assumption that the widespread availability of knowledge benefits the human condition more than the restriction of knowledge, elements restrictive to the dissemination of manuscripts, archives, and early printed books should be overcome, and the intellectual content of such items should be available to as wide an audience as possible through the digital library equivalent of the medieval scriptorium, termed here the 'virtual scriptorium'.

Impacts of New Media on Scholarly Publishing

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Impacts of New Media on Scholarly Publishing
Author: YEHUDA E. KALAY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 122-131
ABSTRACT This article summarizes a few key results of a workshop, held in the University of California Berkeley in June 2006, organized by the Center for New Media and supported by Elsevier, the leading publisher of scholarly journals. The workshop focused on the following questions: How will scientific publishing be affected by New Media? How will the new means of production, dissemination, and consumption of information impact scientific publishing? How will they affect the social, cultural, legal, and economic modalities of its practice? How will they affect the practitioners and the institutions that rely on it? How will they affect society at large? The article discusses the results of the workshop in terms of how New Media affect personal information behavior, research group behavior, and issues affecting scholarly communication generally.

Going Digital: the transformation of scholarly communication and academic libraries

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: Going Digital: the transformation of scholarly communication and academic libraries
Author: ISAAC HUNTER DUNLAP
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 132-141
ABSTRACT Not since the age of Gutenberg has an information upheaval so thoroughly disrupted the processes of scholarly knowledge creation, management and preservation as the digital revolution currently under way. Academic libraries have traditionally been structured to effectively facilitate the access, use and storage of mostly static, print-based research collections. In the midst of sweeping change university libraries are attempting to re-imagine services, embrace emerging technologies, reallocate resources and provide proactive leadership in a new digital knowledge society. This article provides both historical perspective and a forward-looking examination into how academic libraries are transforming themselves to both cope with, and help shape, unprecedented transitions in scholarly research and communication.

BOOK REVIEWS

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:47 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2008 Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Pages: 142-151
ABSTRACT Building Knowledge Cultures: education and developments in the age of knowledge capitalism (Michael A. Peters, with A.C. (Tina) Besley), reviewed by Ruth Rikowski, pages 142-145

Constraining Public Libraries: the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (Samuel E. Trosow & Kirsti Nilsen), reviewed by Ruth Rikowski, pages 146-147

Libr@ries: changing information space and practice (Cushla Kapitzke & Bertam C. Bruce, Eds), reviewed by Ruth Rikowski, pages 147-150

Open Source Database Driven Web Development: a guide for information professionals (Isaac Hunter Dunlap), reviewed by Ruth Rikowski

Educating Elites in Democratic Societies: a dialogue

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Educating Elites in Democratic Societies: a dialogue
Author: JOSEPH AGASSI; RONALD SWARTZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 424-430
ABSTRACT This dialogue centers on the following questions: (1) How can schools help a society select or identify new elites who are hopefully as good as and perhaps even better than those individuals who belong to the existing elite system?, and (2) How can we create learning situations that provide the most general learner with a broad basic education? The first question is rejected as highly inadequate and unsatisfactory partly because it makes a number of mistaken assumptions about how schools can best meet the educational needs in modern countries (such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada). The second question is deemed extremely worthwhile; it should be at the heart of educational dialogues in liberal democratic societies. The discussion is mainly about the desirability of replacing the first problem (of selecting new elites) with the second problem (of a broad basic education) by the way of commentary on the development of Western educational thought from Plato to Popper and beyond. A major aim of this dialogue is to upgrade the way elites in liberal democratic societies attempt to reform and improve our educational institutions.

Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: technology, politics and the reconstruction of education

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: technology, politics and the reconstruction of education
Author: RICHARD KAHN; DOUGLAS KELLNER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 431-448
ABSTRACT This article examines the theories of education and technology held by two of the most important philosophers of education during the last few decades, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich. These two related thinkers each charted a unique approach to the questions surrounding modern education and technology, and despite their widely acknowledged brilliance, and in Freire's case the establishment of an entire field of critical pedagogy throughout North America, almost no attention has been paid to examining their views on educational technology. This article fills that important gap and attempts to dialectically mediate their two positions towards a broader critique of media culture and the role of educational technology generally. By utilizing both Freire and Illich, it is argued, a critical pedagogy of technology can be reconstructed that is capable of speaking to today's needs, and this critical pedagogy itself can be reconstructive of the current terrain in education as it works to overcome inequalities through the appropriate use of technology and the establishment of critical consciousness on the issues surrounding technology and society.

Governmentality, European Politics and the Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Governmentality, European Politics and the Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities
Author: ANDREA LIESNER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 449-459
ABSTRACT This article deals with the governmental strategies basic to the construction of the European Higher Education Area within the Bologna Process. With regard to the actual reconstruction of German universities, these strategies are verified on a structural level, in individual and collective subject relations and also in the subject matter which is to be taught and learned. The introduction of standardized quality assurance procedures, the promotion of entrepreneurial forms of subjectivation and the dividing of knowledge into functional modules are powerful instruments which combine to form a reduced understanding of what is supposed to be economic with a universal claim. Now, after the first half of the Bologna Process, some possible effects of these strategies are visible. From an educational perspective, there are two corresponding tendencies in particular which are noteworthy: while the knowledge of educational experts outside the university is devalued by a common prudentialism, educational sciences within the German universities are trivialized by structures and curricula which tend to obstruct the production of new dimensions of knowledge and to curtail the possibilities of scientific scepticism and critique.

The Cross-thematic Approach and the 'New' Curricula of Greek Compulsory Education: review of an incompatible relationship

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: The Cross-thematic Approach and the 'New' Curricula of Greek Compulsory Education: review of an incompatible relationship
Author: OSTAS AGGELAKOS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 460-467
ABSTRACT Compulsory Greek education has long shown its need for revision. The Greek Pedagogical Institute (GPI) has presented the cross-thematic approach as a panacea, yet further changes are necessary in terms of experiential learning, school subject demarcation, teaching time management, teaching material, and the student/educator role. This article examines whether these changes are incorporated in the recent educational system revision, which resulted in widespread confusion, a national debate, and the publication of A Cross-thematic Curriculum Framework for Compulsory Education (DEPPS). A speech analysis of GPI leadership indicates the exaggerated, fictionalised, and ideological use of the term 'cross-thematic'. Futhermore, detailed analysis demonstrates that the new 'cross-thematic' curricula reproduce the 1999 curricula, making no major changes to traditional school subject demarcation, or teaching time management. New curriculum elements are also problematic; the fundamental cross-thematic concepts are vague and haphazard, while the recommended cross-thematic activities (projects) are undermined by poor examples or inadequate allotted teaching time. Moreover, the 'new' curricula follow the goal-setting model, which leads to a multiplicity of teaching objectives and to increased content quantity, thus impeding schoolbook writing. Most importantly, the suggested integration of the cross-thematic approach in Greek schools is not ideologically neutral.

Development and Change in Swedish Municipal Adult Education: occupational life history studies and four genealogies of context

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Development and Change in Swedish Municipal Adult Education: occupational life history studies and four genealogies of context
Author: INGRID HENNING LOEB
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 468-477
ABSTRACT This article is based on the author's dissertation work on development and change in Swedish municipal adult education (MAE), investigated through occupational life history studies of four teachers in different municipalities who have worked in MAE since the mid 1970s. Three periods of development - three 'eras' - in MAE have been identified in terms of its relationship to the state, comprising two restructuring shifts: (1) from centralization to decentralization in the early 1990s, and (2) the establishment of quasi-marketization of adult education in the late 1990s, with a variety of adult education providers, municipal boards and procurement processes. Comprehensive analysis of the four teacher trajectories and their genealogies of context has been carried out relating to the three eras, and concepts on mechanisms for institutional isomorphism have been used for analysis on why and how the different MAE organizations that the four teachers work in have developed in similar or homogenous ways. In the article, tensions and contestation in development and change in the local context are made explicit, and are analysed and provide the basis for problematizing late national reformation and restructuring efforts.

The Varieties of University Entrepreneurialism: thematic patterns and ambiguities in Swedish university strategies

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: The Varieties of University Entrepreneurialism: thematic patterns and ambiguities in Swedish university strategies
Author: TOMAS HELLSTRÖM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 478-490
ABSTRACT The idea of the 'entrepreneurial university' has captured the imagination of academics and policy makers for some time now. However, most of the recent writings on the subject have tended to emphasize technology transfer in terms of spin-off creation and licensing. This article takes its point of departure in the strategy formulations of Swedish public universities to inquire into the varieties of university entrepreneurialism, that is the breadth of the spectrum from short- to medium-term capitalization from innovation, to social outreach and organizational cultural change. The study builds on a qualitative content analysis of strategy documents which explicates and discusses ongoing and planned third mission activities - including commercialization and outreach - at Swedish universities. The strategy categories derived from this study include (1) support infrastructures for commercialization, (2) internal knowledge building and cultural change, and (3) outreach and sectoral cooperative activities, as well as eight subcategories. The article contributes an explication and a discussion of these categories, and concludes with a number of issues relating to the way universities may develop these strategic dimensions given the conflicting or ambiguous goals present in the notion of the entrepreneurial university.

Jack Mezirow and Perspective Transformation: toward an understanding of Irish educational policy within a European framework

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Jack Mezirow and Perspective Transformation: toward an understanding of Irish educational policy within a European framework
Author: TIMOTHY MURPHY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 491-496
ABSTRACT This article considers important junctures in the evolution of Irish educational policy. For this purpose, the author makes appropriate references to the theoretical framework of Jack Mezirow. In particular, Mezirow's treatment of 'meaning schemes', 'meaning perspectives' and 'paradigm shifts' are applied toward a better understanding of recent developments in educational policy there. The principal 'paradigms' or 'frames of reference' which underpin the formulation of educational policy are considered. It is hoped that such an analysis will contribute to the on-going debate about the future role of education in society in Europe generally. Readers from outside Ireland have an opportunity to reflect on the various influences that have impacted the evolution of their educational policies, and may identify resonances with specific developments in the Irish context, as well as points of departure.

A Communitarian Critique of the Warfare State: implications for the twenty-first-century university

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: A Communitarian Critique of the Warfare State: implications for the twenty-first-century university
Author: PAUL THEOBALD; JIM KNOTWELL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 497-506
ABSTRACT This article contends that the relatively recent academic movement known as communitarianism can serve as a policy guide that could work catalytically on American cultural development of the sort that would loosen the tight military-industrial connection and in so doing aid the dismantling of the 'warfare state.' After chronicling the development of our current cultural circumstances, the authors demonstrate the possible contributions of communitarianism to a culture that raises community welfare among its list of policy priorities. They further argue that the deployment of community-oriented policy will require universities that engage students relative to the merits of communitarian theory.

Toward an Authentic Ethos for Online Higher Education

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Toward an Authentic Ethos for Online Higher Education
Author: GRAHAM E. HIGGS; JOHN BUDD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 507-515
ABSTRACT The influence of capitalism on education's telos is a subject of critical concern. This article argues that a neo-liberal ideal that markets should determine educational efficacy and process is antithetical to the cultural good. The authors describe education as fundamentally teleological, responsible for defining, building and sustaining civilization. They further argue that an illusory ethos built upon the purely instrumental goals of the marketplace is replacing the authentic ethos for culture and identity building found in education's traditional telos. The authors hope to open a discussion that addresses the philosophical assumptions which underlie the emerging and burgeoning industry in online higher education. A call is made for a critical examination of the instrumental ethos and it is claimed that an authentic ethos will necessarily include a discourse that questions the goals for culture found in education.

Inequity in the Australian Education System

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Inequity in the Australian Education System
Author: AYBEK GOREY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 516-518
ABSTRACT This article deals with the current situation of the Australian education system- particularly the public schools in disadvantaged areas. Research undertaken in the last decade show that while Australia has developed intensively in economic terms in the last ten years, inequality has spread nonetheless. Furthermore, there are legal barriers for public schools in obtaining funds unlike private schools. The article aims to assure the policymakers that pumping more funds into the system would not be as effective as investing in to create a caring community through motivated and well-resourced teachers.

Multiculturalism and a Research Perspective in Initial Teacher Education: possible dialogues

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Multiculturalism and a Research Perspective in Initial Teacher Education: possible dialogues
Author: ANA CANEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 519-534
ABSTRACT This article describes action research within a multicultural pedagogical praxis orientation in a teacher education course at a higher education institution in Brazil during the academic year 2003. The narrative draws on the ways in which the course sought to develop a research perspective that could equip student teachers with elements that allow them to interrogate the constructions of social and cultural inequalities, as well as of the process of research itself and the impact of the researcher as a multicultural identity. The meanings, potentials and challenges of the research undertaken are discussed and should be relevant comparatively, not only because they highlight tensions of multiculturalism and seek to refine the concept of multicultural research, but also because local narratives reflect imbricated global issues that go beyond national borders, particularly concerning the role of research within teacher education in highly multicultural countries.

Towards Equity in the Futures Market: curriculum as a condition of access

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Towards Equity in the Futures Market: curriculum as a condition of access
Author: LINDA J. GRAHAM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 535-555
ABSTRACT This article provides a consideration of the problem of equity in education. In the first part of the discussion, the author draws on philosophical and sociological literature to consider what equity means and its implications for education. Drawing on work by Burbules, Lord and Sherman, she looks to curriculum as a condition of access and the importance of learning support structures in bringing about equitable educational outcomes, conceived in terms of Amy Gutmann's democratic threshold. The article offers a conceptual-theoretical model for thinking about the resourcing and curricular requirements for equity in contemporary liberal democratic societies, contrasting the social and economic policy mixes employed by governments situated at different points along a liberty/equality continuum.

Neoconservatism English-style: back to the future with remoralizing voices for education?

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Neoconservatism English-style: back to the future with remoralizing voices for education?
Author: ANTHONY GREEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 556-566
ABSTRACT This articles addresses the conservative dynamics of 'neoconservatism' in the field of education with particular reference to possible complementarities between the 'voices' of two, seemingly alternative public intellectuals. These dynamics are conceptualized as part of what is, in social realist mode, enmoralization, a term coined to specify part of the structures and processes of realizing morale, by which remoralization works in this context to 'neo' conservative effects. Here, the post-postmodernist rediscovery of the moral and the ethical, the remoralization agenda, works to TINA by supporting the morale of the fatalism of capitalism. In the context of Blairite New Labour education policy, this ideology critique suggests ways in which neoconservatism articulates neoliberalism where agendas are set to prioritize authority over equity and social justice and to foreshorten the search for radical alternatives for policy futures.

Extending the Responsibilities for Schools beyond the School Door

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: Extending the Responsibilities for Schools beyond the School Door
Author: KENT DEN HEYER; ANDREW PIFEL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 567-580
ABSTRACT In this article, the authors use qualitative and quantitative research to identify the performance of social actors whose decisions impact students and teachers, elucidate a set of measurements for their performance, and offer both a theoretical and research justification for these measurements. The work challenges two faulty assumptions behind the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that make it more likely that school curricula will continue to be unrepresentative of diverse experiences and that far too many children will continue to attend schools under unnecessarily trying conditions. The first faulty assumption is the legislation's location of school 'problems' or the 'problems with schools' as beginning and ending at the school door. A second assumption that the authors' development of research-based rubrics seeks to challenge is a prevalent attitude in US society regarding individual responsibility for personal success or failure, which supports the thrust of NCLB in the public imagination. Like the ill-distribution of economic possibilities despite people's hard work, rubrics holding the various public stakeholders in education are required to appropriately expand responsibility for student success beyond schools and teachers.

BOOK REVIEWS

Mon, 3 Sep 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Pages: 581-586
ABSTRACT Declining by Degrees: higher education at risk (Richard H. Hersh & John Merrow, Eds), reviewed by Casey E. George-Jackson, pages 581-584

Inventing the Modern Self and John Dewey: modernities and the traveling of pragmatism in education (Thomas S. Popkewitz, Ed.), reviewed by Seamus Mulryan, pages 584-586

Introduction

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Russell Farnen; Heinz Sünker
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 275-277
ABSTRACT This special guest-edited issue of Policy Futures in Education draws upon the expertise of scholars from Israel, Germany, Norway, South Africa and the USA. Two of the articles appearing here (Farnen and German & Lally) stem from the June 2005 conference on childhood, youth and society in Wuppertal, three others (Michel, Schertges, and Sünker & Swiderek) were also created in that city and the last three articles (Hemson, Westrheim & Lillejord, and Shepherd) come from South Africa, Norway, and the USA, having only been commissioned from Wuppertal. In a sense this collection of articles on political socialization, childhood and education would not exist without the long-standing support and inspiration that the Bergische University provided to all of us.

This collection of articles fits within the thematic genre which this journal has identified for its authors to address for its readership. This includes a shared interest in social inclusion and cohesion (e.g. Shepherd, Hemson, Sünker & Swiderek), political/national culture and identity (Farnen, Michel, Westrheim & Lillejord), global media trends (German & Lally, Schertges), and citizenship (Farnen, German & Lally, Westrheim & Lillejord, Sünker & Swiderek). The three principal topics with which contributors deal are, namely, childhood and class/politics; political media; and political socialization and education. These subheadings provide the organizing scheme for the presentation of this diverse work. Now we shall say a few introductory words about each of the eight articles.

Childhood and Class/Politics

Farnen deals with the much neglected subject of class and its educational links in North America. He singles out the current obsession with mass, criterion-based, high-stakes testing for particular criticism and excoriation. He also claims that socio-economic status (SES) repeatedly is a 'principal determinant' of test performance along with race, ethnicity, and urban residence. Another case examined is service learning, also a middle-class treasure trove and new civic panacea providing the 'great white hope' for an in-school civic epiphany with an instant infusion of social capital to offset serious losses which the Harvard scholar, Robert Putnam, regularly bemoans. Farnen also proposes two other meliorations of class's meretricious effects, namely, reconstruing political socialization's research paradigm to emphasize now-neglected topics (such as SES, cognitive processing, family and group activities) and educational reforms consonant with radical pedagogy/critical theory. Civic education reforms, group work, and calling a halt to the class warfare now under way in North American schools, churches, job sites, media, and public life are needed.

Also speaking to the theme of political socialization and education, Sünker & Swiderek examine the politics of childhood, democracy, and communal life. They discuss children's rights from the perspective of the United Nations, UNICEF, the Council of Europe, relevant German child and youth welfare law (KJHG) and similar European initiatives providing for protection, provision, and participation (e.g. the Children's Office/Parliament). Too many present trends in childhood and youth policy are paternalistic, encourage conformity rather than emancipation, and serve to reinforce the status quo and traditional hegemonic relationships. Child politics in Germany, for example, still tends to be for rather than of children, is less democratic and participatory than is needed, fails to advance democratic initiatives, and lacks spontaneity, imagination, and creativity. Yet we must work with what we are given while focusing on empowerment, maturity, self-determination, emancipation, liberation, and participation.

Hemson discusses rural children in South Africa collecting water for much of the day, which in turn takes time away from their schooling with deleterious effects on their health, education and lives. These water carriers are mostly young boys who never recover from this type of debilitating experience. Their education is given short shrift in that the water carriers are fatigued, late for school, lack concentration, have low morale, and leave early, making it a short school day. Although youth are highly valued in South Africa, there are not enough regional public water supply projects to provide relief for these youth so that they may complete their schooling in proper fashion. Since the South African water supply projects are behind in their scheduled implementation, there is no great hope that they will provide relief for this problem, especially since some of the completed projects have not had a great impact on this aspect of child labor exploitation in the country. To succeed, there is a need for planning, child protection, and participation in policy making, advocacy, priority ranking, research, and elimination of this major, but hidden, social problem.

Media

German & Lally present an updated, revised and much expanded version of their June 2005 Wuppertal conference paper on US media use and its effects. The Internet, social capital formation, and the global electronic media outbreak combined with the devolution of print media as well as the Internet. Specialized electronic media and the Internet combine to decrease group connectedness while increasing individualization, loneliness, apathy, and occasionally anomie. Race and SES are two other factors causing a 'digital divide' in that the financially poor are also electronically/technology poor so they now have fewer books and paper media at home as well as a meager electronic diet to choose from there. Yet African Americans are more television dependent than are whites/Hispanics, and African Americans and Hispanics are less Internet connected (because of high associated costs) than whites.

These media developments do not support the growth of new social capital already seriously injured by television dependence and isolation. Improved access to new technology is essential for knowledge production as well as political socialization, identity development and personal democratic growth. Media research clearly documents television/filmic violence and its contribution to aggressive behavior, but additional studies are under way on the Internet and its political socialization effects. Politicians, legislators, media suppliers and consumers, and American citizens will then have to decide if the new information found supports the media-violence link and, if so, does this mean censorship or more regulation? Or will it be just a continuance of press freedom and commercial profit taking?

Schertges adopts a Habermasian approach to political media in the public sphere. That is, media are not just political agenda setters, nor do they just tell us what to think about, they are also an integral part of politics and the public sphere since there is a close link between political news and political consciousness, public opinion, and public knowledge. Media research to date supports the convergence hypothesis in competitive environments, i.e. the most entertaining parts of, say, a popular newscast, will soon be adopted by other news agencies, especially commercial broadcasters. Media are used in modern societies as boredom eliminators, companions, and time killers. The news they supply is retrospective and seemingly complete and current but it is always lacking in analysis and predictive power or utility. Media also provide a common format, a sense of completeness, but events reported are trivial, disjointed, selective, misleading and, in some cases, productive of anomie, frustration, and alienation.

Political Socialization and Education

Michel's piece on political socialization, consciousness, and agency in Israel discusses first-hand political research results from a study of older Israelis, Jewish-German citizens, divided into two groups, namely, pre-May 1948 immigrants (German Zionists and asylum seekers) who came directly to Israel, and a second group of respondents who were Holocaust survivors sharing their concentration camp experience and going to Israel after May 1948.

These interviews focused on their historical-political experiences as well as attitudes about Israeli politics and Middle East conflicts. The pre-1948 Israelis were more interested in their past creativity and stressed meritocracy and internal security. They were more open-minded about working with Palestinians and Arabs for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The Holocaust survivors were externally security focused and opposed giving any concessions to the Arabs. Domestically, the second group expected more from the state and was more critical while the Zionists were more supportive of present-day internal affairs practices. Each group showed that they clearly were products of their times and personal experiences.

Next, Westrheim & Lillejord relate the story of their personal research efforts among the PKK guerillas in Turkey, dealing with knowledge production and identity formation. The Freirean tradition of emancipatory/liberating research is used. A 'zone for deliberation' can be created for developing intersubjectivity and understanding, especially when the experiences of the interviewee and the interviewer are culturally distant and seemingly unbridgeable.

These authors also examine the ideas of 'objectivity' and 'bias' control within the framework of critical pedagogy/theory, concluding that such qualitative research properly done is done with, not to or for subjects using dialogue and participation, especially if the interview climate is rife with conflict and the interviewees have been previously isolated and marginalized, never before serving as the focal point of research apart from their institutional/organizational ties. This 'zone' is something that develops over time as an outcome of mutual trust and confidence building where the subjects can freely express themselves before the interviewer starts to ask his/her own questions. The goal is to listen, understand and learn.

In addition to growing mutual trust, decency, transparency and shared power relationships are equally necessary, just as is individualization of the non-traditional interview process, rather than taking a collective, perhaps non-productive, approach. The interviewer may have initially been deliberately manipulated; but once trust builds up, he/she may be fully accepted into the group as a working partner. The other trap interviewers must avoid is to be used as propaganda peddlers for the marginalized group in question, one which lives on free publicity while always seeking legitimacy. One cannot be a comrade and friend as well as a researcher in such a case.

Finally, Linda Shepherd discusses community violence and its cultural and political socialization effects in Northern Ireland. She examines sectarian violence and its interrelationships with anxiety, aggression, segregation, intimidation, and fractured community unity with restricted political participation. She employs a Northern Ireland data set called the Youthquest 2000 Survey. Scalogram analysis of property, proximity, violence and personal experience was conducted along with measures of political information, attitudes and anxiety.

Results indicated that exposure to violence was positively correlated with, for example, political interest and support for youths' voting rights whereas property/personal violence were not related to support for voting rights for the youth. Violence exposure also seems to affect political information and attitudes. The combination of low political trust and high political efficacy levels may be a harbinger of future paramilitary activity, protest, and other violent behaviors. Both political and group political development may also be arrested if this process takes root.

Russell Farnen University of Connecticut, USA

Heinz Sünker University of Wuppertal, Germany

Class Matters: inequality, SES, education and childhood in the USA and Canada today

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Class Matters: inequality, SES, education and childhood in the USA and Canada today
Author: RUSSELL F. FARNEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 278-302
ABSTRACT This article examines recent trends in childhood and youth policy, political socialization, and civic education in the USA and Canada since 2000. It examines some of the current trends (such as political socialization and education research findings on children and youth) as well as policy initiatives (such as the landmark federal legislation called the 'No Child Left Behind' law which mandates yearly testing in reading, writing, and mathematics from grade 5 on while totally ignoring other fields critical to democratic political development (such as social studies and civics). In addition, the article broaches the subject of class and socio-economic status (SES) in the US educational system and other trends such as introducing service learning into the elementary grades. Briefly put, all measures used for evaluation to date point to SES as the principal determinant of test performance, along with race, ethnicity, urban residence, and other such background factors. Service learning is also worth discussing both for its philosophical roots (which are firmly middle class) but also for its fit with the US and Canadian volunteeristic capitalistic political cultures which stress self-reliance and individualism. The article also considers some of the counter-effectiveness research that people (such as Gerald Bracey) use to indicate that except for its elitism, the US/Canadian educational systems are not underperforming and that educational critics have a hostile anti-public policy stance because they wish to privatize everything, regardless of the consequences therefrom to a democratic society.

Politics of Childhood, Democracy and Communal Life: conditions of political socialisation and education

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Politics of Childhood, Democracy and Communal Life: conditions of political socialisation and education
Author: HEINZ SÜNKER; THOMAS SWIDEREK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 303-314
ABSTRACT Conditions of children's political socialisation and education have more than ever in the last 40 years to deal with questions of social inclusion and exclusion. This is a result of social cleavages which are pertinent for children's lives and experiences. This article deals with this question while favouring an approach which shows that a strengthening of children's rights - based on an emancipatory concept of politics of childhood - could support the struggle against these cleavages in the interest of establishing a really democratic society. A central starting point for an improvement of the situation of all children could be a new connection between communal life and childhood policies. Therefore the article shows different approaches which work on this level and argues for their generalisation. When the future of mankind is at stake, only a democratisation of society/ies - based on enlisting the competencies of all citizens (including children ) - can be useful. This is the major challenge for political education.

'The Toughest of Chores': policy and practice in children collecting water in South Africa

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: 'The Toughest of Chores': policy and practice in children collecting water in South Africa
Author: DAVID HEMSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 315-326
ABSTRACT The child has an elevated position within national policy in South Africa. This concern for children has been translated in varying degrees into policy, particularly in relation to child labour. Internationally there is concern that forms of child work should not impede the development of the child, particularly in health and education. Research conducted in South Africa has concluded that children collecting water, often over long distances in rural communities, is one of the most common forms of child labour. The research pioneers the study of children collecting water and develops an appropriate research methodology. The results of a survey into this practice conclude that in rural communities there are very high proportions of children collecting water. Of the time per week spent in domestic activities, two-thirds is spent in collecting water. The children's attitude is generally that this is a socially necessary practice. Among those collecting, however, an important proportion of those who are most extensively involved report that they are suffering ill effects in terms of education and health. The survey found that that those collecting for longer hours than the average complained of often being late for school, being unable to concentrate in class, having poor morale, and needing to leave school as early as possible to collect water. Delayed progress through schooling at the 'appropriate' age is also evident as well as complaints of fatigue and other health effects. The results of this research are intended to lead to the prioritisation of the implementation of water projects to areas where there are large numbers of children collecting water.

A Profile of Americans' Media Use and Political Socialization Effects: television and the Internet's relationship to social connectedness in the USA

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: A Profile of Americans' Media Use and Political Socialization Effects: television and the Internet's relationship to social connectedness in the USA
Author: DANIEL GERMAN; CAITLIN LALLY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 327-344
ABSTRACT This research project traces the media use habits of children and adults. Over time, television consumption is increasing even though computer and Internet activities are also rapidly increasing. The American people are consuming greater amounts of electronic media while traditional newspaper use is declining. It appears that people are not connecting face to face as much as in the past and live more and more in the individualized world of media. Furthermore, a digital divide based on socio-economic status and race is evident. Blacks use television more than Whites and Hispanics and African Americans and Hispanics use the computer less than Whites. Both of the developments of increased media use and the digital divide do not bode well for (1) building the social capital of connectedness, and (2) widening access to political information which fuels democracy. The political socialization process and hence American political culture are developing new patterns which should be carefully monitored in the future.

Political News and Political Consciousness

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Political News and Political Consciousness
Author: CLAUDIA SCHERTGES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 345-356
ABSTRACT This article deals with mass media in modern democratic societies, using the example of Israeli news reports in German television (TV) news. Central to this interest are processes of mediating politics: political socialisation and education; that is to say, empowering citizens via TV news to participate in democratic processes. The article outlines the current state of TV news making in Germany. Against this background, whilst focusing on TV news production, processes of alienation within the making of news as well as a process of alienation making by the news are discussed.

Lifelong Political Socialization, Consciousness and Political Agency in Israel Today

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Lifelong Political Socialization, Consciousness and Political Agency in Israel Today
Author: DIRK MICHEL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 357-372
ABSTRACT This article deals with the nexus between biographical experiences in political extraordinary times of crisis, disaster and terror and their influence on political orientations. At the centre of interest is the reconstruction of political orientations related to two different historical-political groups of Jewish Germans who had immigrated or escaped either to Palestine before May 1948 or to the State of Israel after the Second World War. The first group of German Zionists emigrated to Israel at the time of the British Mandate and the second group were German Jews who survived the German concentration camps. The extraordinary background of the life courses, i.e. the 'Zionist period' in Palestine or the German concentration camps, were the historical-political experiences that both groups had to face in their childhood and youth. These extraordinary life experiences are analysed in connection with their political attitudes regarding contemporary Israeli internal politics as well as political questions dealing with the Middle East conflict.

A Zone for Deliberation? Methodological Challenges in Fields of Political Unrest

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: A Zone for Deliberation? Methodological Challenges in Fields of Political Unrest
Author: KARIANE WESTRHEIM; SØLVI LILLEJORD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 373-385
ABSTRACT This article outlines certain problems and challenges facing the qualitative researcher who enters fields that are either extremely difficult to access or potentially hostile towards outsiders. Problems and dilemmas in such contexts are highlighted by reference to fieldwork research among PKK (Kurdistan Worker's Party) guerrillas in North Kurdistan, Turkey. The article is part of a larger study on knowledge production and identity development in the PKK. The theoretical foundation draws on the Freirian tradition that is also labelled emancipatory or liberating research. The article discusses challenges within this particular line of research and presents the idea of a 'zone for deliberation' as a potential arena for developing intersubjective understanding in cases when the experiences of informants and interviewer are culturally and politically diverse.

Exposure to Community Violence and Political Socialization among Adolescents in Northern Ireland

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: Exposure to Community Violence and Political Socialization among Adolescents in Northern Ireland
Author: LINDA SHEPHERD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 386-389
ABSTRACT This study evaluates the effects of adolescent exposure to cross-community violence, intense paramilitary operations, aggression, and intimidation in Northern Ireland. Using publicly available survey data gathered by agencies in Northern Ireland, the research examines the effects of exposure to political violence with focus upon the manner by which adolescents have become politically socialized, the development of political attitudes, and the presence and level of psychological responses to this environment. Special attention is paid to cultural context, gender, and religious differences.

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM

Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:50:54 GMT

Title: REVIEW SYMPOSIUM
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Pages: 401-423
ABSTRACT The Access Principle: the case for open access to research and scholarship (John Willinsky) reviewed by Fides Datu Lawton, Cushla Kapitzke & Garett Gietzen, with an Introduction by Michael A. Peters, and a response by John Willinsky

Introduction

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: DAVID HURSH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 115-118
ABSTRACT If we are to understand the educational reforms of the last several decades, we must place the reforms within the rise and supremacy of neoliberal theory. It is only by understanding the profound shift in social and economic goals that we can make sense of the rise of standardized testing, auditing, and accountability in education, the increased emphasis on education for economic productivity, and the increasing control over education by national and international governing bodies.

The articles in this special issue focus on neoliberalism and its impact on education and society in the USA, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Brazil. As described in several of the articles, neoliberalism arose as the capitalist response to economic and political gains by the middle and working class, women, and people of color made during social democratic administrations after World War II. Beginning in the 1970s, with the elections of Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in England, neoliberal political and corporate leaders began arguing that the government had no little or no direct responsibility for the public welfare but, instead, economic well-being would be ensured through economic growth in an increasingly globalized economy. Under neoliberalism, governments, observes David Harvey (2006), are to ‘optimize conditions for capital accumulation’ by creating ‘a ‘good business climate’’ (p. 25), by reducing the corporate tax burden and decreasing governmental spending on social services, privatizing or deregulating sectors formerly run or regulated by the state such as transportation, telecommunication, oil and other natural resources, welfare and education, and creating, where possible, competitive markets and free trade. Education, therefore, should be privatized and where that is not possible, subjected to market forces.

Neoliberalism requires not only changes in the social and economic structures but in individuals themselves.

Neoliberalism proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within the framework characterized by strong property rights, free markets and free trade. (Harvey, 2005, p. 2)

Consequently, neoliberalism perceives of and promotes the individual as an autonomous entrepreneur responsible for his or her self, progress and position. Lemke (2002) describes neoliberalism as seeking

to unite a responsible and moral individual and an economic-rational individual. It aspires to construct responsible subjects whose moral quality is based on the fact that they rationally assess the costs and benefits of a certain act as opposed to other alternative acts. (p. 59)

The market becomes central within such a conception of the individual.

Every social transaction is conceptualized as entrepreneurial, to be carried out purely for personal gain. The market introduces competition as the structuring mechanism through which resources and status are allocated efficiently and fairly. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market is thought to be the most efficient way of sorting out which competing individuals get what. (Olssen et al, 2004, pp. 137?138)

Under neoliberal rationality, the state plays a central role in creating the appropriate conditions, laws, and institutions necessary for markets to operate. This includes producing and reproducing particular discourses, practices and structures that enable neoliberalism to persist and prosper. As the authors in the issue show, proponents of neoliberalism have worked to reshape how we talk and think about the world, and the social structures we act within. Under neoliberalism, we are to accept that the purpose of education is to promote economic growth rather than social well-being, that efficiency, even in education, is achieved only through competition, and that standardized tests are required to provide objective assessments so that inefficient schools can be identified, improved, or eliminated.

However, the authors also note that neoliberal policies are both contradictory and resisted. For example, neoliberals decry state intervention because they presume that administrative and bureaucratic structures are inherently inferior to markets as a means of allocating resources. But, as Thrupp & Wilmot (2003) point out, all markets depend on the state for regulation (Sayer, 1995, p. 87). Recent educational reforms have been noted not for the government intervening less in the lives of educators, parents, and students, but more. In the USA, in cities like Chicago (see Lipman & Hursh in this issue), states like Florida and Texas, and in the passage of No Child Left Behind, governments, with corporate executives as cheerleaders, have intervened in education to create a system in which schools compete with one another and are assessed through standardized testing. In fact, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), made into law by a Republican president and congress that only a few years earlier had called for closing the Department of Education, represents the greatest intervention of the federal government into education in the USA (DeBray, 2006). NCLB has shifted educational control from the local and state levels to the federal level. This intrusion has not gone unnoticed.

Furthermore, while neoliberalism is promoted as the most efficient way to provide for economic growth and equality, and to improve schooling and decrease the achievement gap, data cast doubt on whether those goals can be achieved. In the USA economic inequality continues to increase and several years after the implementation of the testing and accountability systems at the states and federal levels, the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students is no longer narrowing but remaining the same or widening (Lee, 2006). In England, school choice enables the schools with high test scores to skim off the better students from schools with lower test scores; consequently, the schools that are already behind end up with even more challenging students and fall further behind (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000).

That neoliberalism has not delivered on its promises has not surprised observers like Harvey (2005), who concludes that the neoliberal vision cannot be achieved and is, therefore, ‘a failed utopian rhetoric masking a successful project for the restoration of class power’ (p. 203). Because neoliberalism cannot deliver on its promises, it is not always welcomed and is, therefore, sometimes implemented only through the authoritarian measures of the corporate and governmental elite. In some countries, neoliberalism has been instituted only through military violence, as in Chile in 1973 when the US backed military coup removed from power the elected President, Salvador Allende, and instituted a dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet, and more recently, in Iraq, where after the invasion the US privatized public enterprises, opened businesses and banks to foreign control, eliminated trade barriers, and substantially limited unions and the right to strike (Harvey, 2006, p. 10). As several of the authors show, implementing neoliberalism has required gaining control over the government and the media, and ignoring the voices of those who will be negatively affected by neoliberalism. In some countries, alternatives, such as the Citizen Schools in Brazil, have been created. Elsewhere oppositional political movements have formed, such as Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago and the Coalition for Common Sense in Rochester, New York.

The contributors to this issue provide a valuable overview of neoliberalism as it has been instituted in several countries and point towards what an alternative politics might look like. For example, David Gabbard, in ‘Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus,’ shows how neoconservatives have assisted in developing the legal and cultural context in which neoliberalism might overcome resistance and thrive. Gabbard states: ‘Neoconservatism has provided a solution to a crisis in neoliberalism – the crisis of how to manufacture the public’s support for an agenda that was so decidedly contrary to the public’s larger interests.’ He traces the rise of market liberalism in the fourteenth century, the closing of the commons, the criminalization of poverty and the conjoining of neoconservatism and neoliberalism in the philosophy of Leo Strauss. Gabbard describes how neoliberals have controlled the media in order to control citizens.

Joao Paraskeva, in ‘Kidnapping Public Schooling: perversion and normalization of the discursive bases within the epicenter of New Right educational policies,’ also examines the way in which neoliberals and neoconservatives have used the media to gain hegemonic control over the way in which we think about education, the economy, and democracy. Paraskeva analyzes neoliberal policies that began with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, in which educational policy shifted away from equity and comprehensive schooling to selectivity, productivity, parental choice, and institutional competition. He shows how neoliberals have changed the dominant discourses regarding the role of government and the purpose of schooling by substituting individualism and the market for egalitarian norms and values (Apple, 2000).

Pauline Lipman & David Hursh, in ‘Renaissance 2010: the reassertion of ruling-class power through neoliberal policies in Chicago,’ provide, as an example of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002), a detailed analysis of the rise of and resistance to Chicago’s educational policies. They describe how corporate and political leaders have gained control over economic and educational policy and created Renaissance 2010, a plan for remaking not only the public schools but also the city itself: to transform Chicago from an industrial hub into a corporate, financial and tourist center, a command center for the global economy (Sassen, 1994, 2004). Over the past 25 years successive city governments have concentrated public resources and legislation to facilitate downtown development and gentrification of working-class and low-income neighborhoods, dramatically transforming the urban landscape. In the process of becoming a global city, not only has the city become spatially and economically segregated, but also the corporate and political leaders, particularly embodied in the Commercial Club of Chicago, have developed a dual school system, one for the white middle and upper class and the other for the poor, mostly people of color.

Likewise, Luis Armando Gandin, in ‘The Construction of the Citizen School Project as an Alternative to Neoliberal Educational Policies,’ argues that the neoliberal policies being instituted in Brazil are being resisted as proponents of the Citizen School project use the neoliberal discourse of decentralization and autonomy to rearticulate an alternative project, the Citizen School. In contrast to neoliberalism, Citizen Schools aim to provide everyone with guaranteed access to a public space for the construction of citizenship, to not merely transmit knowledge to students but to transform knowledge.

Sandra Leaton Gray, in ‘Teacher as Technician: semi-professionalism after the 1988 Education Reform Act and its effect on conceptions of pupil identity,’ shows the effect of recent British Conservative and New Labour governments on education, in particular how the increased auditing and control over teachers’ work, or the ‘new managerialism,’ has undermined teachers’ professionalism and students’ identities as learners. Instead, neoliberal policies, in preparing students for the labor market, have standardized both teachers and students, thus alienating them from the educational process.

Similarly, Dave Hill examines the effect ‘new managerialism’ has had on teacher education in England and Wales in ‘Critical Teacher Education, New Labour, and the Global Project of Neoliberal Capital.’ These past and current neoliberal governments, he argues, have radically transformed teacher education with the goal of preparing students for the workplace, compliant to management’s requirements. Schools, consequently, have narrowed their curriculum and practices. Hill ends his analysis by describing what a Radical Left proposal for teacher education might look like.

While Hill shows how neoliberals desire to reshape the student into an economically productive, non-critical citizen, Penny Griffith, in ‘Neoliberalism and the World Bank: economic discourse and the (re)production of gendered identity(ies),’ argues that the discourse of the World Bank reproduces particular hierarchical gendered identities. The World Bank does this by limiting their consideration of gender inequality to women differing in their ability to ‘accumulate human capital in the home and the labor market’ and ignoring the structural and cultural ways in which that inequality is reproduced.

John Clarke, like Gandin, suggests that neoliberalism has not yet been universalized. In ‘Citizen Consumers and Public Service Reform: at the limits of neoliberalism?,’ he examines the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to uncover the political and governmental difficulties in converting users of the national health services into the ideal consumers as envisioned by neoliberal theorists. Based on 106 interviews of both providers and users of health care services, he uncovers people’s resistance to thinking of themselves as either customers or consumers of health services.

The issue is rounded out by two reviews of Harvey’s recent book: A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), the first by Kenneth Saltman and the second by Victoria Perselli.

References

Apple, M. (2000) Official Knowledge, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.

Brenner, N. & Theodore, N. (2002) Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’, in N. Brenner & N. Theodore (Eds) Spaces of Neoliberalism: urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe, pp. 2?32. Oxford: Blackwell.

DeBray, E. (2006) Politics, Ideology and Education: federal policy during the Clinton and Bush administrations. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gillborn, D. & Youdell, D. (2000) Rationing Education: policy, practice, reform, and equity. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harvey, D. (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism: towards a theory of uneven global development. New York: Verso.

Lee, J. (2006) Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NLCB on the Gaps: an in-depth look into national and state reading and math outcome trends. Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Lemke, T. (2002, fall) Foucault, Governmentality and Critique, Rethinking Marxism, 12(3), pp. 49?64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242288

Olssen, M., Codd. J. & O’Neill, A.M. (2004) Education Policy: globalization, citizenship and democracy. Thousand Oaks, Sage.

Thrupp, M. & Wilmot, R. (2003) Educational Management in Managerialist Times: beyond the textual apologists. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Sassen, S. (1994) Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press.

Sassen, S. (2004) A Global City, in C. Madigan (Ed.) Global Chicago, pp. 15?34. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Sayer, A. (1995) Radical Political Economy: a critique. Oxford: Blackwell.

Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus
Author: DAVID GABBARD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 119-136
ABSTRACT Given the vacuity of political metaphors in the USA, most Americans might assume neoliberalism and neoconservatism to be at odds with one another. This article argues to the contrary. Neoconservatism has provided a solution to a crisis in neoliberalism - the crisis of how to manufacture the public's support for an agenda that was so decidedly contrary to the public's larger interests. Aided in large part by the political philosophy of Leo Strauss, neoconservatism has emboldened neoliberals to embrace the heteronomy always implicit within the capital relation by recognizing their own 'natural right' to rule by virtue of their demonstrated superiority. Hence, the advancement of the neoliberal agenda has demanded more than the economic disenfranchisement of the population. To fulfill its desires to return America to nineteenth-century conditions, when capital dominated, neoliberalism has formed an alliance with neoconservatives to effect an equally devastating political disenfranchisement of American citizens.

Kidnapping Public Schooling: perversion and normalization of the discursive bases within the epicenter of New Right educational policies

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Kidnapping Public Schooling: perversion and normalization of the discursive bases within the epicenter of New Right educational policies
Author: JOÃO M. PARASKEVA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 137-159
ABSTRACT Public schooling has been kidnapped. The author examines how this happened - since we all know very well who did it. How did public schooling become a hostage of world's neo-rightist political processes? This article attempts to unveil some of those strategies that underpin the very core of the neo-rightist current triumphalistic posture. To understand the way neo-rightist political processes encompassed public schooling at such a frightening pace it is necessary to situate neoliberal policies based on what has been called the third hegemony of historical capitalism. Also it is necessary to be aware of (a) how particular key concepts and practices have been cleverly and gradually twisted and perverted, positively hijacked from the social sphere, and coined within an economic flavoured materiality, and (b) how the new rightist triumphalism is deeply enmeshed within the politics of the common sense and the role that the media plays in building a particular commonsensical framework. The article ends by taking the Portuguese reality as an example, not only denouncing the poor record of some of the graduate and teaching education courses within the universities and colleges, but stating the need to rescue democracy by reinventing it.

Renaissance 2010: the reassertion of ruling-class power through neoliberal policies in Chicago

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Renaissance 2010: the reassertion of ruling-class power through neoliberal policies in Chicago
Author: PAULINE LIPMAN; DAVID HURSH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 160-178
ABSTRACT The Chicago Public Schools, along with the city of Chicago itself, serve as an exemplary case of neoliberal reorganization, as corporate and governmental 'leaders' remake Chicago into a global city meeting the needs of capitalism. As such, Chicago provides us with an example of 'actually existing neoliberalism,' in which neoliberalism's goals are contradictory and contested. The focus in this article is on Renaissance 2010, a corporate proposal to reform both the city and its schools to create schools and spaces that will attract the professionals needed in a global city. Renaissance 2010 places public schooling under the control of corporate leaders who aim to convert public schools to charter and contract schools, handing over their administration to corporations and breaking the power of unions. However, as the article shows, such reforms not only disenfranchise the poor, people of color, students, parents, and educators, but also create an economically and spatially separate city. Consequently, while neoliberalism is promoted as an efficient and neutral reform, in Chicago neoliberalism faces increasing resistance.

The Construction of the Citizen School Project as an Alternative to Neoliberal Educational Policies

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: The Construction of the Citizen School Project as an Alternative to Neoliberal Educational Policies
Author: LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 179-193
ABSTRACT This article examines the 'Citizen School' project implemented in Porto Alegre, Brazil as an example of how to fight against neoliberal projects. It begins by describing the broader context in which the Citizen School project was born, including the hegemonic agenda for education, first in its global aspects and then in specific instances in Brazil. The Brazilian case is understood not as a simple reproduction of a global trend in education, but as a hybrid process, with local characteristics and peculiarities. Therefore, this article examines the ways in which the global process of neoliberalism and marketization heavily influences the Brazilian educational scenario but, at the same time, it also studies the results of the encounter of this global process with the local dominant alliances and struggles for transformation. Second, it situates the Citizen School project in the context of the counter-hegemonic educational struggles in Brazil. Finally, the article also addresses how the leaders of the project were able to disarticulate some of the decentralization and autonomy proposals from its neoliberal agenda and rearticulate them in an alternative project, the Citizen School project.

Teacher as Technician: semi-professionalism after the 1988 Education Reform Act and its effect on conceptions of pupil identity

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Teacher as Technician: semi-professionalism after the 1988 Education Reform Act and its effect on conceptions of pupil identity
Author: SANDRA LEATON GRAY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 194-203
ABSTRACT This article discusses whether the occupational culture of teachers has changed as a consequence of increased managerialism, using as an exemplar some of the routine planning, assessment and reporting procedures in common use in schools in England. The article examines this claim in the light of developments after the 1988 Education Reform Act, which had a profound effect on the way education is delivered in England. It then relates this question to the issue of teacher and pupil identity within the English education system, and concludes that there are dangers with using such frameworks for education, as they can undermine the role of the child as an individual within the schooling process.

Critical Teacher Education, New Labour, and the Global Project of Neoliberal Capital

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Critical Teacher Education, New Labour, and the Global Project of Neoliberal Capital
Author: DAVE HILL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 204-225
ABSTRACT The first part of this article contextualises 'education reform' - the restructuring of education and teacher education - within the global and national requirements and demands of Capital in the current epoch of global neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The second part analyses developments in teacher education in England and Wales under both Conservatives (1979-97) and New Labour (1997-2006) and the extent of continuities between the two. These developments have resulted in the detheorised, non-egalitarian and technicist state of teacher education in England and Wales, with its marginalisation of issues of the social contexts of education, and issues of equality/inequality. These silences work to produce teachers more fit to develop children and young adults fit for the purposes of Capital. The third part sets out a series of progressive egalitarian policy principles and proposals that constitute an egalitarian manifesto for education and for critical teacher education and critical pedagogy, very distinct from both the Conservative and New Labour policies, and calls for critical transformative egalitarian education.

Neoliberalism and the World Bank: economic discourse and the (re)production of gendered identity(ies)

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Neoliberalism and the World Bank: economic discourse and the (re)production of gendered identity(ies)
Author: PENNY GRIFFIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 226-238
ABSTRACT This article examines the World Bank's discourse of neoliberalism with a view to understanding how this informs and sustains the Bank's policies and practices in particularly gendered ways. 'Neoliberalism' is, here, a discursive structure that constitutes a powerful and pervasive contemporary model of economic development, resting on assumptions of economic growth and stability, financial transactions and human behaviour that are deeply gendered whilst presented as universal and neutral. The article thus seeks to offer an analysis of the discursive practices by which the Bank (re)produces a fundamentally gendered discourse of neoliberalism. Neoliberal discourse is a power-laden and discursively regulatory framework of economic identity that (re)produces the social reality that it defines through particular discursive practices, predicating, pre/proscribing and (re)producing the meanings, behaviours and human identities that best correspond with the pre-given, economic 'reality' thereby constructed. It is in the places that the Bank does not explicitly discuss or mention gender that gender identity(ies) most clearly reside, constituting the foundations of the Bank's neoliberal economic logic and informing at every level the Bank's processes of decision and policy making.

Citizen-Consumers and Public Service Reform: at the limits of neoliberalism?

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Citizen-Consumers and Public Service Reform: at the limits of neoliberalism?
Author: JOHN CLARKE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 239-248
ABSTRACT This article addresses the question: what is not neoliberal? It explores the problem of treating neoliberalism's universalising ambitions as having come true in practice and argues that this obscures both the uneven and partial impact of neoliberalism and the forms of political cultural work that are needed to make it come true. Focusing on one quintessential neoliberal development - the transformation of citizens into consumers - the article uses evidence from a recent study of public service reform in the United Kingdom to suggest that neoliberal subjects have not (yet) materialised in this specific context. It considers how New Labour and neoliberal discourses 'tell the time' of other social imaginaries, attempting to residualise them as leftovers from earlier ways of thinking.

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM A Brief History of Neoliberalism (David Harvey)

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: REVIEW SYMPOSIUM A Brief History of Neoliberalism (David Harvey)
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 249-263
ABSTRACT reviewed by Kenneth Saltman and Victoria Perselli

Palestinian Universities and the Israeli Occupation

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: Palestinian Universities and the Israeli Occupation
Author: KEITH HAMMOND
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 264-270
ABSTRACT This article details the emergence of Palestinian universities in the 1970s in the conditions of Israeli occupation. Palestinian universities grew during the first intifada in 1986. An outline of the present controls on and around these universities is given - controls that are contrary to academic freedom and the basic right to education. Israeli actions involve arrests, violence, detention and death. In these conditions, however, academic culture still flourishes. Universities have become centres of resistance. The article details the arrest and imprisonment of several academics. Reports of routine violence only emerge when European and American academics visit Palestinian universities. This article thus urges more and more exchange visits with a view to the full details of Israel's occupation being brought out in the international community of academics.

REVIEW ESSAY. Identity, Reason and Violence

Wed, 16 May 2007 14:36:38 GMT

Title: REVIEW ESSAY. Identity, Reason and Violence
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 271-274
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Introduction
Author: Michelle Stack; Megan Boler
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-16
ABSTRACT Not available

Palestinian Youth and Political Activism: the emerging Internet culture and new modes of resistance

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Palestinian Youth and Political Activism: the emerging Internet culture and new modes of resistance
Author: MAKRAM KHOURY-MACHOOL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 17-36
ABSTRACT The information technology revolution and the introduction of the Internet in the last decade have transformed the life of individuals and groups across the globe. One unique example of the remarkable impact of this new medium on the life of a marginalised society is the impact of the Internet on the life of Palestinians. The author demonstrates that, since the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada on 28 September 2000, and the drop of the average income of Palestinian households living in the 1967 Palestinian territories, a sharp increase in the number of Palestinian Internet users, especially youths, has been reported through connectivity in schools, universities and cafes. In universities, a method of instruction has been developed to maintain higher education, since students frequently cannot reach the campus due to conditions of siege. The author also argues that, due to the pertinent socio-political conditions of Palestinian youths and students under occupation, the Internet now acts as a medium between teachers and students, as well as a tool for intense politicisation and cyber-resistance. With constant Internet access possible for over 25% of the Palestinian population, a new youth culture has emerged amongst Palestinians, in particular at schools and universities. By organising relations between teachers, students and the youth in general, as well as with various sectors of the Palestinian population, the Internet now acts as a broad and collective front for national peaceful political resistance, and is one of the most central elements of everyday life. It is to be noted that this phenomenon should be seen in the specific socio-political, economic and cultural context of the Palestinians, unconnected to the introduction of the Internet in the broader Arab world. It should also be noted that, as a result, Palestinians are now the largest group of users of the Internet in the Arab world.

Gambling with the Future of Public Education: risk, discipline, and the moralizing of educational politics in corporate media

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Gambling with the Future of Public Education: risk, discipline, and the moralizing of educational politics in corporate media
Author: KENNETH SALTMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 37-49
ABSTRACT This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such moral imperatives of consumer culture not only replace a civic morality of political engagement more consistent with democratic ideals and participatory culture but also typify and even stimulate the shifting of politics onto a moral register and language that has characterized neo-liberal ideology, third way post-politics, and that informs contemporary US politics, especially evident during the 'War on Terror.' The article discusses these matters through the media spectacle of a Utah woman who permanently tattooed an advertisement for a casino on her face to pay for her son's private school tuition and through the gambling problem of former Secretary of Education and educational entrepreneur William Bennett.

As Seen on TV or Was that My Phone? New Media Literacy

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: As Seen on TV or Was that My Phone? New Media Literacy
Author: CARMEN LUKE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 50-58
ABSTRACT Media literacy studies traditionally have been the domain of the English and Language Arts classrooms. Cultural studies has not made significant inroads into school-based media studies although, like media studies, it too is concerned with the politics of image/text representations. Information literacy, which also passes as computer or technology literacy, has focused principally on the teaching of operational 'how-to' skills. In the last decade, consumers have abandoned newspapers, magazines and network television en masse in favour of cable and Internet news and entertainment sources. Fast news and 24/7 coverage - of 9/11, the US presidential 2004 campaign, world soccer, the 2003 Bali bombings, or the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami in South-east Asia - are global spectacles watched by billions. Given the rapid drift towards media convergence, and consumer shifts from 'old' to 'new' media, it is argued that media literacy studies, cultural studies, information or technology studies can no longer be taught independently of each other.

Critical Media Literacy: crucial policy choices for a twenty-first-century democracy

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Critical Media Literacy: crucial policy choices for a twenty-first-century democracy
Author: DOUGLAS KELLNER; JEFF SHARE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 59-69
ABSTRACT The concept of critical media literacy expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication and popular culture, as well as deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power. The authors argue that critical media literacy is crucial for participatory democracy in the twenty-first century, and that the only progressive option that exists is how to teach it, not whether to teach it. The article, first, explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and demonstrates examples from community-based after school programs and an inner-city elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. A multiperspectival approach addressing issues of gender, race, class and power is used to explore the interconnections of media literacy with cultural studies and critical pedagogy. It is argued that alternative media production must engage students to challenge the master narratives and the systems that make them appear natural. The article then explores the public policy options open to implementing a critical media literacy program. Focusing on media literacy policy in the USA, different approaches commonly used for teaching media literacy are explored and a hybrid critical media literacy framework is proposed. In this day and age of standardized high-stakes testing and corporate solicitations in public education, radical democracy depends on a Deweyan reconceptualization of literacy and the role of education in society. The authors conclude that on the public policy level critical media literacy must reframe our understanding of literacy so that these ideas become integrated across the curriculum at all levels from pre-school to university.

'Read All about It!' UK News Media Coverage of A-level Results

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: 'Read All about It!' UK News Media Coverage of A-level Results
Author: PAUL WARMINGTON; ROGER MURPHY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 70-83
ABSTRACT News coverage of public examination results in the United Kingdom has escalated in recent years. The years 2002 and 2003, in particular, witnessed a bitter media debate over A-level results. Yet, while educationalists often deride the quality of the annual examination debate, there has been minimal research into the specific ways in which exam news issues are constructed by news media. This article discusses the critical findings of an interdisciplinary study, conducted by education and media specialists, of print and broadcast news coverage of the publication of A-level results in August 2002 and 2003. The article focuses upon three particular elements: the distribution of different headline categories and themes; the structural, narrative and presentation templates in which A-level news items were embedded, and the discursive features that have characterised the dominant template for A-level news coverage: the claim that examination standards are 'falling'. The article concludes by briefly considering some of the broader questions about the relationship between the education sector and news media in the United Kingdom, reflecting upon the ritualistic and polarised nature of coverage, the subtext of anxieties over the 'massification' of post-compulsory education and the readiness (or not) of educationalists to engage in a debate being played out for increasingly high stakes.

Literacy is Just Reading and Writing, Isn't It? The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test and Its Press Coverage

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Literacy is Just Reading and Writing, Isn't It? The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test and Its Press Coverage
Author: LAURA PINTO; MEGAN BOLER; TREVOR NORRIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 84-99
ABSTRACT This article examines how the public discourse of print news media defines and shapes the representation of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) based on coverage in three primary newspapers between 1998 and 2004. The data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative measures to identify types of coverage, themes, and inclusion/exclusion of voices. The analysis, which is framed by discourse about conceptions of literacy relating to Dewey's democratic vision for the press, suggests some disappointments on the measure of democratic representation and participation. The article concludes that, if the media is to represent the diversity of voices and provide a wide range of views so as to fulfil its democratic responsibility as envisioned by Dewey, a wider debate over representations of literacy must occur and more perspectives and voices must be included in newspaper coverage.

Representing School Success and Failure: media coverage of international tests

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: Representing School Success and Failure: media coverage of international tests
Author: MICHELLE STACK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 100-110
ABSTRACT It is through the media that audiences come to learn about the apparent successes and failure of the education system. Despite this power, the connection of the media to educational leadership and policy making is often given little attention in determining the forces at play in evaluating what happens in schools. Using a critical discourse analysis of media coverage concerning the 1999 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the 2000 and 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the author argues that the media interpreted these test results in concert with business and electoral elites as a 'failure of marginalized students,' rather than a failure of society to address systemic discrimination. The media coverage of such failures presents solutions provided by business and government as common sense. Consequently, alternative framings, for example, as to what a successful education system would look like to people who are judged school failures based on the tests are never sought. There is also no discussion of the ways in which the PISA and TIMSS tests are constructed to favor the knowledge of dominant interests and ignore that which is outside this realm.

BOOK REVIEW

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:46:32 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2007 Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Pages: 111-114
ABSTRACT Building Knowledge Cultures: education and development in the age of knowledge capitalism (Michael A. Peters with A.C.[Tina] Besley), reviewed by Xavier Rambla & Aina Tarabini

Editorial. Copyrights and Patents: issues and ethics for education

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Editorial. Copyrights and Patents: issues and ethics for education
Author: Cushla Kapitzke
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 330-333
ABSTRACT Not available

Did You Say 'Intellectual Property'? It's a Seductive Mirage

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Did You Say 'Intellectual Property'? It's a Seductive Mirage
Author: RICHARD M. STALLMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 334-336
ABSTRACT The term 'intellectual property' tends to warp thinking wherever it is used. It carries a bias in favor of dealing with a variety of issues as kinds of 'property'; even worse, applying the term to various disparate issues focuses attention erroneously on the little that they have in common. The term should never be used, and we should not let others lead us into using it.

Freedom as in a Self-sustainable Community: the Free Software Movement and its challenge to copyright law

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Freedom as in a Self-sustainable Community: the Free Software Movement and its challenge to copyright law
Author: SHUN-LING CHEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 337-347
ABSTRACT Copyright law, together with the market logic it carries, penetrates deeply into our daily life. The copyright regime is so restrictive that it turns a normal learning process into a series of potential copyright violations. The Free Software Movement (FSM) represents a substantial community effort to counter this trend. It seeks to supersede the copyright regime by offering the 'Copyleft' licensing mode, which facilitates the formation of a cooperative, resource-sharing community. The FSM has been so successful that it has challenged the utilitarian values presumed in copyright law, has fuelled widespread reassessment of copyright law, and has influenced many who engage in various creative activities. Claiming to bear similar values, Creative Commons (CC) provides licensing models for people to waive some rights granted to them. However, CC differs from the FSM in significant ways. Most notably, the flexible CC licensing model weakens the firm philosophical and political ground which binds FSM advocates together. Hence, although CC's rapid growth seems to signal its success, it is questionable whether such success is as enduring as the FSM's, or if it is leading to a different result. While CC champions the author's freedom to decide how to use his or her bundle of property rights granted by copyright law, the FSM advocates the freedom to build and live in an alternative, vital and self-sustaining community. The existence of such an alternative model not only allows these particular participants to be independent from the proprietary world, but also may empower the rest of society to imagine different kinds of relationships between human beings and their creative activities.

The Properties of Locke's Common-wealth of Learning

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: The Properties of Locke's Common-wealth of Learning
Author: JOHN WILLINKSY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 348-365
ABSTRACT This article reads the educational implications of 'intellectual property' that are found in the double meaning of property, as the word refers to an economic right and a quality of being. It briefly visits the seventeenth-century origins of this double concept of intellectual property (IP), with particular attention paid to John Locke (who provides the basis of IP as a personal possession as well as furthering the idea of a 'common-wealth of learning') and the emergence of 'open science'. The argument proceeds on two levels, educational and public, as it draws parallels between the way that students are taught to regard learning and the way in which a knowledge-based global economy treats learning. On the first level, that of the personal, the article puts forward a critique of the common educational tendency to treat learning as a private good, in terms of personal asset management, which ultimately undermines the common-wealth of learning and the idea of knowledge as a public good. On the second level, that of the public sphere, the article turns to the increasing privatization and capitalization of knowledge that is making inroads into the common-wealth of learning, particularly around publicly funded research and scholarship. The article considers the prospects, finally, of 'open' responses (e.g. open access, open source, etc.) to reassert the vital role of the common-wealth, through new technologies of knowledge sharing, and it considers the educational policy implications of preparing a new generation of students who, as they are prepared to participate in knowledge-based economies, should also understand the implications of sustaining the common-wealth of learning.

The Rise of Open Access in the Creative, Educational and Science Commons

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: The Rise of Open Access in the Creative, Educational and Science Commons
Author: SCOTT KIEL-CHISHOLM; BRIAN FITZGERALD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 366-379
ABSTRACT Management of intellectual property and, in particular, copyright is one of the most challenging issues in an increasingly digital world. The rise of the open access (OA) movement provides a new model for managing intellectual property in educational and research environments. OA aims to promote greater and more efficient access to educational and research materials and has an international profile. This article overviews the basic charter of OA and explain how it proposes to transform academic communication and publishing in an online world. Importantly, this article also overviews the legal issues that surround the move towards OA and the concept of open content licensing (including the Creative Commons Project).

Copyright and Cultural Production: a knowledge and wisdom theory perspective on education policy

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Copyright and Cultural Production: a knowledge and wisdom theory perspective on education policy
Author: DAVID ROONEY; BERNARD MCKENNA; THOMAS KEENAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 380-395
ABSTRACT This article addresses concerns about the role of education policy in the context of knowledge-related public policy. Specifically, it raises concerns about how the technocratic and anti-social tendencies already observed in knowledge-related policy discourse may adversely influence the intellectual and cultural life of communities. A key goal of this article, then, is to stimulate debate about how we might, through education policy, slow the relentless and socially impoverishing drive towards a more commercially and technologically centred society; a society that is savant-like in its technical capacities yet fails to measure up on basic social and cultural imperatives such as the pursuit of knowledge and cultural expression for their own sakes. The article draws on two complementary theories, the relational theory of knowledge and the balance theory of wisdom, to set out a novel framework for deciding what the goals of education in a knowledge society might be. Finally, the article will make a case study of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's 2003 Education Policy Analysis document to demonstrate how this relational and balance theory of knowledge can be used to evaluate and improve education policy for its contribution to achieving a knowledge society.

A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
Author: RUTH RIKOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 396-409
ABSTRACT This article examines the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). There are many WTO Agreements, but TRIPS is likely to have significant implications for areas such as information, education and libraries. The article provides an overview of TRIPS in general. Various intellectual property rights (IPRs) are covered in TRIPS, including copyright, patents, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, integrated circuit designs and 'trade secrets'. It then considers the implications of TRIPS for information provision, focusing in particular on copyright and patents. Finally, it examines the TRIPS within an Open Marxist theoretical perspective. The author argues that TRIPS is fundamentally about transforming IPRs into internationally tradable commodities. Marx began his analysis of capitalism in Capital volume one with 'the commodity'. We need to get back to basic Marxism and to make it applicable to the global capitalist world that we find ourselves in today. Thus, capitalism is essentially about the commodification of all that surrounds us and the TRIPS assists with this process. Value that is extracted from labour, and largely from intellectual labour, becomes embedded in internationally tradable commodities (such as patents) that are created and socially validated by TRIPS. Profit is derived from this value and through this process global capitalism is extended and intensified.

Breaks, Flows, and Other In-between Spaces: rethinking piracy and copyright governance

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Breaks, Flows, and Other In-between Spaces: rethinking piracy and copyright governance
Author: SHUJEN WANG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 410-420
ABSTRACT This article uses three case studies to examine the intersecting developments of technology, capitalism, and globalization through the contradictions and paradoxes of copyright governance and piracy. China is used as a case study to investigate the relations among the state, law, and global capitalism.

Aboriginal Knowledges in the Australian Market Place: different issue, same story

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Aboriginal Knowledges in the Australian Market Place: different issue, same story
Author: GORDON CHALMERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 421-430
ABSTRACT With Indigenous knowledges being increasingly available via different media, there is the risk of these knowledges becoming disengaged from the peoples who imparted them. A consequence of this disengagement is that it creates the conditions for the creation and perpetuation of misunderstanding and misuse of Indigenous peoples' lifeworlds. This article explores issues surrounding tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of disseminating knowledge and it points to areas of possible change whereby the latter may seek to find its processes normalised within the former. In particular, it suggests that an approach to Indigenous knowledges that incorporates many of their original regulatory mechanisms would go a long way towards avoiding both the misunderstanding and misuse of these knowledges. The article draws upon examples from particular Aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory of Australia who, it can be said, have for a long time engaged in this process of 'Indigenising' dominant modes of information dissemination and use. In some cases, this process has proven successful but in others it has proven unsuccessful. The reasons for these different outcomes will be explored in regard to the extent to which 'outsiders' have personally engaged with the peoples from whom the knowledge was originally imparted and the extent to which the outsiders have themselves Indigenised their own normative Western modes of information use.

Intellectual Property Rights: governing cultural and educational futures

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: Intellectual Property Rights: governing cultural and educational futures
Author: CUSHLA KAPITZKE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 431-445
ABSTRACT This article uses Nikolas Rose's theory of governmentality to examine ways in which intellectual property is imbricated in a broad spectrum of globalised and globalising discourses. Using the 2004 Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement as a case in point, it shows how discourses of culture, trade, foreign policy, and security intersect and potentially restrict access to cultural knowledge and textual resources for young people and educators.

INTERVIEW. Cultural Policy and Copyright: implications for education. A Conversation with Siva Vaidhyanathan

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: INTERVIEW. Cultural Policy and Copyright: implications for education. A Conversation with Siva Vaidhyanathan
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 446-453
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEWS

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:24:14 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 454-458
ABSTRACT Globalisation, Information and Libraries: the implications of the World Trade Organisation's GATS and TRIPS Agreements (Ruth Rikowski) reviewed by Cushla Kapitzke. Education, Equality and Human Rights, 2nd Edn (Mike Cole) reviewed by Renee DePalma

Editorial. Knowledge Society/Knowledge Capitalism and Education

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: Editorial. Knowledge Society/Knowledge Capitalism and Education
Author: Heinz Sünker
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 217-219
ABSTRACT Knowledge as we know it from the famous phrase of Francis Bacon - coined some four hundred years ago at the beginning of the period of modernity and capitalism - is power. Using different frames of reference - social theory, social policy and social history - to learn about the history of the knowledge question, we have to study scholarly works like Toulmin's Cosmopolis: the hidden agenda of modernity (1990), Burke's A Social History of Knowledge (1997) and Kintzinger's Wissen wird Macht. Bildung im Mittelalter (2003) (Knowledge becomes power. Bildung in medieval times).

One strand of these discourses, today, we find in Foucault's talk of 'truth regimes'; another in Chomsky's 'pedagogy of lies' (2000). This shows that the knowledge question has not gone away, but accompanies us in societies and education. Moreover, knowledge, we are told by the press, politicians and institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation, and researchers, is much more relevant than ever before in the history of mankind. It is maintained that there should be a real development to a new type of society, the knowledge society. Therefore we have to deal with the problem of the 'knowledge gap', resulting from what is called the 'digital divide' (Castells, 2002). This is not only a problem for education but for social policy, too. And we have to deal with the problem of knowledge and international economic competitiveness - it may be that this is really grounded in (some) processes of globalisation. It could be that there is a transformation within the capitalist society, from Fordism to post-Fordism (Jessop 2005), to be reflected by sociological analysis (Therborn, 2000).

There are many weighty allegations that do not admit easy answers. But it seems clear that social scientists and educators face some new challenges connected with questions of the status and the state of the art of knowledge today. This requires differentiations like the following, aiming at knowledge and society, knowledge production, knowledge distribution, knowledge and education, and knowledge and capitalism (cf. Postone, 1996; Peters, 2003; Gorz, 2004; Kincheloe, 2004; Murphy, 2005).

In dealing with knowledge capitalism the starting point is the question of the relevance of (types of) knowledge in processes of social and economic production, reproduction and change. On the one hand, this includes various discussions about the meaning of labour and technological processes, especially with respect to the split between intellectual and manual labour and the consequences of forms of subsumption (formal or real) of labour under capital - as Marx put it. What is at stake is first of all the conception of labour, the status of labour in present social developments. If labour does not only embody metabolism with nature, but rather is also included in social reproduction processes, this then, on the other hand, leads to the question of social organisation of labour (and knowledge, too) and therefore to problems of the definition of labour, alienation, labour satisfaction, the indifference of workers.

There are at least two lines of discussion that deal with this view of the problem in a committed manner. The first is the 'labour process debate', within which the 'nature' of labour and technology is dealt with under capitalistic conditions. It directs attention to the meaning of control, agreement and resistance in the scope of the capitalist mode of production, the capitalist determined labour process (Thompson, 1983; Casey, 1995). To complement this Anglo-Saxon debate one may look at the contributions from a German discussion about the development of the labour process, which focus on the term 'new production concepts' (Kern & Schumann 1984). The object of both debates consists of the analysis of the nature of labour as well as today's social relationships, which are referred to or follow from this and are dominated by technology, science and knowledge. Interpretations of the results of these analyses are strongly contradictory. The deciding difference here lies in the evaluation of the results of the restructuring of former Fordist production processes; in their consequences for labour is it (only) about the substitution of Taylorism and its control techniques with more modern control techniques, or does this development show a real growth in the area of dealing with and organising 'production intelligence' (Kern &Schumann 1984)?

Having studied many of these controversial ideas, I am interested in the question of what could be good reasons to argue that an emancipating change is possible and what could be good reasons not to consider this as a doctrine when labour, technology, knowledge and educational processes are placed in a historical systematic relationship together.

In the future, changes in the labour process, and new technical and organising demands that are put on the economy will be able to support the radical spread of democratic principles (Bowles & Gintis 1987, p. 179). As Bowles & Gintis (1987, p. 213) put it, 'Democracy can only survive by expanding to cover areas of social life now dominated by prerogatives of capitalist property'. This perspective must be supported, however, by rising awareness of the conditions of social life as well as a new form of technological competence whose core exists in the critique of technocracy and alienation. Therefore Kern & Schumann (1984) demand in very clear language in their foundational study, 'The end of the division of labour', firstly, a spread of currently needed production intelligence, i.e. generalisation of knowledge, and secondly, a politicisation of this need.

The fact that this is historically nothing new is referred to by Heydorn in his view of education theory and production learning (eighteenth century):

An educational concept is only as progressive as the powers that it represents and, at the same time, leads to a direct political struggle to change society. This is the only way the education opportunities remain current and education becomes an important moment in the argument. Education for its own sake is not capable of very much; it does not have much common sense. The framework of production learning received its liberating opportunity through a confident middle class prepared for a revolution that was able to temporarily join with the rising proletariat. The moment this requirement was no longer valid, production learning turned into its opposite and stabilised the existing power. Without transcending categories, without the formal, abstract clamp on material things, a coordinate system of knowledge, without the direct struggle, production learning became a means of keeping people's feet on the ground like a pig. ([1973] 1980, p. 109, trans. J. Farrar)

Thus, developed stances on education theory and social sciences have accordingly, for the time being, the indispensability of consciousness education that holds an awareness of history and the present in its substance and is justified by the fact that knowledge and experience determine the beginning of the struggle against existing living conditions, and contemporary everyday life. Thus one may say, 'The new revolutionary subject, which is the only focus, is a knowledgeable subject' (Heydorn, [1970] 1979, p. 334). This could be the common contested ground with knowledge capitalism as it is depicted by Gorz in his 'Knowledge, value, and capital' (2004). To overcome the valorisation process of capital for which a new mode of knowledge is necessary, critical knowledge is necessary, too. The production and distribution of this mode of critical social knowledge is the challenge for educational theory and praxis.

The articles in this issue tackle questions of knowledge, knowledge production, knowledge society and knowledge capitalism in different ways, mediating these with questions of education and professional action. In times of marketisation and commodification of education it seems necessary to revitalise an educational approach aware of the political and societal embeddedness of educational theory and praxis. Therefore this issue has two general socio-theoretical and socio-political articles, by Heinz Sünker and Armin Bernhard, an article by Joe Kincheloe analysing the (mis)use of knowledge in educational psychology and an article by Fabian Kessl & Hans-Uwe Otto showing the relevance of the knowledge debate for a critical theory of educational professions. In the same vein Trond Solhaug contributes an article on political knowledge and its place in democratic education, and the final two articles are related to the special issue focus on higher education: Michael Peters, perhaps more optimistically than most and certainly in a utopian spirit, discusses the possibilities of higher education contributing to a renewed and differently theorised form of development (both at home and internationally) and Maarten Simons & Jan Masschelein provide a searching examination of the concept of 'educational quality' from a broadly Foucauldian perspective, emphasising how the present obsession with quality is part of a wider governmental regime. The issue also carries an article by Heinz Sünker focusing on the ideology of the Volk community in National Socialism and an extended review by Michael Peters of David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

Heinz Sünker

Wuppertal University, Germany

References

Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1987) Democracy and Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.

Burke, P. (1997) A Social History of Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society: after industrialism. London and New York: Routledge.

Castells, M. (2002) The Internet Galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business, and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N. (2000) Chomsky on MisEducation, ed. and introduced by D. Macedo. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Gorz, A. (2004) Wissen, Wert und Kapital. Zur Kritik der Wissensökonomie. Zürich: Rotpunktverlag.

Heydorn, H.-J. ([1970] 1979) Über den Widerspruch von Bildung und Herrschaft. Frankfurt: Syndikat.

Heydorn, H.-J. ([1973] 1980) Zu einer Neufassung des Bildungsbegriffs, in H.-J. Heydorn Ungleichheit für alle, pp. 95-184. Frankfurt: Syndikat.

Jessop, B. (2005) Reflections on Globalization and Its (Il)logic(s). Lancaster: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University). http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/jessop-reflections-on-globalization.pdf

Kern, H. &Schumann, M. (1984) Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung. München: Beck.

Kincheloe, J. (2004) Critical Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang.

Kintzinger, M. 2003) Wissen wird Macht. Bildung im Mittelalter. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag.

Murphy, P. (2005) Knowledge Capitalism, Thesis Eleven, 81(1), pp. 36-62.

Peters, M.A. (2003) Education and Ideologies of the Knowledge Economy. Paper presented at the Conference 'EURONE&T, Learning Related Policies in the Light of EU Integration and Enlargement - towards a learning society'. Stirling, October 2003.

Postone, M. (1996) Time, Labor, and Social Domination: a reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Therborn, G. (2000) At the Birth of Second Century Sociology: times of reflexivity, spaces of identity, and nodes of knowledge, British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), pp. 37-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/000713100358426

Thompson, P. (1983) The Nature of Work. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Toulmin (1990) Cosmopolis: the hidden agenda of modernity. New York: The Free Press.

A Critical Politics of Knowledge: analyzing the role of educational psychology in educational policy

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: A Critical Politics of Knowledge: analyzing the role of educational psychology in educational policy
Author: JOE L. KINCHELOE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 220-235
ABSTRACT This article examines the ideological dimensions of educational psychology and psychometrics as they relate to the validation of the 'intelligence' of the privileged and the 'deficiency' of the marginalized. In this critique a critical psychology emerges that takes seriously the lifeworld experiences of culturally and politically oppressed groups. This critical intervention in psychology forces the field to confront its class elitism, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy, as well as the epistemological foundations on which it is constructed. Here the abstracted study of individual minds is rejected for a more contextualized view. Mind in the critical view is more a distributed concept than an autonomous, isolated one bounded by the border of the brain. In this context the ideological dimensions of psychology can be challenged.

The Knowledge Society and Educational Science

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: The Knowledge Society and Educational Science
Author: HEINZ SÜNKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 236-245
ABSTRACT This article examines diverse approaches claiming to analyse new modes of connecting knowledge and society: to depict the rise of the knowledge society or dealing with the social analysis of a new type of capitalism in the shape of informational capitalism. Against these backgrounds it highlights the possible role of education in overcoming the capitalist mode of societalisation, making use of a critical social knowledge for establishing a democratic society.

The Monetary Valuation of the Human Mind: the conditions for knowledge transfer and education in a neo-liberal society

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: The Monetary Valuation of the Human Mind: the conditions for knowledge transfer and education in a neo-liberal society
Author: ARMIN BERNHARD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 246-255
ABSTRACT The Marxist category 'alienation' - the author maintains - contains already all the dimensions necessary to identify and interpret the educational problems of a neo-liberal society going through the process of economic globalisation, without reducing these problems to pure economism. It not only aids in understanding the fragmentation of identity itself, but even the fact that the maturation of the education of human nature forms an indispensable aspect of this fragmentation. Ways of developing an educational system that does not restrict itself to a treatment of human resources centred only on their market-oriented exploitation will be discussed. In contrast to the centrifugal forces of neo-liberal modernisation. the project of 'human incarnation' must be created.

Pedagogic Professionalism Defi(l)es the Knowledge Economy? Some Preliminary Notes

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: Pedagogic Professionalism Defi(l)es the Knowledge Economy? Some Preliminary Notes
Author: FABIAN KESSL; HANS-UWE OTTO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 256-264
ABSTRACT The ability to generate and process information, and hence the availability of knowledge has increasingly shifted to the foreground of the new knowledge societies. At the same time, traditional systems of knowledge production (science) and knowledge reception (professions) are subjected to a steady loss of legitimacy. Within this context, pedagogic professions, which in their struggle for social recognition have never been able to achieve the status of a classical profession such as medicine, are confronted with their own ideas of themselves. The article discusses this context against the backdrop of reconstructing a central, knowledge-based, economic rationality and suggests working out a model of attentive-reflexive professionalism as an alternative to knowledge management processes for reforming the present evidence-based professions.

Knowledge and Self-efficacy as Predictors of Political Participation and Civic Attitudes: with relevance for educational practice

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: Knowledge and Self-efficacy as Predictors of Political Participation and Civic Attitudes: with relevance for educational practice
Author: TROND SOLHAUG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 265-278
ABSTRACT The results reported in this article are part of a larger study of the political competencies of students in Norwegian upper secondary school. The main focus of this study is how to teach civics in secondary school as a preparation for democratic citizenship. In this study, it is argued that self-efficacy and motivation, in addition to knowledge, are key competence variables that should be studied simultaneously. Five similar causal models are constructed to explore the relationship between the competence variables and various forms of political participation, tolerance and involvement. Five structural equation models (SEMs) are then estimated using LISREL. The main results for the three mediation variables are as follows: self-efficacy is a stronger predictor of motivation and three aspects of political participation than knowledge. Knowledge, on the other hand, is moderately related to motivation, but is a stronger predictor of civic attitudes than self-efficacy, while motivation is a strong predictor of both future participation and civic attitudes. The results thus confirm that competence other than knowledge is vital to civic participation. Finally, the relevance of these results for civic education in upper secondary schools is discussed. It is emphasized that enhancing students' self-efficacy in the political field (often referred to as 'internal political efficacy') may be of equal, if not greater, importance for school education as promoting civic competence.

Higher Education, Development and the Learning Economy

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: Higher Education, Development and the Learning Economy
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 279-291
ABSTRACT This article reviews the claims for the new economy as necessary background to analyzing changes in knowledge production and the role of the university in the so-called learning economy. The article develops an argument for 'knowledge networks' as a basis for the university to promote regional development at home and international development abroad.

The Permanent Quality Tribunal in Education and the Limits of Education Policy

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: The Permanent Quality Tribunal in Education and the Limits of Education Policy
Author: MAARTEN SIMONS; JAN MASSCHELEIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 292-305
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyse the evident use of the notion 'educational quality' from the perspective of a critical 'ontology of the present' by focusing on governmental relations. Through mapping present discourses on educational quality and related technologies, the authors analyse how our present concern with quality is part of a particular regime of government and self-government. In this governmental regime the 'quality apparatus' seeks to assure an optimal relation between supply and demand. In conclusion, the perspective of a 'creative ontology' of the educational present is introduced in order to formulate alternative ideas on education and in order to indicate the limits of education policy.

Community's Discontent: the ideology of the Volk community in National Socialism

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: Community's Discontent: the ideology of the Volk community in National Socialism
Author: HEINZ SÜNKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 306-319
ABSTRACT National Socialism, the German type of fascism, is analysed in this article with respect to the question of its ideological foundations, the ideology of the Volk community, and its consequences for a relevant type of social practice, Volk welfare. Under National Socialism the form of state social work intervention was transformed. The German welfare state became an educational state. Social education, which encompassed social work, was a system geared to complete social control through the establishment and maintenance of the 'Volk community'. The 'Volk community' was a social policy which combined welfare and repression - sometimes in a murderous way - as the means of achieving the social organisation of everyday life. The way in which the 'Volk community' shaped individual consciousness and constructed social relations is elaborated and demonstrates the extent to which the eugenics and racism embedded in this ideology were central to all social institutions, including 'Volk welfare'.

BOOK REVIEWS

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:06:05 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 320-329
ABSTRACT Not available

Introduction. Doing Diversity

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Introduction. Doing Diversity
Author: Sara Ahmed; Elaine Swan
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 96-100
ABSTRACT Not available

Transcendence over Diversity: black women in the academy

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Transcendence over Diversity: black women in the academy
Author: HEIDI SAFIA MIRZA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 101-103
ABSTRACT Universities, like many major public institutions, have embraced the notion of 'diversity' virtually uncritically - it is seen as a moral good in itself. But what happens to those who come to represent 'diversity' - the black and minority ethnic groups targeted to increase the institutions' thirst for global markets and aversion to accusations of institutional racism? Drawing on existing literature which analyses the process of marginalisation in higher education, this article explores the individual costs to black and female academic staff regardless of the discourse on diversity. However, despite the exclusion of staff, black and minority ethnic women are also entering higher education in relatively large numbers as students. Such grass-roots educational urgency transcends the dominant discourse on diversity and challenges presumptions inherent in top-down initiatives such as widening participation. Such a collective movement from the bottom up shows the importance of understanding black female agency when unpacking the complex dynamics of gendered and racialised exclusion. Black women's desire for education and learning makes possible a reclaiming of higher education from creeping instrumentalism and reinstates it as a radical site of resistance and refutation.

Working for Equality and Diversity in Adult and Community Learning: leadership, representation and racialised 'outsiders within'

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Working for Equality and Diversity in Adult and Community Learning: leadership, representation and racialised 'outsiders within'
Author: SHONA HUNTER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 114-127
ABSTRACT This article uses empirical material from a qualitative study of adult and community learning (ACL) to explore issues around leading for equality and diversity in educational organisations. What the author is interested in is the way that the commitment to a 'community' context in ACL opens up (or keeps open) certain possibilities for 'diverse' educational leaders because of the connection it draws between pedagogic practice and the politics of equality. By calling for a mainstreaming of political knowledge around unequal social relations, participants problematise notions of leadership currently circulating in education. Whilst homogenising tendencies in their accounts may be read as going against the very grain of contemporary debates around the recognition of 'difference' and diversity, they also pose significant challenges to neo-liberal imaginings of diversity.

Changing Leadership in Contexts of Diversity: visibility, invisibility and democratic ideals

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Changing Leadership in Contexts of Diversity: visibility, invisibility and democratic ideals
Author: AUDREY OSLER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 128-144
ABSTRACT This article considers the degree to which recent changes in school leadership discourse, to incorporate diversity, reflect a changing professional culture among school leadership trainers and researchers in England. It examines the extent to which equalities legislation has had an impact on school leadership agendas and considers what can be learned from school leaders, including those from visible minorities, to inform policy in this field. The national culture is shaped by patterns of forgetting, so that diversity is represented as something new, and potentially disintegrative. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century leaders of colour, who were once highly visible, are made invisible through the processes of history. Parallels are drawn with today's school leaders and current educational leadership research agendas. Research commissioned by the National College for School Leadership adopts a cross-cultural paradigm. Cross-cultural approaches which do not engage fully with the legal imperative to promote race equality and which overlook deep-seated patterns of inequality are unlikely to meet the needs of a multicultural democracy. Many school leaders are concerned with racial justice and recognise their responsibility as citizens to address racism and inequality. Racism is an anti-democratic force, serving to undermine the full and equal participation of citizens. Anti-racism is thus an essential element of democratic practice within a multicultural nation state. The article concludes by arguing that school leadership researchers, trainers and head teachers need to adopt new patterns of remembering which build on the experience and wisdom of head teachers from all sectors of society who are engaged in the practical citizenship task of creating equitable schools and building an effective multicultural democracy.

Falling between the Cracks: what diversity means for black women in higher education

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Falling between the Cracks: what diversity means for black women in higher education
Author: CECILY JONES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 145-159
ABSTRACT The concepts of social justice and diversity have attained currency in political discourse and in organisational policy. Since the 1960s, the concept of social justice has been at the forefront of governmental drives to eradicate social inequalities, delivered through a framework of equality of opportunity. Recent years have, however, witnessed a shift away from the 'traditional' equal opportunity model of achieving equality towards the adoption of diversity management as a strategy of organisational policy. This shift comes in the wake of the increasing recognition of the diverse nature of employees in the workplace. A cornerstone of diversity management is its stress on the recognition and valuing of individual rather than social-group difference. An emphasis on individual difference may, however, carry profound consequences for the achievement of equality, for it may in fact serve to obscure and exacerbate the structural causes of inequality and, moreover, it may be an inadequate approach to countering the racialised discrimination and disadvantage encountered by black female academics. This article therefore asks: what are the implications of this shift for black and minority ethnic women academics in higher education in the United Kingdom today? Is it possible for higher education institutions and other employers to initiate a diversity policy that not only recognises differences, but at the same time ensures the delivery of policies and practices that challenge inequality?

Face Values: visible/invisible governors on the board and organisational responses to the race equality agenda

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Face Values: visible/invisible governors on the board and organisational responses to the race equality agenda
Author: LEWIS TURNER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 160-171
ABSTRACT This article explores institutional responses to the race equality agenda in the context of further education (FE) and sixth form colleges. More specifically, it examines the experiences of black and minority ethnic governors within the environment of recent legislative changes to improve the representation of black and minority ethnic people in governing bodies and senior management within the sector. Using data from interviews with black and minority ethnic governors and diversity managers, the article explores the negotiations that participants made within these institutions as black and minority ethnic people. This exploration is framed by a problematic of visibility and invisibility - a 'double bind' which can restrict the role that black and minority ethnic governors are able to undertake within some college environments. The author claims that the modalities of these informal dynamics inform and affirm a conceptualisation of colleges as the 'proper' location of white male subjectivity.

Diversity and the Marginalisation of Black Women's Issues

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Diversity and the Marginalisation of Black Women's Issues
Author: ROSEMARY CRAWLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 172-184
ABSTRACT This article describes and evaluates information gained from a programme of workshops that took place during the late 1990s for approximately one hundred black women who originated from the African diaspora and worked in the social housing sector. The programme was designed to utilise group working in order to promote feminist thinking and self-actualisation from a black female perspective. Most of the participants saw it as a means of personal and career development. In the event it also provided valuable research information. Stories were told and feelings explored about the effect on black women of living and working in a predominantly white society that publicly acknowledges itself as diverse but holds on to its economic privileges and notions of its innate superiority. The participants focused on the impact on black women of diversity as it is practised in employer organisations, diversity training, ascribed images and roles and interactions with family and community.

Diversity in the Academy? Staff Perceptions of Equality Policies in Six Contemporary Higher Education Institutions

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Diversity in the Academy? Staff Perceptions of Equality Policies in Six Contemporary Higher Education Institutions
Author: ROSEMARY DEEM; LOUISE MORLEY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 185-202
ABSTRACT The article is based on recent research involving qualitative case studies of staff experiences of equality policies in six English, Scottish and Welsh higher education institutions (HEIs). Recent changes to UK legislation (e.g. on 'race' and disability) and a series of European Union employment directives (including on religion and sexual orientation) have caused more attention to be paid to equality policies and their implementation in higher education. The wider context for equality policies has also changed, from a predominant focus on individuals and redistributive equality policies to viewing inequality as a generic and relative concept which can be policy-mainstreamed, with greater concentration on organisational cultures and diversity and a focus on recognitional rather than redistributive approaches to inequality. The article uses the authors' recent research findings to consider how higher education institution employees who participated in the study understood notions of equality and diversity. There is a particular focus on whether different forms of inequality are seen to be interconnected, whether diversity is seen as desirable by most employees interviewed, the potential tensions and conflicts between equality policies applying to students and those concerned with staff and the visions of equitable HEIs of the future held by senior managers. It is suggested that whilst all HEIs studied had equality policies and senior managers who have benefited from equality training, nevertheless the shift away from redistributional notions of inequality (except in respect of occupational inequality) towards greater emphasis on recognitional forms, the tensions between student and staff equality issues, and the pursuit of organisational diversity may reflect a relative depoliticisation of the staff equality agenda in higher education.

Teaching Diversity - im/possible pedagogy

Fri, 5 May 2006 13:44:23 GMT

Title: Teaching Diversity - im/possible pedagogy
Author: SANJAY SHARMA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Pages: 203-216
ABSTRACT A turn to 'cultural diversity' in the curriculum offers a multitude of opportunities for educational practitioners: questioning Eurocentric knowledge; deconstructing 'marginality'; recognising the ensuing hybridities, intercultural dialogues and encounters in a globalizing world. However, this article questions the current representational pedagogies of cultural and media studies in relation to how they address the epistemic and political grounds upon which the antagonisms of multiculture are played out. It argues that a point of departure for teaching diversity needs to acknowledge the contestations of racialized difference, and the pedagogic im/possibility of encountering otherness outside of domination. A key aim of the article is to explore the entangled politics and practice of teaching diversity, through scrutinizing the challenges of using a 'multicultural' film such as Bend it Like Beckham (dir. Gurinder Chadha, 2002). It has become increasingly common in cultural and media studies to use 'ethnically marked' texts to examine and deconstruct the dynamics of cultural-racial identity formation and representations of otherness. The article interrogates the productive possibilities and limits of such approaches.

Introduction. Marcuse's Challenges to Education

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Introduction. Marcuse's Challenges to Education
Author: Douglas Kellner
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-5
ABSTRACT Philosopher, social theorist, and political activist, Herbert Marcuse gained world renown during the 1960s as 'father of the New Left.' The author of many books and articles, and for decades a popular university professor, Marcuse gained notoriety when he was perceived as both an influence on and defender of the 'New Left' in the United States and Europe. His theory of 'one-dimensional' society provided critical perspectives on contemporary capitalist and state communist societies, while his notion of 'the Great Refusal' won him renown as a theorist of revolutionary change and 'liberation from the affluent society.' Consequently, he became one of the most influential intellectuals in the United States during the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Marcuse was born in Berlin and after serving with the German army in World War I, he went to Freiburg to pursue his studies. After receiving his PhD in literature in 1922, and following a short career as a bookseller in Berlin, he returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study philosophy with Martin Heidegger, then one of the most influential thinkers in Germany. In 1933, Marcuse joined the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt and soon became deeply involved in their interdisciplinary projects, which included working out a model for radical social theory, developing a theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, and providing a systematic analysis and critique of German fascism. Marcuse identified with the 'Critical Theory' of the Institute and throughout his life was close to Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, and others in the Institute's inner circle.

In 1934, Marcuse - a German Jew and radical - fled from Nazism and emigrated to the United States where he lived for the rest of his life. The Institute for Social Research was granted offices and an academic affiliation with Columbia University, where Marcuse worked during the 1930s and early 1940s. His first major work in English, Reason and Revolution (1941), traced the genesis of the ideas of Hegel, Marx, and modern social theory. It demonstrated the similarities between Hegel and Marx, and introduced many English-speaking readers to the Hegelian-Marxian tradition of dialectical thinking.

In 1941, Marcuse joined the OSS (Office of Secret Services) and then worked in the State Department, becoming the head of the Central European bureau by the end of World War II. After serving in the US Government from 1941 through the early 1950s, which Marcuse always claimed was motivated by a desire to struggle against fascism, he returned to intellectual work and published Eros and Civilization in 1955, which attempted an audacious synthesis of Marx and Freud and sketched the outlines of a non-repressive society.

In 1958, Marcuse received a tenured position at Brandeis University and became one of the most popular and influential members of its faculty. During his period of government work, Marcuse had been a specialist in fascism and communism, and he published a critical study of the Soviet Union in 1958 (Soviet Marxism) which broke the taboo in his circles against speaking critically of the USSR and Soviet communism. In 1964, Marcuse published One-Dimensional Man, a wide-ranging critique of both advanced capitalist and communist societies that became one of his most widely known works. The text theorized the decline of revolutionary potential in capitalist societies and the development of new forms of social control. Marcuse argued that 'advanced industrial society' created false needs which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption. For Marcuse, mass media and culture, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought all reproduced the existing system and attempt to eliminate negativity, critique, and opposition. The result was a 'one-dimensional' universe of thought and behavior in which the very aptitude and ability for critical thinking and oppositional behavior was withering away.

One-Dimensional Man was followed by a series of books and articles which articulated New Left politics and critiques of capitalist societies in 'Repressive Tolerance' (1965), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972). 'Repressive Tolerance' attacked liberalism and those who refused to take a stand during the controversies of the 1960s. It won Marcuse the reputation of being an intransigent radical and voice for the Left; as we shall see below, it has been a major target for right-wing attacks on Marcuse in the contemporary moment. An Essay on Liberation celebrated the existing liberation movements from the Viet Cong to the hippies and exhilarated many radicals while further alienating establishment academics and those who opposed the movements of the 1960s. Counterrevolution and Revolt, by contrast, articulates the new realism that was setting in during the early 1970s when it was becoming clear that the most extravagant hopes of the 1960s were being dashed by a turn to the right and 'counterrevolution' against the 1960s.

Marcuse and Education

Marcuse's engagement with education involves radical critique of the existing system of education and the search for emancipatory alternatives. In general, there has little serious engagement with the potential of Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School to present systematic critique and positive alternatives for education. Hence, the articles collected here, many of which were first presented at the 2005 conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Montreal, will be breaking new ground in laying out a series of Marcuse's challenges for those who seek an emancipatory reconstruction of education and society.

An early attempt by Joseph DiVitis to engage Marcuse's implications for education was overly critical and generally unsympathetic to Marcuse, reducing Marcuse's complex positions to pan-rationalism and Platonism (1974), which DeVitis claimed was 'repressive' in regard to education. The only serious and sustained analysis of the implications of Marcuse's thought for education are found in Charles Reitz's Art, Alienation and the Humanities (2000).

Reitz explicates the relevance of Marcuse's thought to provide elements of a radical philosophy of education that could be combined with critical pedagogy and existing progressive alternative educational projects (2000, pp. 240ff.) He suggests that Marcuse's work in the 1930s mediates dichotomies in education between humanities and the sciences that should be overcome, sublating the poles of idealism and scientific empiricism (pp. 27ff.) In general, Reitz focuses on Marcuse's notion of aesthetic education, and posits an overly dualistic theory in Marcuse between Hegelian-Marxian critical theory and an aesthetic ontology grounded in Schiller, Freud and a subjectivist aestheticism. While Reitz is correct that the latter dimension sometimes stands in an uneasy relation with Marcuse's critical theory, at its best Marcuse's work combines critical philosophy, social theory, aesthetics and radical politics. From this perspective, Marcuse's educational project is to mediate aesthetic education, the humanities, and the sciences with a critical theory of the contemporary era and a radical politics aiming at emancipation and a non-repressive society.

Ironically, so far the Right has provided more engagement with Marcuse's impact on contemporary education than the Left, but I want to dispose quickly of the right-wing critique of Marcuse by Allan Bloom and Kors & Silvergate in their book The Shadow University (1998). Bloom, in his infamous The Closing of the American Mind (1987) claimed Marcuse was the most important philosopher of the 1960s counterculture, and that the spread of his theories led to 'the betrayal of liberty on America's campuses'. Moreover, Bloom claims that German thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger and Marcuse have spread a corrosive nihilism and seduced the youth, writing that the USA imported 'a clothing of German fabrication for our souls, which ... cast doubt upon the Americanization of the world on which we had embarked' (1987, p. 152). In the era of Bush administration unilateralism, I and others might argue that any casting of doubt on US imperial aspirations is a salutary contribution for which Marcuse should be thanked. Revealing his inability to grasp the philosophical dimension and challenges of Marcuse's thought, Bloom also writes of Marcuse: 'He ended up here writing trashy culture criticism with a heavy sex interest' (1987, p. 226), a simply ludicrous claim.

Kors & Silvergate (1998) make Marcuse responsible for speech codes in the University, so-called 'political correctness', intolerance toward conservatives, and other nightmares for the Right such as critical race theory, gay and lesbian studies, and militant feminism because he argued for intolerance against sexism, racism, homophobia, militarism, and imperialism and argued for what we would now call multicultural education.

In fact, probably more than almost any other professional philosopher, Marcuse promoted classical philosophy ranging from Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Freud, as well as presenting a critical theory of contemporary societies, capitalist and socialist, and projecting emancipatory alternatives to what he saw as a repressive contemporary civilization. And while Marcuse actively opposed racism, sexism, homophobia, and imperialism, while promoting the rights of oppressed groups and multicultural education, it is an exaggeration to credit Marcuse with academic programs in these areas because it was largely women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and others in social movements and research areas where new program areas like Women's Studies, or Chicano studies, developed these new academic programs.

Marcuse's critics, of course, do not really engage his ideas or note the wealth of his thought that is probed in the presentations collected here. The AERA panel was organized by Daniel Cho and Tyson Lewis and the panelists, whose papers we collected here, along with papers produced in a Spring 2005 Origins of Critical Pedagogy seminar at UCLA, are currently pursuing their PhDs at UCLA and have found Marcuse's thought useful and provocative for a wide variety of projects with which they are currently involved. The papers also pose in a provisional fashion how Marcuse challenges educational orthodoxy and offers alternatives to existing pedagogy and the system of education, although limitations in Marcuse's positions are also noted. Hence, neither the AERA panel, nor this set of texts is in any way an exercise in hagiography or theology, but rather of promoting critical thought and practice in the Marcusean spirit.

Tyson Lewis opens with a study of the relevance of Marcuse and Adorno' s work in developing a radical critique of the current system of education and producing emancipatory alternatives. Strong negative critique is one pole of Marcusean thought, shared by Adorno, but Marcuse frequently also valorized alternative practices, in this case stressing the importance of play, education of the senses, and cultivation of the imagination for an emancipatory pedagogy. Lewis focuses on the intimate connection between utopia and education in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson. For Lewis, education forms a bridge that links the present to the future and as such necessitates a utopian turn. Likewise, utopia, in order to become concrete must ultimately address the question of the reconstruction of education. This connection keeps Marcuse's utopianism alive through the dystopia of One-Dimensional Man, sparks Adorno' s utopian imagination in his lectures on education, and provides Jameson with a link between cognitive mapping and utopia.

Daniel Cho, reading Marcuse through the lens of Jacque Lacan's psychoanalysis, suggests that a radical practice of Marcuse's Great Refusal in the arena of pedagogy and social action would involve a symbolic destruction of the system and search for radical alternatives. Cho underlines the affinities between Marcuse and Lacan's respective 'return to Freud', and demonstrating Marcuse's continued influence and legacy.

Both Lewis and Cho take on Marcuse's controversial engagement with psychoanalysis. I might note that when I began presenting Marcuse's thought in the 1970s and 1980s I used to get attacked by Habermasians and post-structuralists who argued that Marcuse's use of Freud's metapyschological categories of Eros and Thanatos constituted an essentialism and reductionism of human life to two basic instincts. I countered that Marcuse's appropriation of Freud's categories could be read as conceptual mythologies used as hermeneutical devices to interpret and illuminate certain phenomena (see Kellner, 1984), as do Lewis and Cho in their presentations. Showing the range of imaginative reconstructions of Marcuse's thought, Lewis sees establishment education as an expression of Thanatos, with deadening repetition, rote learning, and authoritarian discipline killing spontaneity and creativity, while Cho argues that embracing Thanatos as symbolic death for the system frees one from repressive and conformist practices and creates the space for new life and pedagogy.

Richard Van Heertum emphasizes Marcuse's motif of utopia and hope, bringing his thought together in the orbit of Ernst Bloch and Paulo Freire. For Van Heertum, critical pedagogy needs to combine critique with hope and theorists like Marcuse and Bloch provide rich and productive concepts of hope, linking individual with community, desire with reconciliation, while recognizing the traces in everyday culture of deeper desire. He argues Marcuse's conception of aesthetic education can help enrich critical pedagogy, offering students tools to step outside the dominant discourse and rationality and contemplate a different world.

Tammy Shel, by contrast, stresses how Marcuse's thought can be used to critique the quantative model of education and the social sciences and provides outlines of a pedagogy of caring which she believes will help provide preconditions for a genuinely non-repressive and loving civilization. Shel argues how 'a pedagogy of caring is relevant for Marcuse's goals and criticizes standardized education as promoting what Marcuse (1964) calls a one-dimension society'.

Clayton Pierce takes on Marcuse's dialectic of technology that provides both radical critique of technological civilization and sketches of an alternative 'new technology' that could serve the interests of life and human emancipation. Pierce contends that Marcuse's challenge for qualitatively different forms of technology and a new technique can best be met in the context of education. Pierce works through three conceptions of technique in Marcuse's work that sketches out ways of using new technologies for emancipation, expanding the concept of technique to incorporate the social and political dimensions of technique with the practical ones. Pierce suggests that Marcuse's dialectical vision of technology is highly relevant to education, given the bifurcated debate over the contributions and limitations of new modes of information technology and the need to overcome one-sided technophilia and technophobia while maintaining a critical and reconstructive vision of technology and education.

Dolores Calderón in turn shows how Marcuse's thought can be appropriated both for radical critique of racism and oppression in contemporary education through linking the concepts of one-dimensionality and the Great Refusal with an interrogation of whiteness. Calderón argues that in the context of the United States, the one-dimensionality that Marcuse condemns in One-Dimensional Man is captured by the notion of whiteness which posits that whiteness in the context of white supremacy is the ideological manifestation of capitalism in the United States. The values Marcuse wants to break with or refuse in An Essay on Liberation can be more concretely captured if it is made clear that the ideology of whiteness represents the normative order of advanced industrial society that must be 'Refused'. In addition, for Marcuse's Great Refusal to take place, it follows that society must break and rupture the ideology of whiteness and white supremacy.

During our work on Marcuse for an AERA presentation, we co-produced a graduate seminar at UCLA on 'Origins of Critical Pedagogy,' that inquired into the relevance of Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and Marcuse in transforming contemporary education and society. We have included here two papers from that seminar which use Marcuse to provide critique of the disciplines of information science and law school. Ajit Pyati, a PhD student in the UCLA Department of Information Studies, shows how Marcuse can be used to present a radical critique of his discipline. Pyati notes that critical theory is generally ignored in discussions of Library and Information Science, and that Marcuse's critique of technological rationality and society can provide a more vigorous critical perspective on information studies and the information society, than many competing perspectives. In the same spirit, Saru Matambanadzo, a graduate student in Women's Studies at UCLA, shows how Marcusean perspectives can provide a sharp critique of Law School and legal studies. Reflecting on her experiences at Harvard Law School, Matambanadzo finds Marcuse's concept of one-dimensionality appropriate in explicating the limitations of legal education in the USA.

Finally, we are also including an article by our colleague in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Richard Kahn, who applies Marcuse's theories to develop radical critiques of environmental social movements that Kahn claims are a central pedagogical force in today's society as they confront growing ecological crises at both the global and local levels. Kahn concludes that Marcuse is a quintessential ecological theorist whose utopian conception of nature extends far beyond more liberal and conservative versions offered by many mainstream environmentalists, that Marcuse himself is fundamentally linked to the more militant origins of US environmentalism in the 1960s, and that he offers a version of pedagogy as politics that is useful for understanding the educational role currently being played by revolutionary groups such as the Earth Liberation Front.

Following the varied presentations, Marcuse's challenge to education appears as a dialectical vision that combines radical critique of the existing system with projection of emancipatory alternatives. This follows the two poles of the Marcusean dialectic between domination and emancipation. Indeed, some of the articles collected here focus on critique, others on alternative educational praxis and pedagogy, with many combining these poles and in some cases proposing reconstruction of Marcuse's thought. Together, they show how the work of Herbert Marcuse continues to challenge the institutions and practices of the contemporary education establishment while providing emancipatory alternatives. In an era of neo-conservative hegemony, Marcuse's critical perspectives are more needed than ever and provide moments of critique and alternative vision needed to keep hope alive and envisage a different and better future.

Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

References

Bloom, Allan (1987) The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.

DeVitis, Joseph (1974) Marcuse on Education: social critique and social control, Educational Theory, 24(3), pp. 259-268.

Kellner, Douglas (1984) Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. Berkeley and London: University of California Press (USA) and Macmillan (England).

Kors, Alan Charles & Harvey A. Silvergate (1998) The Shadow University. New York: HarperCollins.

Reitz, Charles (2000) Art, Alienation and the Humanities. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Utopia and Education in Critical Theory

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Utopia and Education in Critical Theory
Author: TYSON LEWIS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 6-17
ABSTRACT In this article the author examines the intimate connections between utopia and education in Frankfurt School critical theory. Although substantial links have been made in the critical pedagogy tradition between education, critique, and utopian dreaming, an in-depth analysis of the utopia-education matrix in the works of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson enriches our current understanding of this topic in several key ways. Marcuse enables us to envision play as a possible praxis for revitalizing utopian longings while Adorno's focus on anxiety offers a sound corrective to the overemphasis on hope in utopian scholarship. Finally, Jameson mediates many of the differences arising between Marcuse and Adorno to fashion a post-utopian utopianism for late capitalism.

Thanatos and Civilization: Lacan, Marcuse, and the death drive

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Thanatos and Civilization: Lacan, Marcuse, and the death drive
Author: DANIEL CHO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 18-30
ABSTRACT During the 1950s and 1960s two thinkers, Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Lacan, were conducting a 'return to Freud' for very similar reasons. If the differences between them are often advertised, their affinities are less so. In this article, I examine how their 'return to Freud' and fidelity to psychoanalysis serves as a common ground to read each in conjunction with the other. Specifically, the Freudian figure of the death drive marks a deep homology within Marcuse and his ethic of 'The Great Refusal,' with Lacan's notion of living in-between 'two deaths.' Reading each as the dialectical complement of the other, this article concludes by provocatively reversing Marcuse's thesis in Eros and Civilization: 'Today the fight for death, the fight for Thantos, is the political fight.'

The Educative Potential of Ecological Militancy in an Age of Big Oil: towards a Marcusean ecopedagogy

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: The Educative Potential of Ecological Militancy in an Age of Big Oil: towards a Marcusean ecopedagogy
Author: RICHARD KAHN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 31-44
ABSTRACT This article begins by tracing the conjunction between the birth of radical ecological politics and the New Left, then moves to a reconsideration of whether a Marcusean politics and culture of intolerance and resistance are legitimate under contemporary circumstances. The article then outlines a call for the reconstruction of a Marcusean 'pro-life' politics, and then closes with a discussion of how Marcuse provides ecological educators with a theory of politics as education and a revolutionary conception of humanitas, through which Marcuse sought to work to overcome the historical struggle and dichotomy between culture and nature, as well as the human and non-human animal. The conclusion offered is that Marcuse is a founding figure of a revolutionary ecopedagogy that seeks an end to the violent destruction of the earth, as it works to manifest a critical, utopian post-humanism based upon new life sensibilities that attempts to displace domination and repression broadly conceived with ecological and just social alternatives.

Marcuse, Bloch and Freire: reinvigorating a pedagogy of hope

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Marcuse, Bloch and Freire: reinvigorating a pedagogy of hope
Author: RICHARD VAN HEERTUM
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 45-51
ABSTRACT Critique of the current order of things is a necessary starting point for any project for radical change. Without an analysis of what is wrong, it is hard to convince anyone that change is necessary. And yet critique alone rarely inspires people to act. We need something to fight for as well as against. The article looks at the centrality of hope as a necessary complement to critique. Combining insights from Freire, Bloch and Marcuse, it argues that critical pedagogy needs to seriously engage methods to create an environment amenable to resistance and struggle for change, founded on a belief that a better world is possible. Marcuse, in particular, offers three key insights that can be instrumental in moving beyond the overly negative discourse and cynicism that prevail today - including a trenchant analysis of capitalism and desire, a program for aesthetic education and a model for utopian dreaming and embodied hope. It is argued that critical pedagogy must move beyond consciousness raising and identity formation alone to foster the belief that change is possible. We need to move toward a discourse and action that can capitalize on repressed desires and provide a provisional alternative vision that can galvanize people to act toward its realization.

On Marcuse and Caring in Education

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: On Marcuse and Caring in Education
Author: TAMMY SHEL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 52-60
ABSTRACT Can caring and standardized testing coincide? Marcuse criticized the misuse of science because it also legitimizes social and economic hierarchy. By the same token, scholars develop standardized testing, claiming these tests are scientific and can measure objectively individuals' learning and intelligence capabilities. However, if inclusive caring embraces human beings' diversity and recognizes diverse learning styles and intelligences, the concept of standards promotes the opposite agenda. Standardized testing aims toward what Marcuse called a one-dimensional human being and social stratification. Can standardized testing promote learning and tolerance? The public and academic debate on this issue also needs to address the moral and social ramifications on society. If the emphasis in education is primarily on quantity, then society devalues human life and narrows it down, as Horkheimer & Adorno claimed, to zero. Such an agenda serves mostly those in power. Marcuse criticized the social ramifications and the portrayal and use of science as an accurate and neutral academic discipline. In a world that copes with violence, poverty, and intolerance domestically, nationally, and internationally, one needs to contemplate the danger that lies in the excessive quantitative measurement of human beings where there is scant qualitative value.

Groundwork for the Concept of Technique in Education: Herbert Marcuse and technological society

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Groundwork for the Concept of Technique in Education: Herbert Marcuse and technological society
Author: CLAYTON PIERCE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 61-72
ABSTRACT This article articulates the groundwork for a new understanding of the concept of technique through a critical engagement with Herbert Marcuse's critical theory of technology. To this end, it identifies and engages three expressions of technique in Marcuse's work: mimesis, reified labor, and the happy consciousness. It is argued that this mapping of the concept of technique provides the philosophy of education with a new perspective in which to understand the relationship between technology and the educational experience in the contemporary moment. The exposition of technique, moreover, when applied to the educational context, applies not only to technological artifacts per se but also extends to educational policies that share the mutual logic embedded within existing expressions of technique. Finally, it is suggested that Marcuse's project to theorize a 'qualitatively new form' of technology must be taken up within the educative process. The article contends that this will require rethinking interactions between students and science and technology within the educational context that can promote and produce democratic and liberatory expressions of technique.

One-Dimensionality and Whiteness

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: One-Dimensionality and Whiteness
Author: DOLORES CALDERÓN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 73-82
ABSTRACT This article is a theoretical discussion that links Marcuse's concept of one-dimensional society and the Great Refusal with critical race theory in order to achieve a more robust interrogation of whiteness. The author argues that in the context of the United States, the one-dimensionality that Marcuse condemns in One-Dimensional Man is best illuminated by the concept of whiteness, which posits that whiteness in the context of white supremacy is an ideological manifestation of capitalism in the United States. The author furthers that the values Marcuse wants to break with or refuse in An Essay on Liberation can be more concretely captured if it is made clear that the ideology of whiteness represents a key part of the normative order of advanced industrial society that must be 'Refused'. The reproduction of whiteness in educational structures serves to oppress raced, gendered, and classed individuals and communities who deviate from the norms established by the ideology of whiteness. Thus, in the context of education, the author proposes that the crucial theoretical tools we have to challenge one-dimensional education and refuse whiteness are critical race theory and critical multicultural education.

Critical Theory and Information Studies: a Marcusean infusion

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Critical Theory and Information Studies: a Marcusean infusion
Author: AJIT K. PYATI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 83-89
ABSTRACT In the field of library and information science, also known as information studies, critical theory is often not included in debates about the discipline's theoretical foundations. This paper argues that the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse, in particular, has a significant contribution to make to the field of information studies. Marcuse's focus, for instance, on 'technical rationality' as a tool of domination in modern capitalist society is a useful construct for understanding how discourses of information technology are being used to perpetuate modernist notions of information and capitalist logics of consumption. It is argued here that critical theory theory and critical theory of technology have a particular relevance and salience to the study of information, and that any discipline that claims to study the creation, use, classification, and access of information simply cannot ignore the larger socio-political critiques of modern, technological society that Marcuse proposes.

Fumbling toward a Critical Legal Pedagogy and Practice

Tue, 7 Mar 2006 14:09:49 GMT

Title: Fumbling toward a Critical Legal Pedagogy and Practice
Author: SARU MATAMBANADZO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2006 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Pages: 90-95
ABSTRACT This article argues that the culture and practice of legal education in the United States functions to dehumanize law students and potentially produce one-dimensional lawyers in the service of corporate interests and the capitalist status quo. These lawyers are trained to serve not only as the guardians of legal rights, social entitlements and privileges of citizenship but also as the vested producers and protectors of the unjust institutions and systems that deny these rights, entitlements and privileges to certain groups and ensure them to others. Drawing on the work of Freire, Gramsci, and Marcuse, critical legal scholars like Lani Guinier and the history of legal education and the legal profession in the United States, this article uses theory and critical scholarship to read and interrogate the ways in which the current practices and the historical evolution of legal education have functioned and continue to function in the service of capitalism and to the disservice of many of its clients. It also proposes Freirean reforms to the structure of legal education that utilize mandatory clinical education as a means to ensure that legal education and lawyers are multidimensional in their orientation to law and social justice.

Editorial

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Ana Canen; Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 309-313
ABSTRACT Multiculturalism has a short history and is vulnerable as a concept and policy in the neoconservative state, after 9/11. It originated in the late 1960s, emerging with the encouragement of the New Left and after a decade of the civil rights movement that forced the recognition of cultural differences on the statute books. The word was first used, curiously, to describe Switzerland, and then was adopted by Canada in 1971 as the first country to develop multiculturalism as an official policy following the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism that responded to the grievances of the French-speaking minority. This policy affirmed the status of all Canadian citizens regardless of their 'racial' or ethnic origins and it confirmed the rights of aboriginal peoples and the status of Canada's two official languages. The policy was soon adopted elsewhere, especially within the Commonwealth and by countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. New Zealand developed its own bicultural policy in the last two decades of the twentieth century after the Maori renaissance of the 1970s revived the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi and began challenging the dominant monoculturalism of New Zealand society and its founding institutions. Multiculturalism, then, had its political home in civil rights, indigenous peoples' movements, in the critique of colonialism and neo-colonialism, in citizenship rights, and in a robust notion of equality, all of which intersected and coalesced during the 1970s. This volatile political mix soon made its presence felt strongly in education and the education system was seen as the basis of establishing a kind of monocultural socialisation in the past and also as the means for addressing new citizenship questions of identity, cross-cultural understanding, ethnic harmony, social and 'racial' coherence, and the discouragement of 'racial' hatred, discrimination and violence. Increasingly, education was employed as the means for initiating the 'naturalisation' of new citizens and immigrants, as well as one of the vehicles for redressing past grievances among indigenous peoples. These immense demands often were translated into attempts to build a multicultural curriculum.

Up until the later 1960s, the liberal state followed a policy of 'one language, one culture, one people' and assumed that cultural homogeneity was a necessary condition for modernisation and development. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the relation between two cultures - a traditional one and a culture of modernity - came to be officially perceived as largely a problem of modernisation, of making the former more like the latter. This modernisation was not just a form of 'assimilation' or 'integration': the logic of modernisation was taken to supersede all forms of traditionalism. Tribalism, in particular, was perceived to be inimical to the interests of the liberal state because it promoted historic 'we-they' attitudes and thereby militated against the liberal of an integrated state. Only recently in Western development and political theory has it even seemed a remote possibility that the enhancement of traditional ways of life might actually contribute to, rather than hinder, the 'development' or 'progress' of a people.

There is probably no more pressing a set of philosophical problems in educational theory than those that fall under the broad issue of cultural difference. The question of cultural difference in the era of modernity can be considered in abstract terms, in terms of the logic of alterity, of Otherness, but it cannot be thought of without examining the historical context of colonisation, its consequences for imperial, white-settler and indigenous cultures, and the historic struggles against the exercise of imperial power: the myriad forms of decolonisation, cultural reassertion and self-determination.

With the ascent of neo-liberalism in the 1980s multiculturalism suffered a series of setbacks. First, there was a revival of attacks from neo-liberals who criticised multiculturalism for allegedly impeding a 'shared national identity'. Old liberal arguments concerning the 'balkanisation' of the liberal state were advanced alongside arguments by the likes of Diane Ravitch, Allan Bloom, Dinesh D'Sousa, Roger Kimball, Thomas Sowell and Charles Sykes in the USA that warned about the ways in which multiculturalism undermined universal values and led to cultural relativism. Second, in the domain of public policy, the market became the favoured means of the allocation of public goods and the basis for redistribution rather than direct state intervention. This ideological perspective eroded many of the political gains made during the 1970s and multiculturalism became a target for the Right that was seen as ripe for reversal. Yet the institutionalisation of multiculturalism in education and in law, as official policy, in so many aspects of the state practices, including hiring practices, official language, anti-discrimination, etc., meant that reversal was not easily accomplished even though the political climate was right.

If anything, the move to the neoconservative state has heralded a new era of multiculturalism where it is even more threatened and vulnerable despite this institutionalisation. Neoconservatives understand that crisis of the neo-liberal state to be one of governance and disorder after excesses of market individualism that in part requires the embrace of traditional conservative morality to address the cultural crisis of individual anarchy, sexual permissiveness, hedonism and cultural relativism. The integration of the Christian Right into American politics, which took place under Reagan and then accelerated under George Bush, has focused a new assault on diversity in the name of (monocultural WASP) values. Multiculturalism is seen as being responsible for tearing down the values of 'civilisation'. After 9/11, multiculturalism is also seen as a mistaken policy, as a policy that has promoted the demolition of the state and created now insurmountable internal security risks. In Britain, the USA and France the emphasis has turned away from rights discourse in relation to immigrants in favour of greater security, more surveillance through the introduction of 'community cards', control and policing of borders, separate education of illegal immigrants - often involving a denial of cultural rights - and an erosion of those liberties that we take for granted. For instance, it has been revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency has secret goals around the globe and a recent amendment to a finance bill introduced by Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has just been introduced that will reverse the Supreme Court decision and take away any legal rights of inmates at Guantanamo, thus destablising the rule of law and questioning the status of habeas corpus. Most often, local resident, immigrant and especially Muslim populations suffer these new indignities. The new policies have begun to impact on the independence and existence of 'faith schools' in the United Kingdom and religious practices in French schools (the government's ban on Muslim girls' veils in schools). Riots in France, perhaps the most extensive since the 1968 student protests, which have spread from Paris to Lyons, typically involve young French Muslims and Blacks living in suburban housing estates on the outskirts of Paris who suffer high unemployment and who have been excluded from the benefits of French society. These young people complain bitterly of racism and the way the French state requires immigrants to adopt French values and customs. This has given rise to comparisons with American multiculturalism that follows anti-discrimination laws based on statistical data (the French state does not keep such data), yet the treatment of poor Black people in New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina struck has indicated how the neoconservative state failed to protect and look after its people. Multiculturalism since 9/11 and under neoconservatism now faces fresh legal, ethical, political and economic setbacks. These risks are acerbated under globalisation.

In a globalised era, tensions have been pinpointed between movements towards homogeneity of policies and practices in education - particularly represented by models grounded in market-oriented approaches towards efficiency and accountability - and those that take cultural diversity, democracy and citizenship-building as the core of their approaches. The former implicitly adopts a position that individualises policy in terms of 'consumers', which, at least at the level of provision of public policy, increasingly obviates cultural difference even if the market itself is sensitive to the exploitation of difference in terms of consumer marketing strategy. The rationale for the latter is mainly based on two arguments: on the one hand, the need for identity representation of culturally diverse groups in different arenas of social, political and cultural life, including education; on the other hand, the need for all to provide an education firmly grounded on anti-discriminatory perspectives that highlight the multicultural nature of citizenship-building and the cultural meanings underpinning democracy.

While these arguments have gained support from all who put into question a culturally blind market-oriented approach to education, this dichotomous approach towards the question of multiculturalism is not enough. There is a strong need to gauge the theoretical grounding and adequacy of policies and practices that take into account a wider multicultural education project. While often well intentioned, educational policies committed to multiculturalism often backfire when they fail to take into account the tensions inherent within the theoretical perspectives and discourses informing multicultural issues. Such tensions touch on issues related to identity and difference, and the extent to which these are thought of as essentialised entities or as dynamic, contingent and always-provisory constructions within discursive space. Likewise, these policies touch on issues related to the hybridisation of identities, bringing in the interplay of markers of identity along the lines of race, gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, language, culture, and so on. They also confront issues related to the spectrum between what is called universalism and relativism, inasmuch as respect for cultural diversity invariably tends to challenge modern assumptions of universal values and the construction of national identities. These policies struggle to find appropriate answers concerning possible ways of taking on board the 'global' and the 'local' interfaces, as well as the plural discourses and voices that shape distinct cultural meanings within educational policies and practices.

These tensions do not exist in a unified field, but rather they interact and impinge on the ways multicultural education is theorised. Thus, clarifying the epistemological and ethical debates surrounding these tensions, as well as looking into the extent to which education and teacher education have been dealing with them, can help not only to map the field - in itself a worthy enterprise - but also to provide groundbreaking thinking of policies and practices attuned to citizenship-building within the multicultural project. In a time when disparate cultural values and outlooks have been at the centre of many misunderstandings and, indeed, signal value differences at the heart of world conflicts, it is worthwhile to examine the tensions in discourses geared towards educational thinking that purport to value cultural diversity and anti-discriminatory perspectives. Even though we are wary of grand narratives or attempts to project a universal dimension, we believe that a critical examination of the field of multiculturalism in terms of its theoretical approaches, as well as its political implications in education and teacher education, will contribute to the enhancement of the multicultural project in education.

To this end we invited a team of international contributors from among those at the cutting edge in the debates surrounding the topic. These contributors adopt different perspectives and their work highlights different aspects of the subject. The contributors come from different cultural and national backgrounds and follow different theoretical, political or practical approaches. The contributors, in particular, were asked to elucidate the implications of their arguments for educational policies and practices.

Susan Searls Giroux in her article 'From the 'Culture Wars' to the Conservative Campaign for Campus Diversity: or, how inclusion became the new exclusion' provides a critical historical account of the rise of multiculturalism in American universities, analysing its impacts and tensions, and pointing out the extent to which the present context of post-9/11 terror attacks has reconfigured old backlashes. She contends that neoconservative forces have been penetrating academic life and promoting the silence of multiculturalism, paradoxically under the very appropriation of the vision and language of multiculturalism itself.

In 'Multicultural Challenges in Educational Policies within a Non-Conservative Scenario: the case of the emerging reforms in higher education in Brazil', Ana Canen discusses the extent to which multiculturalism has had an impact in the emerging reforms in higher education in Brazil. Building on a post-colonial critical multicultural approach, she analyses the main axes around which the higher education reform is built. Canen examines the plural and contradictory discourses of the written media, including university media and the government voice, in relation to the meanings ascribed to inclusive and multicultural reform. She concludes by pointing to possible roads ahead towards a transformative higher education within a multicultural perspective that not only goes beyond dichotomies and incorporates hybridity as a part of its political outlook, but also attempts to take both cultural plurality and academic excellence on board.

In ''White', 'Ethnic' and 'Indigenous': pre-service teachers reflect on discourses of ethnicity in Australian culture', Anne Hickling-Hudson analyses students' writing in autobiographical or biographical mode, pinpointing contesting discourses of ethnicity in Australia. The author argues that in grappling with the negative legacies of neocolonialism and its 'race' ideologies, reflection on how students have been socialised to regard their place of indigenous culture in their society could be the first step in order for them to become teachers who can overcome prejudice and discrimination in the classroom, deemed crucial in an intercultural pedagogy.

Ho-chia Chueh, in an article entitled 'The Multiculturalism Caveat', explores the notion of a politics of difference and the essentialist assumptions of political subjectivities. She provides a close reading of major scholars in the field and specifically examines the post-structuralist critique of subject-based reason and its appraisal of the Hegelian metaphysics of negation as means of identity claims. From this discussion Chueh proceeds to work through 'a pedagogy of the politics of difference'.

In his article 'Audit Cultures, Commodification, and Class and Race Strategies in Education', Michael Apple turns his attention to educational policies in the USA, focusing particularly on the federal reauthorisation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as No Child Left Behind. Pointing to its turn towards testing and accountability, Apple takes that policy as a starting point to discuss issues related to current neo-liberal trends that have been informing an agenda of privatisation and marketisation in education. He highlights the ways that a punitive culture of external auditing, inspection and league tables underlies No Child Left Behind, even though it is disguised in a transformative and seemingly multicultural language. Apple points out the implications of race, class and cultural diversity of such a 'reform' agenda, and urges educational researchers to pay close attention to the complicated class and race dynamics. The article concludes with the hope that we provoke alternative ways to promote educational policies that go beyond the controlling, homogenising culture that has prevailed in neo-liberal educational agendas worldwide.

Zeus Leonardo in his article 'Through the Multicultural Glass: Althusser, ideology and race relations in post-civil rights America' develops his insights on race and multiculturalism by delving into Althusser's analysis of the concept of ideology. Arguing that a thoroughgoing and critical theory of ideology is currently missing from multiculturalism, the author argues that Althusser's theory of ideology is useful for the study of race (absent from Athusser's original work). He contends that radical work on race within multiculturalism cannot forsake ideology. We must study not only its real manifestations, but also its imaginative, ideological dimensions. In that sense, by analysing the three main moments of Althusser's notion of ideology, Leonardo claims the third synthesises the other two and, indeed, most directly provides a clear picture of how racial ideology functions on a daily basis.

In 'English Rustic in Black Skin: post-colonial education, cultural hybridity and racial identity in the new century', Cameron McCarthy rethinks the constructs of race, identity and cultural heritage, central to multiculturalism. He takes hybridity and the dynamism and heterogeneity of plural everyday human encounters. Through what McCarthy calls three 'vignettes', one of which is autobiographical, he develops his argument against understandings of multiculturalism that tend to mark out 'indelible lines of separation between the culture, literature and traditions of the West and the culture and traditions of the Third World'. He shows the complexity of identity formation and stresses that curriculum reform must find links that connect plural groups across the particularities of their ethnic, geographical and cultural identities.

Jamie Kowalczyk & Thomas Popkewitz examine discourses of multiculturalism by historicising the notion of multiculturalism, examining Italy's conversations about schooling. In their contribution entitled 'Multiculturalism, Recognition and Abjection: (re)mapping Italian identity', they argue that 'Italian schools, along with other European Union member schools, are engaged in conversations around citizenship(s) (supranational, national and local variants), the question of national identity as a natural, uninterrupted homogeneity or an evolving heterogeneity, and the way in which immigration is evoked as the catalyst for these conversations'. Kowalczyk & Popkewitz first historicise and second consider the relationship of multiculturalism to the 'memory work' involved in narrating the nation. Third, they explore the local and the global in the Other. In this they provide a much-needed analysis of the European and specifically Italian dimension of multiculturalism.

In the final article, 'Education, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Difference', Michael Peters elaborates on the phrase 'the politics of difference' by reference to four main elements: a deepening of democracy through a political critique of Enlightenment values; an understanding of 'governmentality' as a form of political reason linking forms of governance and the self-regulating individual; an understanding of emergent forms of post-coloniality, an emphasis on philosophies of difference and the encounter with the Other; and an examination of 'the multitude - the coming of world democracy'.

Finally, Peter Roberts contributes a review essay that explores recent publications and what he calls 'Friere in the age of the market'.

From the 'Culture Wars' to the Conservative Campaign for Campus Diversity: or, how inclusion became the new exclusion

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: From the 'Culture Wars' to the Conservative Campaign for Campus Diversity: or, how inclusion became the new exclusion
Author: SUSAN SEARLS GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 314-326
ABSTRACT This article explores the new conservative assault on the university and the relative silence on the part of progressives in response to this challenge. In part, this apparent retreat is a consequence of the vulnerabilities and anxieties of workers in the academy that result from the ongoing corporatization of the university as well as the pervasive culture of fear that permeates the USA in the wake of 9/11, which tends to punish critique as anti-American. As important as such factors are, the current analysis focuses more inwardly on processes of internalization and normalization of the tenets of professionalism and (neo)liberalism in the post-civil rights American academy. Upon careful reexamination of the 'culture wars' of the 1980s and 1990s, it locates part of an explanation for such confounding quiet in the ideals that marked the university's 'multicultural turn.' The often limp endorsement and bland acceptance of principles such as 'nondiscrimination,' 'diversity,' and 'openness' in the abstract enabled the Right's ruthless appropriation of the vision and language of civil rights, turning fact and history on their heads.

Multicultural Challenges in Educational Policies within a Non-Conservative Scenario: the case of the emerging reforms in higher education in Brazil

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Multicultural Challenges in Educational Policies within a Non-Conservative Scenario: the case of the emerging reforms in higher education in Brazil
Author: ANA CANEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 327-339
ABSTRACT The article discusses the extent to which multiculturalism has had an impact in the emerging reforms in higher education in Brazil, against the backdrop of the rise of a new non-Conservative, Labour-oriented government whose political agenda is marked by a discursive stand against conservatism, neo-liberalism and neocolonialism. Building on a post-colonial critical multicultural approach and on the need to include ideology in discussions concerning educational reform, it argues that educational policies should work towards valuing cultural diversity and challenging discriminatory practices without falling into dichotomies that freeze subject and institutional identities and fail to consider their mobility, hybridization and contingency. It then proposes alternative perspectives to consider future policies in education that take multiculturalism on board in a transformational perspective.

'White', 'Ethnic' and 'Indigenous': pre-service teachers reflect on discourses of ethnicity in Australian culture

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: 'White', 'Ethnic' and 'Indigenous': pre-service teachers reflect on discourses of ethnicity in Australian culture
Author: ANNE HICKLING-HUDSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 340-358
ABSTRACT A cornerstone of the author's pedagogy as a teacher educator is to help students analyse how their culture and socialisation influence their role as teachers. In this article she shares the reflections of her Australian students on their culture. As part of their coursework in an elective subject, Cultural Diversity and Education, students reflect on and address questions of how they have been socialised to regard Anglo-Australian, Indigenous and non-British migrant cultures in their society. Some recall that their early conditioning cultivated a deep fear of Aborigines, and a tokenistic understanding of ethnicity. Others talk of their confusion between the pulls of assimilation into mainstream 'whiteness' and of maintaining a minority identity. This, combined with an often Anglocentric education, has left them with a problematic foundation with regard to becoming teachers who can overcome prejudice and discrimination in the classroom and the curriculum. This article argues that in grappling with the negative legacies of neo-colonialism and its 'race' ideologies, teachers need as a first step to analyse discourses of ethnicity and how these discourses construct 'white', 'ethnic' and Indigenous Australians. This groundwork is necessary for the further steps of honouring the central role of Indigenous people in Australian culture, recognizing how interacting cultures restructure each other, contributing to initiatives for peace and reconciliation, and promoting the study of cultural diversity in the curriculum - all essential components of an intercultural pedagogy.

The Multiculturalism Caveat: a pedagogy of the politics of difference

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: The Multiculturalism Caveat: a pedagogy of the politics of difference
Author: HO-CHIA CHUEH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 359-377
ABSTRACT Iris M. Young, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau are known for their political perspective on the politics of difference. The politics of difference concerns the fundamental question of political subjectivity. They argue against the essentialist belief that there is a fixed identity, instead promote the celebration of multiple and diverse values within society as reflecting the nature of difference. This article provides a genealogical examination of the discursive construction of these new attempts to define a philosophical basis for difference. The theories on difference and identity of Young, Laclau and Mouffe have been described and critiqued in this article. Such an examination will provide a better understanding of the notions of political agency presented in these new attempts. This may also lead us to a better understanding of the depth implicit in such notions as emancipation and empowerment notions these new theories have led us to.

Audit Cultures, Commodification, and Class and Race Strategies in Education

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Audit Cultures, Commodification, and Class and Race Strategies in Education
Author: MICHAEL W. APPLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 378-399
ABSTRACT The author discusses some of the ways in which certain elements of conservative modernization have had an impact on education at multiple levels. He points to the growth of commodifying logics and the audit culture that accompanies them. In the process, he highlights a number of dangers currently being faced. However, he urges us not to assume that these conditions can be reduced to the automatic workings out of simple formulae. He argues that we need a much more nuanced and complex picture of class relations and class projects to understand what is happening - and a more sensitive and historically grounded analysis of the place of racial dynamics in the vision both of 'a world out of control' that needs to be policed and of 'cultural pollution' that threatens 'real knowledge' in the growth of markets and audit cultures. Thus, Michael Apple also urges his readers to listen carefully to the critiques coming from collective voices within oppressed communities and to not assume that one can read off their positions by reducing their agency to simply expressions of rightist ideological formula. Becoming more nuanced about such constitutive dynamics will not guarantee that we can interrupt the tendencies upon which he focuses here. But it is one essential step in understanding the genesis of what is at stake in a serious politics of interruption.

Through the Multicultural Glass: Althusser, ideology and race relations in post-civil rights America

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Through the Multicultural Glass: Althusser, ideology and race relations in post-civil rights America
Author: ZEUS LEONARDO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 400-412
ABSTRACT In 1996, an edited volume devoted to Stuart Hall's work published the essay 'Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity'. Central to Hall's analysis was Gramsci's deployment of the concept of hegemony. This article hopes to accomplish parallel insights on race and multiculturalism by going through the concept of ideology as theorized by Althusser. A thoroughgoing and critical theory of ideology is currently missing from multiculturalism. When ideology is invoked, it either goes through a Marxist refutation of the racial concept or it is posed as a problem that needs to be transcended rather than a constitutive part of the ideological struggle over race. Just as Hall reminds us that Gramsci's theory of hegemony must be taken in the context of Gramsci's Marxist problematic, this article notes that Althusser's theory of ideology must be taken in the context of his commitment to historical materialism. However, in order to analyze the relevance of Althusser's theory of ideology for the study of race and multiculturalism (something which did not appear in Althusser's work), the author appropriates his insights sans his problematic of historical materialism. Althusser's theory is useful for a study of race, which is as much a problem at the ideological as it is at the material level. Furthermore, Althusser's discourse on ideology enriches debates about race and multiculturalism to the extent that his general insights on ideology are appropriate for such an analysis. In this explication, the author presents a brief introduction to the multiple levels of Althusser's theory of ideology. Then, he appropriates Althusser's general insights and relevance, determining the most pertinent moments in his theory for the study of race and multiculturalism. Last, the author poses the problem of color-blind discourses on race.

English Rustic in Black Skin: post-colonial education, cultural hybridity and racial identity in the new century

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: English Rustic in Black Skin: post-colonial education, cultural hybridity and racial identity in the new century
Author: CAMERON McCARTHY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 413-422
ABSTRACT This article is written against the backdrop of deepening xenophobia and ethnic absolutism (forms of 'racial cruelty') that have come to dominate human relations between individuals and groups worldwide in the new millennium. Cameron McCarthy argues that these tendencies towards ethnic absolutism and ethnic essentialism have their counterparts in schooling, where debates over identity and the curriculum in the educational field have been clouded by ethnic particularism and dogmatism with enormous consequences for contemporary school youth and their teachers. As an alternative frame of reference, McCarthy attempts to theorize his autobiographical journey from his inauguration in post-colonial education in the British Caribbean and his ultimate displacement to the academy in the United States. McCarthy writes about race relationships in education from the viewpoint of radical instabilities that inform our understanding of identity and subjectivity. He uses the term 'radical instability' to underline the expiration of old forms of knowledge about race centered on unreflexive, quantitative, behavioral and fixed strands in social science and education. In doing so, he seeks to offer new understandings of race relationships, which are always contextualized and immersed in forms of experience that exceed the more orthodox academic canon and mainstream curriculum organization, experience and interpretation.

Multiculturalism, Recognition and Abjection: (re)mapping Italian identity

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Multiculturalism, Recognition and Abjection: (re)mapping Italian identity
Author: JAMIE KOWALCZYK; THOMAS S. POPKEWITZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 423-435
ABSTRACT This article focuses Italy's conversations about multiculturalism as dual processes of national homogeneity and abjection with respect to its growing conversation around citizenship, national identity and immigration. Abjection is a concept that directs attention to border-making through dual cultural practices of recognizing and managing difference through the processes that simultaneously produces ghettoes of difference within the imaginary of the nation. Italian schools, along with other EU member schools, have been designated as a central institution for the production of the new citizen, both European and Italian. Through an analysis of documents from the European Union and Italian Ministry of Education, one can begin to map the multiple multicultural citizenships that make up these relational new citizens. This work gives intelligibility to particular dispositions, particular practices, ways of being and systems of reasoning connected to the new multicultural citizen. In doing so, it also makes visible the non-European, non-Italian and non-multicultural within multicultural, European Italy.

Education, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Difference

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Education, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Difference
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 436-445
ABSTRACT This article examines the 'politics of difference', a phrase now almost synonymous with postmodernism and the critique of the Enlightenment. The article provides a post-structuralist take on this critique arguing that a critique of Enlightenment values can lead to a deepening of democracy and using Foucault's notion of governmentality to elucidate the way political reason links the form of liberal government with the self-governing individual. It also examines emergent forms of post-coloniality with its emphasis on philosophies of difference and encounters with the Other and borrows the concept of the 'multitude' from Hardt and Negri, to talk about Derrida's 'coming of world demoracy'.

Pedagogy, Politics and Intellectual Life: Freire in the age of the market

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:36:32 GMT

Title: Pedagogy, Politics and Intellectual Life: Freire in the age of the market
Author: PETER ROBERTS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Pages: 446-458
ABSTRACT Paulo Freire is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential educationists of the twentieth century. Eight years after his death, Freire's work continues to generate considerable interest among scholars and activists across the globe. This review essay addresses some of the key questions and issues raised in a new book of previously unpublished letters and other writings by Freire: Pedagogy of Indignation (Paradigm, 2004). The review sets this book in the context of Freire's biography, his politics and his educational philosophy. Particular attention is paid to a somewhat neglected theme in commentaries on Freire's work: his stance on the roles and responsibilities of the critical intellectual. It is argued that Freire's approach to intellectual life, for all of its shortcomings and flaws, remains relevant and important in a policy environment dominated by neo-liberal agendas.

EditorialEnvironmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: EditorialEnvironmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 239-242
ABSTRACT This special issue entitled 'Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development' was organised and edited by Dr Edgar Javier González-Gaudiano who, as his brief biography indicates, works as an advisor for the Secretariat of Public Education, in the Mexican government. He has long been active in the field of environmental education, working for a variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and, in particular, with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and UNESCO. He is an acknowledged authority in the field, having written many articles and books on topics related to environmental education. He is also the founding editor of Tópicos en Educación Ambiental. I had the good fortune to meet Dr González-Gaudiano in Mexico City in 1998 and since then we have become good friends and worked collaboratively together on a number of projects. It was with great delight that I was able to persuade him to edit a special issue on environmental education and sustainable development. For this special issue Dr González-Gaudiano has brought together six contributions, including his own, from distinguished scholars and specialists located in Spain, Mexico and Canada.

These articles all concern sustainable development and its relation to environmental education. González-Gaudiano, starting from the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), analyses the configuration of ESD as a discourse and the conditions which gave rise to it. He signals its development and 'demise' in terms of major conferences from Rio to Johannesburg and indicates how it is still an emerging discourse relatively insulated from the concerns of most educators. He also emphasises the extent to which, as a field, environmental education today reflects the dominant neoliberal climate and how it has proved resistant to non-Western perspectives. This lack of environmental value diversity in the cultural sense is surely a major blind spot, especially when 'development', even when wedded to the concept 'sustainable development', has become a term now synonymous for many in so-called developing countries with a history of exploitation, with aid politics, with structural adjustment policies and the very diminution of 'the commons' environmental education was originally designed to enhance and protect. Bob Jickling also wants to question 'sustainable development' or at least to take a critical stance towards it as a governing concept when it is understood in a global context. He offers us some cautions about education for sustainable development (ESD), especially as a phrase and prescription for 'educational determinism' and he counters with the idea that 'education should provide the capacity to transcend this particular conception - to reach outside and beyond sustainable development'. Both authors imply the easy ways in which environment can become corrupted through its association with 'development'. José Antonio Caride Gómez charts the shifts from environmental education to education for sustainable development, arguing that the latter does not replace the former and should not be seen in terms of an equivalence or reduction. He provides us with frames of reference for understanding the origin and evolution of environmental education as well as examining its realities and perspectives. Lucie Sauvé, Renée Brunelle & Tom Berryman provide an analysis of international documents related to the configuration of environmental education and they present a critical view of how environmental education is and has been conceptualised, charting the recent shifts towards economistic models and perspectives and the need to introduce elements into national policy initiatives that enrich their ethical basis. Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea provides an argument 'in praise of environmental education', inquiring into why EE became 'education for sustainable development' under the auspices of the United Nations and other organisations and agencies. He provides a detailed historical analysis and examines the theoretical literature concerning their relations. José Gutiérrez & Mª Teresa Pozo in their essay 'Stultifera Navis: institutional tensions, conceptual chaos, and professional uncertainty at the beginning of the Decade for Sustainable Development' begin with the weight of diverse expectations invested in the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that have contributed to the methodological tensions and epistemological conflicts that now bedevil the field of EE.

These articles by noted international practitioners and leaders in the field all point to the political, institutional and epistemological difficulties experienced by an emerging field and together cohere in a single chorus in calling for a strong programme in environmental education aimed at revitalising the field and clarifying the differences with 'sustainable development' and coming to terms with the criticisms. Their work collectively bears on fundamental political, historical and conceptual issues that will help orient educators towards workable curricula, to new policies, and to a new clearing that may become the sustainable basis for further work.

One of the difficulties pointed to by González-Gaudiano and other contributors is the ways in which the older, perhaps more emancipatory, conception of environmental education has been substituted and replaced by 'sustainable development' and, thereby, increasingly given ground and become indissociably entangled with prevailing models of economic development. (I say 'emancipatory' but it differs from traditional emancipatory movements because it lacks an emancipatory subject or agent and it is not clear what 'freedoms' are predicated.[1]) This is even more pronounced when neoliberalism as the prevailing hegemony demands market solutions to the world's environmental problems where models of sustainability are driven by a new rationalism manifested in assumptions of individualism and self-interest.

Clearly, there is an environmental/ecological critique of neoliberalism that in the name of the ecological complex of living organisms - the biota - and its major organising principle of the network, immediately casts doubt on assumptions of individualism, rationality and self-interest - the standard assumptions of a revived homo economicus. These assumptions are called into question in relation to the environment - natural or social - and arguments that build on this tradition: not only arguments concerning the protection of 'the commons' but also arguments that embrace a living complexity over timescales and cycles outside the natural human lifespan, the individual biography, or, even, generations of human community. These long timescales and cycles are now also increasingly complexified by a growing spatial global interconnectivity fostered through advancements in transport, information and communications technologies and the accelerated flows of capital, goods, services and people that they permit. The resulting interconnectivity promotes new ecologies, fostering some and, at the same time, destroying others. The point is, as these authors demonstrate, environmental education needs to come to terms in a new marriage with 'development education' at a time when 'development' has never been more open to question, particularly because of its deep and problematic relationship with 'modernisation'. The point is worth expanding and elaborating.

Modernisation theory has been intimately associated not only with the rise of the United States as a hegemonic world power but also with US financing of post-war reconstruction in Western Europe at exactly the same time that the process of decolonisation in Africa and Asia took place as an outcome of the disintegration of the former European colonial systems. It was also associated with the emergence of 'development aid' and its special blend of aid politics that blended a post-war realpolitic aimed at the creation of 'the free world' with development ideologies crafted around ahistorical narratives of 'freedom'. Development in modernisation theory has tended be depicted as a staged process impervious to history though hostile to traditional societies. It has been considered a form of Westernisation, implying a kind of world convergence where societies became more like each other. Above all, from its early post-war beginnings it was tied to simple theories of capitalism and grand narratives of 'progress' that demanded the adoption of capitalist relations of production that exacted a price in the short term. The price for forced or speeded-up and planned development was often environmental/social. Environmental despoilation became the accepted short-term cost. Rarely if ever was it observed that traditional societies were more environmentally balanced or more harmonious than the ever-increasingly rapacious consumer societies of the West that themselves increasingly relied on the institutionalised exploitation of Third World 'resources' and labour. This assemblage of development theory helped to legitimate 'foreign aid policy', 'international development' and US expansionism and has itself gone through many incarnations, most recently as a doctrine of 'free trade' in agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and those of the trade round of talks characterising the World Trade Organisation activities.

It is these overly rationalist and functionalist premises that interpret 'economic growth' on a naïve, unreflective rationalist philosophy of history picturing world progress as driven by a Western historical process motivated by the values of 'freedom', (technical) 'progress' and (technical) 'rationality' that have come under increasing scrutiny and have been highlighted under the conditions of globalisation. The way in which economic development theory as a world narrative tended to ignore the most obvious aspects of its ideological purpose deserves comment. It also requires a critique based on aspects internal to the discipline itself. In particular, the notion of rationality and its role in mainstream economics with the revival of homo economicus in rational choice theory has been subject to devastating critique.

The rationality assumption of neoclassical economics has been subject to scathing treatment, for instance, by Vivian Walsh (1996) in his Rationality, Allocation and Reproduction. He has showed how neoclassical economics that prided itself on its neutrality and its avoidance of all metaphysical assumptions was merely adopting one of its latest forms, the metaphysics of logical positivism. The distinguished Harvard philosopher, Hilary Putnam (2002), has recently reviewed the history and collapse of the fact/value distinction at the heart of positivist science and economics to argue that science itself presupposes values, albeit epistemic ones, that fall into the same boat as ethical ones when it comes to questions of 'objectivity'. He also effectively critiques the 'completeness' assumption of rational choice theory. Philosophy and ethics are thus closer to economics than most mainstream economists would admit.

It is clear that assumptions governing disciplinary perspectives are not often examined. They operate as taken-for-granted starting points, the hard core of theory based on values, as Thomas Kuhn has argued, not open to philosophical scrutiny. And in the realm of development studies its prime object of study is first of all the discourse of Western developmentalism, based as it is on unexamined assumptions of cultural and cognitive Western superiority which were part of European colonialism and development essentially as a form of economic growth based on the global expansion of the capitalist system since the nineteenth century. Where theories of development closely modelled themselves on Western modernisation and industrialisation, Marxist theories that took root with critiques of imperialism and colonialism provided accounts of 'dependent development' and emphasised that modernity comes at a price. Yet both neoclassical and Marxist theories of growth and development shared a set of modernist assumptions inherited from the Enlightenment; indeed, they shared assumptions of truth, reason, progress and freedom while interpreting these concepts differently and giving them different content within a broader theory of politics and change. Most recently the modernity-postmodernity debate has been played out in development studies as in other disciplines. In particular, the challenge from postmodernism and post-colonialism has begun to impact on development studies.

As Peet & Hartwick (1999, p. 3) explain:

Development theories differ according to the political positions of their adherents, their philosophical origins, and their place and time of construction. They differ also according to scientific orientation, that is, whether predominantly economic, sociological, anthropological, historical, or geographical.

They mark out a history of development from the viewpoint of geography, acknowledging without too much historical investigation that there is a deeper conceptual history tied to the Enlightenment and to Enlightenment values. They provide a rough chronological contemporary history of development focusing on the primacy of economic theories of growth and development, sociological theories of modernisation, Marxist and neo-Marxist theories, including dependency, world systems and regulation theories, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and post-developmentalism, and feminist theories of development. They end by embracing 'critical modernism' based on the prospect of radical democracy and the possibility of alternative development. They assert a 'critical modernism' against the post-structural critique of development, which considers developmentalism as a discourse. They argue: 'Our allegiance is to an alternative development founded on a politics of radical democracy within a critical- and not post-modernism' (Peet & Hartwick, 2002, p. 87). They expand their view as follows:

postdevelopmentalism rejects modern development; postmodernism evidences the most extreme scepticism about the modern project of human emancipation; and ... we do not think that the 'postings', especially Derridean deconstruction, are heirs to the democratic commitments of the Enlightenment. (p. 87)

They add that Foucault's power/knowledge applied as a critique of development by Escobar (1995) need not lead to the rejection of developmentalism in toto.

Post-developmentalism based on Foucault, taking its inspiration from the thrust of decolonisation theory, aided by new post-colonial emphasis on hybridisation and the importance of culture, can take different forms and may still operate as a critique of modernisation theory rather than pointing the way forward to practical strategies for 'development' in a world of globalisation. Yet these political forms of post-developmentalism and 'critical modernism' require a more nuanced interlacing with environmentalism, as much as environmental education requires a new relationship and understanding of development education.

The contributors to this issue provide us with a useful platform to begin the process of re-examining new perspectives, new relationships, as well as sympathetic critiques of 'sustainable development' and the conceptual means to begin to go beyond present flawed and constraining conceptions.

Professor Michael A. Peters

Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 360 Education Building, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA (mpet001@uiuc.edu).

Note

[1] We might begin by asking what unfreedoms are tied to environmental degradation, how they constrain choices, especially future ones, and whether their removal advances substantive freedoms - a conception derived from Sen (1999).

References

Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Peet, R. with E. Hartwick (1999) Theories of Development. New York: Guilford Press.

Putnam, H. (2002) The Collapse of the Fact/Value Distinction and Other Essays. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Walsh, V. (1996) Rationality, Allocation and Reproduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Education for Sustainable Development: configuration and meaning

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: Education for Sustainable Development: configuration and meaning
Author: EDGAR GONZÁLEZ-GAUDIANO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 243-250
ABSTRACT The inception of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14) has excited controversy over the validity of the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD), as well as reactivating a critical review of the environmental education field as a whole. This article analyzes the peculiarities of ESD, the conditions that gave rise to it, the characteristics of its proposed configuration and the implications for environmental education.

Sustainable Development in a Globalizing World: a few cautions

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: Sustainable Development in a Globalizing World: a few cautions
Author: BOB JICKLING
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 251-259
ABSTRACT This article takes the view that in a globalizing context the concept of 'sustainable development' should not be assumed uncritically. Further, tensions arise when education is constructed as an instrument for the implementation of this concept, as manifest in the term 'education for sustainable development'. With critical concern about sustainable development and the tensions arising out of an agenda of educational determinism, this article presents a series of cautions about education for sustainable development. While much good work is being done by educators who work under the label 'sustainable development', I argue in the end that education should provide the capacity to transcend this particular conception - to reach outside and beyond sustainable development.

In the Name of Environmental Education: words and things in the complex territory of education-environment-development relations

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: In the Name of Environmental Education: words and things in the complex territory of education-environment-development relations
Author: JOSÉ ANTONIO CARIDE GÓMEZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 260-270
ABSTRACT The proclamation of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development by the United Nations has placed education in general, and environmental education in particular, at the front of a future full of important and uncertain meanings. On the one hand, those inviting a conceptual, theoretical and praxiological revision of the education-environment-development relationship appeal to the role of education in the construction of 'sustainability' and lifestyles that will make it possible. On the other hand, there are those that anticipate new and different readings of the environmental educative task. They range from the questioning of its historic entity and identity (more than 30 years of initiatives, plans and programmes across the world) to the firm demand for its proposals to provide an 'education' that is essential for the renewal of human action and thought. The article subscribes to the latter position, arguing in favour of the necessity of an environmental education that does not contradict itself, neither in its critical-reflexive discourses nor in its emancipative practices, as a fundamental pillar of any development that aims at being 'human' and 'sustainable' from a pedagogical, ecological and social point of view.

Influence of the Globalized and Globalizing Sustainable Development Framework on National Policies Related to Environmental Education

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: Influence of the Globalized and Globalizing Sustainable Development Framework on National Policies Related to Environmental Education
Author: LUCIE SAUVÉ; RENÉE BRUNELLE; TOM BERRYMAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 271-283
ABSTRACT This article presents and discusses some results of the authors' analysis of international and national institutional documents related to environmental education from the 1970s to the present day. The aim of the study is to present a critical characterization of how environmental education is conceptualized and introduced through the ongoing worldwide educational reform movement. The results presented in this article highlight the influence of the globalized and globalizing international political program for sustainable development on national educational proposals. The shift from the previous institutional discourse related to environmental education towards a more explicit economicist view of the world is discussed. The purpose of this article is to stimulate discussion about some of the foundations upon which educational policies and other national initiatives related to environmental education rest, and to introduce elements that could enrich their conceptual and ethical dimensions.

In Praise of Environmental Education

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: In Praise of Environmental Education
Author: PABLO ÁNGEL MEIRA CARTEA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 284-295
ABSTRACT Environmental education (EE) is going through a critical stage. The wide acceptance of education for sustainable development (ESD) as a reference guiding the educational response to the environmental crisis has strengthened the critical views of EE. This article tries to refute the arguments put forward by those who criticize EE and advocate its 'substitution' by ESD. The article points out the theoretical weaknesses and the political and ideological bias of the notion of 'sustainable development and sets these against the rich historical development of EE. In this approach, ESD is shown to offer no original responses to the challenges of the environmental crisis and of development. The author admits that ESD may be one of the options in the multi-paradigmatic essence attributed to EE, but believes that other interpretations of educational action are coherent with a view of society which is equally sustainable, but which is at the same time oriented towards the attainment of justice and equity today and in the future of mankind.

Stultifera Navis: institutional tensions, conceptual chaos, and professional uncertainty at the beginning of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:17:30 GMT

Title: Stultifera Navis: institutional tensions, conceptual chaos, and professional uncertainty at the beginning of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development
Author: JOSÉ GUTIÉRREZ PÉREZ; Mª TERESA POZO LLORENTE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Pages: 296-308
ABSTRACT The main idea this article develops is the conceptual chaos, methodological tensions and epistemological conflicts that are being experienced in the field of environmental education as a result of the uncertainty generated by some institutions and international organisms. The authors' perspective starts from the idea that too many expectations have been invested in the celebration of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The celebration will contribute to making the tensions and fractures grow between the different collectives and professional cultures that inhabit this educational field. While some will find their channels of expression waning and their work models delegitimated, others will increase their popularity and extend their hegemonic power over the dominant models of intervention and the securing of financial resources through the programs and grant competitions they enter. The reason for these tensions lies in the underlying focus promoted by the model of celebration that has been advocated by the institutions leading the process.

Editorial

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 131-131
ABSTRACT This is truly an international issue with papers from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Israel and New Zealand. It has a decidedly curriculum orientation with a strong focus on questions of justice, cultural studies, creativity, educational development, social critique, sports education, teacher education, interculturalisation and educational transformation. One of the aims for Policy Futures in Education is to develop as a truly global and international forum and we are committed to publishing both papers and theme issues from all parts of the globe.

Yusef Waghid from Stellenbosch University begins this issue of Policy Futures in Education with an account of possibilities for cultivating justice in relation to teaching and learning in South African universities. He investigates new policy frameworks and demonstrates how a responsive, democratic and critical attitude on the part of teachers and students can enhance civic reconciliation after years of apartheid. Alpesh Maisuria traces the demise of creativity in the national curriculum in England and Wales, arguing that it has disappeared under the imposition of centralised testing and quality assurance regimes, which have severely damaged the morale of teachers and learners and encouraged teaching to the test. He reviews recent attempts under New Labour to revive creativity through the curriculum and makes some further suggestions for enhancing it.

Makere Stewart-Harawira examines cultural studies in relation to indigenous knowledge and what she calls 'pedagogies of hope'. She makes the case for pedagogies that draw on studies of culture and ethnicity to contest the global order, to resist neoliberal globalisation, and to encourage alternative visions. Anita Silvana Peršuric & Patrick Gautier examine educational strategies in rural Croatia, first, describing and analysing the major problems of basic education and, second, proposing a set of recommendations not only to increase the level of education but also enhance employment, resettlement and citizenship.

Heinz Sünker turns to Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld to review and examine their work in relation to a social analysis of educational history, focusing on the Weimar Republic. As Sünker explains, Adler, from the perspective of Austro-Marxism, and Bernfeld, operating from an approach that links psychoanalysis and Marxism, provide a connection between social analysis, critique and education, specifically concerning the political-pedagogical question of how far education can change society involving the project of the 'new person' and the limits of educational theory ('old structures').

Ilan Gur-Ze'ev investigates sports education under the impact of a globalising capitalism, that is to say the change in the function, representation, and consumption of sport, sport education and physical education. By contrast and explicitly against 'the perversion of sport', Gur-Ze'ev provides a new philosophy of sports education that questions the present cultural politics of sport and he attempts to transcend it.

Janet Mansfield examines the dominant discourse of teacher education in New Zealand through the code words and metaphors of 'censure' and 'certainties', while Xiaoping Jiang discusses the interculturalisation of New Zealand universities in a global context. Both authors turn over new ground and provide important directions for reflection and change.

Norman Gray provides a review of two recent additions to the Paul Chapman series: Knowledge, Learning and Power (Paechter et al), and Learning, Space and Identity (Paechter et al).

My sincere thanks go to all contributors who have submitted to this diverse international issue and in terms of future issues as editor I am interested in publishing further accounts to extent the debates in the area of social justice (especially in relation to teaching and learning), indigenous knowledges, rural education, and the philosophy of sports education.

Michael A. Peters

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

On the Possibility of Cultivating Justice through Teaching and Learning: an argument for civic reconciliation in South Africa

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: On the Possibility of Cultivating Justice through Teaching and Learning: an argument for civic reconciliation in South Africa
Author: YUSEF WAGHID
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 132-140
ABSTRACT In this article the author explores possibilities for cultivating justice with reference to teaching and learning in (South African) universities. It is argued that teachers and learners ought to become responsive, democratic and critical – they need to act justly in order to break with South Africa’s apartheid legacy. The author discusses why readiness, deliberation and responsibility – acts of justice – ought to unfold in South African university classrooms and, more importantly, how each characteristic can potentially engender responsiveness, democracy and criticism respectively. Finally, some of the implications of justice through teaching and learning for civic reconciliation in South Africa are explored. The author shows how a responsive (compassionate), democratic (deliberative) and critical (restive) disposition on the part of individuals can offer hope for enhancing civic reconciliation after decades of apartheid rule.

The Turbulent Times of Creativity in the National Curriculum

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: The Turbulent Times of Creativity in the National Curriculum
Author: ALPESH MAISURIA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 141-152
ABSTRACT This article traces the demise of creativity in the national curriculum in England and Wales. It is argued that the creative dimension in the national curriculum has been purged by various government directives since the Ruskin speech in 1976, all aiming to introduce provisions of standardisation, centralisation, and vocationalisation of education. The plethora of centralised testing regimes and quality assurance measures has not only damaged the esteem of teachers and pupils, but has also turned education into a game where teachers teach the art of passing exams, and pupils realise the academic dangers of non-conformity. In the second section of this article it is suggested that despite New Labour’s infatuation with measurable standards, it seems the assault on creative subjects is being reversed somewhat, and various efforts have been introduced to bolt creativity onto the national curriculum with the aim of re-energising teachers’ and pupils’ creative spirits. The article finishes by offering further avenues of thought and concludes by suggesting that a truly inspiring, satisfying and rewarding curriculum can only result from moving from a business-education-orientated education system to a child-centred learning experience.

Cultural Studies, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies of Hope

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Cultural Studies, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies of Hope
Author: MAKERE STEWART-HARAWIRA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 153-163
ABSTRACT Notions of crisis and chaos have become the rationale for a new discourse in which empire is the logical outcome of a world no longer secure. One level at which this is manifested is in the rejection by the USA of international agreements to which it is signatory, in the demonstrated failure of the Bretton Woods system to meet its declared objectives, and in the increasingly broad and globalized resistance to globalization. Another is in the attacks on particular forms of knowledge and academic freedom by strong neoconservative elements which seek the reconstruction of societies within a particular cultural and ideological framework. In this context, the construction of pedagogies which articulate a different vision for global order has become a contested and critical task. This article argues two things: first, that the study of culture and ethnicity is vitally important in developing pedagogies for better ways of being in the world, and second, that indigenous cultural knowledge is profoundly relevant to this endeavour.

Multiple Effects of Education in Rural Areas: action research for development strategies in Croatia

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Multiple Effects of Education in Rural Areas: action research for development strategies in Croatia
Author: ANITA SILVANA ILAK PERŠURIC; PATRICK GAUTIER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 164-183
ABSTRACT The strategy of development in rural areas of Croatia includes several factors. Among them is education. The education system in Croatia has a number of institutional, infrastructural and regional characteristics that are a frame of research for this article. Rural areas confront additional factors such as population migrations, poor socio-professional structures, long distances from cities, etc., which have consequences on the quality of education. A high quality education system provides a base for a better professional structure that can curb migrations (e.g. people staying in villages for education and not migrating to cities) and raise the quality of life through open activities in schools, as schools provide a meeting point for children and the whole population. The objectives of this article are, firstly, to present the findings of an analysis of basic education in rural areas of Croatia and, secondly, to recommend measures to improve access to and quality of education for rural people in order to make a better contribution to rural development. Therefore, after a brief presentation of the context of and justifications for this article, the document presents the findings for each level of education in the form of problems and, from these problems, proposes measures to ensure that education in rural areas is contributing to rural development.

'New People' and 'Old Structures': Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld on society, education and change

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: 'New People' and 'Old Structures': Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld on society, education and change
Author: HEINZ SÜNKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 184-193
ABSTRACT This article deals with central issues in the field of theory of education and history of education. The examples of Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld show that contemporary debates on education and society, social reproduction of social inequality, and education and social change have been subjects of strong controversies in the first third of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the deepness of these approaches shows the contemporary relevance and the limits of these historical attempts to solve these controversies. The article aims to overcome some of these limits in proposing to deal with the approach of the central educational theorist in Germany in the twentieth century, Heinz-Joachim Heydorn.

Sports Education Facing Globalizing Capitalism

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Sports Education Facing Globalizing Capitalism
Author: ILAN GUR-ZE'EV
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 194-211
ABSTRACT From its very beginning sports activity became - already within the framework of the modern nation-building project, establishing national ethos, and constituting effective colonization of the Other - a central element of the effort of the modern system to create, represent, and consume the modern body and soul and to create the healthy-conquering national 'we'. And yet, when true to its essence, sport represents the impetus of Love of Life. As Love of Life it raises the human from lower levels of existence to their supreme goal within the forms of constant self-elevation. Sport as a global commodity is manufactured and consumed locally, serving and representing both ethnocentrism and false universalism in the form of globalization. It is of vital importance for sport's success as a worldwide commodity to function in the service of local passions and as a manifestation of the negation of the otherness of the Other. Without local rivalries, hate, and chauvinism, the worldwide reception and production of sport would not have been so successful.

Certainties and Censure: teacher education in a changing terrain

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Certainties and Censure: teacher education in a changing terrain
Author: JANET MANSFIELD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 212-222
ABSTRACT Economic and cultural globalisation has resulted in particular political ideologies in policy and practice that have created a certain essentialism - a tightened modernist 'will to certainty' - which is reinscribed in curricular practices in New Zealand teacher education. At a time when the naming and framing of educational practice in terms of the 'knowledge society', the 'learning society' and the effects of such discourses on experience needs to be revealed in teacher education - when the relations between political ideologies and their inscription in policy and practice need to be exposed - critical approaches that might threaten global knowledge truth claims exposing the non-neutrality of educational processes have been diminished. A limited selection of 'worthwhile' knowledge, which has its genesis in classroom instruction, is involved in censure and a politics of censure opened here for analysis, and thus preconditions practice in the changing educational terrain of the teaching subject. What is questioned here is the related essentialism of the dominant discourses of teacher education (pedagogy, assessment and evaluation, psychology and learning theory), based as these discourses are on the human subject. Drawing distinctions between 'education' and 'pedagogy', it is suggested that a continuing 'education' in the broadest sense of the word rather than mere 'pedagogy' is necessary for teachers to be named 'educated' professionals.

Interculturalisation for New Zealand Universities in a Global Context

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: Interculturalisation for New Zealand Universities in a Global Context
Author: XIAOPING JIANG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 223-233
ABSTRACT This article critiques the notion of multiculturalism, which aims to assimilate minority cultures into a dominant culture rather than genuinely accept their 'differences'. Therefore, the author proposes interculturalism as a policy for the multicultural campus because it values equitable treatment of all cultures. Recent years have witnessed an influx of international students into New Zealand's higher education institutions. The author asks whether these institutions have adequate strategies to accommodate the increasing cultural diversity on campus. Through a comparative analysis of multiculturalism and interculturalism, the author sees interculturalisation as an emancipatory process that should be supported, as it emphasises non-discriminative cultural reciprocity based on equality and respect.

REVIEW ESSAY. Readers, Readers, Writers and Engineers

Mon, 3 Oct 2005 14:44:03 GMT

Title: REVIEW ESSAY. Readers, Readers, Writers and Engineers
Author: Norman Gray
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Pages: 234-238
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-2
ABSTRACT This issue of Policy Futures in Education was not planned as a thematic one, yet its contents show strong similarities and overlapping interests. The emphasis is overwhelmingly on schools - schools in relation to neo-liberalism, markets and democracy, charter schools, the future of schools in the European Union, schools for a knowledge economy. We desperately need a more economically literate education policy given that much education policy originates outside the realm of education, mostly in economic policy of one form or other. This much is clearly evident. The Left needs not only an economically literate education policy that is informed by economic history and the history of economics, but also by strong analytical readings of current economic policy - not just a policy sociology aimed at investigating or recording the effects of policy and their differential effects but also one that intelligently can interpret debates on globalisation and the knowledge economy through an interrogation of the economic origins of policy notions. The economics of knowledge and education needs new research directions that are not simply reactive to the claims and findings of mainstream economics, whether it be in the form of Chicago-style human or social capital theories or those of Stanford endogenous growth theory. These new directions might acknowledge the relevance of contemporary history of economics, of, say, neo-liberalism, as Michel Foucault did in the early 1980s in his recently published course at the Collège de France, Naissance de la biopolitique (2004), which with considerable foresight analysed the post-war recovery of the German economy under Erhart and the emergence of German neo-liberalism. The new policy analysis must also necessarily engage in comparison and complete, detailed empirical work rather than adopted standard off-the-shelf analyses. Both of these innovations are aspects of PFIE and I think that aspects of both are provided in the articles that follow.

David Hursh examines education reforms in the USA and England over the last 20 years with their neo-liberal and neo-conservative policy emphases on standardisation, accountability, choice and privatisation. He demonstrates how they arise from similar political rationales and differ mostly only in terms of the effects of different political systems. His analytical and empirical comparisons are detailed and the theme of the piece is strongly argued. His considered analysis is that these policies have failed to achieve their goals and he points to a number of contradictions in neo-liberal policies that will impact on their future.

Brian Ford focuses his attention on educational policy discourse in the USA surrounding charter schools, identifying three areas of review - media debates, and debates concerning national policy and local school reform. He details each of these areas using the Jeffersonian motif of 'holding the wolf by the ears'. For Ford charter schools implies the privatisation of standards and ultimately the end of public education.

Henrik Hansson & Scott Hall turn towards the future of schools, describing a Schools Foresight project undertaken within the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technology and Development that investigates futures learning approaches and innovative uses of technology in school settings. They describe the framework, the methodology, and the results of this important project. Gerard Macdonald, by contrast, investigates the notion of schools for a knowledge economy (see Volume 1, Number 1 for an issue devoted to education and the knowledge economy), explaining that English schools, especially since the mid nineteenth century, have always been part of the industrial economy, preparing students for the production line. Yet he questions whether this industrial styled school system is up to the demands of a new knowledge economy and whether a conservative institution like English schools will easily be able to adapt to the changes required.

George R. Burns & Robert R. Paton in a related article investigate a knowledge transfer paradigm for workplace learning within the United Kingdom policy arena. They investigate the concepts of knowledge generation and transfer to sketch knowledge transfer options and draw on two case studies to analyse the effects of knowledge transfer on organisational structures. Donald Christie & Joan Menmuir examine the 'new orthodoxy of interprofessional collaboration and multidisciplinary practice' in the caring professions within the Scottish policy context. They review arguments for and against a common framework for professional standards and argue that it may enhance professionalism, providing the means to engage in dialogue across professions and to 're-story' themselves promoting professional learning and development.

Sowaribi Tolofari provides a general and theoretical account of the relations between New Public Management (NPM) and education reforms. Tolofari analyses NPM's theoretical origins, policy drivers and its emphases on privatisation, marketisation, managerialism, performance measurement and accountability - all thrusts of New Right ideology. Mike Cole outlines the Marxist critique of postmodernism and assesses transmodernism, in the work of Dussel among others, to interpret and understand the legacy of European invasions of the Americas. He finds both paradigms wanting and returns to the Marxist notion of 'racialisation' as a necessary supplement. His argument then poses the question of liberal democracy or democratic socialism from the contrasting viewpoints of transmodernism and Marxism, before investigating these political choices and their implications for teacher education. Anne Pirie provides a spirited defence of long-life learning offered as a critique of the European Union's Lisbon strategy emphasis on 'basic skills' which, she argues, exists in a contradiction between the goals of economic competitiveness and those of social solidarity.

There is also a review essay by David Chalmers of three recent books on education, 9/11 and the age of terrorism, followed by three book reviews. All in all, this is a substantial issue and one, it is to be hoped, that will keep the wolf from the door, so to speak.

Michael A. Peters

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Reference

Foucault, M. (2004) Naissance de la biopolitique cours au Collège de France (1978-1979), ed. Michel Senellart, with François Ewald & Alessandro Fontana. Paris: Le Seuil.

Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability: transforming education and undermining democracy in the United States and England

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability: transforming education and undermining democracy in the United States and England
Author: DAVID HURSH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 3-15
ABSTRACT Education in both England and the United States has undergone a profound change over the last two decades as part of neo-liberal and neoconservative political reforms. The reforms have been characterized by efforts to standardize the curriculum, to implement standardized tests in order to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable, to increase school choice, and to privatize education provision. While the reforms in both countries have similarities, differences in the structures of schooling and in the relative political strength of neoconservatives and neo-liberals help to account for policy divergence.

The Significance of Charter Schools and the Privatization of Standards: holding the wolf by the ears

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: The Significance of Charter Schools and the Privatization of Standards: holding the wolf by the ears
Author: BRIAN FORD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 16-29
ABSTRACT The dynamics of educational policy discourse in the USA are illustrated by the highly contested positions on charter schools in three arenas: media debates, national policy and local school reform. In media debates, civil society actors - including teachers' unions, think tanks and print media - engage in polarized exchanges notable for their name-calling and vitriol. In national policy, after two decades of much consensus where charters were viewed as a way of raising standards, policy formation is presently shaped by deep splits on funding and privatization initiatives; charters are increasingly short on the former and seen as potential vehicles for the latter. This manifests itself on the level of local reform, where charters are a component part of numerous school reforms, including a systematic overhaul of the nation's largest school district. There, a corporate model that emphasizes the chief executive officer's role in selecting among productive and unproductive employees has been deployed. The title image (wolf, ears) responds to some of the discourse and is taken from Thomas Jefferson's explanation of the dilemma slavery posed for the USA. As the privatization of standards seems to advance incrementally, the article suggests that a similar dilemma now confronts advocates for public education, especially teachers' unions, who have previously supported standards-based reform and the use of charters for the purpose of educational innovation.

The Future of Schools from a European Union Perspective: selecting, analyzing and disseminating the most innovative approaches towards the school of tomorrow

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: The Future of Schools from a European Union Perspective: selecting, analyzing and disseminating the most innovative approaches towards the school of tomorrow
Author: HENRIK HANSSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 30-37
ABSTRACT What can we learn from European Union (EU) school projects about future learning approaches? The EU has invested massively in information and communication technologies (ICT) projects promoting innovative use of new technologies in school settings. The aim of the project 'School Foresight', with partners in Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Romania, the Czech Republic and Sweden, was to select and reflect on the best projects done so far. These projects were popularized and presented at the European Science Week in the autumn of 2004 and reached more than 10,000 students in five countries. This article describes and discusses the School Foresight project and the selection process of innovative EU projects showing the way towards the school of tomorrow. A number of best cases will be presented and discussed in a European, American and global context. The school of the future is both a question of what is possible and what is desired. Different scenarios might be preferable depending on local context, history, language, etc., or, are we all moving into the 'global classroom'?

Schools for a Knowledge Economy

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Schools for a Knowledge Economy
Author: GERARD MACDONALD
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 38-49
ABSTRACT English schools have always been involved with the economy of their time, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that schooling for the poor became primarily an adjunct of industry, rather than of the Church. This industrial style of education, preparation for the production line, still informs the school system, though Britain is no longer primarily an industrial country, but one moving toward a post-industrial economy. Such a 'new economy' will almost certainly be dependent on the production of new, or renewed, knowledge; and thus on the creativity and innovative capacity of its workers, and on their ability to continue learning throughout life. To foster these qualities, our school system - designed for quite different purposes - will have to undergo significant change. It will need a rethinking of what is meant by learning; a forward-looking and individualised curriculum (though not necessarily one that is centrally mandated); a new involvement with economic growth areas; and a quite different approach to networked technologies. Like any conservative institution, British schools tend to resist proposals for radical renewal, and that resistance is now, and will be in future, supported by an influential group of parents. But the school system's political paymasters have traditionally seen schooling as an instrument of economic growth. Since schools are not well fitted to serve a nascent knowledge economy, at some point there are likely to be radical changes to their practice.

Supported Workplace Learning: a knowledge transfer paradigm

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Supported Workplace Learning: a knowledge transfer paradigm
Author: GEORGE R. BURNS; ROBERT R. PATON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 50-61
ABSTRACT The importance of knowledge to the effective development of economic growth in the twenty-first century has led to a number of initiatives such as lifelong learning, skills development and knowledge transfer. Of these, knowledge transfer has predominantly been concerned with the commercial exploitation of research knowledge. This article suggests that such a narrow focus on research-led development is really only practical for larger organisations and misses many opportunities for knowledge transfer related to improving organisational knowledge and business effectiveness through supported workplace learning appropriate to small to medium-sized organisations. Two models of supported workplace learning, one involving a programme of study developed to reflect the strategic objectives of the organisation, and one developed to reflect business-led development, are described through case studies. Both illustrate the effectiveness of knowledge transfer that, although not research-led, had a significant impact on the competitive advantage of the respective organisations. In one case the students gained postgraduate awards, while in the other the students gained considerable business experience, again illustrating the flexibility that supported workplace learning can offer for individual development. Finally, the article concludes that effective knowledge transfer into the workplace may legitimately be structured around objectives that do not depend on research. In this mode, supported workplace learning offers an approach that is effective for the organisation and flexible in supporting individual development. It is also noted that one aspect of the process that became evident in both case studies was the need to manage the change process that injection of new knowledge created.

Supporting Interprofessional Collaboration in Scotland through a Common Standards Framework

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Supporting Interprofessional Collaboration in Scotland through a Common Standards Framework
Author: DONALD CHRISTIE; JOAN MENMUIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 62-74
ABSTRACT The context of this article is the emergence of a new orthodoxy of interprofessional collaboration and multidisciplinary practice in the caring professions. Several current policy initiatives in Scotland, especially in relation to services for children, illustrate this trend, which is evident on an international scale. The article considers the nature of the challenge to models of professionalism represented by interprofessional collaboration. The contentious issue of whether it is appropriate to attempt to define standards of professionalism is examined. In particular, arguments for and against the articulation of a common framework of professional standards are analysed. The model of professionalism adopted in The Standard for Initial Teacher Education in Scotland is explained and the shared features in the equivalent standards in the fields of nursing, other allied health professions and social work are outlined. The potential value of a common standards framework is analysed in terms of how such a framework might help to overcome barriers to interprofessional collaboration. It is argued that defining professional standards need not diminish or demean professionalism. On the contrary, it is possible to create a common standards framework which can serve to enhance professionalism by enabling professional practitioners to 're-story' themselves and at the same time engage effectively in dialogue with colleagues in other professions with whom they are expected to collaborate. The potential implications of a common standards framework for patterns of professional education and training are discussed.

New Public Management and Education

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: New Public Management and Education
Author: SOWARIBI TOLOFARI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 75-89
ABSTRACT Public administration has always been under constant review. Such reviews were mostly parochial, incremental, initiated or driven by low-key staff and often ended as fads. From the end of the 1970s to the 1990s, however, governments around the world were engaged in widespread and sustained reforms of their public administration. These reforms were born out of economic recession, but also had political and social drivers. They were initiated by the political apex and fuelled by New Right ideology. Collectively, these reforms came to be termed New Public Management (NPM). NPM is characterised by marketisation, privatisation, managerialism, performance measurement and accountability. This employment of corporate attitudes in public administration is grounded on certain theories, mainly public choice, transaction cost analysis and principal-agent theory. As with every other sector, the education service was also reformed. In this field the major signs of NPM are the local management of schools on managerialist principles and the heightened influence of stakeholders in the daily life of the school, while the collegiality of academia is diminished. At the higher education level, institutions are tending towards full-fledged corporate organisations delivering enterprise education. This article discusses NPM in detail, tracing its origins, considering the theories and examining its principal characteristics, and then takes a critical look at its implications for education.

Transmodernism, Marxism and Social Change: some implications for teacher education

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Transmodernism, Marxism and Social Change: some implications for teacher education
Author: MIKE COLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 90-105
ABSTRACT The author first briefly outlines what he considers to be the defining features of transmodernism and its relationship both to postmodernism and to Marxism. He then suggests that transmodern interpretations of the legacy of the European invasions of the Americas are illuminating, as is Marxism, in providing an understanding of how the imperialism in which contemporary US foreign policy is currently engaged has a specific and long-standing genealogy. However, he argues that the Marxist concept of racialisation is more convincing in explaining the source of violence against the Other than the transmodern positing of 'basic narcissism' as the source. Next, he contrasts the transmodern perception of liberal democracy with Marxist analyses of democratic socialism. After this, he challenges transmodernism's conception of Marxism as an imposed and utopian philosophy locked within modernism. He concludes with a consideration of the political and economic choices open to us, and, with respect to these choices, the implications of both transmodernism and Marxism for sustaining resistance to neo-liberal capitalism and US imperialism within teacher education.

Reclaiming Basic Skills: in defence of long-life learning

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: Reclaiming Basic Skills: in defence of long-life learning
Author: ANNE PIRRIE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 106-116
ABSTRACT The author draws upon recent experience of providing consultancy services to a working group established by the European Commission in 2001 to facilitate the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy for economic, social, and environmental renewal in the European Union. The article begins with a critique of the 'new basic skills' identified at the Lisbon European Council on 23 and 24 March 2000. These were information and communication technologies (ICT), technological culture, foreign languages, entrepreneurship, and social skills. The article raises questions about the compatibility of the economic and social aims of the Lisbon Strategy. It also asks whether the Lisbon Process privileges certain forms of knowledge over others. Furthermore, who are the winners and the losers in the breathless rush towards increased economic competitiveness? The author concludes that the logic of competition inherent in the Lisbon Process may undermine rather than reinforce social solidarity; and that the chronic neglect of some really basic skills has had dire social and economic consequences.

REVIEW ESSAY. The Age of Terrorism

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: REVIEW ESSAY. The Age of Terrorism
Author: David Chalmers
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 117-120
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEWS

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:31:56 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2005 Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Pages: 121-126
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial. Marxist Futures: knowledge socialism and the academy

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Editorial. Marxist Futures: knowledge socialism and the academy
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 435-438
ABSTRACT Marxism, we are told by politicians and the popular press, is dead. The Left, as a historical movement tied to the labour movement, is frozen over, caught between the collapse of actually existing communism in Eastern Europe and the triumph of global market forces. Union membership in the traditional industrial economy in the United Kingdom is dwindling as multinationals relocate offshore; even insurance, information, banking and call-centre jobs of the 'new economy' are increasingly outsourced to India and other emergent economies literate in information and computing technology and English. China has joined the World Trade Organization and committed itself to a post-socialist market economy. At a time of an intensification of inequalities between regions and, perhaps more significantly, between North and South - between the developed world and the developing world - the Left in Britain, the USA and most of Europe seems ideologically gutted by the Third Way preoccupation with the social market and with citizenship 'responsibilities' rather than with traditional concerns of equality and advancing rights. The best offer on hand seems to be a socialisation of the market and an acknowledgement of its moral limits. The age of privatisation reduces the state's role more and more to one of regulation, rather than provision or funding of public services. The US-UK neo-liberal model of globalisation has dominated the world economy and world politics for the last 20 years, defining the present crisis of fundamentalisms and restyling imperialism as a new age of barbarism. In this age, American-style democracy is exported alongside the ideology of 'free trade'. Yet many Americans have shifted their view since the Vietnam War on whether the USA is a force for good in the world or an imperialist power, and this is so despite Bush's recent election victory. Even the philosophers of '68 have given way to a new breed of fashion-conscious savants, who now turn their attention to extolling the virtues of liberal individualism or sneer at the last great generation of Left-Nietzscheans, such as Foucault and Derrida.

The Left has certainly been marginalised and even in the home of European socialism it seems confused and crisis-ridden. Europe itself is fighting to establish a new identity, reshaping its territory through enlargement and integration, and desperately competing with the US juggernaut of global power and the rising stars of East Asia -not only China, but also Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea - which seem destined to develop a trading bloc at least as powerful as that of the USA and the European Union. The traditional Left, wedded to the rise of the industrial working class, some observers have remarked, is also tied to its demise. Is the Left history? Has it simply become an academic form of analysis or does it have the seeds to reconfigure itself as an organising force once again?

In terms of emancipatory futures there are all sorts of oppressions to overcome; many of these oppressions have intensified in the neo-liberal era. The question that Steve Brier asks is:

How do we position ourselves as a movement in relation to all the particular forms of oppression experienced by specific communities and people, defined by race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, etc., especially at a time when no unified working-class movement exists that encompasses these communities and fights to eradicate the special injustices they face? (Brier, 1999)

The question of unity becomes paramount. Against identity politics and certain forms of postmodernism we need to inquire: what is the unifying principle? Is it the concept of 'class' or even an overlapping set of concepts? Brier was writing at a time that had not yet seen the neoconservative hegemony in the White House or its consolidation after the re-election of Bush for a second term. In this environment of vote fraud and corporate corruption it is difficult to see the flourishing of social democracy even though the White House wants to export American-style democracy to the world as part of its neoconservative agenda.

In these circumstances is it really enough to talk of 'beyond left and right' as the future of radical politics as Tony Giddens (1994) has done? Or does Alex Callinicos's (2003) Anti-Capitalist Manifesto define a way forward?

These are weighty questions that do not admit easy answers. But it is clear that even in this environment of world politics there are new lines of struggle emerging that coalesce with the old articles of faith. There are expressions of new forms of socialism, for instance, that revolve around the international labour movement and invoke new imperialism struggles based on the movements of indigenous and racialised peoples. There are active social movements, perhaps less coherent but every bit as powerful as older class-based movements, such as the anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation movements, women's and feminist movements, and environmental movements. These new expressions do require engagement and retheorising by the Left. One obvious challenge for Marxism and the Left more generally is its engagement with Islam and the enslavement of women.

There is also a host of struggles around the socialisation of the market and a question of whether this can be pursued successfully at the level beyond the state. Indeed, as many theorists have asserted, the future of the Left is tied up with the future of world democracy and with the development of left media cultures and centres. Part of the success of the Right has been its ability to privatise thinking and media, moving beyond the academy to set up dozens of new think tanks, private consultancies, and media centres that propagate partisan 'news' or lobby and influence government departments at the highest levels.

One form of new expression concerns what I call knowledge socialism to indicate the new struggles surrounding the politics of knowledge that directly involve the academy and I do not mean simply refer to the role of theory. I am referring to what has been called knowledge in the age of 'knowledge capitalism', a debate that increasingly turns on the economics of knowledge, the communicative turn, and the emerging international knowledge system where the politics of knowledge and information dominates. One issue concerns intellectual property, not only copyright, patents and trademarks, but also the emergence of international regimes of intellectual property rights, and the accompanying emphasis on human capital and embedded knowledge processes that now drive university management.

In these discussions, issues of freedom and control reassert themselves at all levels: at those of content, code and information. This issue of freedom/control concerns the ideation and codification of knowledge and the new 'soft' technologies that take the notion of 'practice' as the new desideratum: practitioner knowledge, communities of practice, and different forms of organisational learning adopted and adapted as part of corporate practice. Indeed, now we face the politics of the learning economy and the economics of forgetting that insists new ideas have only a short shelf life. I am not sanguine about the easy adoption and co-option of these forms that often advertise themselves in terms of reflection but really focus on efficiency and turning a profit. These questions are also tied up with larger questions concerning disciplinary versus informal knowledge, the formalisation of the disciplines, the development of the informal knowledge economy, and the pervasiveness of informal education. Informal knowledge and education based on free exchange is still a good model for civil society in the age of knowledge capitalism.

We should remember that the rise of academic societies only dates from the late seventeenth century with the establishment of the Royal Society in Britain in 1660 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780. The history of academic journals is also short and tied to this recent history. It is during this period that copyright also emerges. Whatever the encroachment of knowledge capitalism on the universities and higher education more generally, the free and frank exchange of ideas stills serves as a sound model of sociality and in this sense knowledge capitalism, I would argue, is parasitic on knowledge socialism for, as Marx, Wittgenstein and Bourdieu acknowledge, knowledge and the value of knowledge are rooted in social relations. In this premise is buried the future politics of knowledge both for the academy and for the developing world.

It is the case that Marxist theory has undergone a renewal in the West since the break-up of the Soviet system in 1989. It has undergone a revival and new developments have occurred in a variety of disciplines and fields. New forms of neo-Marxist thought have emerged such as the post-structuralist Marxisms from France, for example, Jacques Derrida's (1994) Spectres of Marx or Terell Carver's (1998) Postmodern Marx. In particular, a form of Marxism applied to the reading of texts has flourished in the university with the advent of cultural studies, and leading Marxist scholars like Terry Eagleton use Marx to analyse and explain the whole field of cultural endeavour. Other scholars have applied Marx again to a different capitalism from the nineteenth-century industrial capitalism with which Marx was familiar, such as Fredric Jameson's (1991) Marxist analysis of the cultural logic of late capitalism or Meghnad Desai's (2002) Marx's Revenge. Others, like Alex Callinicos (2003) , have used Marx to explain globalisation and anti-globalisation. The 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto was the occasion for many of these reappraisals of Marx. In the field of education since Paulo Freire and Bowles & Gintis were writing in the 1970s, scholars in the tradition of critical theory and critical pedagogy, like Henry Giroux, Doug Kellner, Mike Apple and Peter McLaren, have kept alive the promise of political analysis of schooling as a form of cultural reproduction and resistance. And those working from traditional Marxist political economy, like Dave Hill, John Freeman-Moir and Heinz Sünker, have consistently utilised Marx as the basis of a critical sociology of education.

This themed double issue positions itself as 'Marxist Futures in Education'. It looks to the future of Marxist analysis to both understand and change contemporary education and invent new forms of Marxist thought - in short, the future of Marxism as an open, developing and progressive research programme. It includes essays by scholars from the United Kingdom, Germany the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The first set of essays by Marginson, Olssen and Leonardo are theoretical in the sense that they seek to revitalise the foundations of traditional Marxist political economy, to rewrite the theory of historical materialism à la Foucault, or to examine the 'unhappy marriage' between Marxism and race critique. The next set of essays by Giroux, Hill, Cole and Weiner pursue the question of neo-liberalism as a public pedagogy and a global imperialistic project that can be pursued in the classroom. Freeman-Moir and Rikowski return to Marx to re-examine political education, the Marxian project, and the future of anti-capitalist education. This is followed by a set of essays that examine in historical and empirical terms adult education in Britain (Steele & Taylor), the reproduction of social inequality in German education (Sünker) and the consequences of neo-liberal policies for US education (Hursh). The essay by Peters picks up the theme of 'citizen-consumers' and the way in which Third Way politics has attempted to reform public services through the market. Cole provides a discussion of US imperialism, discussing via the notion of transmodernism an article by David Geoffrey Smith that was published in a previous issue of Policy Futures in Education; and Smith provides a response to Cole. There is also an interview with Henry Giroux and a report on an ongoing research project by Kane, plus two book reviews.

All in all, it is a substantial double issue that provides a series of thought-provoking and scholarly essays on Marxist futures. I thank all the contributors for their efforts in helping to develop this special double issue.

MICHAEL A. PETERS

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

References

Brier, S. (1999) In: Roundtable on the Future of the Left. Available at: www.brechtforum.org/highlights/roundtable%20on%20the%20future%20of%20the%20 left.htm This transcript was published in Socialism & Democracy, a co-sponsor of the Manifestivity, in issue 25, Spring/Summer 1999).

Callinicos, Alex (2003) An Anti-capitalist Manifesto. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Carver, T. (1998) The Postmodern Marx. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international, trans. Peggy Kamuf, with an introduction by Bernd Magnus & Stephen Cullenberg. New York and London: Routledge.

Desai, M. (2002) Marx's Revenge: the resurgence of capitalism and the death of statist socialism. London: Verso.

Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond Left and Right: the future of radical politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso.

A Revised Marxist Political Economy of National Education Markets

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: A Revised Marxist Political Economy of National Education Markets
Author: SIMON MARGINSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 439-453
ABSTRACT This article synthesises the social and economic dynamics of both non-market and market production in national education systems, drawing primarily on Marx's analysis of the commodity and Hirsch on positional competition. Market production has six principal aspects: a defined field of production, protocols governing entry/exit, the production of scarce and individualised commodities, monetary exchange and price-based coordination, competition between consumers, and market subjectivities/behaviours. In national systems the dominant form of education continues to be a status competition led by elite institutions that in key respects do not behave like capitalist firms. Elite universities and schools do not expand to meet demand, but remain exclusive, maximising the value of the student places they provide. Their lodestone is not revenues, but social status and power. Revenues are means to the fulfilment of status objectives. Fully commercial education is mostly conducted in lower status institutions that are subject to the price cutting of quality in a 'race to the bottom'. Nevertheless, fully commercial forms of education are gaining ground in national education systems, and still more at the global level in the cross-border education of foreign students and trade in intellectual property. The article examines the various kinds of educational commodity.

Foucault and Marxism: rewriting the theory of historical materialism

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Foucault and Marxism: rewriting the theory of historical materialism
Author: MARK OLSSEN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 454-482
ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship of Foucault to Marxism. Although he was often critical of Marxism, Foucault's own approach bears striking parallels to Marxism, as a form of method, as an account of history, and as an analysis of social structure. Like Marxism, Foucault represents social practices as transitory and all knowledge and intellectual formations as linked to social relations and power. In this he asserts the historical relativity of all systems and structures - of society, of thought, of theory and of concepts, while at the same time not denying a materialism of physical necessities. Yet while Foucault's approach reveals these important similarities to Marxism, the differences, claims the author, are fundamental. These concern his rejection of Hegel's conceptions of history and society as a unified developing totality, his rejection of essences and teleology, and his rejection of any utopian impulse revolving around the laws of economic development or the role of the proletariat in history. Foucault's own conception of change, in fact, is represented in ways that are altogether different to Marx's approach, and ultimately supports localistic forms of resistance and specific forms of democratic incrementalism, rather than revolutionary or totalistic strategies as the basis of transforming society.

The Unhappy Marriage between Marxism and Race Critique: political economy and the production of racialized knowledge

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: The Unhappy Marriage between Marxism and Race Critique: political economy and the production of racialized knowledge
Author: ZEUS LEONARDO
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 483-493
ABSTRACT In educational policy theory orthodox Marxism is known for its commitment to objectivism or the science of history. Race analysis is developed in its ability to explain the subjective dimension of racial oppression. The two theories are often at odds with each other. This article is an attempt to create a theory by integrating Marxist objectivism and race theory's focus on subjectivity. As a result, both Marxism and race analysis are strengthened in a way that maintains the integrity of each discourse. This benefits educational policy theory because praxis is the dialectical attempt to synthesize the inner and external processes of schooling.

Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Neo-liberalism: making the political more pedagogical

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Neo-liberalism: making the political more pedagogical
Author: HENRY A. GIROUX
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 494-503
ABSTRACT Neo-liberalism has reached a new stage in the United States, buttressed largely by the almost seamless alliances formed among the Bush administration, religious fundamentalists, neo-conservative extremists, the dominant media, and corporate elites. This article explores the various ways in which neo-liberal cultural politics works as a form of public pedagogy to devalue the meaning of the social contract, education, and citizenship by defining higher education primarily as a financial investment and learning as a form of training for the workforce. Aggressively fostering its attack on the welfare state, unions, non-commodified public spheres, and any critical vestige of critical education, neo-liberal politics makes it increasingly more difficult to address the necessity of a political education in which active and critical political agents have to be formed, educated, and socialized into the world of politics. This article explores how the intersection of cultural studies and public pedagogy offers a challenge to both the ideology and practice of neo-liberalism as a form of cultural politics. In doing, so it outlines how the pedagogical can become more political in the classroom and how the political can become more pedagogical outside of the classroom via the educational force of the wider culture.

Books, Banks and Bullets: controlling our minds - the global project of imperialistic and militaristic neo-liberalism and its effect on education policy

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Books, Banks and Bullets: controlling our minds - the global project of imperialistic and militaristic neo-liberalism and its effect on education policy
Author: DAVE HILL
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 504-522
ABSTRACT This article focuses on global trends in education policy during the current epoch of imperializing, militaristic, neo-liberal global capital. It is based on an analysis that global capital, in the form of dominant US multinational capital, together with its client governments, uses the repressive and ideological apparatuses of the state to advance its interests, and to marginalize, terrorize, weaken, or kill those who stand in its way. What we are seeing is class war from above - war by national and global capitalist classes against national and global working classes. The author identifies global and national characteristics of the ideological and repressive state apparatuses that impose (broadly neo-liberal) educational and wider social, cultural, economic, and fiscal policy as part of the hegemonic activity of US-led global neo-liberal capital. In particular, he examines the repression of critical thought and oppositional activity within the sites of teacher education, schooling, and university/higher education - the compression and repression of critical space in education today.

'Rule Britannia' and the New American Empire: a Marxist analysis of the teaching of imperialism, actual and potential, in the British school curriculum

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: 'Rule Britannia' and the New American Empire: a Marxist analysis of the teaching of imperialism, actual and potential, in the British school curriculum
Author: MIKE COLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 523-528
ABSTRACT The author begins by arguing that in order to understand imperialism it is necessary to have a conceptual awareness of the concepts of racism and racialisation. He then considers how the British Empire impacted on schools during the imperial era. He goes on to examine the nature of the New Imperialism. Calls are currently being made by notable 'establishment figures' for the renewed teaching in schools of the history of Britain's imperial past. He concludes that Marxists should endorse these calls and should argue for the teaching of imperialism to be extended to include an analysis of the New Imperialism.

The Work of Power and the Power of Work: teaching for class consciousness in the neo-liberal age

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: The Work of Power and the Power of Work: teaching for class consciousness in the neo-liberal age
Author: ERIC J. WEINER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 539-554
ABSTRACT As workers throughout the globe struggle to gain control over the conditions in which they labor as well as the means by which capital is produced, the importance of understanding class struggle, class formation and class consciousness as they relate to education and schooling takes on a new urgency. In the early part of the twenty-first century, neo-liberal ideology persists in normalizing relations of capital, just as contemporary educational theory has tended to subrogate class struggle for social movement. As such, the category of class as a potent historical actor with specific temporal qualities suffers for legitimacy in an age characterized by end-of-history prophets and profiteers; 'bio-identity' movements; neo-corporate hegemony; quasi-sovereign nation-states; global financiers monetarily and ideologically supported by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization; increasing local and global disparities between wealth and poverty; and violence. A more comprehensive understanding of social class and education will not eradicate or transform all of these social realities. However, by erasing class as a historical actor, social and educational theorists as well as other political workers miss significant pedagogical opportunities to heighten class consciousness, create class formations, and enliven class struggle so that the future has an opportunity to become something other than what the present suggests it will be. But in an age characterized by a fear of freedom, radicalizing our thinking is a necessary step in imagining the possibility of collective struggle over a future that has yet to be determined.

Turning towards History: turning towards Utopia

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Turning towards History: turning towards Utopia
Author: JOHN FREEMAN-MOIR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 558-564
ABSTRACT Turning towards history - to be contrasted with turning away from history - captures the Marxian sense of education. Marx worked out the elements of a theory of political education in relation to history by equating education with the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and people. This theory received its most comprehensive yet succinct and attractive expression in the Communist Manifesto. The Manifesto is used as a means of analyzing the foundations of political education - the circumstances of history, class struggle and Utopia - from a historical materialist perspective. These foundations, which define an educative view of history, remain necessary to the further development of Marxian educational theory and practice in the contemporary world.

Marx and the Education of the Future

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Marx and the Education of the Future
Author: GLENN RIKOWSKI
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 565-577
ABSTRACT With reference to Karl Marx's writings on education, this article outlines the education of the future as anti-capitalist education. In starting out from a conception of communism as the 'real movement which abolishes the present state of things' (Marx), it is argued that the anti-capitalist education of the future consists of three moments: critique, addressing human needs and realms of freedom. It is also argued that all three moments are essential for an anti-capitalist education of the future, but the emphasis on particular moments changes (a movement from moment one to three) as capitalist society and education are left behind through social transformation. In the light of this framework, Marx's views on the relation between labour and education, and his views on education run by the state, are critically examined. In the light of the preceding analysis, the article ends with a consideration of two trends that are gaining strength in contemporary education in England: the social production of labour-power and the business takeover of education. Political responses to these are briefly explored.

Marxism and Adult Education in Britain

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Marxism and Adult Education in Britain
Author: TOM STEELE; RICHARD TAYLOR
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 578-592
ABSTRACT In British adult education Marxism has been a persistent if marginalised current that has consistently informed its more radical movements and practitioners. This article firstly introduces some contested Marxist perspectives on adult education, particularly around the issues of ideology and incorporation into bourgeois society. Secondly, it examines the adult educational context, contrasting the themes of middle-class-provided 'liberal' adult education and 'independent' working-class education. It then focuses on the trajectories of workers' education in the twentieth century and the contrasting roles Marxist education played in the Communist Party and the National Council of Labour Colleges up to the Second World War. In the post-war period the rebirth of community education in the 1960s and 1970s absorbed more cosmopolitan Marxist influence, such as those of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire. The article ends by assessing what remains of the Marxist tradition in the twenty-first century and the authors conclude that in a capitalist system that remains deeply unequal and globally exploitative, Marxism still offers a valuable framework of analysis through which adult educators may be able to engage in a dialogue with emergent social movements.

Education and Reproduction of Social Inequality: German politics and sociology of education

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Education and Reproduction of Social Inequality: German politics and sociology of education
Author: HEINZ SÜNKER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 593-606
ABSTRACT This article deals with central issues in the field of sociology and politics of education after the publication of the outcomes of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study for Germany. These outcomes serve to remind us of the old debate on politics of education in the 1960s. The main topic since then remains the reproduction of social inequality via education. Critical educational theory shows an alternative in conceptualizing education for all and in overcoming the three-tier system in Germany. This is necessary in the interest of a real democracy based on the abilities and competencies of an educated society.

Undermining Democratic Education in the USA: the consequences of global capitalism and neo-liberal policies for education policies at the local, state and federal levels

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Undermining Democratic Education in the USA: the consequences of global capitalism and neo-liberal policies for education policies at the local, state and federal levels
Author: DAVID HURSH
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 607-620
ABSTRACT In the USA, many of the recent education reforms have been implemented in response to calls from neo-liberal and conservative policy makers to improve education efficiency and reduce public expenditures within an increasingly globalized economy. Consequently, local, state, and federal education policies increasingly employ curricular standards and high-stakes testing as a means of introducing competition and markets into education. Moreover, for some policy makers such reforms are the first step towards privatizing education through charter schools and vouchers programs. In this article the author analyzes the consequences such policies have had on the education system on three scales: the city of Chicago, the state of New York, and the US federal government. In particular, the reforms have shifted the control over education from the local to the state and federal levels. Further, the reforms have increased inequality between the advantaged middle-class and White students and the disadvantaged working-class students and students of color.

Citizen-Consumers, Social Markets and the Reform of Public Services

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: Citizen-Consumers, Social Markets and the Reform of Public Services
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 621-632
ABSTRACT In a paper presented in July 2003 to Labour's National Policy Forum, the main policy-making body in the United Kingdom, Liam Byrne, a research associate of the Social Market Foundation, forecast the major problems that will face government in Britain in 2020. As reported in the Guardian (9 August 2003): 'British national government weakened by a seepage of power to international bodies, faces a massive challenge to meet the demands of an ever more consumerist and distrustful public'. Pressures on existing services will increase and the National Health Service especially will be beset by demands from an ever more consumerist public. Not only will expectations of quality public services rise as public services users expect higher standards, but the public will also become less afraid to express dissatisfaction. Byrne predicts that, rather than explicit political power, the spread of power to lobby groups and the willingness of the public to express political views through customer choice will weaken the national government. With better information, access to experts on the Internet and better education, the public is both less deferential and more distrustful of politics and political institutions. The question has become whether the forces of consumerism, political cynicism and individualism in Western economic growth can be challenged or at least reshaped. This is the topic for this article, which in turn examines the construction of 'citizen-consumers' in relation to the concept of the social market, how it is underpinned by British Labour government policy and how it is prefigured as a basis of policy by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, for Labour's next term in office.

US Imperialism, Transmodernism and Education: a Marxist critique

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: US Imperialism, Transmodernism and Education: a Marxist critique
Author: MIKE COLE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 633-643
ABSTRACT The author begins by discussing David Geoffrey Smith's analysis of the enantiomorphism inherent in the rhetoric of New American Imperialism. He goes on to examine critically Smith's defence of Enrique Dussel's advocacy of transmodernism as a way of understanding this enantiomorphism and of moving beyond what are seen as the constraints of both modernism and postmodernism. The author argues that transmodernism has purchase in analysing the genesis and genealogy of the New Imperialism. The author then offers a critique, from a Marxist perspective, of both postmodernism and transmodernism. He suggests that, in moving beyond the mere deconstruction of postmodernism, transmodernism is theoretically and practically more progressive than both non-Marxist forms of modernism and postmodernism. However, he suggests that, in rejecting all forms of totalising synthesis, transmodern analysis, like postmodern analysis, is ultimately conducive to capitalism. He also suggests that, since transmodernism's agenda for change is solely analectical rather than dialectical, transmodernist proposals for change are not viable in the context of the current imperialist project. Turning to education in societies characterised by an enantiomorphism and enfraudening, he argues that, from a Marxist perspective, the role of education should be to transform schools from sites of misrepresentation and conformity to the needs of neo-liberal capitalism and imperialism into sites of social justice.

A Reply to Mike Cole

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: A Reply to Mike Cole
Author: David Geoffrey Smith
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 644-645
ABSTRACT Not available

REVIEW ESSAY: American Conservative Identity Politics: Huntington on Who Are We?

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: REVIEW ESSAY: American Conservative Identity Politics: Huntington on Who Are We?
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 655-657
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEW

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:26 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Pages: 658-660
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 159-174
ABSTRACT What is the University and where is it going? What are its possible futures, and what futures are most likely to happen? The popular image of 'the University' in television and film is one of ivy-covered tradition, though only a minority of actual university sites fit the image. In its search for a foundational argument, scholarly discussion of the University as an institution often works back to the ancient Greeks, or at least to the mid-nineteenth century The Idea of a University by Cardinal Newman ([1854] 1996). Here there is a divergence between discussion of the University conducted within the humanities, and discussion in the smaller specialist fields of higher education studies and policy studies in education. Practitioners in the humanities are preoccupied by the discursive and administrative conditions for teaching and scholarship in those disciplines. Examples of this kind of commentary include papers by philosophers Gaita (2002), and Godon in this volume, and Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987), written from English literature. Higher education and policy specialists focus on the tasks of system organisation, government policy and institutional management. Their disciplinary tools are drawn mostly from sociology, economics, and political science and policy studies. They find the antecedents of the contemporary University less in Plato and Newman and more in the building of the modern mass education systems after World War Two (Scott, 1995; King, 2004) and in Kerr's The Uses of the University (1963). From there it is a short step to discussing the role of the University in the global 'competition state', which is the most recent rendering of the university-as-nation-builder project, and hence to globalisation and its university manifestations such as global networks (Beerkens, 2004) and cross-border students (Marginson & Rizvi, forthcoming). Examples of this work include the articles in this volume by Vincent-Lancrin, Eckel et al, Rhoades et al, Westerheijden et al, and Turner & Pusser. Some commentary draws on both sets of sensibilities. Though the article here by Kenway et al works in education policy studies, its central concern is with the character of and conditions for scholarship.

In his account of The University in Ruins the starting point for philosopher Readings (1996) is not Plato's Academy but the modern University and its role in constructing national culture, as Waks notes in his article in this volume. Readings argues that this role is irretrievably compromised by globalisation, neo-liberalism and corporatisation. His work might be said to represent a third, postmodern strand of discussion about the University, which focuses on the role of the University in the authorisation of truths. Perhaps the most famous and influential example is Lyotard's critique of utilitarianism and commercialism in The Post-Modern Condition (1984):

The question (overt or implied) now asked by the professional student, the State, or institutions of higher education is no longer 'Is it true?' but 'What use is it?' In the context of the mercantilisation of knowledge, more often than not this question is equivalent to: 'Is it saleable?' And in the context of power growth, 'Is it efficient?' (Lyotard, 1984, p. 51)

Preoccupations with neo-liberalism and its manifestations in the University cross the different literatures. Several of the articles in this volume target commercialism and markets, policy-driven and money-driven science, and credentialism. Compared to a decade ago, there is now less inclination to situate 'managerialism' as a universal explanation of all problems in the University. Executive-leaders, university businesses and modernised institutional bureaucracy are symptomatic of a larger set of cultural and social practices. These practices have produced a fourth way of talking about the University, in the burgeoning business literature, which imagines universities as standalone corporations swinging free of government in their own global marketplace and subjected to the familiar novelties of corporate management and leadership. In this kind of literature the University has no history: it is nothing more or less than the generic corporation - though images of traditional Ivy are exploited in the marketing and branding strategies of the more venerable institutions. The practices of scientific research and its commercialisation might have produced a fifth strand of literature about the research-intensive University (where, rightly or wrongly, most attention is focused), but have yet to translate discussion of innovation strategies, technology transfer and research and development (R & D) investment in journals such as Research Policy into a broader institutional frame.

We can find illuminating insights in almost any intellectual tradition. Arguably, no one grasped the institutional being of the modern University better than Clark Kerr. The Uses of the University is as informative for executive managers as for their critics (though neo-liberal economists, who are both managers and never-satisfied-with-an-impure-market critics, would probably prefer something that is less explanatory and open-ended than Kerr, and more normative and strident). Kerr's key insight, one that was novel 40 years ago but is now commonplace, was that mass higher education is associated with multiple purposes and constituencies. Kerr christened the University as 'the Multiversity', which was clever, and anticipated later theoretical developments, though it never quite caught on. He saw the Multiversity as a 'city of infinite variety'. The University was no longer reducible to a single purpose (if it ever had been), such as scientific research, or scholarship, or the formation of culture, or the training of social leaders. As Pusser (2002) remarks in an insightful review essay on the successive versions of Kerr's argument, his Multiversity was also marked by contradictions:

autonomous and constrained, powerful and vulnerable, innovative at the margins yet conservative at the core, dedicated to education as it depreciates teaching, devoted to liberal arts and vocational, nonprofit and commercial, and an 'aristocracy of intellect' in a populist society. (Pusser, 2002, pp. 460-461)

Clark Kerr sealed the authority of his analysis by predicting - in the early 1960s - the growth of a 'knowledge industry' with nodes along Route 128 around Boston and the Silicon Valley in California, a revolution in the biological sciences, a steeper hierarchy between science and humanities, the politicisation of the student body (later, the student revolt was to cost him his post as President of the University of California when he was dismissed by Governor Ronald Reagan) and the 'mechanisation' of learning to cope with the tasks of mass teaching. Pusser notes that Kerr's account of the origins of the Multiversity and its 'daily routines' has held up well; but 'little in the book explains why the University functions as it does or why it is so often enmeshed in conflict' (2002, p. 463). Kerr's account of the politics of the University is too focused on its internal operations, with not enough recognition of the external forces that drive it. Pusser suggests that in identifying these external drivers, in the case of the American University we might look to the fostering of research by industry and cold-war government, and the role of the research-intensive University in training national and global leaders. Perhaps the former explanation holds up less well outside America - in most nations, despite common global imaginings about the knowledge economy, and much to the continued chagrin of policy makers, the evidence for American-style strategic research synergies between government/university/industry is sparse. 'Academic capitalism' (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) of this kind and on this scale is confined to a small number of leading capitalist economies and cannot become universal to the University unless every nation becomes wealthy. In contrast with the United States, for better or worse, most national economies are not awash with surplus capital from a plethora of public and private sources, available for parking in the universities, to seal the Faustian bargain with economic power. On the other hand, the sociological role of the University in leadership training and in social selection is played out everywhere, whatever the state of the national economy; and it echoes through several of the articles in this volume.

Despite its external limitations, at the time it was published, Kerr's internally focused notion of the Multiversity was useful for people like himself, for the then emerging caste of professional administrators/leaders thereby invited to play balance-of-power politics among the fecund communities that were ranged within and around the University, and so maintain executive control, in the days before performance management and competitive budget distribution were invented to pursue the same purpose in an economically arbitrary, not politically arbitrary, fashion. That political model of the University as a field of often contrary interests (Baldridge, 1971) has now given way to a corporate model of managing the University as a site of production with an economic bottom line, though the latter is hard to define (profits? economic revenues? student numbers? research grants? research outputs? local social status? competitiveness within the national higher education system? global standing?). Yet it is clear that the University as an institution is at least as strongly motivated by social and global status, or prestige, as a goal in itself, as it is by the goal of economic revenues - though the two objectives are also intermeshed, in that achieving one is a principal means to the other. And the component academic units within the University are often little concerned about revenues as an end (while always mindful of money as a means); and their notions of status or prestige tend to be focused on discipline-based goals that are much narrower than those of the University qua University.

Arguably, the model of University as self-serving corporation - while it is certainly capable of inflicting major changes on teaching, learning and research, as the experience of the last decade indicates (Marginson & Considine, 2000) - no more exhausts the University as an institution than the notion of the University as site of political conflict and resolution; the University as privileged site for the workings of the scientific imagination; the University as community of scholars; the University as the fountainhead of culture and civilisation; the University as the arena of cultural diversity and global linkages; the University as producer of common public goods; the University as the wellspring of commercial science and technology; the University as the engine room of global competitiveness; nor, indeed, the University as irretrievably wrecked by neo-liberal globalisation. The range of these images indicates the University is not only complex in its activities and associations, but is a 'discourse sticky' institution. Many claims are made on the University.

The different literatures and the various claims are associated with many insights into the practices of universities. At the same time, though there are growing similarities between research-intensive universities across the world - a convergence that is much remarked on in the higher education studies literature - we lack persuasive theories or just new Kerr-style insights to help us understand the likely future trajectories of the University. It is broadly agreed the research-intensive University will continue to be an important institution. Amid the emergence of flexible learning and virtual institutions, Peter Drucker inspired a careless claim that conventional face-to-face universities would soon be obsolete, but the argument failed to outlast the collapse of the dot-coms at the end of the 1990s. Since then, there has been surprisingly little attention to 'University Futures'; and the discussion is often narrow. It seems that few of those who talk about the future of the University can refer to its pedagogical and cultural aspects while keeping an eye also on its sociology, political economy and its policy context.

This special issue of Policy Futures in Education on 'University Futures' is one attempt to fill the gap. The authors have varying preoccupations, and use different methods of inquiry and exposition, and come to sometimes contrary and often heterogeneous conclusions. We invite you to read all the articles because they each add something distinctive to our common understandings of University Futures, and they help us to map the field of discussion itself.

In the opening article on 'Competition and Markets in Higher Education', Simon Marginson starts not from the economic roots of the University, nor its contemporary functions in the competition state or the production of knowledge goods, but from its social roots - its role in the allocation of social benefits and relative advantages in a neo-liberal era. Arguably, the University plays a key part in configuring the social as a modernised Hobbesian space, the civilised war of all against all that F.A. Hayek and Margaret Thatcher imagined. Status competition in higher education has two dimensions: the competition between students for the most favoured places, and the competition between institutions for resources and prestige. Within the University, Marginson is interested in the interplay between the University as prestige maximiser and the University as resource driven. He examines status competition in higher education on both national and global planes and explores the national/global intersections. He finds that while status competition is much broader than buyer-seller competition in economic markets, these markets are becoming more pervasive and influential. Correspondingly, status competition has become both 'economised' (it is mediated by private capacity to pay), and intensified (there is diminished attention to public-good objectives, so that status competition is less modified by state interventions designed to increase equality of opportunity between individuals and between social groups). These trends have shaped the capacities of individuals, and universities as institutions, to use globalisation to pursue projects of upward mobility, and have more closely tied the University to the servicing of national and global hierarchies. This suggests the classical national policy project of equality of educational opportunity has been rendered obsolete by marketisation and globalisation, and now needs to be reworked. Marginson is interested in the manner in which in every nation the category of high-quality universities seems to be shrinking and a worldwide market in prestige universities has emerged. These patterns are typical of positional competition (Hirsch, 1976) in 'winner-take-all' markets in a networked environment (Frank & Cook, 1995). Marginson's argument suggests that we need to look beyond the critique of neo-liberal discourse. The discursive practices of neo-liberalism are deployed by specific socioeconomic interests. Far from the free movement of capital being the ultimate arbiter, markets in higher education are subordinated to government policy, to status competition and to conservative social power. On the global plane markets serve specific national interests, not vice versa. He argues that the leading Anglo-American universities exercise an unhealthy sway, while the rapidly growing commercial markets in cross-border English-language education also rest on relations of domination/subordination. Both of these factors retard the potential of higher education outside the global metropolis and therefore hold back national capacity in the developing world where universities are crucial to social and economic formation.

In 'Building Future Scenarios for Universities and Higher Education', Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin notes that higher education institutions and systems are affected by four common factors: convergence in the forms of higher education and the issues faced by institutions, from often very different starting points; the growth of participation including cross-border student mobility, despite demographic decline in some nations, and the multiplication of missions and functions; greater institutional autonomy and an expanded role for private providers; and new potentials of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The article provides informative internationally comparative data on participation rates, demographic trends and public and private funding across the nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In about half the OECD countries public expenditures per student declined between 1995 and 2000, though in some cases the drop in public funding was compensated by increased private funding. Like Marginson, Vincent-Lancrin notes that as well as providing teaching, research and services, universities exercise a central function - their 'only remaining monopoly' - in granting degrees and screening graduates for employment. This is 'one of the foundations of social stratification in democratic societies'. Vincent-Lancrin identifies six possible scenarios: little change, so that trends to mass education and marketisation are halted and developments in ICTs and lifelong learning largely take place outside the sector; a more entrepreneurial model with enhanced scope for private funding; an unabashed free-market model with institutional specialisation, enhanced hierarchy, extensive internationalisation and widespread use of ICTs in teaching, and movement of much research outside the universities; the re-centring of universities on a lifelong learning and open education model, again with research moving outside the sector, greater flexibility and an enhanced role for corporate institutions; a global network of universities where learners would design their own education, and industry partners would play a key role in the large market for lifelong learning; and the disappearance of formal tertiary education. Common to several of the scenarios is a demand-driven approach, more focus on the development of teaching, and the separation of teaching and research functions, with publicly funded science moving to outside research centres.

In 'Universities, Regional Policy and the Knowledge Economy', Michael Peters & Tim May extend Vincent-Lancrin's discussion of knowledge economy linkages to a more detailed examination of ICT-driven economic activity and its implications for regional capacity building. Regardless of the ideological content of some knowledge economy discourses, for example a tendency to abstract education/economy linkages from community building, ICTs have transformed both industrial productivities, and the material forms of community. At the same time, ICT-mediated networks, like the ICT industries themselves, are concentrated in particular nodes bound by geographical space. 'The major theoretical question is why has industry clustering reappeared in advanced economies when it had all but disappeared in the mid-twentieth century.' This re-regionalisation enables location-bound higher education institutions to retain a central role in economy and society, confounding predictions that the Virtual University would shift from adjunct to dominant form. 'Place matters', as Turner & Pusser put it in the heading to their article. Further, there is potential for these concentrations of new economic activity to be globally plural, rather than confined to the USA; and in turn this suggests that in the longer term there is potential for the exacerbated dominance of American institutions to be modified. In any case, Peters & May suggest that it is important not to become confined by critique but to focus also on the materiality, the positivity of the new economies and explore the potential for civic construction and education/industry/community interfaces that are created. They examine a detailed case study, the Manchester Knowledge Capital Initiative, which seeks to counterbalance the 'Golden Triangle' of Oxford, Cambridge and London. Within the Knowledge Capital Initiative some regional higher education institutions are shifting significantly, from being seen as merely 'in' the region to becoming 'of' the region.

In 'In the Shadow of the Ruins: globalization and the rise of corporate universities', Leonard Waks focuses on that sector of higher education where, as Vincent-Lancrin notes, much of the institutional innovation is now concentrated - the for-profit institutions and corporate universities. For-profit corporate universities have yet to gain acceptance from the orthodox academic sector as 'real' universities. However, benefiting from the neo-liberal policy climate and offering specialised forms of adult and vocational education, they 'have achieved broad public and political acceptance and accreditation'. Waks identifies two principal types of for-profit corporate university: standalone adult universities such as the University of Phoenix that are open to all customers, and the university divisions of corporations such as Motorola that want staff training that is 'more closely aligned with the firm's specific missions and markets'. In the last decade enrolments in both categories have grown rapidly though there are only a small number of really large-scale providers. The University of Phoenix is the outstanding success story, with many city-fringe sites in the USA and campuses in Mexico and the Netherlands. Few of the company-specific institutions have gained accreditation their own right: most work through established universities. However, conferral of state or mainstream institutional authority is not always essential to the corporate university sector, which sees the mainstream University is an illegitimate cartel organised to retard new initiatives, and regards Hayekian neo-liberal states as over-regulatory. Waks notes that in 1988 the Thatcher Government passed legislation requiring all diploma programs in the United Kingdom (UK) to be subject to approval by the universities. For the successful International Management Centres Association (IMCA) these were the very institutions IMCA was set up to contradict. The IMCA provides tutoring services and accredited degree programs to corporate universities. It has no preset curricula and develops flexible reflexive teaching/group learning processes that are 'authentic' to the specific firm. Like the University of Phoenix, IMCA provides no research function, maintains no library and dispenses with conventional academic criteria in staff appointment and promotion. The economic efficiency and demand-attractiveness of this model is beyond the reach of orthodox research-intensive universities. The success of the corporate universities in developing and exploiting specific adult learning markets is clear. It is not so clear that they are capable of developing commercial alternatives to conventional first degrees for pre-vocational undergraduates, or research training at doctoral level.

It is those nations that benefit most from global exchange in education that tend to be its more fervent advocates. Yet in 'Curricular Joint Ventures: a new chapter in US cross-border education?', Peter Eckel, Madeleine Green & Britany Affolter-Caine remark that, nonetheless, American universities can be surprisingly indifferent to the global sphere. While there is a continuing debate about the implications of the World Trade Organization/General Agreement on Trade in Services model for public institutions in the United States, globalisation in higher education generates net benefits to American universities and poses little threat to them. But despite (or is it because of?) America's favoured global position, international students are relatively marginal, and universities are often insular. The authors focus on exemplary universities that use strategic partnerships with each other, and/or with corporations, non-profit organisations and non-governmental organisations, to provide cross-border programs. Global enterprise is not just designed to raise revenues: it also augments institutional prestige and creates a broader set of capacities, potentials and perspectives. Institutions, including bachelor-level and community college providers, consider not just research and knowledge but the curriculum itself as a form of negotiable capital and the basis for entrepreneurial activity. The examples include the for-profit Cardean University; the Singapore-MIT alliance; the integrated international OneMBA program based on five providers in five nations (USA, Netherlands, Hong Kong China, Mexico, Brazil); Universitas 21 Global, an alliance of 17 universities that is attempting to mount a virtual university with a principal focus on delivery to China; and a second multi-institutional network of established universities, the Worldwide Universities Network, offering joint programs, the first accredited by York University in the UK. Curricular joint ventures are pursued most actively by certain large research-intensive universities that see themselves as global in orientation, and institutions that see the global dimension as their market niche, including the for-profit sector. Eckel et al note that nevertheless it is not 'clear if US institutions will become more outward-looking both in their academic and entrepreneurial ventures', and they advocate a more open internationalism. The American higher education sector is less aggressively entrepreneurial than UK and Australian universities. Given the tremendous magnetic attraction exercised by American universities on the global scale, what would happen to the global market in cross-border education if the American doctoral sector adopted a more capitalist approach, so that the supply of places to foreign students rose to meet potential demand?

It is therefore ironic that American universities are seen around the world as the paradigmatic case of the successful fusion of higher education and capitalist economy. In 'Imagining Alternativas to Global, Corporate, New Economy Academic Capitalism', Gary Rhoades, Alma Maldonado-Maldonado, Imanol Ordorika & Martín Velazquez note that on the global scale an Americanised neo-liberal model of higher education as academic capitalism has become almost all-pervasive. The model blurs the boundaries between public/private, and non-profit/for-profit. It emphasises university entrepreneurship and university-industry partnerships; the generation of profitable commodities by universities themselves; and marketised forms of production, student fee charging, administration and system organisation. Notions of higher education as a producer of public goods and a cultural project are marginalised. This model of the University is now as dominant as the German Humboldtian model of the research university a century ago. But it is an idealised Americanised model not an actual American model, and is applied to other national sites without the infrastructures and social supports enjoyed by American research-intensive universities, e.g. their research resources and tuition subsidies. The move to the market in other countries, aggressively promoted by global agencies - particularly active in many Latin American nations - often 'proceeds much further and to a greater, unrestricted, extreme than it has in the USA'. Public institutions are weakened, their public functions are undermined and because system access is expanded by privatisation, financial barriers increase. The authors argue that nevertheless 'there are realistic and realizable alternatives' to the prevailing model. The seeds of one set of alternatives lie in the inherited tradition of public universities in Latin America, such as the autonomous university as it developed in Argentina; and in the distinctive entrepreneurial forms of a non-profit Mexican private university, the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey ('Monterrey Tech'). Though Monterrey Tech enjoys less public aid than do non-profit universities in the USA - it has only a limited role in applied research - a third of its students receive tuition aid from within the institution and it has large-scale commitments to both international student exchange, and social service work by students designed to develop sustainable local communities. Rhoades et al conclude that Latin American universities should play to their inherited strengths and develop distinctive national projects in three areas: the democratisation of the University's social and political functions; the sustainable development of independent communities; and the building of 'new and sovereign cultural identities' in the nations of Latin America.

As Rhoades et al argue, in the policy discourses of the neo-liberal competition state, public becomes private: 'public' purposes become controlled by privatised objectives and agents that are beyond the capacity of either universities or populations to affect. There is no reciprocity here. The University is accountable to capital, but capital is not accountable to the University or subordinated to its logics of teaching/learning and knowledge exchange. Universities are positioned as supplicants and dependants in relation to corporations that are mostly indifferent to higher education, and notoriously reluctant to pay for it. The next two articles provide critiques of government policies concerning innovation and the knowledge economy and the positioning of universities within those policies. In 'The Knowledge Economy, the Techno-preneur and the Problematic Future of the University', Jane Kenway, Elizabeth Bullen & Simon Robb note that the intellectual antecedents of the policies on innovation and the knowledge economy lie in Schumpeter's theorisation of innovation as 'creative destruction'; notions of long-wave cycles of innovation driven by dominant technologies, and endogenous growth, drawn from economics; and the conceptualisation of national innovation systems as networks of private and public sector agents. It is curious that innovation is typed as 'national': knowledge economy policies only partly factor in the global dimension. These policies now exercise a major influence on programs for funding university research in many nations. Kenway et al take in policy discourses from the World Bank, the OECD and European Commission and specific developments in the English-speaking countries, principally Australia. These policies 'accord technology undue power as an agent of change' so that social and cultural factors are seen as subordinate to technology, which like the capitalist economy is beyond control, and share a common preoccupation with techno-science, networking and commercial imperatives. Correspondingly, they value three kinds of university subject: the techno-scientists, the knowledge networker and the entrepreneur. For the University, it is a seductive policy, placing it at the centre of national interest by defining knowledge as the central factor in economic growth. The caveats are that the main purpose of knowledge work becomes its contribution to economic growth, and research funding systems ensure that universities no longer determine the pattern of inquiry. 'Knowledge' is presented as a universal across all fields of inquiry, but valued knowledge is commercialisable knowledge. Kenway et al argue that 'current knowledge economy policies and innovation systems tend to ignore the distinctive features of universities and scholarly communities and that, in so doing, they put in peril aspects of what they seek to achieve and much else besides'. The techno-scientist-entrepreneur is encouraged to cut corners, steal ideas, evade free exchange and treat the ethical and social implications of science as marginal to the main game. This excludes not just basic research in the public interest but the reciprocal bonds typical of the best academic life, where the social-economic logic is not the capitalist economy but the gift economy. A gift transactor wants an intellectual community, 'the intellectual relationships that the exchange of gifts creates'. Such a position is anathema to the 'techno-preneur', argue Kenway et al. '[C]ommodity exchange exerts a disintegrating influence on the academic community ... No one, for instance, will freely share with someone who is known to have an eye on a potential patent.' No doubt the future of the University turns on the potential for accommodation between the gift economy and the techno-economy.

In 'Neo-liberalism, Knowledge and Inclusiveness', Peter Roberts critically examines two New Zealand examples of policy discourses on the knowledge economy: the Foresight Project developed by the then National Government in the late 1990s, and the Labour-led Tertiary Education Strategy, setting out priorities for post-compulsory education and training in 2002-2007. Both statements are enamoured of a sense of 'newness', and foreground futures in education. The discourses blend what Lyotard (1984) called 'narrative knowledge', and techno-science, with neo-liberal 'market knowledge', using terms such as consumers, providers, stakeholders, choice, outputs, value-added, market share, positioning, competition, performance indicators, etc. But in this fusion market knowledge is decisive: it has harnessed techno-science (whose role becomes to legitimate economism) to competitive capitalist ends. The Foresight Project is a potage of all modern things to all modern people. In its language about the 'knowledge revolution' there is the familiar unproblematic, almost seamless movement from broader thinking about the future, to openness to innovation, to globalisation and breaking down boundaries, to fostering science and technology, to maximising opportunities for individuals and enterprises, to mushrooming knowledge industries, to global economic competitiveness. The Labour education strategy adds 'foundation skills', multiculturalism and sustainable communities to the mix; and repeats the Foresight commitment to consultative processes. But on whose terms? Roberts argues that notions of inclusiveness and social-racial harmony fostered by both policy statements are illusory. The policy makers skate over both historical inequalities and the social disharmonies fostered by market competition; and leave fairness to be determined by market competition.

In 'The University and Social Transformation', Rafal Godon shares preoccupations common to several articles: that education is become a privatised commodity and the incentives governing life in the University 'have nothing to do with the common good'. Conceptions of University as self-education, as a process of reflective personal development, have been displaced. Students 'no longer study for the sake of their inner betterment'. They are focused on the transactional utilities of knowledge and degrees. Correspondingly, 'the institutions increasingly focus on their economic success than on educating'. They care less about the person they educate and more about efficiency and about expanding the number of graduates. The myth that is identified by Godon, 'that education is like a ticket to a better world' - the myth that the University is a medium for understanding, calculating, creating and controlling futures - in different ways runs through the knowledge economy discourse; through status competition between institutions and the competition between students; through the rates of return equations of economists, through the policy assumption that the University is the producer of individual benefit, and universities' own strategies of increased tuition; and through University's marketing to students, its invitation to make enrolment in this or that program of study into self-investment. Godon notes that this myth rests on ideologies of self and social transformation in which 'self-education' is replaced by 'self-satisfaction and success'. These ideologies foster illusions, and disappointment is inevitable; it is unsurprising that there is endemic frustration with the University. Like Kenway et al, Godon emphasises the consequences for human relationships. The University 'is not, any longer, a place for establishing new friendships' based on the love of something held in common. Students become preoccupied with the size of the diploma, the service they receive and the status of their institution rather than knowledge and friendship. By confronting the philosophical underpinnings of conduct within the University, Godon takes the critique of neo-liberalism, and the solution, a stage further. There is no universal internal antidote for these difficulties. The problems lie in the larger culture. After all, as Waks remarks, 'institutions are adaptive tools for meeting basic human purposes', and 'as one sphere changes, others must adapt to maintain stability'. We need to look to those basic human purposes - in Kerr's suggestive term, to the uses of the University - if we are to understand the predicament. But the University also constitutes a space and set of tools for personal and social reflection. If social life is reified, this makes it all the more important to preserve (or regain) independent spaces within the University, where research is controlled by scholars and not by outer bodies or vocational demands. 'Only one who is able to forget himself, to lose himself in otherness, can reveal new perspectives on the world.' Godon argues that to address its own health and gain (or regain) its 'equilibrium', the University needs to confront the nature of the knowledge it transmits, recover the distinctions between the sciences and the humanities, and above all foreground self-understanding and empathy with the other.

The final two articles re-anchor the discussion in national systems and locally focused universities, albeit operating within global contexts. In 'Ground Force Does the Dutch Higher Education Gardens', Don Westerheijden, Jeroen Huisman & Harry de Boer use styles of garden as a metaphor for the national higher education system (Ground Force is the BBC's garden changing program). In 2001 Westerheijden et al conducted a Delphi study to establish forecasts for the Dutch higher education for 2010. In an exercise similar to that of Vincent-Lancrin they identified three possible types of system-garden. The Palatial Garden is government ordered in straight lines with well-clipped hedges, consisting of the present two well-defined types of institution (universities and colleges) with homogeneity within each group. With all universities focused on a research-intensive mission, most students are in the college sector, which caters for local/regional labour markets. The system is planned and public, though tuition costs have risen. Polder Gardens fit on the margins of the Dutch polders, which are designed in straight lines but have to fit the natural shape of flowing water, so that there is room on the margins for a few wild flowers. The Polder Garden higher education system in 2010 remains a nationally ordered public responsibility and continues to be largely supply driven. It is rationally designed but less strictly than in the Palatial Garden. The binary line is abolished, government influence in curriculum is limited to the bachelor level and the Master's level is deregulated, with some instances of high fees. Some Dutch students are exiting, preferring to access Master's programs through European structures. The Natural Garden is a wilder and messier place. Networking, partnerships and collaborations with industry are endemic. A range of missions has developed, though certain research-intensive universities have survived. Some institutions have broken out of the national system onto the European plane, or have become global players with focuses on China and Latin America. For-profit education takes a large share of the student market, while academic areas without strong demand support have tended to wither. The basic units are shorter modules. Accreditation is managed at European level, using a bachelor/Master's structure. Comparing the garden scenarios with the changes in 2001-2004, Westerheijden et al note that already a bachelor/Master's structure has been achieved, and institutions can now merge across the binary divide. The Polder Garden is closest to reality, but developments have been more international than the Polder scenario suggested. Government is positioning Dutch institutions at the quality end of the global market by making their research strengths more visible; while cross-border developments within Europe are taking an inter-national rather than a supra-national European Union (EU)-controlled form. The core of Dutch education remains a nationally controlled public education system producing public goods. Clearly, the nation-state is proving to be more resilient in higher education than many in the Netherlands and elsewhere expected, and much of the literature on globalisation has suggested (for example, Appadurai, 1996). Higher education is determined not by a dialectic of global (or EU-regional) elements with local elements, but in the three interacting dimensions of the global/regional, the national, and the local (Marginson & Rhoades, 2002; Valimaa, 2004).

Notwithstanding the growing salience of economic markets within and between national higher education systems, and the fervour about private universities and commercialisation that touches many in the global agencies and in the higher education sectors of nations where neo-liberalism holds sway, on a worldwide basis public education remains the dominant mode. Public, state or national universities enrol the majority of students at all levels of education except vocational education, and cover more than two-thirds of students in the United States. Even in some nations where the private sector is the majority sector, the national universities exercise leadership in academic research and social status, for example Japan. If public education and public policy - and more problematically perhaps, public goods - are at the centre of the higher education equation, then the provision of an equitable structure of participation is at the core of that public role. As Vincent-Lancrin suggests, the classical democratic mission of national and provincial/state higher education systems is to provide social equality of opportunity. In 'Place Matters: the distribution of access to a state flagship university', J. Kirsten Turner & Brian Pusser provide a major empirical study of the role of public universities in developing social leaders/allocating positional or status goods. The empirical site is the University of Virginia in the American state of Virginia. Turner & Pusser review debates about equality and diversity in admissions. They note that despite the benefits to individuals, institutions and communities of diversity in the student body - and despite efforts to improve diversity - students from certain racial-ethnic, socioeconomic and regional origins are persistently under-represented in selective universities such as the University of Virginia. The founder of the University, Thomas Jefferson, stated that 'we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated'. Turner & Pusser provide both tabular and diagrammatic tests of proportionality in representation, for 1992 and 2002. They find for example that in 2002, though more than three-quarters of Virginia's high schools were represented in the admission cohort, more than half the students came from 13.6% of the state's high schools, and one school district, Fairfax County, had a remarkable access to the University. Income tests indicate substantial socioeconomic inequality on a sub-state regional basis. Afro-American students apply at less than 40% of the rate that proportionality of representation would suggest, and the acceptance rate lags further. Hispanic-Americans are also under-represented. Asian-American students are considerably over-represented in applications (more so) and acceptances, though over-representation diminished between 1992 and 2002. Place, income and racial-ethnic effects tend to combine. The data from Turner & Pusser enable specific pockets of under-representation to be identified and addressed. But whether Jefferson's goal is still relevant is unclear, given that the University of Virginia has declared that it wants to raise enough in donations to dispense with the need for state government funding and the public accountability that goes with it.

The question posed by Turner & Pusser in their careful locality study is 'Whose social interests are served by universities?', a question posed more broadly in the first article by Marginson. The questions posed by self-privatisation and self-marketisation strategies are 'Whose interests are served by university self-interest?', and what does this mean for the community building dimension of higher education that was identified in different ways in the article by Peters & May, and in the article by Rhoades et al? As editors, we have found gathering these articles to be a rewarding process, and we have learned much from them. We hope they will stimulate further discussion, and invite vigorous rejoinders and alternatives.

Correspondence

Professor Simon Marginson, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia (simon.marginson@education.monash.edu.au).

References

Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Baldridge, R. (1971) Power and Conflict in the University: research in the sociology of complex organizations. New York: Wiley.

Beerkens, E. (2004) Global Opportunities and Institutional Embeddedness: higher education consortia in Europe and Southeast Asia. Doctoral thesis, Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente.

Bloom, A. (1987) The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Frank, R. & Cook, P. (1995) The Winner-take-all society. New York: The Free Press.

Gaita, R. (2002) The University - is it finished? in S. Cooper, J. Hinkson & G. Sharp Scholars and Entrepreneurs. Melbourne: Arena Publications.

Hirsch, F. (1976) Social Limits to Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kerr, C. (1963) The Uses of the University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

King, R. (2004) The University in the Global Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lyotard, J. (1984) The Post-modern Condition: a report on knowledge, tr. G. Bennington & B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Marginson, S. & Considine, M. (2000) The Enterprise University: power, governance and reinvention in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marginson, S. & Rhoades, G. (2002) Beyond National States, Markets, and Systems of Higher Education: a glonacal agency heuristic, Higher Education, 43, pp. 281-309.

Marginson, S. & Rizvi, F. (forthcoming) Going Global: the internationalisation of Australian universities. Manuscript in preparation.

Newman, J. ([1854] 1996) The Idea of a University. Newhaven: Yale University Press.

Pusser, B. (2002) The Political Uses of the University, Review of Higher Education, 25(4), pp. 459-467.

Readings, B. (1996) The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Scott, P. (1995) The Meanings of Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Slaughter, S. & Leslie, L. (1997) Academic Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Valimaa, J. (2004) Nationalisation, Localisation and Globalisation in Finnish Higher Education, Higher Education, 48, pp. 27-54.

Competition and Markets in Higher Education: a 'glonacal' analysis

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Competition and Markets in Higher Education: a 'glonacal' analysis
Author: SIMON MARGINSON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 175-244
ABSTRACT Higher education - particularly the research-intensive university, which is the focus of this article - is the subject of global/national/local effects, and is shaped by hierarchy and uneven development on a world scale. The article theorises social competition in higher education, and traces inter-university competition and stratification on the national and global planes with the help of figures and tables. It argues that social competition is much broader than economic exchange, but in the neo-liberal era marketisation is becoming more important, particularly cross-border markets. Globalisation and markets together are changing the competition for status goods (positional goods) in higher education. The competition is becoming more 'economised' because mediated by private capacity to pay, and intensified because there is diminished attention to public good objectives such as equality of opportunity: in any case transnational markets are configured as a trading environment where such objectives are irrelevant. The outcome is the steepening of university hierarchies, the formation of a 'winner-take-all' world market in elite and mostly American university education, a tighter fit between social hierarchy and educational hierarchy at the national level, and global patterns of domination/subordination that are as yet scarcely modified by global public goods. This suggests the need to rework the equality of the educational project and situate it globally as well as nationally.

Building Futures Scenarios for Universities and Higher Education: an international approach

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Building Futures Scenarios for Universities and Higher Education: an international approach
Author: STÉPHAN VINCENT-LANCRIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 245-262
ABSTRACT The article presents a set of scenarios for universities and higher education in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area. The first section gives a brief overview of the main forces currently at play in higher education in OECD countries, setting the context in which speculation about the future takes place. The second section discusses the purposes of a scenario-building exercise, the methodology used and (some of) its caveats. The third section presents the set of scenarios, before some concluding remarks.

Universities, Regional Policy and the Knowledge Economy

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Universities, Regional Policy and the Knowledge Economy
Author: MICHAEL A. PETERS; TIM MAY
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 263-277
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the spatial clustering dimension of new information and communications technology (ICT)-driven economic activity based on knowledge industries and especially the tacit knowledge synergies to be achieved through networking in geographical space. The article first details the new knowledge economy, reviewing claims made for its distinctiveness and its role in raising levels of productivity before turning to a brief study of the clustering effects of new ICT-driven economic activity and the development of policies designed to enhance regional development. The remainder of the article details a case study - Univercities: the Manchester Knowledge Capital Initiative - in the North-west of the United Kingdom based on recent research into the attempt to create a 'Knowledge Capital' within the Greater Manchester conurbation, which is designed to position Manchester at the heart of the knowledge economy.

In the Shadow of the Ruins: globalization and the rise of corporate universities

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: In the Shadow of the Ruins: globalization and the rise of corporate universities
Author: LEONARD J. WAKS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 278-298
ABSTRACT The term 'corporate university', which has come into wide use in the last decade, is applied to three kinds of organizations: (1) established, mainstream, non-profit universities adapting to economic and technological pressures by adopting managerial practices of modern for-profit corporations; (2) newly established, highly innovative universities that operate as for-profit corporations, but satisfy the political and legal requirements for university status, and meet the standards of accrediting bodies (e.g. the University of Phoenix); and (3) new educational organizations operating within, and providing education and training services for, for-profit corporate firms (e.g. Marriott University). Organizations of types (2) and (3) provide a different 'product' than traditional universities, but nonetheless are subverting traditional academic practices in areas of recruitment and retention, academic standards, pricing, and managerial culture, thus making mainstream institutions corporate universities of type (1). This article offers a framework for understanding corporate universities as 'shadow institutions', an analogy with shadow cabinets, or shadow governments-in-exile. The framework draws on three connotations of the word 'shadow': corporate universities exist in the shadow of, or are obscured by, mainstream universities; they reflect, or form a shadow image of, these mainstream universities in certain formal respects; and they foreshadow or pre-figure mainstream universities of the future.

Curricular Joint Ventures: a new chapter in US cross-border education?

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Curricular Joint Ventures: a new chapter in US cross-border education?
Author: PETER D. ECKEL; MADELEINE F. GREEN; BRITANY AFFOLTER-CAINE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 299-315
ABSTRACT For universities in industrialized nations such as the United States, globalization poses relatively little threat and offers many benefits. This article identifies and describes one trend emerging from globalization - how American colleges and universities are leveraging their curricula internationally through joint ventures between universities or between universities and other partners such as corporations, or non-profit or non-governmental organizations, that result in new academic programs each partner alone does not offer. It discusses US institutions' hunt for revenue, prestige and quality and the motivations for such international activity. It describes a range of international curricular joint ventures using different models and with varying motivations. However, for most US institutions, cross-border education is subservient to other campus priorities. Although one could guess that inter-institutional collaboration will be an important strategy to maximize resources and to gain access to the global market place, the jury is still out. It is also not clear if US institutions will become more outward looking both in their academic and entrepreneurial ventures.

Imagining Alternativas to Global, Corporate, New Economy Academic Capitalism

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Imagining Alternativas to Global, Corporate, New Economy Academic Capitalism
Author: GARY RHOADES; ALMA MALDONADO-MALDONADO; IMANOL ORDORIKA; MARTÍN VELAZQUEZ
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 316-329
ABSTRACT In this article, the authors detail the conditions and patterns of academic capitalism and the new economy in US higher education. Subsequently, a conceptual model is offered for considering the international reach and national and local patterns of academic capitalism. Further, a distinctive Mexican case of entrepreneurialism is offered. The article concludes with a discussion of alternatives for a model of a universidad latinoamericana that is grounded in the historical role of Latin American universities.

The Knowledge Economy, the Techno-preneur and the Problematic Future of the University

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: The Knowledge Economy, the Techno-preneur and the Problematic Future of the University
Author: JANE KENWAY; ELIZABETH BULLEN; SIMON ROBB
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 330-349
ABSTRACT Knowledge economy policies are currently very powerful drivers of change in contemporary university approaches to research. They typically orientate universities to a national innovation system which both positions knowledge as the key factor of economic growth and sees the main purpose of knowledge as contributing to such growth. In this article, the authors explain the economic logic informing such policy interventions in university research and look at the conceptualisation of national innovation systems in various national and international policy sites around the world. Their interest is in what these particular sets of policies have in common, not in how they differ. They introduce three key themes of such systems and the academics they seek to produce. These themes are their techno-scientific orientation, network characteristics and commercial imperatives. The corresponding implied subjects are the techno-scientist, the knowledge networker and the entrepreneur. The authors make the case that evident in such constructions of the future of universities are some unacknowledged and under-acknowledged problems, one of which is a failure to recognise the power of the gift economies of academic culture.

Neo-liberalism, Knowledge and Inclusiveness

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Neo-liberalism, Knowledge and Inclusiveness
Author: PETER ROBERTS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 350-364
ABSTRACT Over the past decade, 'knowledge' has become a key policy buzz-word. This is particularly evident in policy material on education, science and research, where references to the importance of building the 'new' knowledge society and economy abound. This article discusses two examples of these new knowledge discourses at work in the New Zealand context. The first is the Foresight Project, a futures-oriented policy initiative developed under a National Government in the late 1990s. The second is the Labour-led Tertiary Education Strategy, which sets out priorities for post-compulsory education and training from 2002 to 2007. The author argues that these initiatives blend narrative, techno-scientific and neo-liberal forms of knowledge, with the latter ultimately dominating the other two. He supports the attempt to take the future seriously in policy development but maintains that these initiatives foster an illusory notion of inclusiveness and consider only a narrow range of social and economic alternatives.

The University and Social Transformation

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: The University and Social Transformation
Author: RAFAL GODON
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 365-373
ABSTRACT The article focuses on the problem of a crisis in contemporary European universities. The key question is whether the crisis in university education is a calamity or a challenge in these times of social transformation. Adapting a metaphor of health to the university education in the contexts of politics, knowledge and self-understanding, the author makes an attempt to throw some new light on the pedagogical issues concerning tertiary education. Specifically, he argues that the wholeness of university education does not narrow our outlook on the world. Conversely, it helps us to remember that learning and teaching always require real practice, critical knowledge and personal engagement.

Ground Force Does the Dutch Higher Education Gardens: three scenarios revisited

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Ground Force Does the Dutch Higher Education Gardens: three scenarios revisited
Author: DON F. WESTERHEIJDEN; JEROEN HUISMAN; HARRY DE BOER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 374-387
ABSTRACT This article shows the changes currently made to higher education in the Netherlands, and what they may mean for its future. Findings from a Delphi study were used to develop three scenarios for Dutch higher education in 2010. The Palatial Garden scenario combined little openness of the system with high governmental involvement, making it more 'strict' than the actual situation in the country. The Natural Garden was in all dimensions opposed to the Palatial Garden scenario. The Polder Garden scenario was in some respects a 'zero option' in that it was built on assumptions of continued, unchanged policies, though in a changing degree structure and in a changing context. Three years on, the scenarios are compared with recent policy plans. The authors conclude that actual developments followed their own path rather than any single one of the garden scenarios. Current policy plans in the Netherlands show signs of (contradictory) compromises between different policy drivers, such as globalisation and national policy, state steering and network society or higher education as a public good and as commodity.

Place Matters: the distribution of access to a state flagship university

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: Place Matters: the distribution of access to a state flagship university
Author: J. KIRSTEN TURNER; BRIAN PUSSER
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 388-421
ABSTRACT This article examines the degree to which admission cohorts at a selective public flagship university in the United States reflect the state's broader social and economic diversity. US Census data and University admission data on socio-demographic characteristics, including race, gender, place of residence, family income and education levels, are used in conjunction with geo-spatial mapping to portray the distribution of access to the University for a variety of sub-populations over time. The data reveal persistent patterns of disproportionate representation, with the highest degree of access to the University concentrated predominately among Caucasian students in suburban areas of the state. The authors argue that such disproportionate access to the University has implications for the distribution of the public goods produced by elite public universities.

BOOK REVIEWS

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:27 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEWS
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Pages: 422-434
ABSTRACT Not available

Editorial

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Editorial
Author: CHRISTOPHER WINCH; LORRAINE FOREMAN-PECK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-4
ABSTRACT For long a relatively neglected area of study, vocational education and training (VET) is coming into its own as an area of recognised importance. This change has occurred for a number of reasons, but the increased salience of vocational education in policy making across the world is an important one. It is, therefore, worth examining why it has become of growing importance to the policy process. The most obvious causes are the increasing liberalisation of trade, improvements in communications and the dissemination of information that go under the name of 'globalisation'. Increasing trade liberalisation and transferability of information bring into sharp relief the relative strengths and weaknesses of different national economies. Because technology has been disseminated, it is now possible for manufacturing processes to be easily located in countries where they enjoy a decisive cost advantage. Even some services which do not require face-to-face contact have become amenable to transfer to countries which enjoy a low cost base. Some of these countries, although relatively poor in per capita income, nevertheless enjoy relatively high levels of basic education and a significant and growing graduate population, which can be utilised in the international market in services. It is natural to think that the competitive advantage of the more developed countries is going to lie in their high levels of general education and the significant proportion of individuals with intermediate and graduate qualifications. If these societies cannot compete on the cost of their labour, then they need to compete on the high specification and quality of the goods and services that they produce. One way of looking at vocational education is to see it as a means of securing this kind of competitive advantage.

However, there are other issues that have also served to make us more aware of vocational education which are more or less related to the globalisation issue. North America, Australia, Japan and Western Europe all enjoy historically high and increasing rates of participation in post-school education. It is implausible to assume that this growing population of people aspiring to education will all benefit from the same type of education. In addition, those being educated are increasingly aware of both the economic costs and potential benefits of their education. For these reasons, it is recognised more and more by policy makers that traditional forms of liberal academic education are not necessarily suitable for a large proportion of the population, neither are they necessarily of economic benefit to either the individuals concerned or to their societies. There is now greater sensitivity than there was perhaps in the past to the variety of abilities that humans may develop and the fact that vastly different kinds of ability may both be valuable to the economy and a source of intrinsic satisfaction to those whose abilities they are. We are thus more willing than we were in the past to recognise the intrinsic, as well as the instrumental, importance of manual, physical, aesthetic and social abilities alongside the traditionally recognised academic ones. It is also more readily recognised that the development of such abilities requires systematic educational preparation, although, as we shall see, there is a tendency in some developed countries, of which the United Kingdom (UK) is perhaps a notable example, to rely on more traditional methods of developing them. At the same time, paid employment plays a larger role in the life of the population than it did 50 years ago. The most notable indicator of this is the large-scale movement of women into the workforce and the consequent bringing of childrearing, domestic work and caring activities into the sphere of paid employment, thus in effect creating new areas of economic activity. Being at work is seen by many as an indicator that one is a worthwhile member of the community and the pressures to join the workforce are not simply economic, but moral as well. At the same time, the tendency of the working population to work shorter hours has been reversed, notably in the USA and the UK, although the contrary tendency can be seen in many Western European countries.

Given paid employment's importance in so many people's lives, their concern to develop economically useful abilities, the varied needs of the economy and the requirement of increasing levels of knowledge and skill in order for people to become and to remain economically active, it is not surprising that vocational education is assuming the importance that it is. As we have noted, it is easy to see its instrumental importance, less easy perhaps to see that non-academic but vocationally relevant activities could have any intrinsic value. Yet to ignore the growing recognition that they do have such value is to ignore another important tendency in developed societies. We have already noted that the diversity of ability is increasingly recognised. We should also note that individuals want to discover what they might be good at and to develop those abilities in their education. If they do have to be educated they wish to develop skills which they find satisfying and which will also benefit them economically. They want to engage in activities that seem to them to be meaningful and to enhance their dignity as human beings. It is not enough for people in our kind of society to be economically viable, we also want to find meaning in what is a very significant aspect of our lives. This tendency poses a large challenge to developed societies which can be stated as follows. How does one reconcile the demand of potential recruits to the labour market for abilities that are both personally satisfying and economically worthwhile with the demand of employers for abilities that will be useful to their businesses, given the unpredictability of consumer demand and the vagaries of competitive advantage? This challenge is not simply one of getting the mix of educational programmes right, because preparation for economically useful activity may well require an extended engagement with the skills, knowledge, equipment and operational requirements of the area of economic activity which individuals are going to enter. Since specialist teachers, equipment and locations are required, as well as classrooms, such vocational education may well prove to be expensive as well as risky for both providers and learners in terms of expenditure of both time and money. The contemporary challenge of vocational education is one of providing preparation for economic viability while, at the same time, ensuring that the development of individual practical abilities is something from which people can gain satisfaction both in their earning and in their exercise. This is a formidable challenge and the articles collected here deal with various aspects of it.

Kevin Williams addresses the fear of many, that a vocational curriculum will be confined to the 'academically challenged' and that they will be deprived of a fulfilling school experience from a 'high culture' curriculum. Recognising that the jobs most esteemed in society (professional/academic) go to those who are academic winners, the vocational curriculum is seen to be inferior, not only in respect of educational quality, but also in terms of its economic exchange value. Williams argues that students who follow a vocational pathway are not necessarily excluded from a personally meaningful and culturally enriching education and that practical or manual subjects can be a source of personal satisfaction.

Judith Suissa expands the debate about the value of the vocational curriculum by contrasting the ideas of the social anarchists of the late nineteenth century with the ideas of two prominent advocates (Richard Pring and Christopher Winch) of a liberal conception of a vocational education. The social anarchists were concerned in their educational programme to foster the virtues of mutual cooperation and fraternity in order to bring about radical change in the political organisation of society. Pring and Winch, on the other hand, while advocating the development of critically active and reflective citizens as part of a vocational curriculum, are not concerned with radical reform. Suissa ends her article with some interesting suggestions about the way in which social anarchist perspectives can be introduced by teachers teaching citizenship education.

Stephen Swailes and Simon Roodhouse's article investigates barriers to the take-up of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). NVQs were introduced with the intention of accrediting and developing a flexible and skilled workforce responsive to global economic changes. NVQs are specifically designed to incorporate the skills employers need, and are designed to assess standards of competence as revealed in the workplace. Over four million people in work have gained an NVQ qualification over the past 15 years, yet there is much dissatisfaction with their design and take-up especially at the higher levels. A survey of over 80 organisations and an interview study with representative stakeholders, conducted in 2002, confirmed continuing problems with the design, take-up and exchange value of NVQs.

The problem of the diminishing credibility of NVQs is examined in depth in Tim Oates's article. He argues that the failure of NVQs to become the preferred method of workplace training is due to failures in the conception of competence used to inform outcomes-based assessment. Oates traces these failures back to various pressures, such as the belief that the further education sector could not deliver high quality vocational provision, and the need to keep placement opportunities open to young people while keeping programme requirements to a minimum. An employer-led, outcomes-based training programme also fitted in with the new 'managerialism' of the 1980s, which emphasised transparency, explicitness and quality assurance through auditing processes. However, the idea of competence that the system was based on is conceptually flawed. Ontologically, it is flawed because competence does not exist in any simple way: it is an inferred capacity and, as Lum argued, to describe actions, procedures or objects as the standards do, is not to describe the skills or competence necessary for meeting the standards. Competence as conceptualised by NVQs cannot account for the fact that some people can transfer 'competences' to different contexts and some cannot. Rather, the focus should be on the qualities of individual action. Competence lies in a mix of action, knowledge, values and goals in changing settings, a much more complex conception than can be captured in outcomes statements. A purely assessment-led system of training has such severe limitations that it cannot possibly fulfil the ambitious aims of its originators. This has been tacitly recognised in the introduction of the Modern Apprenticeship. The design of this brings back elements of formation (as opposed to competence) and provides a better theoretical foundation for the specification of competencies.

The last of the special issue articles is by James Foreman-Peck. The notion that VET should be provided by employers was a distinctive feature of the British approach until the 1960s. This is conventionally contrasted with the much more formal state coordinated approach of Germany. The question Foreman-Peck poses is whether one can see the British approach as 'spontaneous order' because markets use information efficiently. Alternatively, is it 'spontaneous disorder' in which the absence of standards and coordination led to under-investment in VET and economic decline relative to those countries with strong leadership? He concludes that there is considerable evidence in the twentieth century that Britain suffered from shortcomings in the availability of highly trained labour. The most credible explanation is the VET system; booms and slumps do not provide adequate conditions for employer-led education and training.

We hope that this collection will both contribute to the policy debate concerning vocational education worldwide and illustrate the variety of approaches that are currently taken to this important subject.

Vocational Purposes and the Aims of Schooling

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Vocational Purposes and the Aims of Schooling
Author: KEVIN WILLIAMS
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 5-13
ABSTRACT This article argues for the compatibility of vocational purposes with the aims of schooling within the liberal tradition. Two main grounds will be offered in defence of this position. In the first place, school students who are following a track that leads to direct employment or to vocational training are not necessarily excluded from a fulfilling school experience or from a curriculum of high culture. In the second place, young people who concentrate on practical or manual subjects can experience much of the enrichment and personal satisfaction that have been traditionally and restrictively associated with the academic curriculum.

Vocational Education: a social anarchist perspective

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Vocational Education: a social anarchist perspective
Author: JUDITH SUISSA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 14-30
ABSTRACT This article discusses the social anarchist tradition of educational thought and practice, in order to throw new light on the philosophical discussion of the liberal-vocational distinction. Focusing on the central anarchist idea of integral education, I argue that the political stance of social anarchism is inseparable from the educational ideas and practice of this tradition, and contrast the key aspects of this political perspective with those embodied in mainstream educational policy and theory in the liberal state. Examining the issue of vocational education and training in light of this often-neglected political position can, I suggest, contribute to our understanding of the relationship between educational practice and values, political ideas and social change.

Vocational Qualifications and Higher Education - some policy issues

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Vocational Qualifications and Higher Education - some policy issues
Author: STEPHEN SWAILES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 31-52
ABSTRACT This article reviews the reactions to higher-level National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in the United Kingdom in the context of certification levels by level and subject. The most successful higher NVQs are linked to professional qualifying routes, have generic application across a range of sectors or fill gaps where qualifications were not previously established. Research among the main stakeholders to gauge their attitudes towards higher NVQs shows that, among positive aspects, some adverse attitudes still exist surrounding issues of comparability, the assessment experience and the design of occupational standards. Suggestions for overcoming these issues are given. However, the wider picture shows that support for occupational standards is strong and it is the use of standards, which may or may not involve NVQs, that will help to drive forward new policy initiatives addressing participation in the sector.

The Role of Outcomes-based National Qualifications in the Development of an Effective Vocational Education and Training System: the case of England and Wales

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: The Role of Outcomes-based National Qualifications in the Development of an Effective Vocational Education and Training System: the case of England and Wales
Author: TIM OATES
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 53-71
ABSTRACT This article analyses the increasingly diverse and sophisticated critique of 'outcomes approaches' in vocational qualifications; critique which has now moved well beyond the early claims of reductivism and behaviourism. Avoiding a naive position on extraction of points of consensus, this article attempts to extract key issues which have purchase on policy and practice relating to National Vocational Qualifications. It outlines not only the ways in which current policy and development processes associated with the qualifications may be defective, but also ways in which they might be enhanced. Crucially, the article points to the severe limitations of the concept of 'competence' which lies at the heart of outcomes approaches, and emphasises the need to reconsider a 'formation' model for initial vocational education and training, rather than a 'competence' model.

Spontaneous Disorder? A Very Short History of British Vocational Education and Training, 1563-1973

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Spontaneous Disorder? A Very Short History of British Vocational Education and Training, 1563-1973
Author: JAMES FOREMAN-PECK
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 72-101
ABSTRACT A distinctive feature of the British approach until the 1960s was that vocational education and training (VET) should be provided by employers. This is conventionally contrasted with the much more formal state coordinated approach of Germany. The question posed is whether the British style was the 'spontaneous order' that results because markets use information efficiently about the supply of and demand for skills. Alternatively, was it 'spontaneous disorder' in which the absence of standards and coordination led to under-investment in VET and economic decline relative to those countries with strong leadership in education and training? There is considerable evidence in the twentieth century that Britain suffered from shortcomings in the availability of highly trained labour. The most credible explanation is the organisation and operation of the VET system; the perceived self-interests of undereducated employers and restrictive unions during booms and slumps provided inadequate conditions for efficient employer-led education and training.

Confronting the Impact of HIV and AIDS: the consequences of the pandemics for education supply, demand and quality. A global review from a Southern African perspective

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Confronting the Impact of HIV and AIDS: the consequences of the pandemics for education supply, demand and quality. A global review from a Southern African perspective
Author: CAROL COOMBE
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 102-140
ABSTRACT The global spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemics will, for the next three generations at least, underline education access, quality and provision. Reforms within the sector will necessarily take account of the implications of this plague within national, provincial and local contexts. This article is based on several assumptions. The first is that HIV/AIDS is not only a medical problem: the spread of the disease has created a pandemic with social, economic, geopolitical and other consequences for all countries. Second, increasing numbers of countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, are now facing one of the great crises of human history. The third is that other countries in Eastern Europe and the Asia and Pacific regions will confront similar challenges as the pandemic spreads. The article focuses specifically on the relationship between HIV/AIDS and education in countries with different levels of HIV/AIDS prevalence. It concentrates on the impact of the disease on education at schools level, with some attention to teacher education. It outlines our current understanding of the pandemic, analyses current and anticipated impact of HIV/AIDS on education in order to clarify probable changes in demand for and supply of education services, and looks at education's current responses to HIV/AIDS, principally in high prevalence countries.

Higher Education Reform in China Today

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Higher Education Reform in China Today
Author: OUYANG KANG
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 141-149
ABSTRACT This report provides a brief account of the major reforms to higher education in China since 1949 and background reforms since 1978, focusing on recent trends and perspectives.

Dialogue or Clash of Civilisations?

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Dialogue or Clash of Civilisations?
Author: Michael A. Peters
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 150-155
ABSTRACT Not available

BOOK REVIEW

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: BOOK REVIEW
Author:
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2004 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Pages: 156-158
ABSTRACT Not available

EDITORIAL Social Inclusion

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: EDITORIAL Social Inclusion
Author: JULIE ALLAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2003 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 622-625
ABSTRACT Social inclusion has become a common part of our everyday language and a central strand of educational policy. The 'social' of inclusion emerged relatively recently and has been adopted by governments as a moral, and indeed legal, imperative. Yet it is one of the most complex notions, characterised by a lack of shared understanding about what it means to be socially included and about the necessary conditions to achieve social inclusion. A key barrier to understanding arises from the fragmentation of policy in relation to different arenas of inclusion/exclusion. So, for example, race/ethnicity, gender and disability are all addressed in different ways, by different government departments, with different solutions, and with varying degrees of ineffectiveness. Joined-up working has been a much-used cliché which has not been accompanied by connected thinking about the different groups who are at risk of exclusion.

This special issue of Policy Futures examines social inclusion from different perspectives. The majority of these articles were first presented at a seminar, hosted jointly by the Participation, Inclusion and Equity Research (PIER) Network, University of Stirling and the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES), University of Edinburgh. The aim of the seminar was to encourage dialogue across different strands of inclusion/exclusion and to consider ways of addressing the fragmentation within national policy. The authors who were invited to present papers, or submit papers to the journal, are accomplished scholars in their own areas of inclusion/exclusion - poverty, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, the criminal justice system, faith and the arts - and it is hoped that this focus is useful in two ways: first, it is intended to speak directly to local and national policy makers within Scotland and to provide some clear messages about the kind of policy futures for social inclusion which are needed; second, by placing analyses of social inclusion from different perspectives alongside each other, it is hoped that some parallels and common strands will emerge which will be relevant to other national contexts. It should be said, however, that these articles are far from parochial and Elinor Kelly, for example, provides some useful comparisons of approaches to faith across Europe, Philomena de Lima considers the development of social inclusion both nationally and internationally, and Anthony Duff's article addresses social inclusion and the criminal justice system in general. The final article offers an Australian perspective, exploring the approach to social inclusion and the arts adopted by the Adelaide-based company, The Tutti Ensemble.

The analysis of poverty, equalities and social inclusion provided by Damien Killean emphasises the profound impact on social inclusion of poverty and reveals how this area of policy seems to have suffered considerably from the effects of devolution, in the form of a confused and complex web of political and departmental responsibilities and accountability at United Kingdom and Scottish levels. Several other authors explore the relationship between material disadvantage and social exclusion: Philomena de Lima, for example, points out that under-provision of social services undermines social cohesiveness and highlights Chinese communities as being particularly affected in this respect. Anthony Duff considers those who experience disadvantage or are excluded and who then commit a crime. He questions whether these individuals should be held to account by the polity, given that they have not been fully recognised as citizens.

Anthony Duff also invites us to question assumptions about inclusion and exclusion; in particular, he asks whether exclusion is always undeniably bad by drawing our attention, in contrast, to coercive or non-voluntary inclusion. In this philosophical essay, he argues that criminal punishment poses one of the sharpest challenges to the politics of inclusion and contends that social inclusion is neither empty rhetoric nor a panacea for our social ills; rather, he suggests, it should be seen as an aspiration for political, social and legal reform by anyone taking the idea of citizenship seriously.

Mary Brennan's account of the inclusion of deaf children makes, in her own words, 'gloomy' reading and raises questions about social inclusion being appropriate for all children. She is questioning, not the principle of social inclusion, but its reification and the processes of assimilation with which it is associated. She also notes that the new disability legislation, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act, creates further inequalities for deaf people and buying into it has been seen by some deaf activists as the equivalent of selling one's soul. Perhaps the most salutary message comes from the deaf children in the research she reports, who speak of decisions being made about them and who describe their feelings of worthlessness. This sense of powerlessness must be deeply exclusionary, denying children their own sense of self.

Elinor Kelly is critical of the omission of issues of faith from the Race Relations Amendment Act, but does welcome the inclusion of measures against 'sectarianism and religious hatred' within criminal law. The principle of equal recognition of denominations and religions, she reminds us, cannot exist so long as there is a single established church (of Scotland, of England) and she highlights the sharp contrast with other European states in this respect. Data on religious affiliation are much needed before a clearer picture of the inclusion/exclusion experienced by different faith groups can be obtained.

The arts have become increasingly implicated as a vehicle for promoting social inclusion and Pat Rix's article gives some indication of why this is a serious charge. Her account of The Tutti Ensemble's growth into an internationally renowned arts organisation - involving both disabled and non-disabled people - provides a much-needed glimpse of how to do social inclusion. I met Pat and Tutti in Toowoomba, Australia, and was immediately cast under their spell. As someone who dislikes singing - intensely - I was astonished to find myself performing in front of an audience, coached and coaxed by the Tutti members. During the workshop, the best and most inclusive teaching I have ever seen was modelled by Pat Rix, the Artistic Director of Tutti. As Pat says in her article, good inclusive teaching is about learning to listen rather than speak and asking questions rather than giving answers or opinions; it is an approach that appears, however, strangely elusive.

Policy Futures for Social Inclusion

Each of the articles in this special issue underlines the fragmented nature of policy on social inclusion and illustrates the disconnections between areas of inclusion/exclusion. Social inclusion and exclusion, as Anthony Duff points out, are useful analytical tools for a framework for analysing the effects of disadvantage, not just in material or psychological terms, but also in terms of how they exclude individuals or groups. It also enables us to assess how far policies facilitate - or limit - social inclusion. The authors make it clear that social inclusion has to be tackled in much more coherent and systematic way. Their analyses suggest that for this to be done, a number of changes are necessary:

greater awareness of the different arenas of inclusion/exclusion in the development of policy and legislation and, in particular, how change in one strand of policy could have an impact on others;

'multi-pronged' strategies for tackling social inclusion, which consider multiple dimensions of social exclusion and which address cultural issues such as language and identity;

the establishment of an anti-poverty strategy with Poverty Impact Statements attached to all legislative proposals, differentiated for gender and minority ethnic and disabled groups;

research and information on a range of matters, including religious affiliation and the educational experiences of all children, including those without formal statutory assessments;

more strategic associations and collaboration among equalities groups;

children and excluded groups advising on, rather than merely receiving, policy;

greater attention to exclusionary potential of language;

consideration of how punishment is enforced upon those who commit a crime, but who, because they have experienced material disadvantage or social exclusion, have not been fully recognised as citizens;

greater acceptance of the place of the arts as a vehicle for social inclusion.

These imply both substantial systemic change and a greater ability, on the part of policy makers, to think about social inclusion in much broader terms. Joined-up working, far from being a cliché, may be essential to ensure that no one is left out of the policy debate on social inclusion.

Correspondence

Julie Allan, Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, United Kingdom (j.e.allan@stir.ac.uk)

Poverty, Equalities and Social Inclusion

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Poverty, Equalities and Social Inclusion
Author: DAMIEN KILLEAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2003 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 626-639
ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between inequalities, exclusion and poverty and assesses the efforts of the Government and others to address them in an integrated way. It considers the failure of a radical vision of a poverty-free and socially inclusive society and attributes this failure, in part, to an unwillingness to take account of the extent of poverty and its impact on different social groups. The article identifies the need for an anti-poverty strategy and calls for non-government equalities groups to demonstrate greater awareness of the impact of economic inequalities on the solidarity and vitality of the communities they represent.

Inclusion: a gender perspective

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Inclusion: a gender perspective
Author: TERESA TINKLIN; LINDA CROXFORD; ALAN DUCKLIN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2003 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 640-652
ABSTRACT This article argues for the need to consider the gender dimension in discussions of inclusion, because of the prevalence and complexity of gender differences in education and beyond, and the interactions between gender differences and other sources of social inequality, such as social class background and ethnicity. Drawing on research carried out by the authors on gender differences in school education in Scotland, as well as on the findings of other research, the article demonstrates the complexity of gender differences in school education: at different stages, across the curriculum and in learning and behaviour support. It highlights the interaction between gender, social class background and ethnicity, demonstrating that social class is a greater source of inequality than gender in school attainment, and that gender and social class differences are further complicated by ethnic background. It describes continuing disadvantages for females in education and beyond, discusses factors related to gender differences and explores shifts in young people's views on work and family roles. The article concludes that more research is needed on the interactions between gender and other sources of inequality and that policy makers and practitioners need to take account of the 'gender jigsaw' rather than the 'gender gap'.

Beyond Place: ethnicity/race in the debate on social exclusion/inclusion in Scotland

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Beyond Place: ethnicity/race in the debate on social exclusion/inclusion in Scotland
Author: PHILOMENA J.F. DE LIMA
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2003 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 653-667
ABSTRACT This article examines the extent to which the discourses on social exclusion/inclusion and policy interventions have addressed the issue of race/ethnicity in the Scottish context. Based on a review of literature and government policy documents, the article concludes that, while there have been some attempts to address issues of race and ethnicity and to take 'institutional racism' seriously, there are a number of recurrent themes which emerge, suggesting that there has been limited success with regard to the 'mainstreaming' of race/ethnicity within the discourses and policy interventions on social exclusion/inclusion in Scotland. The overwhelming emphasis on economic or labour market participation, the lack of interrogation of the notion of a 'homogenous cultural majority', which underpins policy discourses, and the lack of 'race proofing' of the social inclusion milestones and targets have resulted in a inconsistent and piecemeal approach to issues of race/ethnicity. For race/ethnicity to be taken seriously, policy discourses and debates will have to develop approaches and analyses which interrogate the assumptions that privilege the views and values of the so-called 'cultural majority', to ensure an approach which embeds race equality and avoids reinforcing the boundaries between the 'included' and 'excluded'.

Deafness, Disability and Inclusion: the gap between rhetoric and practice

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:19:28 GMT

Title: Deafness, Disability and Inclusion: the gap between rhetoric and practice
Author: MARY BRENNAN
Journal: Policy Futures in Education
Year: 2003 Volume: 1 Issue: 4 Pages: 668-685
ABSTRACT This article provides a critique of the interpretation and practice of educational inclusion, particularly in respect of deaf children. It is argued that the inclusion agenda, as presently realised, does not incorporate the fundamental paradigm shift required to bring about equity and social inclusion for deaf children. Superficially 'inclusive' practices, such as the attendance of deaf children at mainstream schools, often simultaneously deny the linguistic rights of deaf children and thus fail to ensure either full access to the curriculum and assessment or access to a satisfying social experience. Despite this, there are indications within Scotland and the Scottish Parliament of a more genuinely inclusive approach to linguistic and cultural diversity. Recent developments include the recognition of British Sign Language (BSL) by the United Kingdom Government and the explicit inclusion of BSL as one of the languages of Scotland. The challenge is to embed linguistic recognition and rights within education at all levels: this requires placing Deaf people at the heart of developments.