Showing papers in "Open Review of Educational Research in 2015"

Teachers’ Critical Reflective Practice in the Context of Twenty-first Century Learning

Abstract: In the twenty-first century, learning and teaching at school must prepare young people for engaging in a complex and dynamic world deeply influenced by globalisation and the revolution in digital t...

Lifelong Learning Policy Agenda in the European Union: A bi-level analysis

Abstract: The Lisbon European Summit in 2000 has been a milestone in reframing education policies to foster a ‘knowledge economy’, whilst amid the challenges of the new decennium Lifelong Learning (LLL) has been propounded as a powerful lever for attaining ‘sustainable growth’ The present article aims to elucidate the development of an integrated European Union (EU) policy framework for LLL in light of the ‘Lisbon’ and ‘Europe 2020’ Strategies Through a bi-level analysis of policy texts with high political significance representing a point of reference for a given discourse, it seeks to explore trends and identify interrelations between EU LLL policy and emerging challenges within the Union, as well as global socio-economic mandates that inform contemporary education policy On the first level, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed, categorizing the data in five main discourse strands On the second, the data underwent Implicative Statistical Analysis The results have indicated a substantial shift in

Sources of Evidence-of-Learning: Learning and assessment in the era of big data

Abstract: This article sets out to explore a shift in the sources of evidence-of-learning in the era of networked computing. One of the key features of recent developments has been popularly characterized as ‘big data'. We begin by examining, in general terms, the frame of reference of contemporary debates on machine intelligence and the role of machines in supporting and extending human intelligence. We go on to explore three kinds of application of computers to the task of providing evidence-of-learning to students and teachers: (1) the mechanization of tests—for instance, computer adaptive testing, and automated essay grading; (2) data mining of unstructured data—for instance, the texts of student interaction with digital artifacts, textual interactions with each other, and body sensors; (3) the design and analysis of mechanisms for the collection and analysis of structured data embedded within the learning process—for instance, in learning management systems, intelligent tutors, and simulations. A conse...

Interpreting Evidence-of-Learning: Educational research in the era of big data

Abstract: In this article, we argue that big data can offer new opportunities and roles for educational researchers. In the traditional model of evidence-gathering and interpretation in education, researchers are independent observers, who pre-emptively create instruments of measurement, and insert these into the educational process in specialized times and places (a pre-test or post-test, a survey, an interview, a focus group). The ‘big data’ approach is to collect data through practice-integrated research. If a record is kept of everything that happens, then it is possible analyze what happened, ex post facto. Data collection is embedded. It is on-the-fly and ever-present. With the relevant analysis and presentation software, the data is readable in the form of data reports, analytics dashboards and visualizations. We explore the methodological consequences of these developments for research methods.

Interview with Pierre A. Lévy, French philosopher of collective intelligence

Abstract: Pierre A. Levy is Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Ottawa, Canada. He occupies the Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence where he is engaged in research on the...

Foucauldian Critique of Positive Education and Related Self-technologies: Some problems and new directions

Abstract: By focusing on positive education, this article draws out the educational implications of Binkley's Foucauldian critique of neoliberal subjects being pressured to learn how to manage their emotions. From the latter author's perspective, positive education self-technologies such as school-based mindfulness training can be construed as functioning to relay systemic neoliberal imperatives down to individuals. What this interpretation overlooks, however, is that young people are not automatically and unambiguously disempowered by the emotion management strategies they are taught at school. Arguably, positive education contributes to the formation of resistant educational subjects with an emotional toolkit that equips them to mount oppositional action against neoliberalism. Foucault's work can be interpreted in a way that is not inconsistent with seeing positive education as having such liberatory potential.

Para-Quantitative Methodology: Reclaiming Experimentalism in Educational Research.

Abstract: This article focuses on the criticisms of current approaches in educational research methodology. It summarizes rationales for mixed methods and argues that the mixing quantitative paradigm and qualitative paradigm is problematic due to practical and philosophical arguments. It is also indicated that the current rise of mixed methods work has increased problems with quantitative and qualitative methods. In this article we offer a different symbolic system, with different logical form for describing educational phenomena based on the philosophical assumptions and new mathematical reasoning: para-quantitativism. Para-quantitative theory is an approach which has been developed in respect to close relationship between paradigm and method, using a postpositivist transcendental realism as a philosophical beginning of the research methodology, taking Operational Logic System or Fuzzy Logic System (OLS/FLS) as logic of scientific research in education.

What is ‘Human’ in Human Capital Theory? Marking a transition from industrial to postindustrial education

Abstract: This article addresses educational practice as a site for the development of human capital theory. The article considers metaphysical constructions that are broadly typical of educational thought, and shows how they are amenable to economic analysis. Using different Marxist and feminist methods, it discusses pedagogy and the family as kinds of investment. The author questions the underlying assumptions about humanity on which both economics and education are predicated. If Western educators are certain of the historical ends to which modern Western education aims, do they also fully appreciate the implications of their own certainty and confidence for the future? As educators, are we equally confident that we question ourselves about why we uphold the value of education in the way each of us does? To engage educators in a debate about these values, the article employs poststructuralist critique to place words and concepts central to education and economics, e.g. the market, under erasure. It quest...

Debating Digital Childhoods: Questions concerning technologies, economies and determinisms

Abstract: The learning child, the child that is the object of interest through modernity and into mutated modernity, in the knowledge economy, is a digital age identity of great interest. Talk about childhood and the digital age invokes a range of questions about what is happening at this time and with these technologies and that creates more or less of a distinction that makes it both possible and necessary to start or to continue talking. This article identifies and engages with different positions in the debates on digital childhood. A range of philosophical questions are presented and their importance to the debates are explored. A series of metaphors and examples are presented in order to play, in a serious way, with the meanings and experiences and narratives of digital childhoods. To explore these questions it is worth considering a politics of digital childhoods and the ebb and flow of perceived tensions—of the sense that there is a problem with other ways of thinking about digital childhoods that a...

Jazz Aesthetics and the Democratic Imperative in Education: A dialogue

Abstract: What appeared decades ago as solely a European model—Thatcherism—is now a global trend with no apparent end in sight. Neoliberalism in the public sector, and within the educational sphere particularly, pervades within a larger pattern of hegemonic ideologies. In sum, market forces and global capitalism make it quite difficult for public education, both nationally and internationally, to retain its democratic ethos, the historical aim of common schools. Is there an antidote to corporate, global capitalism ideologies undermining the democratic aims and the common good in public education? In this article the authors assert that, indeed, there are discursive spaces where scholars and citizens can turn. One space is the arts, especially jazz. In jazz the discursive, social practices of improvisation, call and response and the tradition of ‘standing on the shoulders of those who came before you' (honoring elders) facilitate deep democracy.This article borrows both from the metaphors and discursive prac...

Collaborative Research to Support Reflexive Feminist Professional Work

Abstract: Possibilities for postmodern emergence [Somerville, M. (2007). Postmodern emergence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(2), 225–243] in professional practice were explored by a group of tertiary educators working together on a collaborative memory project. This allowed new possibilities for informing and extending practice beyond taken-for-granted norms circumscribed by the neoliberal university environment. Each author branched off from an initial study to work further with their constituent professional groups: early childhood educators, teachers, counsellors and educational psychologists. The collaborative method involves theoretical provocations for analysing positionings within dominant discourses that shape contemporary educational practices, providing support for reflexive insight into professional work. Findings indicated the fruitfulness of collaborative support for theoretical explorations into diverse domains of inquiry relevant for practice. There were also c...

Mathematics Education in Brazilian Rural Areas: An analysis of the Escola Ativa public policy and the Landless Movement Pedagogy

Abstract: The article discusses mathematics education within two educational projects addressed to rural multigrade schools in Brazil: Active School Program (in Portuguese, Programa Escola Ativa—PEA) and the...

Turtle Watch: Community engagement and action

Abstract: Many threats face the freshwater turtle, Chelodina colliei, also known as the oblong turtle. A community education project, Turtle Watch, focused on this target species and enabled effective conservation action to be implemented. Turtle Watch was conducted in the Perth Metropolitan Area of Western Australia, as the oblong turtle inhabits the wetlands of Perth. Predation, habitat loss, road deaths and climate change are key threats to this species. Nest predation issues arose during stage 1 of Turtle Watch (2005–2008), so Turtle Watch 2 (2010–2012) aimed to identify predators and foster community partnerships, including citizen science, to promote awareness and conservation of turtles. Turtle Watch 2 focused on four eco education centres and involved collaboration between government and community groups concerned about turtles. Camera surveillance was undertaken to determine predators. Various strategies were also adopted to promote community education and participation, such as, public talks, fair...

Higher Education Scholarships: A review of their impact on workplace retention and career progression

Abstract: The community-managed mental health sector is facing a crisis. Funding is less certain, demand for services is increasing, and retaining a skilled and competent workforce is proving a challenge. In order to respond to this workforce crisis a literature review was conducted on the effectiveness of higher education scholarship programmes, as a workforce strategy to encourage mental health workers to remain in the community sector and to determine the key elements in the design of a successful scholarship programme.The review focused on whether undertaking tertiary studies influenced workers’ intentions to remain in their chosen area of work and their future career plans; however evaluations on the successful provision of higher education scholarships and their influence on workforce retention proved limited.The review resulted in the development of a list of key elements that may contribute to the successful design and delivery of an industry focused, higher education scholarship programme.

Fromm's Humanism and Child Poverty: Neoliberal Construction of the "Have-Not".

Abstract: Children are particularly vulnerable to structured inequalities in society. Building on the work of Erich Fromm (1900–1980), this article contends that modern (post)industrial capitalism corrupts the human capacity to operate in the ‘being mode’—that is, in altruistic and compassionate ways. Rather, within the individualistic logic of the ‘having’ mode of existence there are morally empty spaces where children become objectified, separated from caring communities, dominated and measured. The second part of this article will discuss these insights in relation to the significant impact of neoliberal regimes on children's social and physical wellbeing. In particular, it is argued that from the mid-1980s in New Zealand, the restructuring of the welfare state in line with neoliberal ideology has increased the vulnerability of young children to poverty and related issues. The narrow conception of poverty that is integral to the ‘having’ mode of existence merely serves to justify the ruling ideological n...

On Dialectics and Human Decency: Education in the dock

Abstract: Set against the backdrop of the contemporary crisis of capitalism and world-historical events, this article examines the advance of globalized imperialism from the perspective of a Marxist-humanist approach to pedagogy known as ‘revolutionary critical pedagogy’ enriched by liberation theology. It is written as an epistolic manifesto to the transnational capitalist class, demanding that those who willingly serve its interests reconsider their allegiance and calling for a planetary revolution in the way that we both think about capitalism and how education and religion serves to reproduce it at the peril of both students and humanity as a whole.

Critical Thinking Activities and the Enhancement of Ethical Awareness: An application of a ‘Rhetoric of Disruption’ to the undergraduate general education classroom

Abstract: This article explores how critical thinking activities and assignments can function to enhance students’ ethical awareness and sense of civic responsibility. Employing Levinas's Other-centered theory of ethics, Burke's notion of ‘the paradox of substance’, and Murray's concept of ‘a rhetoric of disruption’, this article explores the nature of critical thinking activities designed to have students question their (often taken-for-granted) moral assumptions and interrogate their (often unexamined) moral identities. This article argues that such critical thinking activities can trigger a metacognitive destabilization of subjectivity, understood as a dialectical prerequisite (along with exposure to otherness) for increased ethical awareness. This theoretical model is illustrated through a discussion of three sample classroom activities designed to destabilize moral assumptions and identity, thereby clearing the way for a heightened acknowledgment of otherness. In so doing, this article provides an alte...

Interview with Michael Apple: The Biography of a Public Intellectual.

Abstract: Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction (CI) and Educational Policy Studies (EPS)...