Mattheou Changing Educational Landscapes

Educational Policies, Schooling Systems and Higher Education - a comparative perspective
2010
ISBN: 978-90-481-8534-4
Verlag: Springer Netherland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 328 Seiten, eBook

Analyzing educational landscapes – the fundamental values, principles and institutions of the sector – is a highly complex and demanding task for any researcher. Like shifting desert sands, these aspects of education are in a constant state of flux, changing according to the unpredictable economic, social, cultural and geo-political circumstances of late modernity. Key aspects of the intricate, fluid and multifarious contemporary setting can always escape the researcher’s necessarily selective observation. The contributors to this book share the view that it is wise, therefore, to take note of other people’s ideas, perceptions and perspectives, to compare notes and reflect critically on them. Thus the papers presented here are a critical and comparative analysis of today’s changing educational landscapes. They are an exploration of some of the forces and factors that induce these changes, and also examine some of their most significant implications. The work takes a fresh look at received ideology and institutional practices and delineates the increasingly internationalized educational discourses and policies. Among other things, the book discusses the obsession with quality in education and the alternative perceptions of educational equality; the rising concern at the obstacles to truly multicultural education, and the debate about the epistemological foundations both of knowledge and knowledge production. Underlying all of the papers in the book is the authors’ intention to enhance our understanding of educational change in this era of transition and to further our appreciation of its multifaceted expressions across the world.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mattheou, Dimitris

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Knowledge: Epistemological and Ideological Shifts.- Changing Educational Landscapes: An Introduction.- The Owl of Athena: Reflective Encounters with the Greeks on Pedagogical Eros and the Paideia of the Soul (Psyche).- Implications of the New Social Characteristics of Knowledge Production.- University Reform in Greece: A Shift from Intrinsic to Extrinsic Values.- Universities and Pricing on Higher Education Markets.- Access and Transitions.- Providing Access to Education: Intercultural and Knowledge Issues in the Curriculum.- Access and Transitions in Education.- Educational Inequalities in Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Analysis of the Origins.- Old and New Solidarities.- Public Education, Migration, and Integration Policies in France.- The Inclusion of Invisible Minorities in the EU Member States: The Case of Greek Jews in Greece.- Learning and Teaching, Quality and Assessment.- Education Quality: Research Priorities and Approaches in the Global Era.- Pupil Assessment in a Historical Perspective: Contribution to the Contemporary Debate.- Recent Trends in Early Childhood Curriculum: The Case of Greek and English National Curricula.- Pre-service Teachers’ Intercultural Competence: Japan and Finland.- Redefining Space.- Internationalising Higher Education: Debates and Changes in Europe.- Nation-State, Diaspora and Comparative Education: The Place of Place in Comparative Education.- The Role of the Nation-State Reconsidered.- Coda.

Leseproben

"Chapter 2 Implications of the New Social Characteristics of Knowledge Production (S. 43-44)

María José García Ruiz

Introduction

In July 2002, the CESE Conference was organised at the Institute of Education, University of London. The themes of the working groups that were dealt with in this conference touched upon some key questions that still remain of crucial interest today and which have yet to find definitive answers. One of these working groups, to give an example, dealt with the new pedagogies and sites of learning. One of the questions posed then and yet not fully resolved was, How do new modes of learning and teaching affect traditional modes of professional control? (CESE 2002). Another working group dealt with the issue of the changing notions of knowledge and educational systems. In this respect, one of the questions posed, also of great interest currently, was, Is the balance of information, data, learning, school knowledge, scholarship and research as concepts of being educated changing and in what directions?

What is a teacher in such a context? Finally, another working group dealt with the subject of the transfer of educational practices and international pressures and posed the question: Are we heading towards the end of education systems? This was also the title of the 2002 CESE Conference: Towards the end of education systems? Europe in a world perspective. This question was not just a provocative statement posed to promote debate among academics.

There are some contextual developments currently taking place at the beginning of the twenty-first century that render certain plausibility to a trend in this direction. Thus, it can be argued that the impact of the rapid development of communication technologies together with the irreversible trend of massification of education in the globalised western world have produced some new patterns in the old structures of education systems – such as the new pedagogies and sites of learning – that are questioning the suitability of the historical physiognomy of education systems. Indeed, at school level, we have been witnessing for some years now the increasing development of the homeschooling movement (Asenjo 2008: 28), which is a model of instruction at home rather than at school.

Parents defending this movement claim that their condition as first educators of their children is prior to the State educational function, as consecrated in many Constitutions, and expound several reasons (axiological and otherwise) in their demand to undertake the education of their children at home. In Spain, this movement is fairly extended in Catalunya, the Balearics and the Basque Country. A further strengthening of this movement would indeed be a very serious threat to the education systems."