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Kinds of Schooling Selected AbstractsParent and caretaker knowledge about avulsion of permanent teethDENTAL TRAUMATOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Marconi Eduardo Sousa Maciel Santos Tooth avulsion, the most severe dentoalveolar lesion, is a dental emergency. The prognosis of avulsed teeth significantly depends on prompt and efficient action at the site of the accident, thus requiring that parents or caretakers be knowledgeable about the correct management of this situation. The objective of the present study was to assess the level of knowledge of parents or caretakers concerning the management of tooth avulsion and to investigate the association between level of knowledge and schooling, monthly family income and age. We interviewed 107 parents or caretakers using a 12-item questionnaire comprising objective questions whose answers received a score from 0 to 3. The results show that 99% of those interviewed would immediately seek professional help; however, 71% did not know what avulsion was. Only 3% would use milk as storage medium and 16% would attempt replantation of the avulsed tooth. The distribution of final means for the overall level of parent or caretaker knowledge was 44.63% for score 3, 15.88% for score 2, 17.99% for score 1 and 21.47% for score 0, showing a low level of knowledge concerning tooth avulsion. Schooling, monthly family income and age were not associated with the knowledge scores for any of the 12 questions. The level of parent and caretaker knowledge concerning the management of tooth avulsion is low, without association with age, schooling and monthly family income. [source] Education for Social Change: Girls' Secondary Schooling in EritreaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2006Tanja R. Müller One central pillar of the Eritrean revolution is the modernization of gender roles within Eritrean society, through education. This article, based on ethnographic style research, looks at the personal experiences of young women in Eritrean secondary schools. These girls' journeys are discussed in terms of gender resistance, exemplifying modernity, and gender accommodation, exemplifying tradition. It is argued that these categories are not as dichotomous as claimed by the education policy agenda: in contrast, many young women strive to find a balance between the two. Ultimately, the success of the Eritrean model of the modernization of gender roles should be measured in terms of having created an environment in which women are able to strive to fulfil their aspirations. [source] Schooling and migration of large pelagic fishes relative to environmental cuesFISHERIES OCEANOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2000Robert Humston A kinesis model driven by high-resolution sea surface temperature maps is used to simulate Atlantic bluefin tuna movements in the Gulf of Maine during summer months. Simulations showed that individuals concentrated in areas of thermal preference. Results are compared to empirical distribution maps of bluefin tuna schools determined from aerial overflights of the stock during the same time periods. Simulations and empirical observations showed similar bluefin tuna distributions along fronts, although interannual variations in temperature ranges occupied suggest that additional foraging factors are involved. Performance of the model is further tested by simulating the relatively large-scale annual north,south migrations of bluefin tuna that followed a preferred thermal regime. Despite the model's relatively simple structure, results suggest that kinesis is an effective mechanism for describing movements of large pelagic fish in the expansive ocean environment. [source] Modesty and Excellence: Gender and Sports Culture in Dutch Catholic Schooling, 1900,40GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 1 2008Marjet Derks This article focuses on the construction of gendered identities in Dutch schools run by religious orders during the process of Catholic emancipation. It discusses the fragility of identity, the simultaneity of tradition and modernity, and the role that gender plays in all these interactions. Two schools in the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, are compared during the first half of the twentieth century: the Jesuit institution for boys, Canisius College, and the Ursuline college for girls next door, Mater Dei. At both, sport played an important role in the transmission of notions of Catholicism and gender. [source] Schooling, cognitive ability and healthHEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 10 2005M. Christopher Auld Abstract A large literature documents a strong correlation between health and educational outcomes. In this paper we investigate the role of cognitive ability in the health-education nexus. Using NLSY data, we show that one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability is associated with roughly the same increase in health as two years of schooling and that cognitive ability accounts for roughly one quarter of the association between schooling and health. Both schooling and ability are strongly associated with health at low levels but less related or unrelated at high levels. Estimates treating schooling as endogenous to health suggest that much of the correlation between schooling and health is attributable to unobserved heterogeneity; the causal effect of schooling on health is large only for respondents with low levels of schooling and low cognitive ability. An implication is that policies which increase schooling will only increase health to the extent that they increase the education of poorly-educated individuals. Subsidies to college education, for example, are unlikely to increase population health. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of Canadian Children's Bodies, 1930,1960HISTORY OF EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001Mona Gleason First page of article [source] Catholic Schooling, Protestant Schooling, and Religious Commitment in Young AdulthoodJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 2 2009Jeremy E. Uecker If and how Catholic and Protestant schools influence the religious lives of their students once they have graduated is unclear. Methodological limitations and inconsistencies in previous studies have resulted in confusing and often contradictory findings. Using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N,= 11,212), I compare the religious lives of young adults who attended Catholic, Protestant, and secular schools as adolescents. The results suggest that Protestant schoolers are far more religious as young adults than those who attended a secular school, a difference that is at least partially explained by the schools' religious environment. But young adults who attended Catholic schools report levels of religiosity that are similar to those educated in a secular school, and are actually lower for some outcomes. Studies of religious schoolers that ignore the religious tradition of the school overlook these differing effects and forfeit statistical explanatory power. [source] Returns to Schooling and Bayesian Model Averaging: A Union of Two LiteraturesJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 2 2004Justin L. Tobias Abstract., In this paper, we review and unite the literatures on returns to schooling and Bayesian model averaging. We observe that most studies seeking to estimate the returns to education have done so using particular (and often different across researchers) model specifications. Given this, we review Bayesian methods which formally account for uncertainty in the specification of the model itself, and apply these techniques to estimate the economic return to a college education. The approach described in this paper enables us to determine those model specifications which are most favored by the given data, and also enables us to use the predictions obtained from all of the competing regression models to estimate the returns to schooling. The reported precision of such estimates also account for the uncertainty inherent in the model specification. Using U.S. data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we also revisit several ,stylized facts' in the returns to education literature and examine if they continue to hold after formally accounting for model uncertainty. [source] Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World, by Caroline Bledsoe,John Casterline, Jennifer Johnson-Kuhn and John Haaga (eds).JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 8 2000National Academy Press, Washington DC, pp.x + 320.Reviewed by Abbi Mamo Kedir. No abstract is available for this article. [source] How and Why to Support Common Schooling and Educational Choice at the Same TimeJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 4 2007ROB REICH The common school ideal is the source of one of the oldest educational debates in liberal democratic societies. The movement in favour of greater educational choice is the source of one of the most recent. Each has been the cause of major and enduring controversy, not only within philosophical thought but also within political, legal and social arenas. Echoing conclusions reached by Terry McLaughlin, but taking the historical and legal context of the United States as my backdrop, I argue that the ideal of common schooling and the existence of separate schools, which is to say, the existence of educational choice, are not merely compatible but necessarily co-exist in a liberal democratic society. In other words, we need both common schooling and educational choice. The essay proceeds in four parts. First, I explain why we need to understand something about pluralism in order to understand common schooling and school choice. In the second and third parts, I explore the normative significance of pluralism for common schooling and educational choice, respectively. In the fourth part, I show how the two can be reconciled, given a certain understanding of what pluralism demands. [source] Schooling and Labor Market Impacts of a Natural Policy ExperimentLABOUR, Issue 4 2005Harry Patrinos These estimates apply to a subgroup of individuals, in the spirit of the local average treatment effect (LATE) literature. Returns to schooling estimates that apply to a subgroup of individuals affected by the policy intervention may be more interesting from a policy perspective than the return to the ,average' individual. We use an instrument based on the 1980 education reform (the Organic Law of Education), which provided for 9 years of compulsory basic education. Alternative estimates derived from interacting the education reform with father's education are also obtained. The estimates are consistent with recent findings suggesting that the effect of education, at least for certain subgroups affected by policy intervention, is as large as or larger than what is suggested by ordinary least squares estimates. [source] Schooling as a Knowledge System: Lessons from Cramim Experimental SchoolMIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION, Issue 1 2010David Chen This article describes an experiment utilizing a research and development strategy to design and implement an innovative school for the future. The development of Cramim Elementary School was a joint effort of researchers from Tel-Aviv University and the staff of the school. The design stage involved constructing a new theoretical framework that defined school as a knowledge system, based on the state of the art, interdisciplinary study of the nature of humans, and the nature of knowledge. A new school design emerged based on this theoretical framework and the school was opened in 1995. Action research followed for 8 years and the results indicated that the school has emerged as a learning organization and successfully integrated knowledge technologies into the learning processes of both students and teachers. Differentiated teaching strategy resulted in a significant increase in achievements (+11% in maths, literacy, and science; +10% in literacy in kindergarten; persistence of higher achievement in junior high schools). The greatest beneficiaries were low-achieving students. As the school is a highly complex system, individual variables contributing to the increased effectiveness could not be isolated. The article's conclusion is that experimental schools are a productive strategy to bring about changes, but unless these schools are part and parcel of the culture of the mainstream education system culture, they are destined to remain isolated cases. [source] The Spread of Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Fertility ChangePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Cynthia B. Lloyd In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of "mass formal schooling." This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub-Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15,19-year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass-schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels. [source] Schooling, Literacy, Numeracy and Labour Market SuccessTHE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 245 2003Barry R. Chiswick The present paper uses data from the 1996 Australian Aspects of Literacy survey to examine the effects on labour market outcomes of literacy, numeracy and schooling. The survey includes a range of literacy and numeracy variables that are highly intercorrelated. A ,general to specific' approach identifies the most relevant literacy and numeracy variables. Including the others adds little explanatory power. Among males and females separately, approximately half of the total effect of schooling on labour force participation and on unemployment can be attributed to literacy and numeracy (the indirect effect) and approximately half to the direct effect of schooling. There is apparently no indirect effect of labour market experience through literacy and numeracy on participation or unemployment. The direct and total effects of experience are the same. Similarly, the direct and total effects of literacy and numeracy are reasonably similar to each other. [source] Earnings and Schooling of Cooperative ManagersANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2003Carlos Pestana Barros The main findings indicate that the rate of return is in line with previous published research. The results also indicate that in this sector, the return on education does not depend on the dimensions of the cooperative in which the individual works. [source] "This Great Emptiness We Are Feeling": Toward a Decolonization of Schooling in Simunurwa, ColombiaANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009Luz A. MurilloArticle first published online: 14 DEC 200 This article examines the decolonization of schooling in an Arhuaco community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of Colombia. Interweaving ethnographic description with accounts of key events that took place between 1915 and 2006, I trace the community's struggle to develop an Indigenous school capable of appropriating Western forms of knowledge while retaining Indigenous practices and beliefs. I describe how Indigenous educators incorporate local forms of knowledge into schooling, and how these are presented and understood relative to the structures and discourses of the colonized school. Using the concepts of "translocality" and "transculturation," I frame this discussion of the struggle for educational autonomy within broader efforts to decolonize knowledge and epistemologies inherited from European traditions and the Colombian state. I argue that educators have transformed the school from a colonizing space to one in which Indigenous people contest and negotiate, via practices of cultural and linguistic revitalization, the state violence that threatens to surround them.,[Arhuaco, Colombia, decolonization, Indigenous education, local knowledge, transculturation, translocality] [source] "Opening to the Other": Schooling among the Karipuna and Mebengokré-Xikrin of BrazilANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2009Antonella Imperatriz Tassinari The article analyzes the Brazilian Indigenous formal educational policies through two ethnographic cases (Karipuna and Mebengokré-Xikrin) that allow us to approach the Indigenous perspective on schooling. We first discuss the possibilities and limitations of past and current legal references and educational policies. In the analysis of the two experiences, we use the notions of cultural boundary and the "openness to the other" to understand the dialogical and interactional spaces that emerge through Indigenous schooling.,[Indigenous schooling, Mebengokré-Xikrin, Karipuna, Indigenous protagonism, cultural boundaries, openness to the other] [source] Indigenous School Policies and Politics: The Sociopolitical Relationship of Wayãpi Amerindians to Brazilian and French Guianan SchoolingANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2009Silvia Lopes Da Silva Macedo In this article, I aim to demonstrate the relationships between the educational policies of the Brazilian and French Guyana governments and the sociopolitical structure of the Wayãpi in respect to these educational practices. My main objective is to go beyond the normal concept that the school is an external interference that catalyzes processes of "Indigenous acculturation," to make clear that the Wayãpi sociopolitical forms of interaction that govern their relationships with alterity also govern their relationships with the state and its representatives. This article is based on my ethnographic study of the school experiences among the Wayãpi living in villages in both countries.,[Wayãpi Amerindians, Brazil, schooling, sociopolitical interaction, alterity] [source] Schooling, Language, and Ethnic Identity in the Basque Autonomous CommunityANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2003Professor Begoña Echeverria Basque-versus Spanish-schooled students in San Sebastian, Spain, understand ethnic identity differently. The former are more likely to speak Basque and to consider the Basque language key to Basque identity. The latter are more likely to claim "biethnic" identities based on territory. The Basque case suggests that an understanding of educational efforts to reverse language shift require an examination of the language ideologies reigning in popular culture, the public sphere, and the home and school domains. [source] "Destiny Has Thrown the Negro and the Filipino Under the Tutelage of America": Race and Curriculum in the Age of EmpireCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2009ROLAND SINTOS COLOMA ABSTRACT The article brings together the fields of curriculum studies, history of education, and ethnic studies to chart a transnational history of race, empire, and curriculum. Drawing from a larger study on the history of education in the Philippines under U.S. rule in the early 1900s, it argues that race played a pivotal role in the discursive construction of Filipino/as and that the schooling for African Americans in the U.S. South served as the prevailing template for colonial pedagogy in the archipelago. It employs Michel Foucault's concept of archaeology to trace the racial grammar in popular and official representations, especially in the depiction of colonized Filipino/as as racially Black, and to illustrate its material effects on educational policy and curriculum. The tension between academic and manual-industrial instruction became a site of convergence for Filipino/as and African Americans, with decided implications for the lived trajectories in stratified racialized and colonized communities. [source] Animal Magnetism and Curriculum HistoryCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2007BERNADETTE BAKER ABSTRACT This article elaborates the impact that crises of authority provoked by animal magnetism, mesmerism, and hypnosis in the 19th century had for field formation in American education. Four layers of analysis elucidate how curriculum history's repetitive focus on public school policy and classroom practice became possible. First, the article surveys external conditions of possibility for the enactment of compulsory public schooling. Second, "internal" conditions of possibility for the formation of educational objects (e.g., types of children) are documented via the processes of différance that were generated from within the experiences of confinement. Third, the article maps how these were interpenetrated by animal magnetic debates that were lustered and planished in education's emerging field, including impact upon behavior management practices, the contouring of expertise and authority, the role of Will in intelligence testing and child development theories, and the redefinition of public and private. Last, the article examines implications for curriculum history, whether policy- or practice-oriented, especially around the question of influence, the theorization of child mind, and philosophies of Being. [source] Sound, Presence, and Power: "Student Voice" in Educational Research and ReformCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2006ALISON COOK-SATHER ABSTRACT Every way of thinking is both premised on and generative of a way of naming that reflects particular underlying convictions. Over the last 15 years, a way of thinking has reemerged that strives to reposition students in educational research and reform. Best documented in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States, this way of thinking is premised on the following convictions: that young people have unique perspectives on learning, teaching, and schooling; that their insights warrant not only the attention but also the responses of adults; and that they should be afforded opportunities to actively shape their education. Although these convictions mean different things to different people and take different forms in practice, a single term has emerged to capture a range of activities that strive to reposition students in educational research and reform: "student voice." In this discussion the author explores the emergence of the term "student voice," identifies underlying premises signaled by two particular words associated with the term, "rights" and "respect," and explores the many meanings of a word that surfaces repeatedly across discussions of student voice efforts but refers to a wide range of practices: "listening." The author offers this discussion not as an exhaustive or definitive analysis but rather with the goal of looking across discussions of work that advocates, enacts, and critically analyzes the term "student voice." [source] Being a Good Teacher of Black Students?CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2005Unintentional Racism, White Teachers ABSTRACT This ethnographic study describes the roles adopted by four White teachers in the United States during and after they participated in a seminar on teaching antiracism with colleagues at the Woodson Elementary School, the only African American neighborhood school in a small Midwestern city. Each of these teachers self-identified as a good teacher and identified a central metaphor by which she understood her role as a teacher of Black students. By examining the roles and related practices of these teachers, I highlight the disconnect between what researchers have identified as good practices for teaching students of color and how these teachers understand themselves as good teachers. I describe how the roles that each of these four teachers adopted relate to the perpetuation of Whiteness and how such a relation is embedded in their everyday teaching practices and might function to sustain racist practice and ideology in the schooling of students of color. Findings suggest that the ways that these teachers understood their roles as teachers of Black students are intimately linked to how closely their practice represented what is known as culturally relevant pedagogy. [source] Parent and caretaker knowledge about avulsion of permanent teethDENTAL TRAUMATOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Marconi Eduardo Sousa Maciel Santos Tooth avulsion, the most severe dentoalveolar lesion, is a dental emergency. The prognosis of avulsed teeth significantly depends on prompt and efficient action at the site of the accident, thus requiring that parents or caretakers be knowledgeable about the correct management of this situation. The objective of the present study was to assess the level of knowledge of parents or caretakers concerning the management of tooth avulsion and to investigate the association between level of knowledge and schooling, monthly family income and age. We interviewed 107 parents or caretakers using a 12-item questionnaire comprising objective questions whose answers received a score from 0 to 3. The results show that 99% of those interviewed would immediately seek professional help; however, 71% did not know what avulsion was. Only 3% would use milk as storage medium and 16% would attempt replantation of the avulsed tooth. The distribution of final means for the overall level of parent or caretaker knowledge was 44.63% for score 3, 15.88% for score 2, 17.99% for score 1 and 21.47% for score 0, showing a low level of knowledge concerning tooth avulsion. Schooling, monthly family income and age were not associated with the knowledge scores for any of the 12 questions. The level of parent and caretaker knowledge concerning the management of tooth avulsion is low, without association with age, schooling and monthly family income. [source] Perception of, and anxiety levels induced by, laser treatment in patients with sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy.DIABETIC MEDICINE, Issue 10 2006A multicentre study Abstract Aims To investigate how laser treatment is perceived, in terms of anxiety and awareness, by diabetic patients attending four centres in Northern Italy with specific interest and expertise in diabetic retinopathy, where work settings and flow are organized differently. Methods The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Family Apgar-List of Threatening Experiences (FA-LTE), State-Trait Anxiety Inventories 1 and 2 (STAI-1 and STAI-2) questionnaires were completed by 259 patients, 131 waiting for laser treatment and 128 control subejcts awaiting non-intervention visits. Open questions were also asked on whether patients had ever heard the word ,laser' and whether they could describe laser treatment. Results High scores were detected by HADS, STAI-1 and STAI-2 among patients waiting for photocoagulation. Anxiety was greater in women and people with poor schooling. After controlling for centres, gender, previous laser treatment and schooling, HADS and STAI-1 remained significantly lower among persons waiting for non-intervention visits. Having received photocoagulation previously did not modify anxiety. Anxiety was lower in those centres where facilities and resources were more patient-oriented. Most patients could neither describe photocoagulation nor explain why they were about to receive it, but had a negative perception and some described it with words evoking cruelty and pain. Conclusions These data suggest that laser treatment is experienced as an event that causes anxiety. Preoperative education and counselling may help to reduce fear and patients' avoidance of treatment. [source] RETURNS TO EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIAECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 3 2008ANDREW LEIGH Using data from the 2001,2005 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, and taking account of existing estimates of ability bias and social returns to schooling, I estimate the economic return to various levels of education. Raising high school attainment appears to yield the highest annual benefits, with per-year gains as high as 30% (depending on the adjustment for ability bias). Some forms of vocational training also appear to boost earnings, with significant gains from Certificate Level III/IV qualifications (for high school dropouts only), and from Diploma and Advanced Diploma qualifications. At the university level, bachelor degrees and postgraduate qualifications are associated with significantly higher earnings, with each year of a bachelor degree raising annual earnings by about 15%. For high schools, slightly less than half the gains are due to increased productivity, with the rest being due to higher levels of participation. For vocational training, about one-third of the gains are from productivity, and two-thirds from greater participation. For universities, most of the gains are from productivity. I find some evidence that the productivity benefits of education are higher towards the top of the distribution, but the effects on hours worked are higher towards the bottom of the conditional earnings distribution. [source] Do Peer Groups Matter?ECONOMICA, Issue 277 2003Peer Group versus Schooling Effects on Academic Attainment This paper estimates an educational production function. Educational attainment is a function of peer group, parental input and schooling. Conventional measures of school quality are not good predictors for academic attainment, once we control for peer group effects; parental qualities also have strong effects on academic attainment. This academic attainment is a then a key determinant of subsequent labour market success, as measured by earnings. The main methodological innovation in this paper is the nomination of a set of instruments, very broad regions of birth, which, as a whole, pass close scrutiny for validity and permit unbiased estimation of the production function. [source] The Returns to the Quantity and Quality of Education: Evidence for Men in England and WalesECONOMICA, Issue 265 2000Colm Harmon Until the late 1960s, state schooling in England and Wales was determined by an ability test of pupils at age 11 which had an effect on both the quantity and quality of education. By estimating the relationship between earnings and earlier schooling during a period when school areas changed from selective to non-selective education, we consider how the returns to the quantity of education are confounded by differences in the quality of schooling and whether the effects of quality are confounded by its correlation with quantity. Our results confirm recent evidence that returns to education quantity are large and quality effects are small. [source] Child-Rearing: On government intervention and the discourse of expertsEDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 6 2008Paul Smeyers Abstract For Kant, education was understood as the ,means' to become human,and that is to say, rational. For Rousseau by contrast, and the many child-centred educators that followed him, the adult world, far from representing reason, is essentially corrupt and given over to the superficialities of worldly vanity. On this view, the child, as a product of nature, is essentially good and will learn all she needs to know from experience. Both positions have their own problems, but beyond this ,internal debate', the change in the content of education (i.e. child-rearing and schooling) is now furthermore due to a radical pluralism that has swept the world. Moreover, there may be differences in value between individual parents and between values held within the family and those held in society at large. Among other reasons this has put more generally children's (and parents') ,rights' on the agenda, which differs from thinking of education in terms of a ,practice'. The paper develops this latter concept and the criticisms to which it has been subject and argues that there is no necessary incompatibility between initiation into an existing practice and transforming that practice in some way, if it is emphasized how practices are learned and enacted. It then turns to the tendency in education and child-rearing, as in other spheres of human interaction, for more laws and codes of conduct and to call upon experts for all kind of matters. It argues that performativity rules on the level of the practitioner, of the experts, and even on the level of educational research. It argues that many governments have adopted in matters of schooling the language of output and school effectiveness and that something similar is now bound to happen in the sphere of child-rearing (with talk of parenting skills and courses). This is made credible due to a particular model of educational research, i.e. an empiricist quasi-causal model of explaining human behaviour. The paper then discusses the problems with this stance and argues that we should part company from the entrepreneurial manipulative educator to open up a sphere of responsiveness for the child and that for these reasons, the concept of the ,practice of child-rearing' should be revisited. Insisting on the complexities that have to be taken into account and thus surpassing a discourse of effectiveness and output as well as of codes of conduct and rulings of courts of law, may help us to focus on what is really at stake: to lead a meaningful life, to be initiated into what is ,real for us' and what we value. It concludes that thus restoring a place for child-rearing as a practice will do justice to the responsiveness to which each child is entitled. [source] From Representation to Emergence: Complexity's challenge to the epistemology of schoolingEDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2008Deborah Osberg Abstract In modern, Western societies the purpose of schooling is to ensure that school-goers acquire knowledge of pre-existing practices, events, entities and so on. The knowledge that is learned is then tested to see if the learner has acquired a correct or adequate understanding of it. For this reason, it can be argued that schooling is organised around a representational epistemology: one which holds that knowledge is an accurate representation of something that is separate from knowledge itself. Since the object of knowledge is assumed to exist separately from the knowledge itself, this epistemology can also be considered ,spatial.' In this paper we show how ideas from complexity have challenged the ,spatial epistemology' of representation and we explore possibilities for an alternative ,temporal' understanding of knowledge in its relationship to reality. In addition to complexity, our alternative takes its inspiration from Deweyan ,transactional realism' and deconstruction. We suggest that ,knowledge' and ,reality' should not be understood as separate systems which somehow have to be brought into alignment with each other, but that they are part of the same emerging complex system which is never fully ,present' in any (discrete) moment in time. This not only introduces the notion of time into our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and reality, but also points to the importance of acknowledging the role of the ,unrepresentable' or ,incalculable'. With this understanding knowledge reaches us not as something we receive but as a response, which brings forth new worlds because it necessarily adds something (which was not present anywhere before it appeared) to what came before. This understanding of knowledge suggests that the acquisition of curricular content should not be considered an end in itself. Rather, curricular content should be used to bring forth that which is incalculable from the perspective of the present. The epistemology of emergence therefore calls for a switch in focus for curricular thinking, away from questions about presentation and representation and towards questions about engagement and response. [source] |