Towards openness and new forms

This article explores some theoretical and methodological problems concerned with scale in education research through a critique of a recent mixed-method project. The project was framed by scale metaphors drawn from the physical and earth sciences and I consider how recent thinking around scale, for example, in ecosystems and human geography might offer helpful points and angles of view on the challenges of thinking spatially in education research. Working between the spatial metaphors of ecology scholars and the critiques of the human geographers, for example, the hypercomplex social space in Lefebvre's political-economic thinking and the fluid, simultaneous, multiple spatialities of Massey's post-structuralism, I problematize space and scale in education research. Interweaving these geographical ideas with Giddens’ structuration and Bourdieu's theory of practice, both of which employed what might be termed scale-bridging to challenge social science's entrenched paradigms, leads me to reconsider what is possible and desirable in the study of education systems. Following the spatial turn in the social sciences generally, there is an outstanding need to theorize multi-scale methodology for education research.     

Towards a literacy of fusion: new times,new teaching and learning?

This paper seeks to widen discussion about which forms of literacy are most appropriate for the education of children in the twenty‐first century. It outlines the current debate about the changes to children's literacy practices, which are described as being prompted on the one hand by the pervasive influence in society of new technologies, and on the other by the extent of pupils' engagement with popular culture. Using a single example, representative of a number of classroom action research studies devised by the author in which children's own interests were used to motivate writing, she argues that what is required from teachers is a transformative pedagogy. This would allow children's cultural interest to be merged with the school requirements into what is described as a literacy of fusion . The paper ends with an outline of the aspects of learning to which a teacher working to create such forms of literacy would need to attend.     

Towards new understandings of learning disability

Abstract

This article highlights inherent difficulties in defining learning disability, particularly in South Africa. It traces the evolution of the category from ‘minimal brain damage’ through to the more current ‘learners with special educational needs’ and ‘learners with barriers to learning.’ Different definitions or attempts to describe the phenomenon ‘learning disability’ are reviewed. An overview of the current international research in the field is provided with particular reference to research that attempts to define learning disability. Much of this research is framed within the medical model, which has as its foundation positivism and empiricism. This results in research which is deficit-focused; in other words the focus is on pathology. A second reductionist model fragments the phenomenon of learning disability into discrete units, each of which is researched. It is suggested that, in re-thinking learning disability, the focus shifts away from the deficit, pathology based, reductionist focus currently held across disciplines.

The problem inherent in including the notion of ‘discrepancy between potential and performance’ in any definition is discussed, with particular reference to the measurement of ‘potential in South Africa's multicultural and multilingual learner population. The article ends with a proposal that there be a shift in focus to a panoptic view of the child: a view that takes in his strengths and talents. In so doing, the country may be better able to serve this growing population.

With the national shift towards inclusive education, there is a renewed focus on learners euphemistically called learners with special educational needs or the more ‘in vogue’ learners with barriers to learning. Yet what we mean when we bandy these terms about, how well we understand these learners, is questionable. The focus of this article is that sub-group of learners that educators and parents think are just not achieving as they should be achieving, despite themselves, that sub-group we identify as having ‘potential’ but not ‘performance’; that sub-group that we just cannot quite explain, we just cannot quite understand; that sub-group for whom support ranges from placement to pills to punishment!

This article critically evaluates the current understanding of the phenomenon of learning disability as it is understood in the South African context. It begins with an overview of the international research, with particular reference to the notion of definition. Thereafter, it makes comments on the term as it is used in South Africa. In conclusion, the article proposes the need for an alternative understanding of this group of learners.     

Complex Systems and Educational Change: Towards a new research agenda

How might we usefully apply concepts and procedures derived from the study of other complex dynamical systems to analyzing systemic change in education? In this article we begin to define possible agendas for research toward developing systematic frameworks and shared terminology for such a project. We illustrate the plausibility of defining such frameworks and raise the question of the relation between such frameworks and the crucial task of aggregating data across ‘systemic experiments’, such as those conducted under the Urban Systemic Initiative sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. Our discussion includes a review of key issues identified by groups of researchers regarding (1) Defining the System, (2) Structural Analysis, (3) Relationships Among Subsystems and Levels, (4) Drivers for Change, and (5) Modeling Methods.     

Towards a new cartography of curriculum reform: Reflections on educational decentralization in Argentina

Curriculum reforms have led to discursive and organizational changes in Argentina. These reforms have reshaped school knowledge and institutional patterns of school administration. We analyse the process of this 'curriculum reterritorialization', the contradictions and displacements it produces, and the hybrid products that result from it. Reterritorialization is traced through four interrelated movements: the hybridization of discourses; the design of new maps of relations between the centre and the periphery of the educational system; the new 'regime of truth' that emerges out of these changes; and the role of the intellectual in educational reform. Although they are different in scope and magnitude, these movements provide the tools required to analyse the many ways in which curriculum reform is transforming Argentina's educational experiences.     

What time may tell: Towards a new conceptualization of developmental dyslexia

This paper is a written version of the Norman Geschwind Lecture delivered to the International Dyslexia Association on November 13, 1998. The first purpose is a theoretical one: to describe a new conceptualization of reading disabilities, the double-deficit hypothesis, that depicts and integrates work on two core deficits in the phonological system and in processes underlying naming speed. Implications for subtyping, diagnosis, and, in particular, intervention are described. The second purpose is to thank the women and men whose commitment to children with reading disabilities has transformed our field over the last century. Within that double set of purposes, I wish to dedicate this paper to five research teachers whose insights have been the foundation for my work and the efforts of many of us in the field of reading disabilities research: Jeanne Chall, Carol Chomsky, Martha Bridge Denckla, Helen Popp, and especially, Norman Geschwind.     

Chinese cultural dynamics and childhood: Towards a new individuality for education

This paper explores, through the lens of childhood, the Chinese cultural dynamics that encourage harmonious human relationships at the price of individual development and yet support a deep appreciation of natural human experiences that allows room for the development of individuality. The purpose of such investigation is to reexamine our cultural heritage in regard to the ways we conceptualize human beings and treat them, retracing its promises, difficulties, pitfalls, and spiritual resources, and thus to help reconfigure a new individuality for education.     

Lone Mothers' Involvement in their Children's Schooling: Towards a new typology of maternal involvement

Parental involvement in schooling is currently advocated by both education policy and theorists in the UK as a solution to 'falling' educational standards. However, this parental involvement is presented as ungendered, with no recognition that the work required of mothers by schools is difficult to do under conditions of sole supporting mothering and low income. This article offers a way of conceptualising lone mothers' understandings of their involvement in their children's schooling by deconstructing the standard educationlist and school-based typologies of parental involvement and constructing a (new) typology of maternal involvement based in lone mothers' understandings. In doing this, the article explores the hidden assumptions about class, 'race', gender and family form behind the parental involvement discourse.     

注重制度建设 落实激励政策切实推进人才培养模式改革

在外聘教师担任辅导教师的情况下，建立助理辅导教师制度有利于为学员提供更好的学习支持服务，有利于尽快建立适应试点工作的教师队伍；推行个别化学习模式，要把课内外教学看成一个整体，综合确定一个合理的计酬方法，切实落实激励政策；指导教师是个目标性、专业性很强的工作，应由本专业教师担任；开放教育更注重教学过程和学习方法，在知识和获取知识能力两方面更注重能力的培养。     

Towards a new higher education law in Lithuania: reflections on the process of policy formulation

The process of transition in countries formerly under Soviet domination has involved the necessity to formulate new legislation. This article traces the process of policy formulation in Lithuania as the country moved towards a new Law on Higher Education. It commences by briefly outlining the recent development of higher education in Lithuania and highlights some of the critical issues facing the higher education community. The various phases of the policy formulation process are described and the experience is analysed. The article concludes with a discussion of findings that may be of relevance to others working in the area of legislative reform in countries moving to a market economy.     

Towards a pragmatic science in schools

This paper contrasts naive beliefs about the nature of science, with science as it appears from sociological and philosophical study, feminist critique and insights from multicultural education. I draw implications from these informed views to suggest how school science might be modified to project a pragmatic view of science to its students that allows students to know science and its relationships to themselves and society in multi-faceted ways. From these perspectives, pragmatic school science is situated within a values framework that questions how we know. Pragmatic school science also requires that the naive inductivist views that permeate school science inquiry methods at present be modified to recognise that observations and inquiry are guided by prior knowledge and values; that new knowledge is tentative; that some knowledge has high status, as it has been constructed consensually over a long period; but that even high status knowledge can be challenged. For implementation of these reforms, yet still to embrace the need for some students to appropriate understanding of discipline knowledge required for advanced science education, a broad set of aims is required.