Contemporary Educational Research Research Articles

Advancing work practices

Purpose The paper aims to discuss the effectiveness of e-Learning in advancing work practices. The paper investigates the assumption that e-Learning is as effective as face-to-face interventions when stimulating change. It also examines the assumption that well-designed and well-executed instructional interventions will advance work practices. Design/methodology/approach The paper synthesizes contemporary social-psychological and educational research in the creation of a model of intervention-based change. In addition, the findings from an empirical study of online teacher professional development simultaneously inspire and exemplify the model. Findings The paper suggests that increased attention to individual motivational drivers is needed, especially post intervention, to help ensure meaningful learning transfer and sustainable behavior change. The importance of individualized on-the-job scaffolding for employees is highlighted through relational considerations of attrition and scaffolding. In investigating the chasm between initial and sustained change, seemingly unpredictable contextual factors appear to be critical to the effectiveness of e-Learning in advancing work practices. Practical implications In recognition of the vulnerability and situatedness of turning instructional interventions into sustainable change, the paper initiates a rethinking of e-Learning as technologies for on-the-job, just-in-time and individualized performance support. The paper gives concrete examples of current technologies that may assist in online scaffolding, while also acknowledging that this is still a field in which further research and developments are needed. Originality/value The paper critically investigates some of the more resilient assumptions that serve as a fundament for professional development interventions currently. It conceptualizes intervention-based change and the key motivational drivers of such change. In doing so, it illuminates highly contextual dynamics presumed to have a critical impact on the effectiveness of e-Learning for PD.

The multi-paradigmatic character of contemporary educational action research: a promising perspective or an underlying threat?

From the very first moment action research started to be used in the social research field until now, it has presented significant variations. Action research looks like a mosaic of theoretical and methodological approaches, named differently from time to time and/or from place to place: for example, practitioner inquiry, practitioner research, teacher research, participatory action research, and so forth. The basic aims of this article are to find the reasons for this and to discuss the implications of the phenomenon. Starting with the first issue, we could ask ourselves: why do we today find so many and considerable variations in action research approaches in the literature? The evident reason is because action research draws upon many theoretical paradigms that – in some circumstances – are not only different, but also contradict each other. Hammersley states characteristically that action research draws upon positivism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, critical theory and postmodernism! After such claims, we can easily wonder: how can such a multi-paradigmatic approach compose cohesive methodological proposals? We can also pose another crucial question: although we can easily understand that this multi-paradigmatic nature is a real advantage which gives action research a pluralistic essence, is it really ‘a strong indicator of the power of action research to reinvent itself according to local needs’ as Somekh stated, or might it at the same time conceal serious risks?

Examining Construct Congruence for Psychometric Tests: A Note on an Extension to Binary Items and Nesting Effects.

This article extends the procedure outlined in the article by Raykov, Marcoulides, and Tong for testing congruence of latent constructs to the setting of binary items and clustering effects. In this widely used setting in contemporary educational and psychological research, the method can be used to examine if two or more homogeneous multicomponent instruments with distinct components measure the same construct. The approach is useful in scale construction and development research as well as in construct validation investigations. The discussed method is illustrated with data from a scholastic aptitude assessment study.

Teachers’ perceptions of the quantity and quality of professional development activities in Turkey

AbstractProfessional development for teachers has been a substantial issue in contemporary educational research and policy. Yet, opportunities for professional development activities have been very limited in Turkey. In this study, we examined Turkish teachers’ involvement in professional development activities by comparing their participation with the level of participation in top-performing countries in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011, including Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Then, we also conducted face-to-face interviews with 13 Turkish mathematics and science teachers in order to explore their views about the current professional development opportunities for teachers in Turkey. The results of this study indicate that, when compared with teachers from Turkey, a larger proportion of teachers in the top-ranking countries participated in professional development activities in most of the sub-categories of professional development in both mathematics ...

Educational Spaces of Cultural Capitalism: The Concept of Consumer Culture as a New Framework for Contemporary Educational Research

This article introduces a specific concept of consumer culture into the international and European discussion about new concepts and categories in comparative education. Basic meanings of consumer culture are presented in reference to consumer research, consumer culture theory, and a revisited concept of world polity. In addition to general reflexions, two educational programs from UNESCO—on sustainable consumption and lifestyles, and on cultural diversity and national cultural heritage—are analyzed to show how education and educational research can benefit from the concept of consumer culture. The article proposes to conceive consumer culture as the educational space of global cultural capitalism.

Learning to earn? The role of performance grades in higher education

Through the reinforcement of shared assessment biographies, the provision of performance grades has been socially constructed as an operating imperative within the assessment practices of universities. The drive towards enhanced accountability through the production of quantifiable outcomes has also played a naturalising role in this practice. In so doing, it has ostensibly removed the need for debate surrounding grading practices in general and diverted focus to issues concerning the reliability and validity of assessment instruments and the resulting grades awarded. This article aims to examine the ubiquitous provision of performance grades from both a pedagogical and ideological perspective. It explores the current espoused function of letter and numeric grades within higher education against contemporary educational research and questions the relationship between performance grades and the broader, liberal educational goals of universities. Finally, the paper highlights alternative models and concludes by raising questions regarding the wider social value of university education.

Outside the Classroom Thinking Inside the Classroom Walls: Enhancing Students’ Critical Thinking Through Reading Literary Texts

Developing critical thinking is one of the crucial objectives of university education worldwide. However, current research in the field suggests that university students in different countries of the world lack the ability to read in-between the lines and to think critically. Therefore, developing critical thinking skills in university students is of major concern in contemporary educational research. The following paper discusses the question of how to enhance students’ critical thinking through reading a literary text as it is in the essence of a literary text to challenge the critical thinking of the reader who, by means of differentiating between the denotative and the connotative meaning, finding correlations between specific events of the plot, identifying the tone of the text, etc. practices crucial critical thinking skills such as problem solving, decision making, interpretation, logical reasoning, and metacognition with the aim to uncover the message hidden between the lines. The present paper illustrates some specific strategies of practicing critical thinking which were employed in an American Literature Course. The paper suggests that because a literary text could be considered a reflection of the real, “outside-the-classroom” world, it can be an effective means of how to prepare students “inside the classroom walls” for outside the classroom thinking.

Everyday Life of Intellectually Disabled Women. A Special Educator’s Perspective

The contemporary educational research methodology can boast of following the trends aimed at changing paradigms so as to create new research orientations. Traditionally, special education concentrates on researching the methods of influencing the disabled as individuals. Yet, at present, the recognition of philosophical, ethical and biological groundings of special education in the context of globalization seems a more tangible approach. Neither is disability a social taboo, nor its discussion can any longerignore such topics as the quality of education for the disabled or the quality of their lives. This provides researchers with a broader cognitive perspective as regards the point of view of people with disabilities. One such point of view is everyday life.

Metaphysics and methods in moral enquiry and education: Some old philosophical wine for new theoretical bottles

If we reject sentimentalist accounts of the nature of moral motivation and education, then we may regard some form of reason as intrinsic to any genuine moral response. The large question for moral education is therefore that of the nature of such reason—perhaps more especially of its status as knowledge. In this regard, there is evidence of some recent drift in both ethics and theory of moral educational theory towards more instrumental pro-social skill acquisition conceptions of moral reason as more methodologically amenable to the empirical research methods of contemporary social science. This article sets out to show that the work of three great philosophers—all of whom have continued to exercise significant influence on modern and contemporary moral educational theorising and research—points in various ways to more epistemically robust conceptions of moral reason as meaningful personally formative knowledge that is not so readily amenable to natural or social scientific understanding and explanation.

The Memoir Method in Educational Research From an Australian Perspective

This paper reviews some key memoir studies, which were carried out in South Australia, and considers their process of data collection and analysis. A second aim is to explore the current status and usefulness of Znaniecki’s memoir approach in contemporary educational research. Smolicz followed Znaniecki in emphasizing the need to accept social and cultural values and actions as facts, just as human agents themselves accept them. Every individual was seen as a member of various group social systems and interpreted as a center of experience and actions based on the cultures of those groups. Smolicz also adopted Znaniecki’s memoir method of collecting and analyzing personal data in order to understand the actions and attitudes of young people of immigrant families and their educational experiences in Australian schools. These conscious human agents played an important role in maintaining and changing their group’s cultural systems. This paper highlights examples of various forms of memoirs collected from four different studies focused specifically on the issue of cultural identity. The comments of the participants, who came from various minority ethnic groups living in Australia, illustrate the nature of the comments made, as well as the researchers’ analysis and findings. The research studies of Smolicz and his associates demonstrate that memoir method has an important place in understanding the culture of different groups, which can be applied in many contexts – global, ethnic, national, and local.

The potential impact of the neurosciences on religious and spiritual education: ramifying from the impact on values education

This article will argue that neuroscientific insights can inform religious and spiritual education’s capacity for strengthening student understanding, promoting transformation and ultimately wisdom. Among other findings, it will show that current neuroscientific research supports a holistic approach to pedagogy which emphasises the cognitive, affective, moral and other dimensions of student learning and the corresponding need to facilitate development in all of these dimensions in order for authentic learning to take place. As such, the article adopts a cross-disciplinary reference point, referring to research that has demonstrated the usefulness of neuroscientific findings in application to education through a specific focus on values education. Values education is held up as a discipline with complementary interests to a holistic religious and spiritual education, these interests being in its capacity to inculcate in students the character dispositions which orientate them towards moral excellence, so allowing them to navigate complex ethical terrain, contribute constructively to society, and ultimately achieve human flourishing (Porter 2001; Becker 2004; Narvaez 2007; Rachels 2007). Drawing on what has been demonstrated above, we will argue that neuroscientific insights can help in understanding and facilitating religious and spiritual education as holistic and able to respond to contemporary issues of personal identity and social friction and, furthermore, as uniquely poised to contribute to contemporary educational research, including around the intersections between neuroscience and education.

Re-examining a false dichotomy: on the contemporary methods in educational research

In educational research, the ‘paradigm wars’—vehement debates between proponents of qualitative approaches and proponents of quantitative approaches—are far from over (Bryman 2006). The development of British educational research demonstrates this nicely. Influenced by policy makers’ demands for prediction and control, the current research climate is characterised by a mistrust of qualitative methods, particularly in regard to their potential value-ladenness and lack of rigour (Hodkinson 2008). British education sociologist and methodologist Martyn Hammersley, one of the authors of Challenging the Qualitative–Quantitative Divide: Explorations in CaseFocused Causal Analysis, objects to the dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative methods that the paradigm wars are based on. He argues that the division is artificial and may even be damaging: for instance, it could discourage researchers of one approach from taking into account arguments produced by researchers of a different style (Hammersley 2005). Challenging the Qualitative–Quantitative Divide should be read in this context. Its authors argue that it is unproductive to accept the qualitative–quantitative divide. They therefore lay bare the hidden assumptions, advantages and disadvantages of different methods in contemporary educational research. To illustrate, they apply each method to extensive examples drawn from their area of expertise: educational inequalities and social mobility in Britain. The authors argue that their arguments are generalisable to social science as a whole, and the methods they discuss are in fact commonly used in other social science areas, such as political science. As such, the book promises three things: to contribute to the topical debate between proponents of qualitative and quantitative methods; to give examples from an interesting area of social science, i.e. educational research; and to introduce the

Queer breeding: historicising popular culture, homosexuality and informal sex education

Through an analysis of gay protest music (1975) and an educational kit for students (1978), both sponsored by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in the UK, this paper brings into focus a history of gay rights activists' efforts to marshal popular culture in the development of informal sex education for young people in the second half of the 1970s. Through a reparative critique of prevailing therapeutic research methodologies, and through a theoretical deployment of notions of methodological reconciliation and queer breeding, it makes the case for the importance of historical methods in contemporary sex education research.

Key education and quality issues and reassessments coming from the developing world

I am pleased to introduce this present issue of Prospects: the first non-thematic collection of peer-reviewed articles that we are publishing in 2013. We continue to seek strong general-interest submissions by researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners alike, on topics of crucial importance to the field of comparative education. While maintaining the journal’s very distinctive profile, substance, and identity, we also continue our earnest efforts to publish the very best in education research, theory and practice, coming from various geographical regions, with a special focus on curriculum-related issues. In this issue, we showcase research pertaining to several topics that lie at the heart of contemporary educational research and policy: education quality, access to education, indigenous education, motivation, class management, school-based management, world-class education, and rural education. Most importantly, these studies offer ways to reinterpret and adapt theory to the needs and contexts of the international and developing world. The geographical coverage of the articles is notable and includes countries as diverse as Australia, Bangladesh, Chile, China, Guatemala, Hungary, Israel, and Pakistan. The issue opens with a controversial Viewpoint, authored by Helen Abadzi, a leading psychologist who has worked for over 25 years as an education specialist and senior evaluation officer in the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education. Her article is a foray into a largely unexplored phenomenon: the decision-making processes of schoolbased management committees in low-income countries. Committees of low-income populations may lack the time and resources, as well as experience with quality schools, to accurately evaluate service delivery. She suggests developing links between two groups— the donor community and governments, and the neuropsychologists and experts in artificial intelligence who study decision-making—in order to better understand the routes from management committee decisions to service delivery and to help improve services to lowincome populations. Zsuzsa Millei and Robert J. Imre examine early childhood education in Hungary between 1948 and 1989. They argue that the socialist kindergarten in Hungary was set up

Imagining the posthuman: hybrid bodies for education

In a time of global economic crisis with imminent austerity measures, protests in the form of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the ‘Occupy’ movements, a reluctance both domestically and internationally to deal with ecological sustainability, concomitant issues around intergenerational equity and the unprecedented technological advancement in science and communications, one should not be surprised that having to think about the future can warrant anxiety or possibly unequivocal apathy. Education, in this world order, is no different. Consumed by a political agenda unashamedly making education a subsidiary of economic reform governed only by the mind-numbing logic of instrumental reason, those of us working in the area of contemporary education research are left with such an extraordinarily narrow description of modern education that we appear to have only penurious possibilities for representing educational futures. It is therefore with great joy that this essay reviews three recent books devoted to developing radical philosophical, ethical and practical understandings beyond a schooling system based on standardised testing, yet that do not hark to a past viewed through rose-coloured glasses. Instead, the three texts that form the basis of this review ask us to consider what it means to be, to live, and to be educated in what some may consider an incantation to a ‘posthuman’ world. Thus, this review will

Vague Concepts in the Educational Sciences: Implications for Researchers

This article argues that many key theoretical concepts and core areas of study in the educational sciences are couched in paradigmatically vague terms. The shared features of vague terms and two different readings of vagueness are discussed. “Practice”, which is widely used both as a theoretical and an empirical term in the field of educational research, is used as an example of a vague concept that cannot be made more precise, regardless of the quality of definitions or theoretical agreement. Finally, in addition to giving an outline of how the term “practice” is used in the educational sciences, the article refers to contemporary educational research to discuss some of the key methodological implications of vague terms for researchers.

Education as the Cultivation of Second Nature: Two Senses of the Given

AbstractIn philosophy, it is almost a platitude to argue that fact and value intertwine. However, in empirically oriented educational research, it is not. Hence, there is some affinity between logical positivism, which is no longer tenable in philosophy, and empirically based contemporary educational research in terms of assumptions each makes about “the given.” In this essay, Koichiro Misawa casts light on how fact and value intertwine by invoking the notion of “second nature” that John McDowell has reanimated. This will in turn prompt us to see the relation between nature and nurture, as well as between mind and world, quite differently and to discern two senses of “the given”: one is illusory; the other educational. Misawa concludes that the philosophy of education should and can take the lead in forming rigorous interdisciplinary studies of the human future with a certain sensitivity to the tight and complex interweaving between the empirical and the conceptual, or between the factual and the normative.

DRS // CUMULUS Oslo 2013. The 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers

14-17 May 2013, Oslo, NorwayWe have received more than 200 full papers for the 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers in Oslo.This international conference is a springboard for sharing ideas and concepts about contemporary design education research. Contributors are invited to submit research that deals with different facets of contemporary approaches to design education research. All papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed. This conference is open to research in any aspect and discipline of design educationConference themeDesign Learning for Tomorrow - Design Education from Kindergarten to PhDDesigned artefacts and solutions influence our lives and values, both from a personal and societal perspective. Designers, decision makers, investors and consumers hold different positions in the design process, but they all make choices that will influence our future visual and material culture. To promote sustainability and meet global challenges for the future, professional designers are dependent on critical consumers and a design literate general public. For this purpose design education is important for all. We propose that design education in general education represents both a foundation for professional design education and a vital requirement for developing the general public’s competence for informed decision making.REGISTRATION AT http://www.hioa.no/DRScumulus

Introduction

This special issue can be situated in the ‘affective turn’ in education. It responds to the increasing significance of affect, emotions and creativity as the foci of contemporary educational research. The resurgence of interest in these issues is symptomatic of current educational reforms and their impact on how educators should think about, and practise, teaching andwhat students need to know and howthey should learn. It is not to say that the current reforms are radically dissimilar from the previous ones in terms of their general intention to bring about change.What is different, though, is theweight they put on standards, accountability, efficiency, performativity and valueaddedness. As a result, the economic, market-driven principles of reforms have subsumed all other dimensions of education, such as its socio-cultural and relational aspects. The turn to affect is driven by a recognition that the economic rationalisation of education is at odds with its emotional and creative dimensions. The turn is registering a change in how education is managed and, indeed, what counts as education today.

DRS // CUMULUS Oslo 2013. The 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers

This international conference is a springboard for sharing ideas and concepts about contemporary design education research. Contributors are invited to submit research that deals with different facets of contemporary approaches to design education research. All papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed. This conference is open to research in any aspect and discipline of design education. Conference theme: Design Learning for Tomorrow - Design Education from Kindergarten to PhD