This book presents the reader with tools to challenge accepted ideas about the standardising forces transforming educational reality, by discussing standards and standardisation from a range of different theoretical perspectives and contexts.
This book presents the reader with tools to challenge accepted ideas about the standardising forces transforming educational reality, by discussing standards and standardisation from a range of different theoretical perspectives and contexts.
This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework. It takes point of departure in the fact that European countries in their school and education policies have been increasingly aligning with each other, mostly via transnational collaborations, the OECD, EU, and the Bologna Process. Even the IEA has been instrumental to motivate alignments by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development. This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies, qualification frameworks and so forth have aimed at facilitating mobility of students, workers, business and so forth as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing a patchwork of different languages, cultures and societal contexts. In national recontextualizations, however, alignments have been continuously contested according to the particularities of what has been possible educationally and politically in the different national contexts. Furthermore, the return of national(isms) as well as the rise of edubusiness and digitalization have been increasingly influential. This book thus concludes that increasing transnational alignments have to be observed with meticulous attention to different national contexts that matter greatly.
The authors in this volume offer a new set of lenses that brings into focus the possibilities offered by different pedagogical approaches. With these lenses, this volume recognizes and answers the growing call from learners, parents, educators, communities, and national leaders for a re-imagined way to educate. This volume creates a vision of the future of education that calls for engagement in such pedagogies as blended learning, disruptive technology, connected and personalized. Contributors are: Vinita Abichandani, Fatma Nur Aktaş, Anastasios Athanasiadis, Anastasios (Tasos) Barkatsas, Seth Brown, Athina Chalkiadaki, Grant Cooper, Carlos García Cuadrado, Kimberley Daly, Yüksel Dede, Zara Ersozlu, Andrew Gilbert, James Goring, Anne K. Horak, Kathy Jordan, Katerina Kasimatis, Gillian Kidman, Peter Kelly, Manolis Koutouzis, Alex Koutsouris, Huk-Yuen Law, Susan Ledger, Kathy Littlewood, Simone Macdonald, Elisa Arranz Martín, Tricia McLaughlin, Juanjo Mena, Claudia Orellana, Anastasia Papadopoulou, Vassiliki Papadopoulou, Kate Park, Scott K. Phillips, Ioanna Skaltsa, Micah Swartz, Hazel Tan, and Lisa Williams.
Measuring governance has become an increasingly important feature of modern societies, with organizations and institutions expected to prove their worth by quantifying their activities and results. This unique Handbook maps historical developments, theoretical conceptions and key approaches, and summarizes what is known about measuring governance from a variety of fields of practice.
This book introduces a research method called ‘auto-teach(er)/ing-focused research,’ a research process that aims to document understandings generated by, and for the teacher when that teacher teaches or re-teaches a course. It demonstrates how this method is applied by the author/researcher within the pedagogical space that is the teaching of a course, one that has been taught numerous times by the author/researcher over many years. This book documents understandings about learning and teaching that have emerged within the pedagogical space that is the teaching of a course, and the pedagogical space that is the writing of a book. It explores the notion that pedagogical spaces are complex, and that subjects navigate and are produced within them in a multiplicity of ways. This book applies a research method that generates a knowledge product that research practitioners in a variety of settings might find useful to adopt or adapt.
New Practices of Comparison, Quantification and Expertise in Education discusses contemporary trends and activities related to comparisons and quantifications. It aims to help scholars to conduct empirically based research on how comparisons and quantifications are instituted in practice at different levels in the educational system. The book furthers discussions on policy by looking at the kinds of activities that comparisons and quantifications lead to at an international, regional and national level. Most of the book’s chapters are based on empirical research conducted in different research projects. The book thus brings all these projects together and discusses them as activities promoted by the reasoning of comparisons and quantifications. New Practices of Comparison, Quantification and Expertise in Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of comparative education, curriculum research and policy studies. It will also appeal to those in the fields of teacher education, including student teachers.
Excellent social work education and training is vital for ensuring best practice, and it is important to understand the key approaches and methods in order to provide the best teaching and ensure effective learning. This volume provides an overview of social work education, including the background and current context. It covers the key debates surrounding social work education, such as the evaluation of social work education, the use of IT, research-mindedness, and the effectiveness of interdisciplinary education. The book also offers guidance on effective teaching and learning approaches tailored to the needs of social work educators, covering teaching within a higher education institution, on student practice placements, and in post-qualifying settings. This will be an indispensable text for educators and trainers in the field of social work.