Educational planning, management, evaluation and policies

Het zwaartepunt van het onderwijsleerproces verschuift geleidelijk van face-to-face onderwijs naar blended learning. Om dit proces in kaart te brengen en verder uit te rollen implementeert Hogeschool PXL een gedifferentieerd beleid voor de opleidingen.
Doel hiervan is studenten maximale ontwikkelingskansen te kunnen bieden.

Back cover text: Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.

La calidad de vida es un concepto relevante hoy en día, por estar centrado en la búsqueda del bienestar social de las personas, considerando sus necesidades y derechos (Weintraub & Bar Haim, 2009). Establece un marco de oportunidades para el desarrollo de las personas y las comunidades, al considerar elementos individuales como grupales —comunitarios—, que permiten el reconocimiento del bienestar y la satisfacción de la persona y de la comunidad en la que se inserta, como aspectos fundamentales para la promoción en salud (De
Vincezi & Tudesco, 2009). 
Si bien se ha trabajado el concepto tanto a nivel teórico —buscando definirlo, caracterizarlo y modelar sus componentes— como empírico
—aplicando instrumentos y evaluando las dimensiones de los modelos—, se observa que se busca aplicar el modelo original al ámbito educativo, solo adecuando sus dimensiones. Sin embargo, se
plantea en este capítulo que, sin desconocer la importancia de las propuestas tradicionales sobre calidad de vida, existiría un concepto propio de calidad de vida escolar que no solo incorporaría aspectos de bienestar físico y material, o condiciones psicológicas positivas para el
desarrollo de la persona, sino además, elementos interaccionales,
socioemocionales y culturales que son propios de los procesos
vinculados a la institución educativa.

EDITORIAL

Zuzana Danišková:
Unwrapping today’s educational gifts is a must

ARTICLES

Andrew Wilkins:
Public battles and private takeovers: Academies and the politics
of educational governance

I-Fang Lee:
Unpacking neoliberal policies: Interrupting the global and local production of the norms

David Greger, Edward Kife:
Lost in translation: Ever changing and competing purposes for national examinations in the Czech Republic

Michaela Minarechová:
Negative impacts of high-stakes testing

Libor Bernát:
The shaping of the Lutheran teaching profession and Lutheran families of teachers in the 16th and 17th centuries

Katarína Šmajdová Búšová:
Professional families – the development of the relationship between a professional mother and the child in the context of the mother’s status

Kelly M. Maye:
A Case study of cognitive and biophysical models of education as linked to anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders

REPORTS

Standardization and Normalization of Childhood (Miriam Böttner, Jessica Schwittek, Aytüre Türkyilmaz)

REVIEWS

Málková, Gabriela: Zprostředkované učení. Jak učit žáky myslet a učit se (Marta Filičková)

This paper examines the way the metaphor of diversity provides a moral basis for inequality in Singapore’s meritocratic education system. Based upon a collection of policy texts from 2002 to 2012, our analysis illustrates that the metaphor of diversity in policy texts provides ways for systemic discrimination within the education system and that this inequality is given legitimacy as necessary through various moral discourses. The paper employs a critical discourse analysis that draws upon the relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values to highlight the ways in which an argument for inequality permeates policy from within a frame of meritocracy, and to analyse how changes associated with new modes of value determination serve to legitimize inequality.

1. The article questions and challenges the official meritocratic principle of ‘equal opportunities’ (Wong, 2000) in Singapore's education system. Drawing on Foucault's and Nietzsche's philosophical perspectives, there is an explicit illustration through an in-depth analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in policy report/speech.

2. Discourse builds in/tangible structures in society and greatly determines the possibilities of the now. As such, I am also arguing that it would be more difficult to 'help' any 'community' if the structural discrimination which has been deeply embedded, is not made explicit through national policies, and by this I mean an explicit illustration through an in-depth policy analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in Singapore's education policies. It may be through this that discriminatory structures could be substantially challenged.

An initial analysis of the original 1979 policy on primary school streaming which I conducted illustrates how dichotomous (arbitrary) categorization of pupils, i.e. 'slow' and 'fast' learners legitimates and sustains increasing institutional/structural access (over the years terms like 'talents' have been employed in policy discourse), of who gets privileged knowledge access. Through this, I also ask then to what ends do forms of 'categorization' or conventional designation entail? By this, given that categorization legitimizes structural access, my question is, what is 'Malay/Muslim community' and how is this categorization necessary?

3. Even though the analysis in the article was based on Singapore's education system, it provides possible ways of understanding how inequality is continuously being inbuilt through policies on the basis of the ideology that economic growth is the (only) way forward. A way to critique this ideology is to expose its underlying assumptions. I believe the findings have much resonance with the widening inequality across many developed nations, as Singapore's policies have parallels with that of the U.K., U.S., and international organizations such as the World Bank.

4. Economically considered, the transliteration of meritocratic discourse into the metaphor of diversity pinpoints how the appeal of development for all necessarily also demands the advance of inequity for the sake of the whole, i.e. advancing the 'growth with inequity' principle.

5. The analysis highlights that value judgments are continually at work in the policy discourse and that despite the strong discourse of meritocracy that the Singapore education system promotes, it is argued that it is in the interests of the Singapore people that 'talents' should get privileged access to knowledge as it is through this that more 'opportunities' for the rest of the population are created. The findings demonstrate that although the underlying assumptions of this 'logic' that has been constructed in policies are unsubstantiated, the logic is continuously legitimated through forms of e/valuations.



This article has been featured in websites such as: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428105815.htm
http://www.eurasiareview.com/28042015-what-is-value-of-inequality-within-singapores-education-system/