David Bridges

Palmira Juceviciene

Roberta Jucevicius

Terence H. Mclaughlin

Jolanta Stankeviciute

Universities and societies around the world are involved in significant transition. Universities are now invited to expand their central aims and purposes in order to embrace a role in relation to the development of the societies in which they are located. This change of focus has major implications for curricula, modes of teaching and the student body. International contributors to this wideranging text discuss different aspects of the phenomenon of globalisation in relation to higher education, but also in relation to moves by nation states to devolve government to regional and subregional bodies and the implications this has for educational systems.

Universities and Societies in Transition

Higher Education and National Development

Education is a social practice that poses ethical questions of policy and practice at every level and at almost every turn -- what we teach, how we teach, how we organise educational provision, how we research it, who controls it, and what principles drive policy nationally and internationally. This collection of papers is rooted in the author’s experience in the education system nationally and internationally over half a century and reflects both the educational history of this period and the author’s experience as a teacher, parent, school governor, teacher trainer, educational researcher, senior manager in higher education and advisor to governments in many parts of the world. It is, then, historically located, but the approach to ethical questions is primarily in the tradition of analytic philosophy and applied and situated ethics. The book is aimed at undergraduate and especially postgraduate students studying education, including those interested in philosophy of education; lecturers in education; and those conducting research and engaged in scholarly writing in higher education.

Ethics in Educational Practice, Policy and Research

Chris Husbands

Christopher T. Husbands

Government educational 'reforms' have set out to place educational institutions in competitive relations in the market place. In spite of this, however, the institutions continue to seek out and to develop a variety of collaborative relations, working in consortia and networks.

Consorting and Collaborating in the Education Market Place

Nicholas C. Burbules

Paul Smeyers

Morwenna Griffiths

This handbook focuses on the often neglected dimension of interpretation in educational research. It argues that all educational research is in some sense ‘interpretive’, and that understanding this issue belies some usual dualisms of thought and practice, such as the sharp dichotomy between ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ research. Interpretation extends from the very framing of the research task, through the sources which constitute the data, the process of their recording, representation and analysis, to the way in which the research is finally or provisionally presented. The thesis of the handbook is that interpretation cuts across the fields (both philosophically, organizationally and methodologically). By covering a comprehensive range of research approaches and methodologies, the handbook gives (early career) researchers what they need to know in order to decide what particular methods can offer for various educational research contexts/fields. An extensive overview includes concrete examples of different kinds of research (not limited for example to ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ examples as present in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, but including as well what in the German Continental tradition is labelled ‘pädagogisch’, examples from child rearing and other contexts of non-formal education) with full description and explanation of why these were chosen in particular circumstances and reflection on the wisdom or otherwise of the choice – combined in each case with consideration of the role of interpretation in the process. The handbook includes examples of a large number of methods traditionally classified as qualitative, interpretive and quantitative used across the area of the study of education. Examples are drawn from across the globe, thus exemplifying the different ‘opportunities and constraints’ that educational research has to confront in different societies.

David Bridges

Books

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