Teacher Collective Bargaining

This comment discusses the effect of collective bargaining by teachers on the formulation of public policy in education. Teachers usually draw on the expertise of superintendents of schools to advise them on this subject. Agreement terms from New York and California are analyzed. The focus of the analysis deals with the content of the contract and agreement clauses and the extent to which they reflect a shift of control over educational policy in specific subject areas. The emergence of teachers associations and unions has created a new pressure group potentially capable of influencing traditional state prerogatives in educational policy. California and New York have responded to the existence of these new groups in different ways. The evidence studied shows these different statutory schemes produce substantially similar results in issues related to the professionalism of public school teachers

Working Paper 110 - Education and Employment in Malawi

This paper analyzes the relationship betweeneducation and employment in Malawi, usingdata from the 2004-05 Integrated HouseholdSurvey (IHS-2). For both men and women,education is the passport to formalemployment and leads to higher hourlyearnings. Within regular wage employment,secondary education is associated with a123 percent wage premium, and universityeducation with a 234 percent wage premium(relative to illiteracy). In both rural and urbanareas, income is positively correlated withspecialization in regular wage employment.For example, in urban areas 60 percent of thehouseholds who derive at least 75 percent oftheir income from regular wage employmentbelong to the highest quartile of the incomedistribution. This reflects the relative scarcityof human capital. Among prime age males(25 to 39 years old), only 10 percent havecompleted secondary education. For womenin the same age group, the situation is evenworse, with the rate of completion ofsecondary schooling as low as 3 percent.The analysis of school enrolment highlightsthat teenage women experience high dropoutrates, which prevent greater femaleenrollment in higher education, and thereforeconstrain future participation in the bestforms of employment.

Improving the teaching and learning of science and technology in South Africa : congruence between North West science teachers and science Expo students

Bibliography: leaves 94-105.The purpose this empirical investigation is to determine how closely the science and technology curriculum views of South African science teachers concur with those of science Expo students in 1997. The study is also substantial contribution to an on-going national survey of the views of more than 1000 respondents for improving the teaching and learning of school science and technology as part of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The 1995 Government White Paper states that there is a need for curriculum development that includes finding criteria to prepare and recruit students for subjects in short supply, particularly science, mathematics and technology. In its statement of Values and Principles of Education and Training, the White Paper (15 March 1995:22) states: -An appropriate mathematics, science and technology education initiative is essential to stem the waste of talent, and make up the chronic national deficit in these fields of learning, which are crucial to human understanding and to economic advancement. Subsequent to the release of the White paper, a panel of seven South African researchers reviewed the science and technology (S&T) literature and extracted fifteen possible policy recommendations for the improvement of teaching methods, curriculum and textbooks in science and technology programmes

Key Competences in Europe: Opening Doors For Lifelong Learners Across the School Curriculum and Teacher Education

The aim of the study is to provide a comparative overview of policy and practice concerning the development and implementation of key competences in the education systems of the 27 Member States of the European Union. In particular, the study assesses the implementation of the 8 key competences contained in the European Reference Framework of Key Competences in primary and secondary schools across the EU as well as the extent to which initial and in-service education and training of teachers equips them with the skills and competences necessary to deliver key competences effectively.key competences, lifelong learning, cross-curricular, competence

Evaluating Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning: A Quantitative Survey

The increasing number of publications on recommender systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) evidence a growing interest in their development and deployment. In order to support learning, recommender systems for TEL need to consider specific requirements, which differ from the requirements for recommender systems in other domains like e-commerce. Consequently, these particular requirements motivate the incorporation of specific goals and methods in the evaluation process for TEL recommender systems. In this article, the diverse evaluation methods that have been applied to evaluate TEL recommender systems are investigated. A total of 235 articles are selected from major conferences, workshops, journals, and books where relevant work have been published between 2000 and 2014. These articles are quantitatively analysed and classified according to the following criteria: type of evaluation methodology, subject of evaluation, and effects measured by the evaluation. Results from the survey suggest that there is a growing awareness in the research community of the necessity for more elaborate evaluations. At the same time, there is still substantial potential for further improvements. This survey highlights trends and discusses strengths and shortcomings of the evaluation of TEL recommender systems thus far, thereby aiming to stimulate researchers to contemplate novel evaluation approaches.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Evaluating Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning: A Quantitative Survey

The increasing number of publications on recommender systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) evidence a growing interest in their development and deployment. In order to support learning, recommender systems for TEL need to consider specific requirements, which differ from the requirements for recommender systems in other domains like e-commerce. Consequently, these particular requirements motivate the incorporation of specific goals and methods in the evaluation process for TEL recommender systems. In this article, the diverse evaluation methods that have been applied to evaluate TEL recommender systems are investigated. A total of 235 articles are selected from major conferences, workshops, journals, and books where relevant work have been published between 2000 and 2014. These articles are quantitatively analysed and classified according to the following criteria: type of evaluation methodology, subject of evaluation, and effects measured by the evaluation. Results from the survey suggest that there is a growing awareness in the research community of the necessity for more elaborate evaluations. At the same time, there is still substantial potential for further improvements. This survey highlights trends and discusses strengths and shortcomings of the evaluation of TEL recommender systems thus far, thereby aiming to stimulate researchers to contemplate novel evaluation approaches.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

College Catalog, 1911, Edu. Bulletin

https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/buffstatecatalogs/1007/thumbnail.jp

German as a foreign language in Britain: the history of German as a 'useful' language since 1600

A quarter of a century ago, two essays examined the early history of German as a Foreign Language (GFL) in Britain.2 The present paper revisits the history of GFL at a time of perceived crisis in modern language education, to provide some historical answers to the question “Why learn German?” that may offer a useful context for debates about the status of German in schools and universities and in wider society today.3 Using as primary sources the materials available to learners since 1600, most of which have previously received very little attention from this perspective, I examine the interplay and the tensions between the various motivations for learning German that have been asserted, and give some illustrations of how the various answers to “Why German?” were reflected in the contents of textbooks and examinations for learners.4 Discussions of the value of German can be found in other kinds of primary sources, too, especially in the later period, including the popular and scholarly press, school prospectuses, policy documents, published and unpublished syllabi and curricula, but this study concentrates largely on the case made for German to its learners in the materials that were available to them. For the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, when modern languages became institutionalized and then established in mass education, I have also made selective reference to policy documents, and to the popular and scholarly press, as these too became fora in which the value of German was discussed. We shall see that the question of why to learn German is closely related to expectations about who should learn German, and that those expectations, too, have changed; but I shall argue that cultural rather than purely instrumental reasons have remained crucial