L’Evolution du métier d’enseignant de langue de spécialité – une perspective internationale

A travers l’Europe, les professeurs de langues vivantes doivent affronter les mêmes défis : parmi ceux-ci, nous passerons en revue (1) le contexte britannique : l’apprentissage des langues vivantes dans les universités (étudiants spécialistes et non-spécialistes, cours pour adultes) et dans le secondaire, les échanges et le séjour à l’étranger ; (2) le contexte international : le processus de Bologne (interculturalité et employabilité), la markétisation de l’enseignement supérieur, les droits d’inscription, l’anglicisation des programmes ; (3) le contexte technologique : les TIC dans la société et dans l’apprentissage des langues

Fremdsprachen aus der Ferne: die britische Open University

Dies ist die vierte, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage der Praktischen Handreichung für Fremdsprachenlehrer. Die Zahl der Beiträge wurde von 77 auf 90 erhöht. Ausgewiesene Fachleute aus Belgien, Deutschland, Großbritannien, Irland, Österreich, Schweden und den USA breiten in vier Kapiteln die Methoden und das Handwerkszeug aus, ohne die ein guter Fremdsprachenlehrer nicht auskommt. Alle wieder aufgenommenen Arbeiten wurden durchgesehen und auf den neuesten Stand gebracht. Viele der zusätzlich eingeworbenen Beiträge stammen aus dem Bereich der Neuen Medien. Der bewährte Aufbau wurde beibehalten. Der Leser kann so seine Praxis auf ein sicheres Fundament stellen und durch Verfolgung der im Sachindex aufgezeigten Verbindungslinien weiter absichern. Die umfangreichen Literaturverzeichnisse helfen ihm, bestimmte Felder noch weiter aufzuschließen

The Problem of Doping

In this Essay, we examine Professor Michael J. Sandel and Judge Richard A. Posner\u27s thoughts on how to draw the line between substances and techniques that are fair game and those that constitute doping; whether there is a difference between sport and spectacle; and the nature of the public’s interest in sport as an institution and in doping as a practice that risks its integrity. Although we do not agree with all of their conclusions, they have made serious contributions to the ongoing discussion of these issues. Their linedrawing work in particular deserves considered attention from WADA and other stakeholders as they continue to work toward a useful and defensible definition of the spirit of sport

For-Profit Education in the United States: A Primer

Higher education during the twentieth century underwent drastic changes as reformers forcefully argued education was the business of the state, and society could be improved by strong, publicly backed schools (Coulson 1999). Often proponents of state-sponsored education on the left argued the government should use education as a way to shape the minds of the nation's citizens, who were not responsible enough to take care of their own education properly (Coulson 1999). On the right, similar arguments were used as special interest groups saw the government as a means to influence what went on in the classroom. Consequently, the government stepped into the higher education arena, in part, by arguing people were not competent enough to oversee their own education. While the data for this period are scarce, it is safe to say for the period 1890 -- 1972, for-profit colleges were increasingly marginalized by the growth of highly subsidized public institutions (Breneman et al. 2006; Kinser 2006; Ruch 2001).Starting in the mid-1970s and accelerating through the 1980s and 1990s, for-profit education underwent a renaissance, due in large part to the 1972 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which increased the amount of government student aid available to for-profit schools (Kinser 2006; Turner 2006). During this era, the broadened scope of Pell Grants gave rise to an increasing number of for-profit universities offering associates, bachelors, and graduate degrees (Turner 2006). Since 1976, for-profit enrollment has grown at an annualized growth rate of about 11 percent, increasing by a factor of nearly twenty-three. For-profits'market share of higher education has gone from 0.4 percent to nearly 6 percent (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006a). The robust resurgence of for-profit schools suggests America's nonprofit colleges are failing to meet fully the people's needs. As a result, for-profits are stepping in to meet market demands their highly subsidized counterparts have chronically failed to satisfy. These recent and rapid developments have once again brought for-profit education national visibility

Diffusion of Knowledge: The Ignored Goal of Public Education

This dissertation provides a capability creation perspective on the story of China’s technological catching up, or resurgence, if viewed from a broader historical perspective. Since the first Asian tigers caught up to modern technological standards (e.g., South Korea, Singapore), two schools of thought have dominated causal explanations (Nelson and Pack, 1999). The first perspective is the conventional accumulation approach, which attributes the major share of growth to the accumulation of physical and human capital, and views learning as a more-or-less automatic byproduct of those investments. The second perspective is the assimilation approach, which emphasizes the arduous learning, risk-taking entrepreneurship, and innovation that is involved in the process and argues that the former proposition neglects this aspect of the endeavour and may therefore lead to erroneous estimates. This dissertation focuses on the second school of thought. Compared to the first-tier Asian tigers, the second-tier tigers, of which China is representative, pose many challenges to the assimilation approach. First, the sheer size of the country results in an unusual scale and scope of activities and interactions in any field. Second, the long history of civilization in China suggests that many modern phenomena have historical roots that are unknown to outsiders and invisible and complex to insiders. The present study aims to contribute a small piece of the puzzle to our understanding of the big picture. By providing an in-depth study of the Chinese information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, this study explores changes that have occurred in the three key building blocks of capability creation; specifically, the sourcing, generation, and appropriation of technological knowledge. A qualitative case study approach was employed for the main, empirical part of the study, which consists of extensive firm-level interviews. Complementary statistical data, including patent data and historical archives, were used to provide context and a deeper look into the study topic. The results are described in five articles. The first article presents establishing overseas research and development (R&D) laboratories as one of the major learning methods for overcoming disadvantages related to dislocation from technology sources and advanced markets. This approach allows China to search for industry-relevant scientific knowledge rather than adopting ready-made technologies introduced by western multinational enterprises in China. The second article describes the modularity-in-design approach, which opens new windows of opportunity for technological advancement. The lack of essential intellectual property rights (IPRs) acts as a key inducement and a factor-saving bias that influences the direction of innovation. When both (international) competitiveness and learning are involved in the catching-up process, the development of industry-wide capability becomes a particularly vital aspect of indigenous innovation. The third article describes the geographic consequences of historically planted industrial capabilities in China’s inland regions, which impact the absorption of different types of industrial knowledge. Fields of industry that are densely populated with patents- IPR thickets- represent a novel situation that was not experienced to the same extent by nations whose technological development occurred earlier. This thesis dedicates two articles to this dimension of knowledge appropriation. The fourth article describes the duality of Chinese ICT patenting, and the fifth article identifies an ambidextrous strategy that depends on where the major competition emerges. In general, the decision to patent and the extent of patenting are determined by four factors: a) the distance to the frontier (Aghion et al., 1997) particularly for technology; b) the nature of the technology (Teece, 1986), but with a rural extension in the case of China; c) the specificities of information (Arrow, 1962) that are embodied in a firm’s origins in China; and d) the supporting institutions that co-evolve in that process. Learning proceeds at different levels: that of individuals, firms, industries, and nations.   This dissertation provides an industry-level perspective on learning and innovation-based technological advancement.from developing economy to global high-tech competitiveness - the case of Chinese ICT expansio