The contribution of education to social progress

Education is the process of learning and expanding culture, and, as it contributes to the improvement of the human condition through better knowledge, health, living conditions, social equity and productivity, is a central tool for social progress. Education is expected to foster social progress through four different but interrelated purposes: humanistic, through the development of individual and collective human virtues to their full extent; civic, by the enhancement of public life and active participation in a democratic society; economic, by providing individuals with intellectual and practical skills that make them productive and enhance their and society’s living conditions; and through fostering social equity and justice. The expansion of formal education, which was part of the emergence of the nation states and modern economies, is one of the most visible indicators of social progress. In its expansion, education created a complex web of institutions distributed according to different paths along the life course, from early education through the school cycles to the final stages of higher education, continuing with the provision of forms of lifelong education. This web of institutions is subject to breaks and cleavages that reflect their diverse and multiple historical origins and purposes and the asynchronous developments in different regions. From primary schooling, education institutions grew horizontally (by learning fields, subjects, or occupations) and vertically (by levels and credentials.) The allocation of children and young people to different tracks and institutions, by a mixture of choice and assignment, is a core process in formal education that often reflects and reproduces preexisting inequalities. The chapter presents the main actions needed to allow education to fulfill its promise to promote social progress considering the four purposes of education. On a global level more research informed policy is required and a balanced approach to educational reform, including teacher education, by putting more emphasis on the civic and humanistic purposes. Governance structures that are flexible, participatory, and accountable considering the political and social context are recommended. The new agenda of Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 established in 2015 calls for a new cooperative paradigm based on the concept of “full global partnership” and the principle of “no one will be left behind.” Sustainable Development Goal 4 for Education aims “to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”. This provides a broad framework for education’s contribution to social progress. To achieve this, it is necessary: (1) to expand access and improve the quality of early childhood education, as a precondition for life-long educational success in all its goals; (2) to improve the quality of schools, including in learners’ direct interactions with their peer groups, educators and the surroundings; in institutional characteristics such as group size, student-teacher ratio, teacher qualifications and spatial and material conditions, and in the provision of a meaningful and relevant curriculum; (3) to enhance the role of educators, considering that teachers are not just carriers of knowledge and information, but role models that have a significant impact on children’s dispositions towards learning and life more generally; (4) to make higher and vocational education more inclusive and socially relevant, thereby enhancing the opportunities for students of all sectors of society to further their education in a meaningful and practical ways, eliminating social and cultural restrictions to access and reducing the dividing lines between high and low prestige and esteem between institutions and careers. Additionally, appropriate use of the opportunities created by the new digital technologies is recommended. These are not a magic bullet that will replace existing educational institutions and create a new learning world. But they can be powerful instruments to improve the quality and relevance of education and its contribution to social progress

Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public–private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration

"Outroduction":A research agenda on collegiality in university settings

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes

"Outroduction”: A Research Agenda on Collegiality in University Settings

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes

“Outroduction” : a research agenda on collegiality In university settings

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes

Dynamika „tworzenia-rynków” w szkolnictwie wyższym

This paper examines what to some is a well worked furrow; the processes and outcomes involved in what is typically referred to as ‘marketisation’ in the higher education sector. We do this through a case study of Newton University, where we reveal a rapid proliferation of market exchanges involving the administrative division of the university with the wider world. Our account of this process of ‘market making’ is developed in two (dialectically related) moves. First, we identify a range of market exchanges that have emerged in the context of wider ideological and political changes in the governance of higher education to make it a more globally–competitive producer of knowledge, and a services sector. Second, we explore the ways in which making markets involves a considerable amount of micro–work, such as the deployment of a range of framings, and socio–technical tools (Çalışkan and Callon 2009, 2010; Berndt and Boeckler 2012). Taken together, these market–making processes are recalibrating and remaking the structures, social relations and subjectivities, within and beyond the university and in turn reconstituting the university and the higher education sector.W niniejszym artykule przedstawiamy wyniki badania tego, co wiele osób uznało za dobrze już opracowaną niszę, a mianowicie procesów i rezultatów czegoś, co najczęściej określa się mianem ‘urynkowienia’ sektora szkolnictwa wyższego. Podejmujemy tę kwestię w oparciu o przygotowane przez nas studium przypadku Newton University, w kontekście którego odsłaniamy gwałtowne rozpowszechnienie się wymiany rynkowej między administracyjnymi sekcjami  uniwersytetu i jego szerszym otoczeniem. Nasze podejście do procesu „tworzenia-rynku” rozwinięte zostało w dwóch (dialektycznie powiązanych ze sobą) krokach. Po pierwsze, rozpoznajemy zakres wymian rynkowych, wyłonionych w kontekście szerszych ideologicznych i politycznych przemian obszaru ładu instytucjonalnego szkolnictwa wyższego, których celem było uczynienie go bardziej konkurencyjnym wytwórcą wiedzy w skali globalnej, jak również sektorem usługowym. Po drugie, badamy sposoby, w jakie tworzenie rynków wymaga dużego nakładu mikro-pracy, takiej choćby jak zastosowanie szerokiego zakresu określonych ram czy narzędzi socjo-technicznych (Çalışkan, Callon 2009, 2010; Berndt, Boeckler 2012). Ujęte łącznie, wspomniane procesy tworzenia-rynku dokonują ponownego dopasowania i przekształcenia struktury, stosunków społecznych i podmiotowości w obrębie uniwersytetu i poza nim, w ten sposób z kolei konstytuując uniwersytet i sektor szkolnictwa wyższego w nowej formie

Branding Universities: Trends and Strategies

Branding campaigns, in which universities restyle their traditional insignia into logos, have both strategic and cultural dimensions. Strategically, rebranding is linked with the expanding efforts of universities to market their programs to prospective students and donors and leverage their reputation for such marketing. Culturally, rebranding symbolically captures the transformation of university governance from guild-like autonomy to a managed and promotional university. The essay describes the three main trends in the branding of universities and considers that strategic implications and cultural meanings of university branding

For show only? The language of human rights in national constitutions

  Sociologist Associate Professor Gili Drori explains how the vocabulary of human rights is making its way into the constitutions of nation states, and what this says about the societies that choose -- or choose not -- to include such rights in their national charters