Sustainability

Sustainability The concept of alienation is often related to Marxist theory, but the historical record enable us to trace it back to the teachings of Agustin, Seneca, and of course the Greeks. It is a concept that for the most part relates to the idea of something that has been separated from its very nature or meaning

Interim Evaluation of the European Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2009: The National Report of Estonia

PRAXIS Working Paper No 3/2010This report summarizes the results of the interim evaluation of the European Lifelong Learning programme 2007-2009 in Estonia. The main objectives of the interim evaluation were: a) to analyse results of the LLP achieved hitherto and to identify lessons learned and good practices; b) to give recommendations for improving the execution of the current programme in the remaining stage of its implementation and; c) to give input for the preparation of the future programme in the field of lifelong learning. The analysis concentrated on the aspects of relevance, effectiveness and efficiency

Implications of Globalization on Education

This piece actually began as an assignment in which each of us were to write a paragraph on education. As I remember it, this led to the idea that we collect them together in a kind of anthology. This was followed by the chain-letter method of sending on paragraph around to each person for comment. The result of that is what you see here

Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) Immersive Research

Praxis, the community-led total sanitation (CLTS) Knowledge Hub at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), together with WaterAid, undertook an immersive research project to learn from the experiences of three districts in India that had been declared open defecation free (ODF). The researchers spent three nights and up to four days in each of a total of eight villages in Madhya Pradesh (3), Uttar Pradesh (2) and Rajasthan (3). The mixed gender teams stayed with families, without a specific agenda, learning open-endedly from lived experience, observation and conversations. The main report sums up the key findings and suggests ways to strengthen the Swachh Bharat Mission – Gramin; the policy and practice note presents actionable recommendations; and the methodology note describes the activities, challenges, lessons learnt and guidance for use of the methodology by others

Leading the transformation of learning and praxis in science classrooms

Individual science teachers who have inspired colleagues to transform their classroom praxis have been labelled transformational leaders. As the notion of distributed leadership became more accepted in the educational literature, the focus on the individual teacher-leader shifted to the study of leadership praxis both by individuals (whoever they might be) and by collectives within schools and science classrooms. This review traces the trajectory of leadership research, in the context of learning and teaching science, from an individual focus to a dialectical relationship between individual and collective praxis. The implications of applying an individual-collective perspective to praxis for teachers, students and their designated leaders are discussed

Gramsci’s Philosophy of Praxis

Gramsci’s Philosophy of Praxis was an attempt to present Marxism as a political philosophy promoting the inter-definable relation between theory and practice. No practice without theory; every man was a philosopher. Marx’s call to change the world (act) more than interpret it (think) did not repudiate philosophy. It reaffirmed the unity theory-practice contextualising it in history. This characterised the intellectual project of the Prison Notebooks as the way ahead for the political affirmation of the working class. Praxis became a pedagogical, consciousness- raising practice. Enriched by other concepts – structure-superstructure (mode of production), intellectuals-working class (historic bloc) – Gramsci’s praxis was also an attempt to prevent Marxism, philosophically presented as historical materialism, from morphing into metaphysics and vulgar materialism. Respecting the strictures of ‘translatability’, praxis is adopted to discuss the 1970s industrialisation and its aftermath in Malta.peer-reviewe

No accounting for risk

At the present time, the relation between accounting praxis and risk is not well understood. Accounting praxis does not appear to regard the risk it identifies with its activities as being different from 'objective risk' - the concept of risk found in positive financial and accounting research. Instead accounting praxis (as reflected in case studies, surveys and other empirical studies) reveal a collection of different, sometimes contradictory, conceptions and 'taken for granted' understandings of risk that are invoked and applied on an ad hoc, case by case basis. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the conceptual disarray in accounting for risk is both costly and unnecessary. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to risk research, the authors review developments in risk thinking at the end of the 20th Century and highlight a way forward for accounting through New Paradigm Risk (NPR). Various illustrations and case study examples are drawn upon to reflect the relevance of NPR to accounting praxis

An illustration of web survey methododlogy

A former study in the Danish primary schools has shown that there is an association between organic school food policies and indicators (proxies) for healthy eating among children when (school food coordinators) statements on indicators (proxies) for healthy eating are used as variable. This project continue to search for the above signs of associations but involving also a “bottom” level (pupils) perspective in addition to the “top” level (school food coordinators) in the previous study. The project is to study the following hypothesis: organic food service praxis/policy (POP) is associated with praxis/policies for healthier eating in Danish school food service. In other words if organic procurement policies and the resulting praxis in schools can help build a healthier eating habits among pupils in such school as compared to schools without organic policies/praxis. The last perspective is going to be studied in a comparative study design where the Danish case (existing data from WBQ) will be compared with new data from school food service in Germany, Italy and Finland. These data is going to be collected through a web survey