Bøger i Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices serien

This book offers a detailed analysis and assessment of the state of education round the world.

This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these parts difficult to handle within RE. Further, ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong to the philosophical context, in which ¿eternal questions¿ are gathered and reflected upon. The first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers¿ objectives and to students¿ texts, respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student perspectives. Next, the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further, can contemporary moral philosophers contribute to such a discussion? In turn, the book discusses the role of statistical analyses with regard to national tests, while the closing chapters present international perspectives on the book¿s main themes and concluding remarks.The book¿s critical yet constructive approach to issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the field of assessment, as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative evaluation may provide important guidelines, but may also pose challenges of their own.

With Responses from Bob Lingard, Meg Maguire and David Hursh

This Open Access book analyses the interplay between governing, evaluation and knowledge with an empirical focus on Swedish higher education.

This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these parts difficult to handle within RE. Further, ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong to the philosophical context, in which "eternal questions" are gathered and reflected upon. The first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers' objectives and to students' texts, respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student perspectives. Next, the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further, can contemporary moral philosophers contribute to such a discussion? In turn, the book discusses the role of statistical analyses with regard to national tests, while the closing chapters present international perspectives on the book's main themes and concluding remarks.The book's critical yet constructive approach to issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the field of assessment, as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative evaluation may provide important guidelines, but may also pose challenges of their own.

This Open Access book analyses the interplay between governing, evaluation and knowledge with an empirical focus on Swedish higher education.

1 Welcome to the World Class University: Introduction.- Part I What''s in a Word?.- 2 Disorderly Identities: University rankings and the re-ordering of the academic mind.- 3 Becoming World Class: What it means and what it does.- 4 Three Notions of the Global.- Part II World-Class Around the World.- 5 The Kafkaesque Pursuit of ''World Class'': Audit culture and the reputational arms race in academia.- 6 Complicit Reproductions in the Global South: Courting world class universities and global rankings.- 7 Realizing the World Class University: Litigation and the state.- 8 World Class at All Costs.- 9 The Paradox of the Global University.- Part III Playing the World-Class Numbers Game.- 10 World Class Universities, Rankings and the Global Space of International Students.- 11 What Counts as World Class? Global University Rankings and Shifts in Institutional Strategies.- 12 The State Role in Excellent University Policies in the Era of Globalization: The case of China.- Part IV The Future of World-Class Universities.- 13 The Marketingisation of Higher Education.- 14 Contesting the Neoliberal Discourse of the World Class University: ''Digital Socialism'', Openness and Academic Publishing.- 15 Spaces of Life: Transgressions in Conceptualising the World Class University.- 16 Realising the World-Class University: An Ecological Approach.

This volume addresses the central question facing the future of higher education around the world, whether and why universities need to exist at all. This book accepts the question¿s premise: It is not clear that the university is any longer needed as an institution -- that is, unless its defenders recover what had made the university the revolutionary institution that over the past two centuries has not only defined the shape of modern systematic inquiry but also the distinctiveness of the societies that have housed them. In short, what is required is a reanimation of the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt for our times; hence the book's title and subtitle. Humboldt was responsible for relaunching the university as the vanguard institution of 'Enlightenment' to which we continue to pay lip service ¿ and sometimes not much more than that. Admittedly, the task of relaunching Humboldt today is made difficult because many of the concrete achievements associated with the Humboldtian university ¿ not least academic disciplines and nation-states ¿ are increasingly seen as problematic if not obsolete. However, the global reach of the Humboldtian vision in its 19th century and 20th century heyday offers hope that it may be recovered in the 21st century. The book focuses on the performative character of the academic vocation, what Humboldt memorably characterized as the 'unity of research and teaching' in the same person, a role model for students and society at large. The book's seven chapters develop this theme in a historically and philosophically nuanced way in terms of the Humboldtian vision of knowledge, sense of free expression and critical judgement, and commitment to translation and publicity.

This edited volume highlights the deep issues of the educational markets and school segregation from its origins to its effects. The book discusses both global trends as well as focalized examples. It¿s based on a comprehensive review of existing literature and an in-depth analysis of two educational systems: The French-speaking community in Belgium and Chile. Both contexts are characterized by a high degree of segregation, a structural environment of free choice of schools and competition between public and private schools financed with public resources. This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of scientific knowledge on the issue of segregation and rigorous analyses of recent policies aimed at reducing segregation in educational systems. It highlights the complexity of a process of change, the importance of its legitimacy among the population and the need of identifying the ethical and social justice issues surrounding school segregation. By providing a solid theoretical and empirical synthesis, this book is a great resource to students, researchers and academics in education, as well as social scientists and policy-makers.