In this thesis I argue in favour of student-oriented education for China based on the educational philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Whiteheads educational thought, while Western in origin, has a strong appeal for Chinese educators because of its openness to other cultural traditions.<p> My own experience as a student and teacher, coupled with a general review of the history of education in China, shows how education is, and has been, exclusively defined by students success in exams. This approach, which I refer to as test-oriented education, is problematical because, by overemphasizing students performance in exams, it abstracts learning from their experience. The result is that learning becomes boring and useless to most students, and they do not see the relevance of education to life.<p> In contrast, Whitehead proposes that education be based on students rich experience and that its aim should be their full self-development as beings imbued with body, mind and spirit. I refer to this approach as student-oriented education, and I believe it would provide more humane, well-rounded, and culturally appropriate forms of learning to Chinese students. More specifically, Whiteheads protest against inert ideas underlines the importance of two key concepts in education, namely the interest of students and the usefulness of knowledge. Second, his conception of learning, or the rhythm of education, works as a guide in making education interesting and useful. Third, his account of technical education helps to restore a balance between abstraction and concreteness, precision and romance, discipline and freedom, education and life, and his insights on arts and aesthetic appreciation strengthen the life of the spirit by directing students attention to the value and beauty in their lives. Finally, his advocacy of a balanced education enables a balanced development of students by paying equal attention to their bodily feelings, spiritual cultivation, and intellectual capabilities. In this manner, education can evoke into life wisdom and beauty which otherwise would remain lost in the past.

The purpose of this study is to explain the development of the first higher technical education in Trollhättan, with the added perspective of Trollhättans strong industrial profile as a city. The interesting thing being that the city did not try to first and foremost get a regular higher education, but a technical higher education instead. The study describes the political twists and turns the question took from its most early stage in the year 1940 and how the city's industrial profile did indeed have an impact on the development of the first higher technical education. Especially because there was a need for educated engineers in the city, as well as the country of Sweden in large during this time. The study also tries to explain the problems related to such a development, primarily by describing the lack of sufficient housing for schools during the 1950's, this meant that the higher regular school and the higher technical school had to cooperate in finding said housing. To put the study in context a brief summary of the educational system in large, Trollhättan as an industrial city during the 1940's and 1950's as well as Trollhättans educational system besides higher education, is also included. The resulting study has mostly been achieved by studying relevant sources in Trollhättans city-archives as well as the local paper ”Trollhättans tidning” during the relevant years 1956, 1958 and 1959.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-160). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (DPhil (Teaching and Training Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership, and Workforce Development. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

A quasi experimental study tested a contextual teaching and learning (CTL) model for integrating reading and mathematics competencies through 13 introductory Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses. Volunteer CTE Lead Teachers with assistance from academic teachers, developed integrated units. The purpose of this study was to determine whether students who participated in CTE courses that integrated core mathematics and reading standards performed better on a test of mathematics and reading skills compared to students who participated in traditional, non-integrated courses. The treatment group consisted of students in the 13 introductory courses taught by the CTE Lead Teachers and the control group consisted of students in all other sections of the 13 introductory courses not taught by CTE Lead Teachers. After a 26-week intervention, 9th and 10th grade student Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) reading and mathematics scores were analyzed to determine if the mean change in post-test scores was greater in the treatment group than the mean change in scores in the control group. An ANCOVA and multiple regression analysis of quantitative data revealed that the integrated CTE courses were statistically significant in improving reading treatment group scores, but not statistically significant in improving mathematics treatment group scores. The study is significant because it seeks to address a gap in the literature on academic and CTE integration and to provide evidence that a partnership between academics and CTE can contribute to student achievement as measured by state assessments.

This thesis documents and analyses a process whereby practice-based applied knowledge achieved formal legitimacy in British Columbia. The study is a historical case study representing a unique case, the creation of a Bachelor of Technology degree at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). The central research question is: What were the external and internal factors that enabled Or constrained the legitimation of applied knowledge to baccalaureate status at BCIT? The study is situated within both a theoretical and comparative context. The theoretical framework recognises the changing base of knowledge through discussion of pure and applied knowledge, knowledge stratification and its overt expression in terms of educational credentials, and the demarcation of knowledge units. A comparative backdrop to the study, traces the legitimation of applied knowledge in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Canada. Methods of investigation included: interviews with stakeholders representing government, the corporate sector, professional associations, and BCIT personnel, past and present; analysis of archival materials and contemporary policy documents; and, participant observation resulting from the author's intimate involvement with the process. The study concludes that this new level of legitimacy conferred on applied knowledge in British Columbia results from the convergence of factors both external and internal to BCIT, the integrative factor being "timing." Practice-based applied knowledge was elevated to baccalaureate status for the following reasons: the proposal for a Bachelor of Technology degree aligned with government's vision; government had confidence in BCIT as a degree granting institution; the political environment was "safe"; and, the approach was cost effective and accountable. Constraining factors pertained primarily to, the effects of degree granting on BCIT's valued diploma programs. Future research could investigate the impact of degree status on the diploma programs and on the overall culture of the institution.

This thesis is situated in the history of British debates over the relationship of technical and vocational schooling to capitalism. It analyses the impact of 'new vocational' policy initiatives on English education from the 1970s, using an approach termed 'historical ethnography.' Using this methodology, it draws on ethnographic studies of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) between 1985 and 1992. / My argument is that TVEI represents the most recent manifestation of a long history of educational policies that have systematically produced and ordered the social relations of class in an educational form. In this vein, I argue that the technical and vocational curriculum can be seen as an integral site within the English educational State for the production and formation of class relations within schooling. TVEI, I assert, was central to such a process through its capacity to concert and co-ordinate the social relations and practices of secondary schooling around the concept of enterprise, which acted as an organising device for management/administration, teaching, learning, and most crucially, the formation of individual subjectivities. Understood this way, we can see how TVEI effected reforms that contributed to the formation of clusters of social relations that produced class in new ways. / I show how this process emerged under TVEI through my ethnographic studies of enterprise, school-based management, business studies, and assessment. What each study reveals is how TVEI worked to effect a generalised shift in the culture of schooling away from the post-war social democratic politics of education, to that of a 'managed market' and enterprise culture. In this respect, I argue, TVEI prefigured many of the reforms that were to flow from the Education Reform Act (1988).

<p><font face="Times-Roman" size="3"><font face="Times-Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">The purpose of this study was therefore to address the following primary research question: &lsquo / What effect would a specially designed, developed, implemented and evaluated Material Science (MS) course have on serving teachers in terms of their perceptions and knowledge/understanding regarding content in MS and instructional practice in D&amp / T?&rsquo / </p> </font></font></p>

This thesis investigates the curriculum discourses of academics within a University of Technology, exploring their responses to curriculum challenges and considering the degree to which national and institutional shifts contest existing curriculum discourses. Curriculum discourses are identified and discussed against the national and institutional environment and are found, to some degree, to reflect the entrenched assumptions of teaching and learning that were dominant during the apartheid era. Existing curriculum discourses also reveal the influence of curriculum practices adopted within the highly bureaucratic technikon system out of which the institution has evolved. This critical inquiry rests on the assumption that with more insight into socio-cultural values and assumptions, understandings of knowledge, teaching and learning, and existing power relations within individuals’ working context, the possibility of transforming curriculum will be increased. Selecting a small sample of twelve participants from the Durban University of Technology, I conducted in-depth, open-ended interviews intended to explore these academics’ curriculum discourses. Adopting discourse analysis as my primary method of data analysis enabled me to explore the discourses which academics use to construct the notion of curriculum and their own roles in regards to the curriculum. Further to this, I used my own experience of the institutional context and the literature on the national and international contexts of higher education to inform the study and add to the richness of the data. Issues of professional, disciplinary and institutional knowledge and culture are acknowledged to play a central role in participants’ curriculum discourses. These socio-cultural factors are found to affect academic identity construction and change, assumptions about knowledge production and dissemination and notions of teaching and learning. These insights are then overlaid onto a consideration of the extent to which academics have the agency to transform their curricula to align with current higher education policy and the societal and economic transformation agenda. Competing curriculum discourses evident in post-apartheid policy, enormous institutional changes resulting from mandated institutional mergers, changed institutional management team profiles, significantly different student profiles and increased student numbers have all to a large degree overshadowed issues of teaching and learning and led to confusion, disillusionment and uncertainty among the academics participating in this study. There is evidence of a weakening institution-identity with academics feeling uncertain about their roles and responsibilities within the institution, feeling under-valued by the institutional leaders and over-burdened in their workloads with limited support and resources. On the other hand there is a strong identification with workgroups which include both professional and departmental groups that share sets of assumptions and established practices that provide academics with the stability, familiarity, security and affirmation that they need. The issue of individual agency as reflected in the findings, demonstrates that there was a continuum of participant agency that tentatively points to a correlation between the level of agency and the amount of stability and value gained from allegiance to and participation in workgroups. Despite the increasing pressure upon academics to interrogate their own systems and disciplinary structures that chiefly focus on a traditional mode of specialised knowledge production, there is limited evidence of significantly changed understanding of curriculum practices. Furthermore there is little to suggest that these academics’ curriculum practices have been impacted by international trends towards globalisation, marketisation and shifts in modes of knowledge production. Traditional views of knowledge construction and low skills training discourses were strongly evident in the data. With the challenges presented not only by the need for economic and social transformation within South Africa, but also by the need to respond to fast-paced technological and knowledge advancements, exceptional leadership and improved capacity are required to enable rather than inhibit curriculum transformation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.