Public-private partnerships in ICT for education

A recent World Bank report notes that across the world, per capita economic growth is driven by three information and communication technology (ICT)-related factors: investments in equipment and infrastructure, investments in human capital (i.e. in education and innovation), and efficient use of labour (human resource) and capital that increases productivity (Schware 2005). These three factors have a direct impact on the provisioning of education. For one, the demand to adopt ICT-supported education services, or e-education, is outweighing the capacity of governments to adequately support education reform and expansion.

Assessment and curriculum reform in China : the college English test and tertiary English as a foreign language education.

Educational assessment was a worldwide commonplace practice in the last century. With the theoretical underpinnings of education shifting from behaviourism and social efficiency to constructivism and cognitive theories in the past two decades, the assessment theories and practices show a widespread changing movement. The emergent assessment paradigm, with a futurist perspective, indicates a deviation away from the prevailing large scale high-stakes standardised testing and an inclination towards classroom-based formative assessment. Innovations and reforms initiated in attempts to achieve better education outcomes for a sustainable future via more developed learning and assessment theories have included the 2007 College English Reform Program (CERP) in Chinese higher education context. This paper focuses on the College English Test (CET) - the national English as a Foreign Language (EFL) testing system for non-English majors at tertiary level in China. It seeks to explore the roles that the CET played in the past two College English curriculum reforms, and the new role that testing and assessment assumed in the newly launched reform. The paper holds that the CET was operationalised to uplift the standards. However, the extended use of this standardised testing system brings constraints as well as negative washback effects on the tertiary EFL education. Therefore in the newly launched reform -CERP, a new assessment model which combines summative and formative assessment approaches is proposed. The testing and assessment, assumed a new role - to engender desirable education outcomes. The question asked is: will the mixed approach to formative and summative assessment provide the intended cure to the agony that tertiary EFL education in China has long been suffering - spending much time, yet achieving little effects? The paper reports the progresses and challenges as informed by the available research literature, yet asserts a lot needs to be explored on the potential of the assessment mix in this examination tradition deep-rooted and examination-obsessed society.

Faculty and students’ awareness and challenges of e-learning in a college of education

This study explored the use of e-learning by student teachers and faculty members at the Paro College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan. It provides an overview of the current status of e-learning at the College including the challenges faced by both faculty members and students teachers, and the influence of ICT resources on the use of e-learning by the lecturers and student teachers. The results indicated that there exist challenges in exercising e-learning at the College for teaching and learning. The data indicated that the Internet connection is slow and revealed that most of the lecturers have average computer competency. This study strongly recommends that the College develops a strategic plan for ICT infrastructure and resources that includes policy and guidelines for use. This study also suggests that lecturers and student teachers use freely available e-learning management software.

Critical attributes of public-private partnerships : a case study in vocational education

The term ‘partnership’ is increasingly used by governments, industry, community organisations and schools in supporting their daily businesses. Similar to the terms ‘ICT’ and ‘learning’, ‘partnerships’ are now ubiquitous in policy discourse. Yet, the term remains ill-defined and ambiguous. This study reviews and reflects on a government led industry-school partnership initiative in the state of Queensland, Australia, to understand how the term is used in this initiative. Given the frequent use of Public Private Partnership (PPP) language, PPP was used as a framework to review this initiative. The methodology of this qualitative case study involved consultations with stakeholders and an analysis of Gateway schools documents, policy documents, and literature. The review suggests that despite the use of terminology akin to PPP projects in Gateway school and policy documents, the implicit suggestion that this initiative is a public-private partnership is untenable. The majority of principles shaping a PPP have not been considered to a significant extent in the Gateway project. Although the review recognises the legitimate and sincere purpose of the Gateway schools initiative, the adoption of a PPP framework during the design, monitoring, or evaluation stages could have strengthened the initiative in terms of outcomes, benefits, and sustainability.

The most private private education : home education in Australia

In Australia, the decision to home educate is becoming increasingly popular (cf. Townsend, 2012). The popularity of home education is in spite of a large number of publically funded, financially affordable private and public schools that offer a range of educational alternatives to parents (cf. English, 2009). In spite of its increasing popularity, the reasons home education is chosen by Australian families is under-researched (cf. Jackson & Allan, 2010). This paper reports on a case study that set out to explore the reasons Australian parents choose to home educate and whether this decision is related to the choice of a private school in Australia. In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with a group of home education families in one of Australia’s most populated cities. Data were thematically analysed. The analysis revealed that there were similarities between the discourses of parents who privately educate and parents who home educate. In particular, it reveals the parents’ fears about schools, their negative experiences of schools and their hopes for their children’s futures.

Public-private partnerships in information and communication technology for education

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have generated a lot of interest from governments around the world for leveraging private sector involvement in developing and sustaining public infrastructure and services. Initially, PPPs were favoured by transport, energy, and other large infrastructure-intensive sectors. More recently, the concept has been expanded to include social sectors such as education.

A review of non-traditional occupational therapy practice placement education : a focus on role-emerging and project placements

Practice placement education has been recognised as an integral and critical component of the training of occupational therapy students. Although there is an extensive body of literature on clinical education and traditional practice placement education models, there has been limited research on alternative placements.-------- This paper reviews the literature on various practice placement education models and presents a contemporary view on how it is currently delivered. The literature is examined with a particular focus on the increasing range of practice placement education opportunities, such as project and role-emerging placements. The drivers for non-traditional practice placement education include shortages of traditional placement options, health reform and changing work practices, potential for role development and influence on practice choice. The benefits and challenges of non-traditional practice placement education are discussed, including supervision issues, student evaluation, professional and personal development and the opportunity to practise clinical skills.--------- Further research is recommended to investigate occupational therapy graduates' perceptions of role-emerging and project placements in order to identify the benefits or otherwise of these placements and to contribute to the limited body of knowledge of emerging education opportunities.

Stability of the learning and development survey : findings for mature aged local government and private healthcare organisations.

This article investigates work related learning and development amongst mature aged workers from a lifespan developmental psychology perspective. The current study follows on from research regarding the construction and revision of the Learning and Development Survey (LDS; Tones & Pillay, 2008). Designed to measure adaptive development for work related learning, the revised LDS (R-LDS) encompasses goal selection, engagement and disengagement from individual and organisational perspectives. Previous survey findings from a mixed age sample of local government workers suggest that mature aged workers aged over 45 years are less likely to report engagement in learning and development goals than younger workers, which is partly due to insufficient opportunities at work. In the current paper, exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate responses to the R-LDS amongst two groups of mature aged workers from a local government (LG) and private healthcare (PH) organisation to determine the stability of the R-LDS. Organisational constraints to development accounted for almost a quarter of the variance in R-LDS scores for both samples, while remaining factors emerged in different orders for each data set. Organisational opportunities for development explained about 17% of the variance in R-LDS scores in the LG sample, while the individual goal disengagement factor contributed a comparable proportion of variance to R-LDS scores for the PH sample. Findings from the current study indicate that opportunities for learning and development at work may be age structured and biased towards younger workers. Implications for professional practice are discussed and focus on improving the engagement of mature aged workers.

Parents’ choice of early childhood education service in Hong Kong : a pilot study

The introduction of a voucher scheme for early childhood education in Hong Kong has resulted in significant changes in the field. This paper reports data from a pilot study that aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of how parents chose early childhood education service following the introduction of a voucher scheme in Hong Kong. Eight-six Chinese parents with children aged three participated in interviews and focus group discussions. This group of parents had just gone through the process of selecting a kindergarten or nursery for their child for the school year of 2007-2008. Parents from a range of socioeconomic circumstances and educational levels who had selected non-profit kindergartens and nurseries in public and private housing estates participated. Results showed that what parents looked in their choice of service matched closely with how they defined quality. As evidenced in the study, parents’ changing views on quality shared a great deal of resemblance with the specific notion of quality being heavily promoted by recent reform policy. The findings pointed to the complex interactions of policy, choice and practices of early childhood education. The new voucher scheme is intensifying the governing of the self and the field, the impact of which can be worrying.

Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools : unpacking strategies of persuasion

Schools have seldom been examined by scholars in studies of organizational sites. Yet schools and the educational context in which they operate, offer potentially important insights into how organizations use rhetoric in their communications to persuade audiences and leverage advantage in the marketplace. This study, which utilises rhetorical analysis to examine the persuasive, yet ambiguous strategies used in 65 school prospectuses in Australia, revealed six strategies consistently used by schools to leverage competitive advantage and persuade internal and external audiences: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, selfexpansion and reframing or reversal. As well as illustrating how schools operate in the context of marketisation and privatization discourses in 21st century education, the organizational theory and methods utilised for the research demonstrates how rhetorical strategies draw on, as well as reproduce, socio-political and cultural discourses around economic and social privilege.

Up the e-learning curve : ensuring quality online education within an Australian university

The paper describes the implementation of a project within Australian Catholic University designed to launch the Faculties into online education in a manner which ensured quality in all aspects of the teaching-learning experiences of academics and students. Key elements of the strategic approach adopted by the project leaders, including the involvement of a specialist commercial provider of web-based delivery systems as a partner in the project, mechanisms to support the initiative through the first stages, careful choice of the programs offered online, and staff development matched to the emerging needs of those involved in the teaching of courses, are described. Challenges encountered in the implementation process, and the factors which assisted in overcoming these problems are identified. The paper draws upon this experience to raise some important issues relevant to the successful introduction of online education as an integral component of the teaching repertoire of Faculties.