The `knowledge-intensive development' agenda and equitable access to knowledge: higher education in Ethiopia

In light of the normative assumption of the role of knowledge in economic productivity and in response to strong exogenous policy orientations (mainly from the World Bank), the government of Ethiopia has restructured and expanded the higher education (HE) subsystem since the late 1990s. In critically analysing selected policy documents, this article seeks to understand the seemingly unlinked agendas of strengthening the role of HE in supporting the knowledge-intensive development agenda and the representation of the problem of inequality in access to and success in HE. It has been shown that the economic value of knowledge has been echoed in the reforms of Ethiopia, and that the problem of inequality has been superficially represented just as inequality of access while serious challenges that hinder participation and success of women, non-traditional students and ethnically and regionally disadvantaged groups remain unchallenged. Hence, the analysis indicates that under a situation of unequal opportunity to knowledge, the knowledge-intensive development agenda appears to be empty policy rhetoric.

Opportunities and challenges : preparing generalist teacher education students in music education in Australia

The Australian Curriculum ‘the Arts’ will be implemented across Australia from 2014. This curriculum is expected to replace existing State and Territory curricula where educators are given the opportunity to review, renew, and refresh their practice. Music tertiary educators are faced with opportunities and challenges to effectively prepare and engage pre-service teachers (PSTs) as generalist classroom teachers. This paper focuses on PSTs within the Bachelor of Primary Education course at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia). Within this course PSTs undertake two Arts units as generalist teachers, in Trimester one where they are introduced to music elements and creative music making. In Trimester two they focus on pedagogical issues and classroom implementation. In 2013, I gained ethical permission to undertake a research project titled “Pre-service teacher attitudes and understandings of Music Education”. This case study draws on semi-structured interview data with music lecturers who taught in Trimester two at Deakin University in 2013 (10 x 3 hour workshops). Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis I analyzed and codified the interview data and report on two themes: ways of teaching and creative music making. This paper also highlights the challenges and opportunities sessional staff face when preparing PSTs in music education as generalist teachers.

Visual research methods in education: in between difference and indifference

The aim of this paper is to support critical and scholarly debates that relate to the increasing role of visual research in education, youth studies, sociology, and studies of mental health. Researching in fields where young people are central exposes many struggles, not least issues of how to represent students who end up on the margins. School disaffection intersects with curriculum practices. When threading together visual research methods and matters of curriculum studies, seduction can set in, and unintentionally curriculum research can become indifferent to difference, the counterpoint often sought by researchers. Some scholars may argue that this debate has been well rehearsed in the curriculum field; I, however, take the opposite view. The constraints of curriculum studies, issues of student disaffection and the exclusions of schooling - when analysed through the perspectives of visual research - trouble our research designs and understandings of data and therefore require more, not less, interrogation. Rethinking the intersection points between visual research methods (VRM) and visuality, a concept that is critical to cultural and visual studies, opens out new spaces in the field of curriculum studies and reframes the methodological decisionmaking process for researching issues that pertain to student disaffection. 

Higher education in Ethiopia : widening access and persisting inequalities

 This Chapter has argued that, even though socially and historically disadvantaged
groups (e.g., geo-politically peripheral ethnic groups and women) have been given a
nominal advantage at the entry point (by slightly lowering admission cut-off points)
and despite the fact that participation has considerably widened, social equity is far
from being a reality in Ethiopian HE. The persisting inequality in the form of high
attrition rates and low graduation rates among females and ethnic minorities, low
female participation in the fields of science and technology, prejudicial views and
hostilities against women and, overall, the subordinate position of women in HE
clearly shows that framing the problem of inequality as a mere lack of access and a
human capital disadvantage is misleading and counterproductive.

Early years education in the primary years programme: implementation strategies and programme outcomes

This mixed-methods study investigated implementation strategies and child learning outcomes in early years education in the Primary Years Programme. Researchers from Deakin University evaluated processes and outcomes in four early years programmes, two in Singapore and two in Melbourne, Australia. Researchers collected qualitative data through classroom observations, drawings and writing produced by children, and interviews with educators, coordinators and parents. Quantitative data was collected through assessments of children’s literacy, developmental school readiness and learning skills. Three of the early years programmes appeared to support the development of learner profile attributes through inquiry-led learning and play-based approaches, while one site in Singapore was still in a developmental stage of implementing the programme. The study suggested that literacy skills at all sites were fairly developed; that children were performing at levels commensurate with or better in terms of school readiness; and that children were developing learning skills at higher rates than a comparative sample.

Ethics education in the Australian accounting curriculum: a longitudinal study examining barriers and enablers

Abstract: The increasing significance of ethics in the accounting profession is evidenced by the seminal events that witnessed the collapse of major corporations (eg. Enron and WorldCom); regulatory interventions (eg. Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the USA and the CLERP 9 Act in Australia); and calls for increased ethics interventions in the accounting curriculum. This project has two objectives: to investigate the nature of ethics education in the Australian accounting curriculum and how it has changed from 2000 to 2012; and to analyse the barriers to enhancing ethics education by soliciting the opinions of Heads of Department/Schools of Australian universities. Compared with early empirical evidence, universities responded to the call for ethics education with increased levels of ethics intervention, but had failed to enhance the extent of ethics education coverage in the intervening period in which the data were collected. He lack of qualified staff and research opportunities represent major obstacles to the enhancement of ethics education.