Leading theory: Bourdieu and the field of educational leadership. An introduction and overview to this special issue

Bourdieu … makes it possible to explain how the actions of principals are always contextual, since their interests vary with issue, location, time, school mix, composition of staff and so on. This 'identity' perspective points at a different kind of research about principal practice: to understand the game and its logic requires an analysis of the situated everyday rather than abstractions that claim truth in all instances and places. (Thomson 2001a: 14)

International evaluation of current and future requirements for environmental engineering education

The field of environmental engineering is developing as a result of changing environmental requirements. In response, environmental engineering education (E3) needs to ensure that it provides students with the necessary tools to address these challenges. In this paper the current status and future development of E3 is evaluated based on a questionnaire sent to universities and potential employers of E3 graduates. With increasing demands on environmental quality, the complexity of environmental engineering problems to be solved can be expected to increase. To find solutions environmental engineers will need to work in interdisciplinary teams. Based on the questionnaire there was a broad agreement that the best way to prepare students for these future challenges is to provide them with a fundamental education in basic sciences and related engineering fields. Many exciting developments in the environmental engineering profession will be located at the interface between engineering, science, and society. Aspects of all three areas need to be included in E3 and the student needs to be exposed to the tensions associated with linking the three.

Training & Education: The CM Educator

Primary healthcare professionals’ lack of knowledge about complementary medicine is a concern to both patients and government. Educational institutions in the field outline needs and propose various models.

'Please Mr Hay, what are my poss(abilities)?': Legitimation of ability through physical education practices

This paper provides two vignettes that draw on data from projects that interrogate how a student can be positioned by practices within physical education (PE) and directed by the PE teacher in relation to their valued or legitimated ability. Through the use of Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual tools of field, habitus and capital we investigate the complex legitimation processes that shape student poss(abilities) and that are situated in the space of the PE class. The first vignette is from the perspective of a student and draws on data from interviews, a journal, questionnaires and photos of her PE experiences in upper primary and lower secondary school. The second vignette focuses on teacher practices and his constitution of the field of a PE class highlighting the significance of teacher perspectives of 'ability' in informing assessment in senior secondary PE. Using these examples we discuss the symbolic violence that works against each student by positioning them as 'less able' or 'unable' despite their participation in a learning context. We argue that by not attending to the possible abilities of students that could have been recognized, developed and legitimated, and through the misuse of capital assignment by teachers, PE may well be counterproductive to students' ongoing engagement with the subject area and the espoused potential upon which such a subject area justifies itself.

My system of career influences: Responding to challenges facing career education

The present article explores major challenges facing career psychology, specifically within the field of career education. Several issues are identified including the need for more effective links between theory and practice, the movement towards constructivist theories and the related challenges of applying such theories. These issues are explored within the context of the reformulation of career education and through the lens of the constructivist Systems Theory Framework of career development and its applied activity, the My Systems of Career Influences.

The handbook of physical education

What is the current condition of the field of physical education? How has it adapted to the rise of kinesiology, sport and exercise science and human movement studies over the last thirty years? This Handbook provides an authoritative critical overview of the field and identifies future challenges and directions. The Handbook is divided in to six parts: - Perspectives and Paradigms in Physical Education Pedagogy Research; - Cross-disciplinary Contributions to Research on Physical Education; - Learners and Learning in Physical Education; - Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education in Physical Education; - Physical Education Curriculum; - Difference and Diversity in Physical Education. This benchmark work is essential reading for educators and students in the field of physical education.

Business education in operations management

This paper examines trends in the practice of Operations Management and in teaching the field in major Business Schools. Operations Management has been defined as the design and management of transformation processes that create value for society. The operations function is the one function directly involved in that transformation, and hence is directly responsible for the activities that justify the existence of the firm, both economically and as a value-creating organization in society. The top rated schools in Operations Management are the top-rated research-intensive Business Schools in the world. Operations Management is an area that has been undergoing rapid change in response to changes in business practices worldwide. It is at the heart of changes of which the AACSB report Management Education at Risk, August 2002 (p 20), comments of Business Schools in general: ‘With regard to global relevance (of Business Schools), the complex opportunities and challenges that emanate from the world scope of operations, outsourcing, supply chains, partnerships, and financial and consumer markets – all linked in real time through the Internet – are not reflected adequately in curricula and learning approaches.’ Products, and even services, depend increasingly on advanced technology. This is true globally and especially so for countries in South East and East Asia, from which Australian Universities draw a significant number of students. Services operations management has become much more important, while there are both educational and industrial needs in management science or operations research.

The state of the field in UK management research: reflections of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) panel

This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions.

Higher education reform in Kyrgyzstan: the politics of neoliberal agendas in theory and practice

There would seem to be no greater field for observing the effects of neo-liberal reforms in higher education than the former Soviet university, where attempts to legitimize neo-liberal philosophy over Soviet ideology plays out in everyday practices of educational reform. However, ethnographic research about higher education in post-Soviet Central Asia suggests that its “liberalization” is both an ideological myth and a complicated reality. This chapter focuses on how and why neo-liberal agendas have “travelled” to the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, what happens when educators encounter and resist them, and why these spaces of resistance are important starting points for the development of alternative visions of educational possibility in this recently “Third-worlded” society.

Management and management education in a less developed economy: the case of Malawi

Malawi is seen as a society in transition, and as a consequence, it is argued, Malawian managers face particular problems where traditional and Western values intersect. The role of the Polytechnic of Malawi as a provider of management education in this environment is thus problematical. The thesis begins with a description of the Malawian business environment in its geographical, historical, political, cultural, economic and institutional forms, and then goes on to examine the problems practising managers themselves feel they face, and attempts to explain these problems in terms of the environmental factors described, and the environmental changes taking place. It is concluded, from the analysis conducted, that the environmental features discussed interact in a complex way to make Malawian managers averse to exercising initiative and taking decisions. The question of what the Polytechnic can do to help overcome this aversion is addressed. The field research was conducted in Malawi in the seven months January to July, 1980, during which time 207 questionnaires were administered to junior and middle managers working in all sectors of the economy at levels equivalent to Polytechnic graduate entry. In addition, a number of senior managers (both Malawian and expatriate) were interviewed, a case study was conducted in a manufacturing organisation, and a second questionnaire was administered to all business students at the Polytechnic. Extensive use of official statistics was also made where appropriate.