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In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

How can we see education research as a coherent body of inquiry? The naturally occurring diversity of epistemologies and methods give education research the appearance of discord. In this paper, we propose that all of these various methods, questions, and interpretive frameworks of education research share a common commitment to the idea that "education is design for learning." We begin with a discussion of how recent efforts at the global and national policy levels have sought to position scientific inquiry as the premiere version of education research based on the model of social sciences. We then discuss the role of practical inquiry as a necessary complement to both receive and generate positivist knowledge. The iteration between scientific and practical inquiry describes a path for how scientific and practical work can be naturally linked in an iterative inquiry for improving education processes and outcomes. However, without a critical perspective, this iterative process can become detached from valued social concerns and become an exercise in optimization, rather than improvement. We propose that critical inquiry should be systemically integrated into the design process for researchers and educators to reflect on both the intentions and consequences of the scientific-practical cycle. We then describe how integrating these approaches can show the way toward to a coherent model of education research.

The aim of the paper is to review scholarly attempts to define or explain vocational education and training and to develop a theoretical model to analyse national definitions or conceptions of VET [vocational education and training] and how they have changed over time. VET takes many forms and is, perhaps, the least unitary of education sectors. Based on a literature review of previous attempts to characterise VET, the paper suggests using a multi-perspective framework which combines: (a) an epistemological and pedagogical perspective; (b) a system and institutional perspective; and (c) a socioeconomic and labour market perspective to analyse VET. These perspectives can help to identify appropriate learning approaches, institutional solutions and forms of cooperation to work towards. In Volume 2 of this series, the approach is empirically tested and the different understandings of VET in 30 European countries are illustrated. [This research paper is the first in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project, "The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18)." The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH. For Volume 2, see ED586252. For Volume 3, see ED586256.]

The purpose here is to translate the Fifth Force Psychologies movement through an integral (Wilberian) lens. One of the most significant impacts of doing this comes from the integral initiative, which has led to Ken Wilber arguing "Psychology is dead." Concomitantly, his view is that the "integral approach" is its replacement. This move characterizes Wilber's unique integral philosophy in a deconstructionist postmodern style of Nietzsche's "God is dead." Yet, Wilber, unlike Nietzsche, and more like Rank, reconstructs a post-postmodern vision of a new critical analysis and critical theory. In the author's view, the best of Wilberian thought and critique is his social politics of knowledge (re: his dealing with the Four Forces). It is what makes a foundational postmodern critical (conflict) theory of Integral (at least, in the Wilberian view, of which the author finds most compelling and useful to the problems of the 21st century overall--that is, ideological conflict, violence, fear, terror, wars, etc.). The very understanding of "psychology" and the field of Psychology is put into question by Wilber's challenge, just as God was more fully put into question by more and more people after Nietzsche. This technical paper puts Psychology into question, not for the first time, but in a way the author thinks is truly a first 21st century vision and profound in its potential as critique. The author offers nine reasons for naming and reclaiming "Integral-Transpersonal" as the Fourth Force of Psychology. (Contains 44 footnotes.) [This paper was published by the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.]

The French Government has had a paradoxical relationship with globalization. Globalization is perceived as both a threat to react against and a cradle for new policy ideas. French policymakers have a love-hate relationship with the European higher education reforms that started in the 1990s, a mixed sentiment that French singer Serge Gainsbourg spoke of in his popular song, "Je t'aime moi non plus". At the outset, most of higher education reforms, such as the Bologna declaration, were framed as a way to build Europe and fight against international competition. Yet, the mode of governance of these reforms mirrored the one recommended by international organizations and led to the precise outcome criticized in globalization, i.e. greater competition. This paper explores the relationship between international, European and domestic discourses and modes of governance. It uses insights from the literature on policy transfer to investigate such relationship and questions the sustainability of such ambivalent discourse. The French government should concentrate on the policy it started developing from 2007 consisting in opening French higher education to globalization. Such global openness requires a change in the academic culture that could be triggered by a reform of academic training. (Contains 3 tables, 1 footnote and 8 notes.)

In this paper, the author describes an ethnographic study of a graduate-level practicum at a large Midwestern university in order to examine one of the ways urban planners develop expertise. The graduate students in the practicum were guided in the production of a site plan for a developing area by a planner with 34 years of planning experience. In the study, the author used epistemic network analysis to examine the presentation feedback sessions in order to explore emergent relationships between the teacher's planning expertise and the students' expertise. These results have the potential to influence the future design of professional practicum environments as well as the broader landscape of education. (Contains 3 tables and 12 figures.)

This paper examines how middle school students developed understanding of transformational geometry through design activities in Escher's World, a computationally rich design experiment explicitly modeled on an architectural design studio. Escher's World was based on the theory of pedagogical praxis (Shaffer, 2004a), which suggests that preserving linkages between epistemology and pedagogy is a critical step in developing computational learning environments based on professional practices such as architectural design. Here, I examine this theory by analyzing the pedagogical processes at work in Escher's World, focusing on three precursors to the development of mathematical understanding: (a) enactment of participant frameworks from the design studio, (b) the autoexpressive properties of the computational tool being used, and (c) the expression of students' interests through design activities. I take a mesogenetic approach to this analysis of learning, using accounts of students' design work based on extensive field notes to examine how these precursors to mathematical understanding interacted over extended design activities. I present a case study of the work of one student in Escher's World and use quantitative analysis to help demonstrate theoretical saturation for the grounded theory I develop. I conclude by discussing implications of and for the theory of pedagogical praxis: that developers of learning environments based on design activities may need to pay careful attention to linkages between the epistemology and practices of design in creating innovative learning environments, and that adapting existing practices from the design studio may be one particularly effective approach to that challenge. Geometry questions are appended. (Contains 15 figures, 4 tables, and 8 footnotes.) [The research reported in this paper was also supported by the LEGO Corporation, the MIT Media Laboratory Things That Think Consortium, and a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship.]

A discussion of the papers, "Representation, Vision and Visualization: Cognitive Functions in Mathematical Thinking. Basic Issues for Learning" (Raymond Duval) and "On the Development of Human Representational Competence from an Evolutionary Point of View: From Episodic to Virtual Culture" (James J. Kaput), is presented. Kaput points to the accelerating emergence of increasingly virtual worlds with which and through which humans interact. Duval emphasizes that thoughtful, didactic attention must be given to helping students employ any register of representation powerfully and flexibly, and that deep mathematics emerges from coordinating specific register-centered activities. This paper suggests that it would be interesting for Duval to analyze Kaput's virtual worlds in terms of registers of representations and didactical strategies, and for Kaput to analyze Duval's didactics in terms of virtual culture. (Contains 10 references.) (DDR)

In his recent bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman argues that countries like the United States can no longer compete in the global economy on the basis of making and selling commodities. Their competitive edge increasingly comes from how well they produce products, services, and technologies that are new . . . special . . . non-standard--and thus not easily produced across the globe by competitors. In this paper, we look at the educational implications of this crisis--implications that are both profound and alarming. We argue that young people in the United States today are being prepared for "commodity jobs" in a world that will, very soon, only reward people who can do innovative work and punish those who can't. The problem is being exacerbated by a new equity gap, in which some students have access at home to the technologies they need to prepare for life in a digital world, but many do not--a problem made worse by current educational policies that focus on giving students standardized skills for standardized tests rather than preparation for creative thinking and innovative work. We argue that the time to tinker with schools, as we have done for decades, is over, and that the change we need is neither liberal nor conservative. We make the case here that the same technologies that are creating this crisis provide a potential solution, and we propose the concept of epistemic games as one way to solve this looming crisis of learning. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this publication ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) has taken the opportunity to bring together two distinct but related reports. Part 1 examines the language of European quality assurance. It grew out of the debates and discussions at an ENQA workshop in Warwick in June 2006. The success of the workshop highlighted the support needed by all agencies as they deal with the linguistic challenges involved in creating a European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Part 2 contains the findings of the second Quality Convergence Study (QCS II). The first Quality Convergence Study (QCS) examined why national quality assurance systems operate in different, yet commonly identifiable, ways in particular national contexts. Building on this, QCSII has sought to go beyond the technical language of quality assurance and provide an opportunity for agencies to reflect on the values that underpin their quality assurance systems. Both of these reports aim to contribute to promoting understanding of the multiple layers of meaning which become apparent when we attempt to understand quality assurance across borders, and across languages. They do not offer a conclusion, but a point of departure for further research and reflection. Individual parts contain footnotes and appendices.

This ethnographic study explores the underlying structure of the design practices in the Oxford Studio, a design studio course taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture. The study describes elements of the practices in the Oxford Studio and then analyzes the connections among these elements at three levels: (a) surface structure, (b) pedagogy, and (c) epistemology. This analysis suggests spatial organization and scheduling of the Oxford Studio made possible particular pedagogical tools, such as extended desk crits, ongoing cyclical projects, and guest reviews. These pedagogical tools, in turn, both depended on and fostered students' ability to develop expressive ideas about architecture. The Oxford Studio was thus an integrated system of practice built on a foundation of expressive activity. An understanding of how this framework was articulated in the Oxford Studio may be of use in the development of other learning environments using the design studio as a model. (Contains 13 figures.) [The research reported in this paper was supported in part by LEGO Corporation, the Things That Think Consortium at the MIT Media Laboratory, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Foundation for Ethics and Technology, and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.]

These narrative accounts follow a group of young adults searching for meaning during the ten years after their college graduation, and offer insights into how higher education might create conditions for this search to occur during college. This longitudinal study is based on interviews with 39 participants at various points during their undergraduate, graduate, and/or early working years for a 13-year period beginning in 1986 when they entered college. All participants were traditional-age students attending state institutions with a liberal arts focus. The primary focus of the college phase of the study was on epistemology, or students' assumptions about the limits, certainty, and criteria for knowing. Phase 2 of the research explored development after college. Sections of the paper examine the implications for educational practice of holistic education and the developmental dimensions of the search for meaning. Interview data inform discussions of complexities encountered in the search for meaning; realization of the need to search for meaning; construction of internal authority and meaning; and solidifying internal meaning-making. Interview responses were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. A final section discusses the creation of educational contexts for internal meaning-making. (Contains 21 references.) (CH)

This paper reports on the analysis of concept maps of the nature of science constructed by preservice secondary science teachers during a semester-long reflective process. During the 16-week fall semester of 1996, 17 students were enrolled in a 5-credit course. After analyzing all students' concept maps, students were classified as either good mappers or poor mappers. Two students were selected to investigate conceptual development and change from their initial concept maps to their final reflection paper. These case studies reveal some issues that need to be sorted out, including: (1) students did not revise their concept maps over the semester; (2) the issue of the value of science remained unsettled; (3) students focus more on the instability of scientific knowledge rather than on its stability; and (4) few students integrate the scientific assumptions discussed in class into their concept maps or papers. These findings have the potential to inform understanding of how to prepare science teachers. Contains 19 references. (DDR)

This paper explores the nature and structure of scientific models by taking the position that representations are not models themselves. Representations of models are essential tools for communicating and conversing about the scientific models underlying them. A scientific model is considered to be a set of ideas that describe a natural process. A scientific model conceived in this way can be mentally run, given certain constraints, to explain or predict natural phenomena. It is in this way that scientific models are both desirable products of scientific research and useful as guides to future research. A discussion of some examples of scientific models and how they are used in scientific inquiry and instruction is provided. (DDR)

A study explored the ways that front-line community development workers across Canada gained information needed to work with women participants in community economic development initiatives. Data were gathered through focus groups, a preliminary study with 15 key informants employed in community development organizations, and structured telephone interviews. One theme that emerged from the interview data was the existence of a large number of differing knowledge classes related to social situations, the legitimization of knowledge, and the practice of community development. Collisions among these different perspectives appear to create a "discord of knowing." The study also found that while gender affects an individual's experience and participation within a community setting, it cannot be considered in isolation from class, ethnicity, geography, disability, and other social factors. Drawing on anecdotal illustrations from the data, the study found that workers construct a knowledge set derived from a synthesis of formal and informal learning sources and apply the resulting perspective in development work. In the process, collisions occur and boundaries are challenged among and within academic, government, business, and practice orientations. The study concluded that agreement is emerging among practitioners about what is needed for successful development outcomes, but that their insights are not necessarily recognized as legitimate, especially by funding agencies. Changing such structural attitudes toward the value of informal local knowledge is vital for the success of development efforts. (Contains 31 references.) (KC)

This Issue Paper includes two papers: (1) "What Can Research on Teacher Thinking Contribute to Teacher Preparation? A Second Opinion," by Robert E. Floden and Hans Gerhard Klinzing, and (2) "Taking Account of the Distinction between Knowing and Thinking in Teaching," by Magdalene Lampert and Christopher Clark. Both sets of authors are working to discern the ways in which research can contribute to practice and improvements in practice. The Floden/Klinzing paper reviews literature on this topic, taking issue in particular with earlier work by Lampert and Clark. The Lampert/Clark paper is less a rebuttal to Floden and Klinzing than an effort to clarify and further develop their own ideas. The content of these papers should help readers in a variety of contexts better understand the relationship between research and teaching. (Author/JD)

This study examined the moral values embedded in the instruction and practice of higher education, focusing on instruction within three disciplines at a mid-sized residential university in the Pacific Northwest over the course of three semesters. Through classroom observations and transcriptions of tapes of classroom interaction in 46 undergraduate classes, the study examined faculty discussions of student evaluation and grading, using Rokeach's (1973) typology of values. Three vignettes from the classroom transcriptions are provided to show that the relationship between the faculty and students is less important than their respective relationships to the content. These models attempt to show that according to the realist discourse, knowledge/power originates from the discipline's content and acts on both the faculty and the student. The script employed by faculty in the hard sciences and mathematics conveyed a message that affirmed obedience to the knowledge paradigm of the discipline, while the script employed by faculty in the social sciences and humanities emphasized the interpretation of knowledge as a human responsibility. (Contains 63 references.) (MDM)

This case study explores the ways in which a beginning elementary classroom teacher gains a foothold in teaching science. The analysis includes episodes from the teacher's first three years of teaching while participating in an educational research project that investigated an inquiry-based approach to teacher professional development. The particulars of the teacher's experiences learning scientific content and practices are examined as well as the initial struggles to bring students' ideas into contact with standard scientific knowledge and ways of knowing. (Contains 61 references.) (DDR)

Recent advances in artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences have made it possible to develop successful intelligent computer-aided instructional systems for technical and scientific training. In addition, computer-aided design (CAD) environments that support the rapid development of such computer-based instruction have also been recently developed. The researchers tailored a particular CAD system for instruction, called the Instructional Design Environment (IDE), for use in vocational training. This project brought together a consulting team that included a successful instructor in business education, cognitive scientists, workers in teacher education, and the IDE development team. The main goals of the project were to develop an instructional design methodology that teaches software use in the context of solving realistic problems and to extend the IDE to support this methodology, which is grounded in cognitive science research and is called example-based minimalist design (EBMD). It was found that the use of IDE has several side effects: (1) IDE encourages a greater depth of analysis and planning; (2) the semiformal representation language used in IDE shapes the design process and the manner in which the designer thinks about instruction; (3) the analyses and specifications developed in IDE provide an explicit design rationale for each product; and (4) designs and design rationales developed in IDE can be easily modified and reused thus standardizing instructional development and promoting dissemination of successful design methodologies. (Contains 11 references.) (ALF)