Uncertainty,story-telling and transformative learning: An instructor’s experience of TEFI’s Walking Workshop in Nepal

ABSTRACT

This article recounts three stories from TEFI’s walking workshop in Nepal: the construction of a road through what was once a trekking path; a dance-floor encounter at a Himalayan party; and the arrival of one participant, fatigued by jet lag and disoriented by the new surroundings. These stories of confusion, discomfort and fear are linked by one common theme: the potential of uncertainty to foster deep reflection and nuanced conclusions. The premise that uncertainty is to be valued and even cultivated has been explored in educational theory, spiritual traditions, and research on transformative learning. These sources affirm the role of uncertainty in the process of knowledge creation. However, accepting this role can be challenging for educators because it requires they assume a new identity, one which they may perceive as being at odds with their status as “teacher” the identity of learner. One way for the educator to address this challenge may be through recounting their own stories of uncertainty. Stories of being immersed in unfamiliar situations that challenge, confuse and even frighten – stories, in other words of being a tourist – can foster reflection on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level, engaging the “whole” person, and thus initiating the educator/learner’s transformative journey.     

Lies,damned lies and statistics: the accuracy of survey responses

That survey research is error prone is not a new idea and different varieties of non-sampling error have been investigated in the literature as well as consideration being given in many statistics textbooks to the issue of sampling error. The paper here considers research upon corporate environmental reporting. It compares information provided by corporate environmental reports with information that survey respondents claim their organization’s environmental report contains. This enables the accuracy of the claims to be assessed. Consideration is given to two different industries the Water industry and the Energy industry. Errors due to inaccurate reporting by survey respondents are shown to be relatively infrequent and respondents appear just about as likely to claim they report information that they do not, in fact, report as to fail to indicate that they report information that is, in fact, actually reported.     

对科学发展观指导下的高校思想政治教育工作的探讨

科学发展观是推进我国经济社会全面发展的指导思想,也是加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的指导方针。本文通过分析高校思想政治教育存在的普遍问题,提出了在科学发展观指导下的思想政治教育工作的新思路,新途径。     

关于开展航海职业教育扶贫工作的探讨

建设新农村的核心环节是提高农民收入。对贫困地区进行扶贫是党和政府解决贫困地区农民问题的重要手段之一,其中心工作是提高农民收入。通过开展航海职业教育扶贫工作可以有效地帮助转移农村富余劳动力,提高农民综合素质,增加农民收入,增强农民自身的造血功能,彻底改变贫穷的面貌;同时也有利于促进航运业和航海职业教育的发展。开展航海职业教育扶贫工作是一个多方合作共赢的过程。     

Changing composition of human capital The Czech Republic,Hungary and Poland1

We show that business education/occupations have expanded and that technical education/occupations have contracted in the Czech Republic and Poland since 1990. We interpret these changes as an adjustment necessary for their transition to a market economy. We do not find the same pattern in Hungary, which we attribute to the earlier timing of its transition. We construct an aggregate model in which labour reallocates in response to changing demand structure. When calibrated with the Czech and Polish data, the model generates a large movement of workers with technical education and experience into business occupations in the early 1990s. The discounted sum of output loss due to the gap between the demand structure and the composition of existing human capital amounts to between 8 and 40 percent of 1990 GDP.     

Software for Learning and for Doing Statistics

The community of statisticians and statistics educators should take responsibility for the evaluation and improvement of software quality from the perspective of education. The paper will develop a perspective, an ideal system of requirements to critically evaluate existing software and to produce future software more adequate both for learning and doing statistics in introductory courses. Different kinds of tools and microworlds are needed. After discussing general requirements for such programs, a prototypical ideal software system will be presented in detail. It will be illustrated how such a system could be used to construct learning environments and to support elementary data analysis with exploratory working style.     

高职《商品学》课程教学改革探索

在高职教学中,课程教学是教学活动的基础,改革传统的课程体系和教学方法,是体现高职教学特点和实现专业人才培养目标的关键。本文通过对连锁经营管理专业中《商品学》课程教学改革的研究与实践,构建了课程的培养目标和课程体系,提出了课程教学组织实施和考试模式改革的具体办法。     

Introducing Time‐to‐Educate in a Job‐Search Model

Transition patterns from school to work differ considerably across OECD countries. Some countries exhibit high youth unemployment rates, which can be considered an indicator of the difficulty facing young people trying to integrate into the labour market. At the same time, education is a time‐consuming process, and enrolment and dropout decisions depend on expected duration of studies as well as on job prospects with and without completed degrees. One way to model entry into the labour market is by means of job‐search models, where the job arrival hazard is a key parameter in capturing the ease or difficulty in finding a job. Standard models of job search and education assume that skills can be upgraded instantaneously (and mostly in the form of on‐the‐job training) at a fixed cost. This paper models education as a time‐consuming process, a concept which we call time‐to‐educate, during which an individual faces the trade‐off between continuing education and taking up a job.     

全面理解人力资本的经济价值——教育经济学与培训经济学的融合

教育经济学不应只是正规学校教育的经济学,在终身学习的理念下,正规学校教育的结束并不意味着学习步伐的停滞和人力资本投资的终结。教育经济学未来拓展的路径,除了理论基础上的"外延式"发展外,还可以在原有的人力资本理论框架内走一条"内涵式"发展的道路,即强调综合考察人力资本投资的多种途径,特别是教育和培训这两种最主要的人力资本投资形式,让教育经济学走出正规学校教育经济学的固有领地,团结在人力资本理论的名义下,与培训经济学融合,走向人力资源开发研究的广阔天地,惟其如此,才能全面、深入地研究人力资本的经济价值及其实现机制。