Seminar

Many academic staff and students will join the 60th anniversary conference of the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) in Vancouver, Canada, 6-10 March 2016. This will be a special one for HKU, since Mark Bray is the President-Elect and an HKU team of students led by Nutsa Kobakhidze has a strong role in organizational matters.

The Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) is organising a pre-meeting to provide some information on:

a)      the CIES (history, mode of operation),
b)      the conference (scale, organization),
c)      Vancouver (including tourist opportunities),
d)      each other (both students and academic staff).

In addition, the session will include some tips for successful presentations and networking.

Date: Monday 22 February
Time: 12.45-14.00
Place: Runme Shaw 202

We look forward to seeing you there.

By Tedros Sium Mengesha

Chair: Mark Bray

Contemporary African education systems have their roots in colonial eras. Though it would be naïve to say that colonialism had no merits at all, colonial education in Africa was characterised by glaring injustice and inequalities. After independence, the various liberation movements proclaimed top priority to reconstructing education to meet the needs and realities of African societies. Yet, the realities remain far from the pioneering ambitions.

Focusing on education in Eritrea, this seminar will emphasise issues of inequality and social justice. Eritrea was an Italian colony between 1889 and 1941, was under British military administration for a decade, and merged with Ethiopia in 1952. The federation of Eritrea with Ethiopia was imposed against the wish of many Eritreans, and a war of liberation from Ethiopia led to Independence in 1993.

Like many other African nations which emerged from liberation wars, post-colonial Eritrea is still building an education system with a vision for reconstruction and development. Drawing on personal experiences and on empirical research for his PhD studies, Tedros Sium will highlight the features of the education system, key policy issues, and some of the constraints.

Tedros Sium Mengesha is a PhD student from Eritrea in the HKU Faculty of Education. His own schooling was organised in the bushes of armed struggle by Eritrean freedom fighters. Following Independence, he continued his education both locally and in the UK for Bachelor’s and MEd degrees. Immediately before coming to HKU, he was Director of the Human Resources Development Division in the Ministry of Education.

Date: Tuesday 12 January 2016

Time: 12.45 – 14.00

Venue: Room 202 Runme Shaw Building

All are welcome!

Venue: Meng Wah Complex Room 820

(inside the Faculty of Education Library, 8^th Floor)

Wednesday Dec. 16, 2015

1:15 pm – Welcoming word from Prof. Mark Bray and Dr. Anatoly Oleksiyenko

1:30 pm – 2:15 pm – Dr. Li Jun

2:15 pm – 3:00 pm – Dr. Shen Wenqin

3:00 pm – 3:45 pm – Dr. Zha Qiang

4:00 pm – 4:45 pm – Dr. Li Aisi

4:45 pm – 5:30 pm – Dr. Ma Jinyuan

5:30 pm – 6:15 pm – Dr. Zhen Gaoming

Thursday Dec. 17, 2015

9:30 am – 10:15 am – Dr. Mark Johnson (on Skype)

10:15 am – 11:00 am – Dr. Igor Chirikov

11:00 am – 11:45 pm – Dr. Alex Kuraev

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm – Lunch at the Senior Commons Room

1:45 pm – 2:30 pm – Dr. Mikhail Lisyutkin

2:30 pm – 3:15 pm – Dr. Sergei Malinovskyi

3:15 pm – 4:00 pm – Dr. Anatoly Oleksiyenko

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm – Concluding remarks from Editors on a Follow-Up Plan

In many parts of the world, students commonly attend and pay for private tutoring classes. Sometimes these extra classes are for remedial purposes, giving students additional help on content covered in mainstream school. Other times students use private tutoring to prepare for school examinations.

The phenomenon of private tutoring is diverse around the world, and researchers commonly use the term “Shadow Education” to describe it. Tutoring is considered a shadow because it often mimics the curriculum of regular schooling – as the content of the curriculum changes in regular schooling, so it changes in the shadow; and as the regular school system expands or contracts, so does the shadow system.

Professor Bray has written extensively on shadow education. His latest book, co-edited with Ora Kwo and Boris Jokić, is entitled Researching private supplementary tutoring: methodological lessons from diverse cultures.

Click here to listen to Mark Bray who speaks about researching shadow education and tips for researchers in this field.

By                 Dr Kirsten Locke
                    Faculty of Education and Social Work
                    The University of Auckland

In this seminar Kirsten Locke will discuss a comparative study she is undertaking in Denmark and New Zealand. The research explores the question of why there are significantly fewer female than male professors in these two countries. Both countries have pursued a project of reforming universities. Accompanying these reforms is a masculinity discourse that conceptualises ‘leaders’ as heroic change agents, with the determination, decisiveness and strategic vision to re-shape the institution in light of demands from external stakeholders. At the same time, the universities seek to address the embarrassingly low numbers of women in senior positions using strategies that are clearly marked by various versions of femininity that contradict the masculinity discourse. Initial findings from the Danish phase of the study will be presented. Themes that emerged in this phase include perceptions of leadership, the effects of neoliberal forms of university governance, and the complex challenges women face at different points of their university careers. The second phase of the study will involve senior academic woman at the eight New Zealand universities over February and March 2016. Possible directions for the New Zealand phase of research will be discussed with the audience in the context of women’s experiences in other settings such as Hong Kong.

Date: November 26, 2015 (Thursday)
Time: 1:15 – 3:00pm
Venue: Room 202, Runme Shaw Building, HKU
Discussants: Dr Sarah Aiston & Prof. Nicholas Burbules
Chair: Dr Liz Jackson

Kirsten Locke is a Lecturer in the School of Critical Studies and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests include philosophical enquiries into gendered academic career trajectories.

Professor Nicholas C. Burbules
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

November 25, 2015 (Wednesday)
12:45 – 14:00
Room 205, Runme Shaw Building, HKU
Discussant: Dr Kirsten Locke
Chair: Professor Mark Bray

The starting point of this discussion is to challenge the supposed epistemological gulf between these methodologies, as if we have to make a fundamental choice between them.

The pursuit of empirical understanding of the social world benefits from multiple theoretical and methodological approaches, each of which reveals something that others lack; and each of which lacks something that needs supplementing from the others.

In a time of emphasis on “big data” and “analytics,” this point needs to be revisited – not out of hostility to these powerful methods, but in order to avoid the temptation toward monofocal vision. We have two eyes for a reason, and bifocal vision gives us greater depth perception and a better view of context. This is a useful principle for educational research as well.

Nicholas C. Burbules is the Gutgsell Professor in the Department of Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign., and the Education Director for the National Center on Professional and Research Ethics. His primary research areas are philosophy of education; teaching through dialogue; and technology and education.

His most recent books are Showing and Doing: Wittgenstein as a Pedagogical Philosopher, coauthored with Michael Peters and Paul Smeyers (2010, Paradigm Press) and Feminisms and Educational Research, coauthored with Wendy Kohli (2012, Rowman and Littlefield). He co-edited, with Paul Smeyers, David Bridges, and Morwenna Griffiths, the International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research (Springer, 2015).

Kirsten Locke is a Lecturer in the School of Critical Studies and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests include philosophical enquiries into gendered academic career trajectories.