scholarly journals Growing Together: Advancing Networks for Service-learning Actors in Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 01030
Author(s):  
Wai Ching Angela Wong

This paper traces the history of United Board‘s engagement with service-learning through higher education in Asia and reflects on the recent discussion about the relevancy of service-learning activities to today‘s higher education system. Through a close review of the experience shared in recent projects sponsored and organized by United Board in the last five years, service learners from colleges and universities around Asia all testified an process that deepens both cognitive and affective learning, generating in service-learning actors-faculty, students and community members-a connection that could inspire and sustain their vision and passion for life. Despite the seemingly still marginalized status of service learning programs and faculty in most higher education institutions, educators believing in whole person education only find service-learning ever more important in the face of higher education that has been increasingly trapped by the ranking race.

Author(s):  
Jun Li Zhang ◽  
Kimberley Lau Yih Long ◽  
Ma Xiao Yuan

Labour education has been weakened and alienated in higher education. Repositioning labour education is an important part of the deepening reform of colleges and universities as well as the focus of improving the higher education system. Practicing labour education can enhance college students’ labour awareness, improve labour skills and enable college students to obtain a rational understanding of ‘knowledge’ from the practice of ‘action’. This is an important way to realize holistic education. This article puts forward the connotation of ‘labour’ under the background of the new era and updates the traditional cognition of ‘labour’. It proposes effective ways for colleges and universities to realize labour education according to the background of the era and the labour demand of employers; so as to break the shortcomings of labour education in colleges and universities as well as improve the quality of whole-person education to better meet the needs of the job market.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-505
Author(s):  
David S. Busch

In the early 1960s, Peace Corps staff turned to American colleges and universities to prepare young Americans for volunteer service abroad. In doing so, the agency applied the university's modernist conceptions of citizenship education to volunteer training. The training staff and volunteers quickly discovered, however, that prevailing methods of education in the university were ineffective for community-development work abroad. As a result, the agency evolved its own pedagogical practices and helped shape early ideas of service learning in American higher education. The Peace Corps staff and supporters nonetheless maintained the assumptions of development and modernist citizenship, setting limits on the broader visions of education emerging out of international volunteerism in the 1960s. The history of the Peace Corps training in the 1960s and the agency's efforts to rethink training approaches offer a window onto the underlying tensions of citizenship education in the modern university.


Author(s):  
Manish Rohatgi

History of Indian education dates back to over 5,000 years. Education in the Vedic and Muslim periods was found to be based on religion while the Buddhist period gave world-class universities. In the British period, education oscillated between being a central subject and a provincial subject. The Constitution of India placed education as a state subject, which was later transferred to the Concurrent List in 1976. But due to lack of coordination between the centre and state governments, the higher education system is found to be in a critical state. Further, there is significant disparity in funds allocation to central and state universities by the central regulator, UGC, which further worsens the situation. The current system can work, if the centre makes the law with a broader view and leaves the states with enough power to customise it. There is need to establish State Education Councils in every state to better assess the need of state universities and recommend/allocate the funds accordingly.


Author(s):  
Masilonyane Mokhele ◽  
Nicholas Pinfold

South Africa faces a multitude of social, economic and environmental challenges, which require well-considered planning efforts. However, the efficacy of the built environment professions to adequately plan for the current and future populations can to some extent be questioned. Factors that are arguably responsible for the failure of the professions to achieve the desired outcomes include the following: (1) the inability of professionals to comprehensively analyse community problems and (2) although the various professions might work on the same issues, they largely fail to transcend disciplinary boundaries. This state of affairs can in part be linked to the role of higher education, which is in a good position to equip future professionals with the skills required for the analysis of diverse societal problems. In spite of the importance of education and training, there is a paucity of literature that explore ways in which the South African higher education sector instils transdisciplinary thinking and, accordingly, imparts the requisite soft skills to students. Using the case study of Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, the aim of this article was to present efforts that are pursued towards instilling transdisciplinarity in students. The efforts revolve around community service-learning pedagogy, which grants students a platform to work in close collaboration with communities. In the process, students and community members develop an in-depth understanding of the community’s problems and how they could be collectively resolved.


Author(s):  
Maria Northcote

The field of online learning, like many other technological innovations, has not burgeoned without controversy. Despite the debates about the role and value of online learning, it has continued to grow in many sectors, especially in higher education. Alongside the growth of online learning, discussions about its benefits and limitations have also flourished, and many studies have investigated the quality and integrity of online courses. This chapter offers an investigation of some of the history of online learning, concluding with a collection of practical recommendations and suggestions for future research directions to guide institutions embarking on online learning programs.


Author(s):  
Brendan Cantwell

This chapter provides a detailed and extensive assessment of the United States of America’s (USA) high participation systems (HPS) of higher education. It considers the history of higher education, system development, and the present condition of higher education in the country. The USA was the first HPS and the American system remains globally influential. Higher education in the USA is a massive enterprise, defined by both excellent and dubious providers, broad inclusion, and steep inequality. The chapter further examines higher education in the USA in light of the seventeen HPS propositions. Perhaps more so than any other system, the American HPS conforms to the propositions. Notably, higher education in the USA is both more diverse horizontally, and stratified vertically, than most other HPS.


Author(s):  
Vincent Carpentier

This chapter explores the history of higher education in Europe by considering three intersected dimensions: the global, national, and local spaces or geography of higher education; the contours of the higher education system regarding access, participation, and institutional differentiation; and the cultural, political, social, and economic rationales driving its expansion. Four historical periods are considered: the emergence of the medieval universities and their spread in the feudal order; the demands posed to universities by nation-states and the Enlightenment during the early modern period; the impact of the political and industrial revolutions; and the crisis of mass higher education since 1918. Overall, articulation among the rationales, shapes, and spaces of higher education has changed periodically across history.


Author(s):  
V.S. Akimova ◽  
◽  
S.S. Atlasova ◽  
K.E. Ershova

Japan is a developing country but is getting diffi cult to hold in leadership 21st century. The domestic lack of raw materials fosters the government to count on competitive power of science and the higher education system. Japanese system of higher education must become demanded in the world. The history of Hokkaido University, the oldest institution in the country and is being modernized at present, is reviewed. It is noted that various mid-term and long-term measures have been developed and implemented. The university partakes in diff erent activities to raise the university international rating.


Author(s):  
Fatma Abdelkhalek ◽  
Ray Langsten

Following the 1952 revolution, the Egyptian higher education system grew rapidly, with post-secondary institutes complementing the expanding university system. Private post-secondary institutes were permitted from 1970; in the early 1990s financial constraints and pressures for cost recovery prompted legislation allowing private universities. In the face of expansion, diversification, and partial privatization, concerns have arisen about equity in higher education opportunities. The 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt is used to examine correlates of higher education track placement and of sector placement within tracks.


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