Das Jahrbuch diskutiert das spannungsreiche Verhältnis zwischen Prozessen der Säkularisierung in Gesellschaft und Politik einerseits, von Religion und Religiosität andererseits in vergleichender Perspektive. Die aktuelle Krise der westlichen Wohlfahrtsstaaten, die christliche Rhetorik New Labours, love parade und Kommunitarismus à la USA rücken die religiösen Grundlagen von Solidarität und Gemeinsinn, aber auch alter und neuer Formen der Ausgrenzung wieder ins Blickfeld.
Die chronischen Schwierigkeiten der amerikanischen Schulpolitik, das amerikanische Schulsystem dem Leistungsniveau anderer entwickelter Industriegesellschaften anzugleichen, werden in diesem Beitrag als Ausdruck von tiefer liegenden Konflikten in der amerikanischen politischen Kultur interpretiert. Die These ist, daß der die amerikanische politische Kultur kennzeichnende Widerspruch zwischen den Forderungen nach Freiheit des Individuums und den Forderungen nach Gleichheit der Sozialchancen eine wichtige Ursache für die zu beobachtende Polarisierung und Selbstblockierung der Schulreform zwischen Schulwahlfreiheit und Chancengleicheit, zwischen Bildungsindividualismus und staatlichem Finanzausgleich ist. Die Aussichten, zu tiefgreifenden Verbesserungen der Schulausbildung zu kommen, dürften somit auch von der Fähigkeit der amerikanischen Politik abhängen, die gerade im letzten Jahrzent zugespitzte Polarisierung der Schulreformer in feindliche ideologische Lager zu überwinden. (DIPF/Text übernommen) ; The United States' persistent difficulties to revitalize public education and implement "world standards" are interpreted in the context of deep-seated conflicts in the American political culture. The paper argues that the conflict between individual liberty and equality, characteristic as it is for American political culture, is at the bottom of the polarization and self-obstruction of American school reform between the imperatives of "choice" and "equality", "excellence" and "equity". The prospects for profound change would, so it seems, depend on the ability of American educators and politicians, to overcome the polarization and provide a rationale for public education capable of integrating the opposing, but in a certain sense complementary demands of excellence and equity.
The controversy around Weber's theory of bureaucracy that occupied post-war American organization theorists serves as a backdrop to consider differences in the institutional and cultural environments of American and continental European, notably German, organizations. I suggest that formal organizations in the United States emerged under institutional and cultural conditions sufficiently different from those Weber witnessed as to account for the differences in the European and American organizational discourses. European institutional-cultural conditions favored a centralized, hierarchical, obedience-based organizational form with little uncertainty tolerance emphasizing loyalty. In the US, by contrast, the primacy of the large business organization which operated in volatile markets under the cultural imperative of equality favored flatter, less hierarchical, and more nearly decomposable organizations in which compliance was based on a temporary contract. Indifference vis-à-vis the national and cultural particulars of formal organizations may have led early organization research to prematurely close off a potentially fruitful line of inquiry in the field of comparative organization.
In: Administrative science quarterly: ASQ ; dedicated to advancing the understanding of administration through empirical investigation and theoretical analysis, Band 34, Heft 2, S. 338-341
Dear Dr. Schleicher,We write to you in your capacity as OECD's director of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). Now in its 13th year, PISA is known around the world as an instrument to rank OECD and non-OECD countries (60+ at last count) according to a measure of academic achievement of 15 year old students in mathematics, science, and reading. Administered every three years, PISA results are anxiously awaited by governments, education ministers, and the editorial boards of newspapers, and are cited authoritatively in countless policy reports. They have begun to deeply influence educational practices in many countries. As a result of PISA, countries are overhauling their education systems in the hopes of improving their rankings. Lack of progress on PISA has led to declarations of crisis and "PISA shock" in many countries, followed by calls for resignations, and far-reaching reforms according to PISA precepts.
This open access book focuses on the role of civil society in the creation, dissemination, and interpretation of knowledge in geographical contexts. It offers original, interdisciplinary and counterintuitive perspectives on civil society. The book includes reflections on civil and uncivil society, the role of civil society as a change agent, and on civil society perspectives of undone science. Conceptual approaches go beyond the tripartite division of public, private and civic sectors to propose new frameworks of civic networks and philanthropic fields, which take an inclusive view of the connectivity of civic agency across sectors. This includes relational analyses of epistemic power in civic knowledge networks as well as of regional giving and philanthropy. The original empirical case studies examine traditional forms of civic engagement, such as the German landwomen's associations, as well as novel types of organizations, such as giving circles and time banks in their geographical context. The book also offers insider reflections on doing civil society, such as the cases of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, epistemic activism in the United States, and the #FeesMustFall movement in South Africa.
countries. It views educational institutions as a key producer of social cohesion by supplying the shared beliefs that generate shared cultural meanings. To most institutionalists, education (schools, colleges, universities, but also home schooling, religious, and informal education) stands out as one of only a handful of key social institutions next to the family, the economy, religion, science, and government. Higher education takes its place in this nexus of institutions, as it globally expands in size and grows in strategic importance.
During the past decade "accountability" has emerged as the master rationale for education reform. Given its ubiquity and central role in current policy and practice, it is almost possible to forget that even 15 years ago the term was hardly ever used and accountability, in today's sense, was virtually a nonissue. That is surprising given the certainty with which advocates claim accountability as the needle's eye through which the camel of public education reform must pass. How has this change come to pass? How has accountability emerged as the master rationale for contemporary education reform? How has it become the accepted justification for policies from the construction of centralized curricula, to teacher evaluation schemes based on student test scores, to government takeovers of schools that "fail to improve"?
