Ligações recomendadas: educação

Diversos artigos sobre aspectos diversos da educação (e um cruzando com a globalização: The new cognitive age - NYT):

• Economist's View: The Declining High School Graduation Rate in the US.
  
  

  "The origins of this dropout problem have yet to be fully investigated. Evidence suggests a powerful role for the family in shaping educational and adult outcomes. A growing proportion of American children are being raised in disadvantaged families. This trend promises to reduce productivity and promote inequality in the America of tomorrow."

• Children better prepared for school if their parents read aloud to them.
  
  

  "Children who have been read aloud to are also more likely to develop a love of reading, which can be even more important than the head start in language and literacy. And the advantages they gain persist, with children who start out as poor readers in their first year of school likely to remain so."

• Do you inherit skills? Free exchange Economist.com.
  
  

  "However, while parents have become better educated, measures of individual achievement (years of completed education and a measure of cognitive intelligence, AFQT scores) increase only by a modest amount. This is surprising; you would think more educated parents would result in even smarter, better educated children. In spite of having a better education, the parents may not be passing on the benefits to their children."

• Skills pay the bills Free exchange Economist.com.
  
  
  
  
  

  "...thought it was important to point out that the problem wasn't wage gaps, but the failure of American workers to respond to them. Slowing educational attainment has meant more unskilled American workers and fewer skilled workers, a supply situation which has pushed wages apart."

• China’s higher education transformation vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists.
  
  
  
  
  

  "These higher educational changes have been accompanied by a shift in focus from quantity flow in the pre-1999 period to an elevated emphasis on quality post-1999. Educational attainment in China is now subject to quantity indicators designed to drive continued improvement of educational quality by participating institutions: funding is no longer simply awarded in response to increasing the numbers of students enrolled. Chinese higher education institutions are now subject to extraordinary pressures to upgrade themselves in terms of objective rankings. High priority is placed on international rankings, taken as publications in international journals, citations, and international cooperation. These measures of attainment are directly linked to institutions’ funding.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Some of this focus on improved educational attainment in China seems to be spontaneous and accelerated by the policy process that exerts the pressure. Indicators of educational attainments in terms of international rankings across countries, publications of papers, and citations feed directly into annual performance indicators for Chinese faculty in an ongoing process that goes substantially beyond the tenure-for-life system outside China. It is not uncommon for an annual target of three international publications to be set for faculty members, and failure means termination of employment."

• The Cognitive Age - New York Times.
  
  

  "The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

  The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?"

• Searching for Science to Guide Good Teaching - washingtonpost.com.
  
  

  "The Bush administration's chief of education research says teachers too often rely on 'folk wisdom' instead of proven methods to help students learn reading and math. Just as doctors consider data from drug trials and clinical research when they treat patients, he wants educators to think more scientifically in their quest for the right textbooks, technology, teacher training and lesson plans to raise student achievement."

• It's the exams, stupid Comment is free.
  

  "At some time in the distant past, exams were meant to measure what students had actually learned. But over the last 20 or so years, they have become an end rather than a means, as a school's perceived success, its place in the league tables, even its existence, now stand or fall on the grades its inhabitants can muster. Teachers have given up the pretence of teaching English, maths, biology or whatever: they teach what the syllabus demands, no more, no less. Why should anyone take any serious action against those websites that provide purpose-built answers to exam questions? So long as the figures go up, that's all that matters."