Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of "knowledge democracy," deploying a pluralistic, and cross disciplinary and humanistic critique. Design/methodology/approach: This is a culturally pluralistic and humanistic interpretation of globally emergent form of learning pedagogy, particularly manifested in e-learning.…

This article reports on data drawn from a larger critical ethnographic study of English language use and instruction in Slovakia at the moment of capitalist integration. Slovaks who sought to learn English at the turn of the millennium were driven by the brand new anxiety of job insecurity. English lessons at this time sold themselves as the…

Multicultural children's literature is a passport to foreign cultures. Because we live in a global and multicultural society, it is important to help children understand cultures different from their own. Many educators use picture storybooks to introduce the social life and customs of other societies. This article highlights four realistic…

For more than 2,500 years, Confucian thought held sway in China, advocating a state guided by highly ethical scholar-bureaucrats and a society ruled by morality and a strong emphasis on hierarchical relationships. But by the end of the 19th century, the Chinese state, powerless to fight off foreign encroachment and growing public dissatisfaction,…

In the UK, the vocabulary of public services is becoming infused with the prefixes "inter"-, "multi-" and "co-". Public-sector agencies are being encouraged to adopt"'multi"- or "inter-agency" configurations; "workforce reform" seeks to dissolve once-impermeable professional boundaries;…

This paper analyses changes in the governance of universities as a result of growing demands from society as well as of a strong penetration of management ideology into all kinds of institutions. For this purpose the paper uses a theoretical framework focusing on two governance mechanisms in social systems: entry control and performance control.…

The author argues briefly that the statement of urban problems and their solution require explicit use of social system concepts." (Author/AA)

This article reads two late nineteenth century short stories--one by Guy de Maupassant and the other by Louisa May Alcott--through the interpretive framework of Critical Disability Studies. It contrasts the traditional view of disability as a deficit or pathology that befalls certain unfortunate individuals with a newer one that understands it…

The search for a social goodness function in economic systems is reviewed, especially in light of the fact that the economy is a subsystem of a biosphere that has its own rules for determining success, or at least for limiting feasibility. The frequent perversity of reductionist quantitative success indicators in economics (profit, quotas, GDP) is…

Knowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organisations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledge that they require, they turn to others in search for that knowledge. While prior research has mainly focused on antecedents and consequences of…

This paper uses data drawn from the European Union Labour Force Survey 2000 Ad Hoc Module on School to Work Transitions to explore the influence of gender and social background (measured in terms of parental education) on young people's educational and early labour market outcomes across 12 European countries. Our results show that social…

Korean lifelong learning in practice is gradually adapted by neo-liberals and the discourses of the economic market. Considering that the public foundation of Korean education is fragile to cope with the market challenge, the whole picture of Korean learning ecology is rapidly distorted towards the establishment of the learning market and the…

Fifteen years after the "peaceful revolutions" brought about the collapse of communism and the reunification of East and West Germany, a heated debate rages over the legacy of communism and the continuing impact of 1989. This paper describes a new course that explores the contentious issues in this debate through the innovative use of…

This paper assumes that contemporary Western society is a consumer society and argues that the need of global capitalism to sell its commodities in the market place is the fundamental force behind consumerism. A model of globalisation is discussed. In it, we see how the control of information technology means that producers have the power to…