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This paper describes a literature review, institutional audit and analysis of practice in the area of digital literacy provision, based on research across the UK Higher Education sector. It concludes that institutions need to place greater value on "literacies of the digital", and better prepare their students and their own organizational processes to thrive in an age of digital knowledge practices. It extends the debate about individual entitlement and provision to ask whether digital literacy offers an opportunity for the academy to redefine its relationship to knowledge in society.

Contemporary teacher education, like other aspects of tertiary education, involves regimes for assessing quality of teaching. These regimes include student assessment of and feedback on teaching. These are widely considered problematic, and yet there are few signs that teacher educators reject the notion that student responses have something of value to offer. This paper examines some evidence of student responses to teaching in teacher education institutions in the first half of the twentieth century, in order to provide means to reflect on regimes for securing and using students' responses to teaching and curriculum in contemporary teacher education. Specifically, it examines evidence from a range of teacher education institutions in England and Australia. Evidence of student responses to teacher education programs in this period is, in fact sparse, but can be derived from student magazines, two systematic attempts to gather (already "historical") information, and from some of the reports on teacher training institutions by His Majesty's Inspectors in the UK. The evidence indicates that students were keenly and often critically aware of the differences between teaching styles, subject content and the effectiveness of different staff and components of their programs. It also reveals that they had a keen interest in the relationship between college curricula and school practice, and its implications for their own preparation as teachers. Their views differed widely among themselves; they also ranged unevenly from a good humoured and often deeply ironic sense of the absurdity of aspects of their programs (in particular the demonstration lesson) through a sense that they were poorly served by some staff and subjects, to a recognition of enduring and (they seem to imply) unresolvable tensions in the process of teacher education. (Contains 1 footnote.)

The growth in the size of the Internet has resulted in much effort being spent on indexing its contents. The most popular solutions are created by automatic methods, and although offering impressive coverage, they are disappointing where precision of meaning is required. Alternative services created by human beings arrange and index resources according to concept and offer more relevant retrieval, but cannot hope to achieve 100% coverage. New developments are imminent which may support both the automated and non-automated approaches, and vastly improve the quality of Internet metadata. This paper demonstrates that the task of locating information on the Internet has not been and will not be accomplished by the use of sheer computing power alone. It reviews the topic of metadata creation, with special reference to the OMNI project (Organizing Medical Networked Information) and describes two encouraging new initiatives: PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) and the Dublin Core Metadata Set/Warwick Framework. All users need improved search tools with which to navigate the Internet. The answers to the present dilemma will be based on more than one tool, on both human intervention and intelligent automated data gathering. Metadata, as exemplified by the old catalog card, is set to become a key concept in the future of the new information world. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/SWC)

This study is the first attempt to analyze the articles in several journals, in order to disclose the development of academic educational studies in Japan. In this paper, my examination was not limited to one journal, but covered six education journals listed below and all their issues until 2005. I chose, from a methodological viewpoint, four journals that have been most important for the philosophical, historical, sociological and comparative research on education and, from thematic viewpoints, two celebrated Japanese journals for the study of educational method and that of educational administration. The development of educational studies shown in the articles of the journals reviewed was diverse and complex. On the one hand, the home institutions of the authors were not only traditional research universities, but also other types of universities. On the other hand, the former institutions are still the center of training for (graduate) students who make up the largest number of authors of the articles today. The analyzed six journals had such heterogeneous character as to have oriented themselves to different areas (theory, school, society [public]) to a varied extent. The articles targeted several historical periods and countries/areas and their distribution of these factors was relatively balanced. Although the studies were based, methodologically, primarily on the analysis of certain kinds of text, in other words on the philosophical method, the object of the studies was mostly not the ideas of certain persons. The articles referred, topically, to a certain philosopher or education researcher/theorist less often than to secondary/higher education. Furthermore, the research methods, objects and topics of the articles in one journal were far from homogeneous. (Contains 11 figures, 15 tables, and 3 notes.)

This paper discusses the cognitive effect of a highly successful 1985 British television program, "Edge of Darkness," which was viewed by millions and received critical plaudits and the accolade of the industry itself. The program is shown to represent a significant television event for formal and cognitive reasons that can usefully be related to the politics of television fiction and postmodern culture. Before describing the program in detail, the relevance of situating it within this broader framework is outlined, i.e., how cognition works in relation to the story's discursive process. The specific qualities of Edge of Darkness are clarified by considering the text itself and why and how it was made. The program is identified as postmodernist stylistically because it: (1) moved to and fro between the logic of realism/naturalism and a kind of modernist reflexivity; (2) explored complex psychic and political depths; (3) dealt with the concept of mapping; and (4) wove a number of themes (the "back story") into an engaging fiction. The knowledge and understanding the program generated is analyzed by situating the text in its contexts of consumption and production. It is concluded that the goal of the program--consciousness raising--was achieved, although any sense the fiction makes to television viewers is conversely viewed as tenuous. (67 notes and references) (CGD)

Since television both reflects and affects society, how blacks are portrayed in television drama is significant for program producers, the audience, and for consideration in debates on multicultural content, minority access, and integrated casting. Previous work in the field of blacks and television has been based on observational sociology, audience figures, or content analysis, and the processes of production have been largely ignored. This research combines the sociological and semiological methods of inquiry to provide a more dynamic and integrated analysis of the representations by making a critical study of the way in which blacks were portrayed in British television drama, a genre in which more conscious and deliberate decisions are made in regard to scripting, directing, casting, and production, than in news and entertainment programs. Content analyses were done on more than 600 randomly selected British programs. The appearances of blacks were analyzed in detail to define the kinds of roles portrayed, frequency of their appearances, and the recurrence of particular images. Two producers were also interviewed about black representation on drama, and an audience survey was done among black viewers in five British towns. The paper outlines the main findings of the research and makes connections with the social situation in Britain. (CGD)

This study was conducted to record and evaluate, through a questionnaire and discussion, a young audience's perception of a quiz type television program with school age children as participants. The question under investigation was how the fundamental principle of a quiz show--in which knowledge is bartered for material gain--could be measured against or related to the state of education in the mid-1980s in Great Britain. One hundred and fifty young adults between the ages of 14 and 18 were surveyed on the following issues: (1) the context for viewing the program; (2) various levels of involvement according to age and gender; (3) identification with, and empathy elicited by, the program; and (4) audience perceptions of the contestants and the questioning. Analyses of the data indicated that, although the program is clearly popular with this age group, the respondents rejected the power relations and representations of youth offered by the quiz program. It is concluded that the key site for further analysis is the relationship with knowledge and how that relationship is structured, both within the experience of the program and within the students' daily experience of education. (6 references) (CGD)

Very little research has been carried out on the extent to which educational television is recognized as part of the curriculum in nursery and infant schools and how it facilitates learning in young children. The aim of the curriculum at this level should be to offer experiences to children that, through conceptualization, will develop in them the understanding to cope sensibly with life, and explain their world to them. Surveys have found that the majority of teachers regard educational television as a "view and follow-up" phenomenon with little or no relationship to other activities in the classroom, although they do regard the stories, songs, and poems presented on children's television as a stimulus to encourage children to read and an aid in developing their language skills. Research on learning from television identifies two forms of knowledge that could come about through watching television--relational understanding and instrumental understanding. Findings also suggest that relational understanding (cognitive learning), which requires interpretation and analysis of program content, was generally beyond the capabilities of children in this age group without some interaction with an adult, e.g., the teacher. Teachers must therefore be mediators between children and educational television broadcasts to make the experience meaningful. A more ideal situation would be the use of video recordings that can be suited to children's needs and used to supplement classroom activities. Teachers should evaluate whether they are providing adequately for children's needs with their use of educational television. (29 references) (CGD)