(1967). The University and Due Process. An alarming aspect of the dramatic change in the relationship between a university and its constituents is the increasing number of court cases challenging traditionally academic decisions. The filing of these cases seems to suggest that judicial processes can be substituted for academic ones. Although many courts have recognized the distinctive nature of the academic community, the danger of shifting final decision making from campus to court remains. The great influx of public funds, the view of education as a social necessity, the strong egalitarian drive, the expansion of civil rights protection, the erosion of disciplinary supervision by home, school or college have made academic decisions vulnerable to judicial review. The university can benefit from measuring its private rules against public canons of due process, but examination differs from actual substitution of the courts. By abandoning disciplinary responsibilities, the university may be sacrificing rights to make… [PDF]
(1980). World Development Report, 1980. Part I: Adjustment and Growth in the 1980s. Part II: Poverty and Human Development. Annex: World Development Indicators. With Summary. The report, third in a series of annual publications, examines some of the difficulties and prospects in areas of social and economic progress and human development which developing countries face during the next decade. Distinguishing oil-importing from oil-exporting developing countries, the first part of the report presents global and regional projections and discusses international policy issues in energy, trade, and capital flows. The second part focuses on human development: education and training, health, nutrition, and fertility reduction. The report provides a brief discussion of human development problems and priorities in each of the major regions of the developing world. It gives particular attention, however, to the two regions in which absolute poverty is most serious: Sub-Saharan Africa, which combines the worst growth prospects with the lowest levels of literacy and life expectancy; and South Asia, which contains half of the world's poor. Human development is shown…
(2003). How Ethics Was Specialized Away. Academic Questions, v16 n4 p31-40 Sep. Prevailing among college students is the belief that higher education is but a mechanism for achieving material prosperity. This perception has impelled them to focus ever more narrowly on ever more specialized fields in a system that has jettisoned broader concerns about the human condition. Karl D. Stephan calls on schools to carve out a place in the curriculum for ethics and other courses that convey an appreciation for such simple ideas as truth, beauty, and right conduct. (Contains 9 notes.)… [Direct]
(1988). Optimizing Learning. A Leadership Accessing Monograph: Education of Gifted and Talented Youth. Data on the development of intelligence and the concept of giftedness are interpreted for use in the classroom and are applied to the development of strategies to optimize learning. The Integrative Education Model is introduced, with its purpose of empowering the learner physically, emotionally, cognitively, and intuitively. The teacher's role is described as central to the establishment of the optimal learning environment, as the teacher sets the tone, establishes the organization, facilitates the goals, and influences the productivity of each class member. The human brain is described, and functions of the brain are discussed, with the integration of these functions seen as allowing human intelligence to express itself most fully. A number of specific activities are offered to illustrate the affective-cognitive interaction of left brain-right brain functioning. (JDD)…
(2005). Syntactic Development in Children with Hemispherectomy: The I-, D-, And C-Systems. Brain and Language, v94 n2 p147-166 Aug. This study reports on functional morpheme (I, D, and C) production in the spontaneous speech of five pairs of children who have undergone hemispherectomy, matching each pair for etiology and age at symptom onset, surgery, and testing. Our results show that following left hemispherectomy (LH), children evidence a greater error rate in the use of functional category elements than their right hemispherectomy (RH) counterparts. Nevertheless, error rates are surprisingly low and comparable across groups. We interpret these results as (a) weak empirical evidence for a left hemisphere advantage in acquisition of functional structure, (b) strong support that functional structure is a property of all human grammars, and (c) strong support that each isolated developing hemisphere has the potential to acquire a grammar embodying and constrained by highly specific structural principles defining human language…. [Direct]
(2014). The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education. Third Edition. SAGE Publications Ltd (CA) "The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education" exposes students to examples of sociological research on schools, with a focus on the school as community. Now in its Third Edition, this engaging reader has broadened its scope even more, presenting additional readings in particular related to the sociology of higher education. The book draws from classic and contemporary scholarship to examine current issues and diverse theoretical approaches to studying the effects of schooling on individuals and society. In addition to covering traditional areas such as stratification and racial inequality, the book also veers off the beaten path, including readings on such contemporary topics as bullying, school shootings, school choice, and teen social media use. This book contains the following chapters: (1) The "Rationalization" of Education and Training (Max Weber); (2) Social and Cultural Mobility (Pitirim Sorokin); (3) Sponsored and Contest Mobility… [Direct] [Direct]
(1995). The Parameters of the Liberal-Communitarian Debate. This essay presents components of the debate between liberals and communitarians, discusses how this debate centers around policies affecting market economies and the role of government, and points out implications for school reform. The chief criticism communitarians aim at liberalism is that it promotes obsessive individualism, and in this process any meaningful sense of communal obligation, responsibility, and tradition has been lost or greatly diminished. Liberalism can be traced back to the 17th century when Christianity introduced the idea that human fulfillment could be achieved through an internal connection with God. This was a dramatic shift away from the once predominant notion that defined selfhood by one's contribution to or fit within society. Eventually, liberal philosophy evolved into the belief that self-identity required rational decision making and any allegiance to community (or to God, or to nature, etc.) was not essential. From a communitarian perspective, such… [PDF]
(2006). The Explanatory Power of Critical Language Studies: Linguistics with an Attitude. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, v3 n1 p1-22 Jan. In this article, I address the miracle of human language from a socio-cultural perspective, emphasizing the role that language, and more explicitly, the critical study of language, can and should play in developing reflective, socially and politically aware and responsible teachers, administrators, and students. The article begins by examining the nature and focus of critical language awareness as it has emerged in the recent years, with particular focus on the implications of critical language awareness for educators. The framework established in discussing critical language awareness is then applied to several broad areas: critical discourse analysis, as a potentially powerful research methodology, and to the implications of critical language awareness for the concept of language rights in education in general and specifically in case of deaf children. (Contains 1 note.)… [Direct]
(2006). Ethical Challenges and Complexities of Including People with Intellectual Disability as Participants in Research. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, v31 n3 p173-179 Sep. The aim of this article is to consider the implications for research involving people with intellectual disability–a vulnerable group–of ethics committees' attempts to apply these guidelines. The issue explored is whether committees such as Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECS) and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are becoming increasingly conservative in their decisions and approaches, with the potential to exclude at least some people with intellectual disability from research. In order to protect the right of people with intellectual disability to be included in research and to participate in the decision-making process, while guarding against exploitation or potential harm, the author suggests that the current protective practices of HRECs and ethics committees of disability organizations should be reframed in terms of respect for people with intellectual disability…. [Direct]
(1983). How Curriculum Leaders Can Involve the Right Brain in Active Reading and Writing Development. Curriculum leaders, program specialists, and teachers can intentionally arouse the activation of one hemisphere of the brain over the other through the use of right brain strategies in language learning. While most functions of the left hemisphere are concerned with convergent production (getting the right answer), functions of the right hemisphere are concerned with divergent production that involves imagery–the vehicle through which creativity occurs. Right-brain strategies in written language encourage the use of thinking inherent in analogy, metaphor, synthesis, and imagery. An example of such a strategy is the use of a configural structure involving free association, imagery, and metaphorical thinking known as a \web.\ Because humans think in images, several activities that encourage free association and imagining can form the basis for language arts activities. For example, guided fantasy can help students to sustain an imaginary experience. The technique of imagining can be… [PDF]
(1981). The Right Brain: An Emerging Frontier in Education. The main thrust of American education has been cognitively oriented. Recent research on the human brain suggests that such orientation is a general function of only one hemisphere of the brain, the left. Because of the close relationships among speech, language, thinking, reasoning, and the higher mental functions, the left brain hemisphere traditionally has been viewed as dominant. However, both the left and the right hemispheres of the brain are involved in higher cognitive functions and operate in a complimentary fashion. The cognitive style of the right hemisphere is nonverbal, rapid, global, spatial, and perceptual. While each hemisphere may take in the same information, that information is processed in differing ways. The potential of the right hemisphere in visualizing, imagining, perceiving, creating, inventing, intuiting, and organizing spatially is not realized in the classroom where the organizational, reasoning, and verbal skills of the left hemisphere are emphasized. A…
(1995). Knowledge about the Brain for Parents, Students, and Teachers: The Keys to Removing the Invisible Roadblocks to Learning and High Self-Esteem for All Students. This paper presents basic information about the brain and how learning takes place, considers causes of differing human temperaments as explained by principles of Jungian psychology, reports on research on the causes of low achievement, and suggests a method to correct many educational problems. Principles of developmental neurology and right/left brain differences are explained. Many educational problems (such as anger and anxiety) are viewed as resulting from downshifting from the neo-cortex to the limbic system. Four major temperament groups are identified, varying in the dominance and influence of right and left brain hemispheres. The paper reports positive behavioral and academic effects observed when junior high school students were provided with basic information on the brain and suggestions for controlling and preventing downshifting. The seven types of intelligence postulated by Howard Gardner are also discussed. Teachers are urged to: (1) teach students about the brain;… [PDF]
(2006). Sexuality and Human Reproduction: A Study of Scientific Knowledge, Behaviours and Beliefs of Portuguese Future Elementary School Teachers. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, v6 n1 p17-29 Feb. Sex education in Portugal has become a right and an obligation starting in the first years of school. However, despite being required by legislation, this is not easy to achieve, partly because of weaknesses in the training of teachers, which need to be identified. In this study, data were collected about the knowledge, behaviours and beliefs of 148 teacher trainees of elementary education (6-10 years old) from two Portuguese public higher education institutions. The topic of sexuality and human reproduction had been covered by almost all of them during their initial training and was considered important by most of them. Nevertheless, about 85% asserted they are not confident enough to teach this topic to small children in a classroom and committed scientific errors about physiological-anatomical aspects of the human body. All subjects felt that there is a lack of specific didactic materials, which does not help to overcome those obstacles. It was also possible to identify in these… [Direct]
(1999). Water, Air, Fire, and Earth–A Developmental Study in Portugal of Environmental Conceptions and Values. This study contributes to an emerging body of research on the development of the human relationship with nature. One hundred and twenty participants from four grade levels (fifth, eighth, eleventh, and college) were interviewed about their environmental conceptions and values. Results showed that participants valued many aspects of nature and sought, in various ways, to coordinate (sometimes unsuccessfully) human needs and desires with the flourishing of the natural world. Participants' conceptions of harmony cut across five categories that included physical, sensorial, experiential, relational, and compositional. Developmentally, compositional reasoning increased with age. Participants' justifications for their evaluations included both anthropocentric appeals (e.g., to personal interests, human welfare, and aesthetics) and biocentric appeals (e.g., that nature has intrinsic value or rights). Based on cross-cultural comparisons to studies conducted with younger children in the… [PDF]
(1969). The Influence of Theoretical Conceptions of Human Development on the Practice of Early Childhood Education. Communication is urged between theorists of human development and practitioners in early childhood education. Major psychological theories on maturation, child development, child behavior, personality formation, and affective and intellectual development are summarized and their effects on nursery school practices from the 1920's to the present are described. Three models of early childhood education are chosen to illustrate the diverse types of programs available for young children today. The key features of the Bank Street model, the Kansas model, and the Ypsilanti model are described, compared, and contrasted. Each program's theoretical conceptions of human nature are analyzed to illustrate the models' fundamental differences about the sources of human development. Conclusions are that (1) teachers should be aware of philosophical assumptions and psychological theories in early childhood education models and (2) the absence of consensus on the "right" way to educate… [PDF]