(2000). Development Policies and Performance–World Issues and World Conferences. Cooperation South, n2. In the business of development, breakthroughs require international communication to help spread potential benefits widely. Obstacles demand international commitment to marshal vision, resources, and effort sufficient to the challenge. This issue of "Cooperation South" contains a two part focus, conveying innovations in development policy and performance, while providing critical reviews of the big issues tackled during the 2000 global conferences. The "Development Policies and Performance" section contains six articles: (1) "Learning to Listen, Listening to Learn: Participatory Approach to Programme Development" (John F. E. Ohiorhenuan); (2) "Towards Balance in Aid Relationships: Donor Performance Monitoring in Low-Income Developing Countries" (Gerry Helleiner); (3) "Human Rights, Human Development and the Seven Freedoms" (J.Paul Martin); (4) "The African Growth and Opportunity Act of the U.S." (Julius Nyang'oro); (5)… [PDF]
(1996). Responsible Citizenship Practices. Life Skills. Teacher Edition. This guide contains the materials required to teach a six-unit course on responsible citizenship that was developed for secondary-level vocational education students in Oklahoma. The following are among the topics covered in the individual instructional units: getting to know your government (types of political systems, historical documents of the United States, powers of the federal government's three branches, reserved and shared powers of federal and state governments; local government (functions/concerns of country and city governments); making laws (rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, human rights, steps/stages in the legislative process, the system of checks and balances); enforcing laws (state and federal courts, law enforcement processes/personnel, financing of law enforcement); voting (voting requirements, importance of voting); and supporting your community (community involvement, interacting with public officials, community organizations, benefits of community work)….
(1995). Jobs, Income, and Work: Ruinous Trends, Urgent Alternatives. This book examines recent trends in the areas of jobs, income, and work. Among the trends discussed are the following: upward redistribution of wealth; persistent impoverishment; less disposable income; lower wages and higher education; union-free labor and increasing numbers of "disposable" workers; competition for global corporations and free trading on cheap labor; rising U.S. unemployment; deceptive methods of measuring unemployment and underemployment; "technological unemployment"; attempts to hide bad economics behind scapegoats, blame women for illegitimate economics, and reduce welfare instead of poverty; unreversed discrimination; the locking up of "surplus" labor; the cycle of unequal opportunity; disinvestment and misinvestment; and unfair and unsustainable development. The need to include economic rights among human rights is emphasized. The following are among the policy elements said to be keys to a viable future: all-age social security;… [PDF]
(1999). Making a Difference. A Resource Pack for People Who Want To Become More Active Citizens. This document, which is a resource pack for individuals in the United Kingdom who want to become more active citizens, consists of information for group leaders and five learning modules. The section for group leaders contains the following: basic tips on leading a group; strategies for overcoming barriers to learning; glossary; and overview of the modules, activities, and learning objectives. Most modules contain the following components: module aim; list of activities and learning outcomes; tips for group leaders; ideas and information; and activities. Topics covered in the modules include the following: (1) setting an agenda (ground rules, aims, stepping stones and barriers, identifying learning needs, active citizens, identifying learning styles); (2) citizenship (volunteering, global citizenship, human rights, the U.K. Bill of Rights); (3) democracy (democracy in action, how laws are made, information and communications technology, lobbying, parent power); (4) campaign groups…
(1976). Education for Citizenship: A Bicentennial Survey. Citizenship/Social Studies Report. A survey of student attitudes and knowledge vis a vis the American political system is presented. Student performance in the areas of social behavior, political attitudes, political knowledge, and political education is described for 13- and 17-year-olds for seven variables–geographical region, sex, race, parental education, size and type of community, educational preparation, and political interest. The first chapter presents an overview of survey results. Findings indicate that 13- and 17-year-olds express similar social and political attitudes, have a high degree of respect for human rights, and favor political participation. The second chapter defines the variables and describes the conventions used to report the data. Social attitudinal trends, including opposition to discrimination, support for equal-housing opportunities and racial trust, are described in chapter three. An assessment of political attitudes is included in chapter four. Knowledge of criminal rights, court… [PDF]
(1999). A Special Remedy: Roma and Schools for the Mentally Handicapped in the Czech Republic. Country Reports Series. This report examines the over-representation of Romani children in special schools for the mentally handicapped in the Czech Republic, reviewing the history of Roma in the Czech Republic, detailing problems in educating Romani children (who are segregated from non-Romani children), and discussing the inferior quality of remedial education. The report highlights abuses that occur when enrolling Romani children in special schools; how racial abuse in the regular school system traumatizes Romani children; and the impossibility of transferring to regular schools from remedial schools once students are enrolled. The report looks at other aspects affecting the human rights of Roma in the Czech Republic as they pertain to education, particularly the effect of the 1992 Act on Citizenship on the educational rights of Roma, the failure of the government to provide education for Roma, and the link between discrimination and abuse in the education system and the ability of Roma to claim other… [PDF]
(1994). Double Jeopardy: The Children of Ethnic Minorities. Innocenti Occasional Papers. Child Rights Series, Number 10. This paper examines the state of current research on ethnic minorities and their children and discusses areas in which further study is needed so that effective policy guidelines may be developed within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. A number of examples of ethnic minority situations are presented to illustrate the particular problems faced by families, children, and youth of ethnic minorities and indigenous and tribal peoples. It is commonly held that the solutions to the problems of these groups lie in their ability and willingness to adapt rather than in actions by the dominant societies. After a description of the ways ethnic minorities are usually categorized (territorial minorities, ethnic and cultural minorities, immigrants and refugees, and indigenous and tribal peoples), the paper surveys theoretical approaches to the study of ethnicity and examines the issue of cultural values in relation to the Convention on the Rights of the…
(1998). Keeping the Promise: Reflections on a Global Workshop on Children with Disabilities in Developing Countries. This paper summarizes the \Global Workshop on Children with Disabilities in Developing Countries\ held in Washington, D.C. in February 1997. The conference focused on children with disabilities in developing countries which encouraged networking, linkages, and partnerships. The conference was attended by representatives of more than 30 nations, people with disabilities, advocacy groups, nongovernmental organizations, governments, universities, and donor organizations. The two days of pre-workshop meetings, site visits, and presentations for participants from developing countries are briefly described. The workshop itself is summarized in the context of its four recurring themes: (1) family involvement for children with disabilities; (2) coordination of education and health programs; (3) public awareness and information sharing; and (4) protection and rights of children with disabilities. These themes are also addressed in summaries of the workshop's working groups, which focused on… [PDF]
(2013). Teaching "Human Rights" through Olympic Education in the Intercultural Lyceum of Athens: A Case Study. Intercultural Education, v24 n5 p489-492. Working in an Intercultural School is one of the most inspiring, motivating challenges an educator can be given in any given society, but that was especially true for Greece at the beginning of the last decade, since it was only in 1996 that the term Intercultural Education was introduced. Partly due to chance, and partly due to personal and professional curiosity, the author sought to find ways to implement in the most effective way the project "Olympic Education," which preceded the Athens 2004 Olympics in one of the four Intercultural senior high schools (Lyceums) in Elliniko, Athens. There is one activity that even today, after more than 10 years, stands out in the author's mind, mainly because of the difficulty faced due to the aggressive reactions of some of the students while implementing it. This particular activity was called "Creating a common world." The educational objectives of the activity were for students to gain knowledge about different cultures… [Direct]
(2021). How the Human Mind Grounds Numerical Quantities on Space. Child Development Perspectives, v15 n1 p44-50 Mar. The propensity to use a spatial framework to organize other pieces of information is a widespread phenomenon that permeates humans' representation of diverse concepts, including numerical quantities. Developmental studies on numerical cognition have revealed that humans possess a system for abstract quantity representation that is functional at birth and connects to a spatial representation system. Human infants, children, and adults link increases and decreases in numerical quantity to corresponding increases and decreases of spatial extent, as well as to lateralized right/left spatial positions, respectively. In this article, I discuss the origins of number-space mappings, their presence throughout development, and their functional properties. I also argue that number-space mappings reflect inborn biases, possibly shared across other species, that support both efficient magnitude processing and serial learning…. [Direct]
(1996). Political Culture in the School and Classroom: Preparation for Democratic Citizenship. Recognizing that civic education is the school subject specifically dedicated to preparing students for democractic citizenship and that the school and classroom often have a less than democratic and value-loaded "political culture," this paper emphasizes the fundamental goals of civic education and then arrives at the ingredients of political culture in the school and classroom that are favorable to preparing students for democratic citizenship. The three fundamental goals of civic education are: (1) helping students become self-confident, well informed citizens who are able to think rationally and who are committed to the values of human dignity and human rights; (2) fostering a willingness and capacity to participate in political affairs on local, national, and international levels; and (3) developing a strong recognition of the need to balance individualism and self-interest with human interdependence and social as well as environmental responsibility. To effectively… [PDF]
(2024). Opaque Reciprocity: Or Theorising Glissant's 'Right to Opacity' as a Communication and Language Praxis in Early Childhood Education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v45 n1 p118-130. In this article, the authors argue for what √âdouard Glissant terms the 'right to opacity' in teaching and assessing communication and language skills in early childhood education (ECE). We draw from Glissant's writing on Relation, and his interrelated concepts of 'opacity' and 'transparency', to consider two vignettes from sensory ethnographic research conducted in ECE settings: a special education classroom and a nursery. We contest the international emphasis on efficiency, clarity, and rationality in ECE communication and language provision as one informed by colonial and ableist logics of 'transparency'. Instead, we argue for an attention to moments of what we call 'opaque reciprocity': of (1) non-dyadic, non-developmentalist, more-than-human exchange, within which (2) authorship becomes distributed inter-subjectively, thereby (3) de-emphasising efficient, clear, and rational notions of meaning-making…. [Direct]
(2012). The Lateralizer: A Tool for Students to Explore the Divided Brain. Advances in Physiology Education, v36 n3 p220-225 Sep. Despite a profusion of popular misinformation about the left brain and right brain, there are functional differences between the left and right cerebral hemispheres in humans. Evidence from split-brain patients, individuals with unilateral brain damage, and neuroimaging studies suggest that each hemisphere may be specialized for certain cognitive processes. One way to easily explore these hemispheric asymmetries is with the divided visual field technique, where visual stimuli are presented on either the left or right side of the visual field and task performance is compared between these two conditions; any behavioral differences between the left and right visual fields may be interpreted as evidence for functional asymmetries between the left and right cerebral hemispheres. We developed a simple software package that implements the divided visual field technique, called the Lateralizer, and introduced this experimental approach as a problem-based learning module in a lower-division… [Direct]
(1974). Social Studies Objectives, Second Assessment. National Assessment of Educational Progress. Major social studies objectives delineated in this booklet provide a framework for the measurement of student achievement in the social studies. The booklet is arranged in four chapters. The first chapter describes the development of social studies objectives; the other chapters respectively list the social studies objectives for the specific age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and 17-year-olds and adults. In each of the later chapters major objectives are stated, followed by specific age-related subobjectives. Six major objectives emphasize the need for students to develop (1) a knowledge base for understanding the relationships between human beings and their social and physical environment; (2) an understanding of the origins and interrelationships of beliefs, values, and behavior patterns; (3) the competencies to acquire, organize, and evaluate information for purposes of solving problems and clarifying issues; (4) the human relation skills necessary to communicate and work…
(1998). Education in Multi-Ethnic Societies of Central and Eastern Europe. A Skills Exchange Workshop (Bulgaria, November 7-10, 1997). Workshop Report. To address problems in public education for majority and minority ethnic groups in Central and Eastern Europe, Minority Rights Group International and the Inter Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation organized a skills exchange workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria in November 1997. Representatives from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovkia came together to address ways of making the education system responsive to the differing needs of minority and majority communities. This workshop report summarizes the key discussions and illustrates examples of good practice. An introductory section gives background information to the workshop and an overview of the discussions. The report's central section summarizes discussions and participants' views on the varied dimensions of multiculturalism in educational policy, concerns about imposing standard solutions to diverse situations, essential elements of successful educational policy and implementation, the legislative framework of…