(2011). The Idea of a University: Grey Philistines Taking over Our Universities. College Quarterly, v14 n2 Spr. In this article, the author stresses the danger of losing the concept of education in favour of lower notions of instruction and training. By \training\ he means a process that suggests the acquisition of skills and the enhancing of performance capacities. By \instruction\ he means learning facts and new information–the results of retention. Too often, states McKernan, even those in universities confuse training and instruction with pure \education.\ Traditional (basic) research, what may be thought of as \blue sky\ inquiry in the human and social sciences, is being viewed as inappropriate in favour of applied scientific \evidence-based\ research methodologies where grant money is being currently channeled. The problem is that the grey philistines who are \running\ the colleges and universities claim, falsely, to be businessmen running enterprises that will bring greater economic growth and riches through applied research–not \blue sky\ inquiry. The author believes that there are… [PDF]
(2008). Fluctuating Asymmetry and General Intelligence: No Genetic or Phenotypic Association. Intelligence, v36 n3 p279-288 May-Jun. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is the non-pathological left-right asymmetry of body traits that are usually left-right symmetrical, such as eye breadths and elbow to wrist lengths in humans, but which can be affected by developmental stressors. It is generally considered throughout biology to be an indicator of developmental instability and thus of lack of overall biological fitness. Several investigators have proposed that deficiencies in general intelligence (\g\) may be indicators of the same kind of instability in human brain development. If so, FA and \g\ should be negatively correlated. Moreover, because \g\ shows substantial genetic influences, FA should also show genetic influences, and the two sets of genetic influences should be correlated. We investigated these propositions in a sample of 263 adults that included 88 pairs of twins. Results indicated genetic influences on FA, but FA and \g\ were not correlated at either the observed or genetic levels…. [Direct]
(2013). New Orleans Education Reform: A Guide for Cities or a Warning for Communities? (Grassroots Lessons Learned, 2005-2012). Berkeley Review of Education, v4 n1 p123-160 Jan. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, co-chair of the Senate Public Charter School Caucus in Washington, DC, hosted a forum for education policymakers. It centered on "New Orleans-Style Education Reform: A Guide for Cities (Lessons Learned, 2004-2010)," a report published by the charter school incubator New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO). Through human capital and charter school development, the report asserts, New Orleans has become a national leader in education reform. In this essay, members of Urban South Grassroots Research Collective, including education scholars and those affiliated with longstanding educational and cultural organizations in New Orleans, reveal that such reform has been destructive to African American students, teachers, and neighborhoods. Inspired by critical race theory and the role of experiential knowledge in challenging dominant narratives, authors draw heavily on testimony from community-based education groups, which have typically been ignored,… [PDF]
(2013). "Before We Teach It, We Have to Learn It": Wisconsin Act 31 Compliance within Public Teacher Preparation Programs. ProQuest LLC, D.Ed. Dissertation, University of Minnesota. Wisconsin Act 31 was established for the purpose of addressing American Indian history, culture, and sovereignty within K-12 schools as a response to treaty rights issues in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet, in the 21 st century there remain issues with compliance throughout not only K-12 schools but also institutions of higher education. The research addresses how public institutions of higher education factor into compliance with regard to teacher preparation programs. Through a mixed methods approach, instructors from nine University of Wisconsin System institutions were surveyed regarding their professional and personal background in relation to American Indian Studies as well as their understanding of Wisconsin Act 31. In addition, a document analysis was performed on the syllabi from teacher-licensing certified courses. The results provided an overall understanding of the issues within teacher preparation programs that affect future educators. A distinction became apparent… [Direct]
(2012). Undercover Education: Mice, Mimesis, and Parasites in the Teaching Machine. Studies in Philosophy and Education, v31 n4 p365-386 Jul. What happens to education when the potential it helps realizing in the individual works against the formal purposes of the curriculum? What happens when education becomes a vehicle for its own subversion? As a subject-forming state apparatus working on ideological speciesism, formal education is engaged in both human and animal stratification in service of the capitalist knowledge economy. This seemingly stable condition is however insecured by the animal rights activist as undercover learner and–worker, who enters education and research laboratories under false premises in order to extract the knowledge necessary to dismantle the logic of animal utility on which the scientific-educational apparatus rests. The present article is based on a semi-structured interview with an undercover worker. It draws on a synthesis of critical education and posthumanist theories to configure knowledge creation and subjectification processes in the \negative spaces\ of education. The techne of… [Direct]
(2012). Good Governance Connects Science and Society. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v31 n3 p722-726 Sum. Owen-Smith et al. (this issue) answer the question about expanding funding for human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) research decisively and emphatically. They conclude that the U.S. federal government should expand funding in volume and scope, and stabilize it through regularity. According to Hurlbut and Robert, If the clear goal of policy should be to increase present and future activity within the hPSC research domain over the long term, the solutions are simple–and their recommendations are on target. This, however, is the right solution to the wrong problem. These authors highlight two premises of Owen-Smith et al.'s essay that they find particularly problematic: (1) One should not mistake the categorizations of research–or research objects–that are employed in public debate and policymaking as matters for science alone. They do precisely this in lumping all forms and sources of cells under the heading of "PSC research."; and (2) Owen-Smith et al.'s assertion that… [Direct]
(2010). Neural Circuitry of the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Effect of Age of Second Language Acquisition. Brain and Cognition, v72 n2 p169-180 Mar. Numerous studies have proposed that changes of the human language faculty caused by neural maturation can explain the substantial differences in ultimate attainment of grammatical competences between first language (L1) acquirers and second language (L2) learners. However, little evidence on the effect of neural maturation on the attainment of lexical knowledge in L2 is available. The present functional magnetic resonance study addresses this question via a cross-linguistic neural adaptation paradigm. Age of acquisition (AoA) of L2 was systematically manipulated. Concrete nouns were repeated across language (e.g., French-German, valise[superscript suitcase]-Koffer[superscript suitcase]). Whereas early bilinguals (AoA of L2 less than 3 years) showed larger repetition enhancement (RE) effects in the left superior temporal gyrus, the bilateral superior frontal gyrus and the right posterior insula, late bilinguals (AoA of L2 greater than 10 years) showed larger RE effects in the middle… [Direct]
(2009). Questions of Right and Left or Right and Wrong: A Disability-Ethics Analysis of the Right-Wing and Left-Wing Media Portrayals of the Latimer Case. Developmental Disabilities Bulletin, v37 n1-2 p165-186. This paper examines the right and left wing media coverage of the Robert Latimer case, arguing that, in particular, the left-wing progressive portrayal of this case not only creates a "preferred version and vision of social order" (Ericson, Baranek, & Chan,1991, p. 4), but also affirms a utilitarian ethics and a normative framework of reference that can be used in the courts of law to argue for the voluntary and, more importantly, the nonvoluntary euthanasia of "defective" and "deformed" individuals. We further argue that publications of the religious right, most notably Alberta Report, have countered this normative framework of utilitarian ethics by consistently providing space for Tracy Latimer's story to be told. We conclude this paper with consideration of an alternative ethics that develops Paul Woodruff's call for a politics and practice of reverence, a secular, as opposed to a religious, praxis that is inclusive and appreciative of all human… [PDF]
(2010). Business Ethics: A View from the Classroom. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, v7 n4 p39-52 Apr. The global economy has been devastated in the last year and according to Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, America's economy was threatened, reminiscent of the Great Depression. Our nation is also in a serious ethical and moral decline, as evidenced by steroid use in baseball, corporate scandals, accounting fraud, religious immorality within churches, human trafficking and the rise of cheating and plagiarism in our school systems. The lines between right and wrong have been blurred, relegating moral and ethical boundaries to outdated standards. This paper will seek to establish some answers regarding university students in the classroom such as, what is the perceived attitudes of today's college students toward ethical behavior, are they naive, etc? Also, this paper will explore ways in which professors can reinforce appropriate ethical behavior as an essential element in our society. (Contains 7 figures and 3 exhibits.)… [Direct]
(2010). Magic, Morals and Health. American Journal of Health Education, v41 n1 p14-17 Jan-Feb. Magic has to do with the supernatural and the unnatural. It is indifferent to natural law and science and is aloof from scientific inquiry. Its existence depends upon unquestioning faith. Granted such faith, it is extraordinarily potent. If it does not move mountains, it convinces the faithful that it can. It can damage health and perhaps, restore it. It has, historically and cross-culturally, been closely tied in with and supportive of morals and religion. Morals have to do with right and wrong, with good and bad, as defined by a particular society. The word derives from \customs.\ By definition, morals as well as customs may differ tremendously from society to society, right being wrong or more or less right or wrong, depending on where one happens to grow up. Morals sometimes have the support and backing of laws, as in the case of sex morals, but nearly always they are protected by magical forces via the superego and conscience. Health may be defined narrowly as freedom from… [PDF] [Direct]
(2011). From Perception to Recognition Memory: Time Course and Lateralization of Neural Substrates of Word and Abstract Picture Processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, v23 n4 p782-800 Apr. Through study of clinical cases with brain lesions as well as neuroimaging studies of cognitive processing of words and pictures, it has been established that material-specific hemispheric specialization exists. It remains however unclear whether such specialization holds true for all processes involved in complex tasks, such as recognition memory. To investigate neural signatures of transition from perception to recognition, according to type of material (words or abstract pictures), high-resolution scalp ERPs were recorded in adult humans engaged either in categorization or in memory recognition tasks within the same experimental setup. Several steps in the process from perception to recognition were identified. Source localization showed that the early stage of perception processing (N170) takes place in the fusiform gyrus and is lateralized according to the nature of stimuli (left side for words and right side for pictures). Late stages of processing (N400/P600) corresponding to… [Direct]
(2011). "Change4Life for Your Kids": Embodied Collectives and Public Health Pedagogy. Sport, Education and Society, v16 n3 p323-341. Recent work in human geography has begun to explore the fluidity of bodily boundaries and to foreground the connectedness of bodies to other bodies/objects/places. Across multiple subdisciplinary areas, including health, children's and feminist geographies, geographers have begun to challenge the notion of a singular, bounded body by highlighting the importance of, for example, relations of care and intergenerationality to everyday embodied experiences; remembered past/anticipated future bodies to self-perception and body image; affect/emotion to the production of embodied collectives; and connections to distant and proximate others to understandings of embodied rights and responsibility. In this paper we will review these areas of work in order to explore the ways in which this geographical work on embodied connections might contribute to recent debates concerning public health pedagogy and the production of embodied and emotional collectives in education. This will involve an… [Direct]
(2011). Energy Decisions: Is Solar Power the Solution?. Technology and Engineering Teacher, v70 n5 p9-14 Feb. People around the world are concerned about affordable energy. It is needed to power the global economy. Petroleum-based transportation and coal-fired power plants are economic prime movers fueling the global economy, but coal and gasoline are also the leading sources of air pollution. Both of these sources produce greenhouse gases and toxins. Worry over the environment and the health of humans is growing. Could the world switch to solar power today and sustain the global economy? Not a chance. In 2008, solar accounted for only 0.048 percent (four one-hundredths of one percent) of the U.S. generating capacity (including concentrating solar). But that is not necessarily the right question to ask. Here is a more appropriate one: Can solar power "contribute" to a cleaner environment and a healthy economy? The answer is yes, with conditions. In this article, the author talks about photovoltaic solar power and explores how this kind of solar power can make a contribution. The… [Direct]
(2012). Global Warming in Schools: An Inquiry about the Competing Conceptions of High School Social Studies and Science Curricula and Teachers. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin – Madison. Despite the scientific consensus supporting the theory of anthropogenic (human-induced) global warming, whether global warming is a serious problem, whether human activity is the primary cause of it, and whether scientific consensus exists at all are controversial questions among the U.S. lay-public. The cultural theory of risk perception (Schwarz and Thompson, 1990) serves as the theoretical framework for this qualitative analysis in which I ask the question how do U.S. secondary school curricula and teachers deal with the disparity between the overwhelming scientific consensus and the lay-public's skepticism regarding global warming? I analyzed nine widely used social studies and science textbooks, eight sets of supplemental materials about global warming produced by a range of not-for-profit and governmental organizations, and interviewed fourteen high school teachers who had experience teaching formal lessons about global warming in their content area. Findings suggest: 1)… [Direct]
(2012). Access to Higher Education for National Development in Nigeria: Distance Education to the Rescue. Journal of International Education Research, v8 n3 p283-294. The paper examined the place of Distance Education (DE) as a method of Adult Education in Nigeria and its contribution to national development. The paper discussed DE practice and challenges in some African countries and related this to the Nigerian situation. The paper further noted the challenge of the national admission body for regular tertiary institutions with reconciling the ratio of applicants to those admitted. Incidentally, DE, which is originally a form of Adult Education, is fast becoming a replacement for regular higher education. The implication of this on Adult Education practice in Nigeria is that the changes in the demographics of participants in DE, along with other challenges, affect the essence of Adult Education provision, access and its conduct. The paper analyzed the concept of DE and noted that distance education is currently used to replace, instead of support mainstream education in Nigeria by eroding the more desirable non-formal approach. The paper agrees… [Direct]