Education & Pedagogy

The theory of organizational drift, or gradual assimilation of change within institutions, is applied to recent developments in Canadian institutions of teacher education, and other organizational theorists' criteria are used to support this alternative to traditional approaches to change in such organizations. (MSE)

Teachers' problems are inadequately understood, and conceptions of their behavior are inadequate. As a result, expectations of rapid change in education have been disappointed. To understand people's actions, one must understand their intentions. Personal construct theory can help with the understanding of teachers. (PP)

Analyzes criticism of the horticulture theory of education, i.e., the teacher is the gardener, the child a growing plant. Contrasts growth theories of A. S. Neill and Rousseau and concludes that growth theory and trusting the individual to develop to his full potential are worthy ideas. (KC)

The first public Hungarian preschool, modeled after Great Britain's, was opened in 1828. Between 1849 and 1891 there was a decline in the infant school movement. The 1891 Preschool Education Act made kindergarten obligatory. Since the Hungarian liberation (1945) the state has supervised and maintained higher standards for preschool education. (RM)

A study of 236 11th-grade accounting students was conducted to measure the economic literacy of students enrolled in high school business education. It was found that those students who had accounting instruction had mean scores that were higher than those students who did not have accounting instruction. (CT)

Strategic planning, a logical framework for organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling the work of an organization, spans three philosophies: "satisficing, optimizing, and adaptivizing." While higher education's traditional orientation is satisficing, continuing education agencies can lead the movement toward adaptivization of strategic planning in higher education. (SK)

Education in Haiti underwent major changes during its occupation by American forces from 1915-1934. New curricula, methods, and better supervision were introduced but ultimately failed because American policymakers overlooked the necessity of allowing the Haitians themselves to participate in the reforms. (KH)

The current trend in colleges and universities has been to reduce or eliminate physical education programs. Possible reasons for this trend may be due to the identity crisis of the basic instructor program and failure to reorganize from wide-ranging fields of study to narrow disciplinary specialization. (DF)

Physical education is a lifelong process with physical fitness being a principal objective. An important aspect of a physical education program lies in the leadership qualities of the teacher. Knowledge and understanding essential to an effective program are listed. (DF)

There are various obstacles and opportunities in the delivery of rural health education. Resource networking can be an effective strategy for extending the health educator's expertise to the rural population. Examples of network structures are offered. (DF)

Elementary education majors were administered the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) to determine their level of anxiety toward mathematics. Results suggested that a high proportion of the female students were math anxious, and this could affect their pupils. (MNS)

Provides tips to assist in preparing a training program designed to show that: (1) fire is dangerous; (2) ordinary individuals can neither understand fire nor extinguish it; and (3) a fire safety officer can do both. (JN)

Discusses the policy report of the Minister of Education and Sciences, the creation and functions of the Advisory Committee on Education and Information Technology and the Centre for Education and Information Technology, characteristics of the development and implementation of computer literacy in the Netherlands, and a planned nationwide survey. (MBR)

Teachers deserve to have appropriate training before they are held accountable for teaching about computer hardware and software, and the responsibility for this training falls to the teacher training institutions. Such a computer literacy program has been instituted at Abilene Christian University (Texas). (DCS)

A competency-based sequence in supervision was designed, developed, and field tested with doctoral trainees over a three-year period. Evaluation revealed positive outcomes for supervisors and their student teachers as well as an impact on classroom projects involving handicapped students. (CL)