Education & Pedagogy

Teachers need a much greater repertoire of skills than those that produce successful test takers. Teachers need to be prepared to lead students to important understandings and ideas, to assist them in developing key skills, and to open up for them values and attitudes that guide everyday actions in an uncertain world. Teacher education programs need to be constructed around these broad areas--areas focused on the need to prepare future citizens. The author argues that an integrated approach needs to be used be with the formal teacher education curriculum as well as cocurricular activities. Indeed, it is the intermeshing of the two components that provide the underpinnings of a true citizenship education for teachers. The author contends that teacher education programs need to ensure that they are producing teachers who are active citizens. They need to be aware of their responsibilities inside and outside school, and they need to be capable of preparing future citizens who recognize similar responsibilities for the world in which they live.

In this paper, the author discusses the necessary elements of civic engagement in teacher education and responsibility for schools. For over 50 years, John Goodlad conducted research, created an institute to study education in a democratic society, and formed 25 partnership sites to engage in research and practice. The National Network for Renewal was founded at sites that were building active partnerships of colleges of arts and sciences, schools of education, and preK-12 schools. One of Goodlad's (1994) principles speaks to civic engagement. Civic engagement in teacher preparation is not a task for a school of education alone. The entire university plays a critical role in educating undergraduate students in a variety of courses and community experiences "to see the moral and civic dimensions of issues, to make informed moral and civic judgments, and to take action when appropriate." The experiences in undergraduate education create a rich foundation for civic engagement. Here, the author discusses the use of action research as an approach to achieve the goals of civic engagement in teacher preparation.

Involvement in advocacy is a responsibility of health educators, as identified by the National Commission on Health Education Credentialing. Of all the professional responsibilities, participation in advocacy-related activity is often neglected. This lack of participation may be due to the absence of advocacy and policy skills training in health education professional preparation programs. The lack of training may be attributed to various reasons, such as the university faculty being unsure about how to include students in advocacy work, students being unable to see the relevance of advocacy to their studied field or the lack of available time to conduct advocacy by students and faculty alike. This article will focus on promoting advocacy among health education faculty and students, and provide creative strategies to incorporate advocacy knowledge and skills into health education coursework. A review of common health education courses is provided with suggestions for relevant advocacy projects, course assignments and proposed evaluation strategies. (Contains 1 table.)

With the phenomenal expansion of distance education in Asia during the past three decades, there has been growing public demand for quality and accountability in distance education. This study investigates the national quality assurance systems for distance education at the higher education level in Asia with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of the current level of development of quality assurance in Asian distance education and to offer potential directions for policy makers when developing and elaborating quality assurance systems for distance education. The analysis of the existing quality assurance frameworks in the 11 countries/territories selected reveals that the level of quality assurance policy integration in the overall national quality assurance in higher education policy framework varies considerably. The purpose of quality assurance, policy frameworks, methods, and instruments in place are generally tailored to each country's particular circumstances. There are, however, obvious commonalities that underpin these different quality assurance efforts. (Contains 2 tables.)

This research essay is intended to situate the curriculum in my multicultural education courses--of talking back through autobiographical inquiry--within real schools, a site where curriculum theorists rarely situate their work. The literature by curriculum theorists that precedes my study generally has focused on how pre-service teachers in multicultural education courses are changed (or not) as a result of course readings, discussions, and critical autobiographical reflection, all of which happen within the confines of the university classroom. My research essay extends the work of curriculum theorists on autobiography in education by focusing on the ways in which pre-service teachers use autobiographical inquiry to reflect on the impact of the context of real public schools and K-12 students on their constructions of themselves as teachers. In my extension of this work, I draw on bell hooks' notion of "talking back" as an overarching framework in analyzing the autobiographical reflections of pre-service teachers. (Contains 3 notes.)

This article analyses key events in the history of adult and community education in Aotearoa New Zealand. It draws on historical sources to examine the role of grassroots community activism and local and national networking in upholding a broad vision of adult and community-based education, in the face of a hostile policy climate. The authors suggest practical and theoretical lessons from their historical analysis: first, the possibilities for adult education that exist beyond the state and its apparatus; second, the need to recognize the power of the state to support or attempt to strangle adult education by controlling or withdrawing funding; third, the need for broadly based alliances across and beyond education. Drawing on critical adult education theory, the authors suggest a range of political and pedagogical actions that adult educators and their allies might take to advance adult education's contribution to social change and social justice.

Arts education research over the years has highlighted the situation of non-specialist preservice primary arts teachers as having little confidence in their own artistic ability and their ability to teach the arts to children. Added to this, problems such a lack of resources, confidence, priority, time, knowledge and experience appear to inhibit the regular teaching of the arts by generalist classroom teachers while at the same time, face-to-face hours for preservice primary arts education have decreased significantly over the recent years. This paper describes how one subject within a Primary Teacher Education course responded to these challenges. This subject was based on Herrington, Oliver and Reeves' (2003) framework for creating authentic learning environments then triangulates this authentic learning framework with what students wanted to learn in the subject and how they perceived they had developed their confidence and competence in creative arts education. (Contains 2 tables.)

Current legal mandates require that students with disabilities in K-12 settings have access to assistive technology (AT) devices and services. Therefore, educational teams serving students with Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) must consider various ATs and identify services to support their implementation in educational settings. However, research has reported that insufficient teacher expertise continues to impede effective student access to AT and that models and strategies for improving teacher expertise, particularly at the preservice level, are desperately needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a model for integrating AT throughout a preservice undergraduate special education teacher preparation program at a large public university. Results indicated that special education teacher candidates were satisfied with their AT instruction and felt prepared for using ATs with students. Discussion and implications for integrating AT throughout a teacher education program are provided. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

This article examines distance education (DE) in the context to which is most frequently applied, i.e., higher education, and from the perspective of some of its most important actors, i.e., teachers. This study, of a qualitative nature, was conducted at a public university in Brazil. Data were collected by means of unstructured interviews, observations, and a questionnaire with close- and open-ended questions. Since DE is a relatively novel educational modality in Brazilian public higher education, this study asked pathfinder faculty to give advice to upcoming colleagues, most of them experienced in face-to-face higher education, but new to DE. Cooperation, commitment, organization, and above all courage and humility to learn and openness to new experiences, are, according to this research, attitudes essential to novice DE teachers. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this article, the author talks about the resignation of New York State's commissioner of education David Steiner, and how it will affect the state's Race to the Top. He contends that Steiner was savvy enough to understand the importance of Race to the Top and able enough to turn the state's education energies toward it. The "Washington Post" said that the program "helped transform the national discussion on education." Once the shining star of the American public education system, New York has of late come to represent all that is wrong with American education. Under Steiner's direction New York had set some bold goals for 2013. Yet, it bothered him that the state might not make these goals. This is what rattled New Yorkers when they heard Steiner was leaving. The author stresses that Steiner had a surprising success turning the education bureaucracy around. Finding the person who can steer it through a radically changed landscape will be New York's next challenge.

Ideas about child education are inevitably underpinned by particular views of children, including their nature and development. The purpose of this paper is to discuss C. G. Jung's account of child education in relation to his psychological theory and view of children. However, as Jung's theory predominantly concerns the psychological development of adults and not children, the current paper makes selective use of Jung's texts that focus on children, and examines what Jung calls "the other half" of education that works through the teacher's personality indirectly affecting the student's development of personality. From a close study of Jung's texts, the paper discusses the nature and the extent of children's involvement in "the other half" of education and considers some problems with Jung's account of unconscious education. The paper identifies the active and autonomous roles played by children in unconscious education and suggests that Jung's account of "the other half of education" could provide fresh insights about the meaning and quality of education. (Contains 1 figure and 23 notes.)

Concerns have been raised in the Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) doctoral education literature regarding: (a) the narrowness of research preparation, (b) the emphasis on disciplinary silos, (c) the lack of competitiveness and innovation within and beyond academia, and (d) the role of graduate assistants. These concerns mirror those in the professoriate at large regarding doctoral education. There is, however, little research that has examined these issues in our field. In this paper we report on the content studied in the core curriculum of doctoral programs, admission requirements, number of full and part time students, number of faculty serving these students, funding supporting students, and type and scope of research classes. Data were collected from websites as well as other public domain sources and open-ended interviews with faculty members in each program. We discuss the findings and implications for PETE. (Contains 2 notes.)

In this paper, the authors review current practices in pre-service teacher education. They suggest that radical improvements are possible and that, if practiced, would help mediate many of the pressures young teachers face. To do so, the authors: 1) outline the experiences of young teachers to consider how teachers might thrive in a difficult vocation; 2) share recent research in the area of in-service teacher professional learning (including their own) as a way to inform teacher education programs; and 3) to use these research findings to suggest possible changes and improvements to pre-service teacher education programs. Synthesizing the research, the authors generate a "To Do List" of activities they believe should become part of pre-service education programs. They believe such instruction can become essential career foundations for teachers that would help build Master Teachers, would help stem the exodus from teaching, and would help our teacher education programs begin to educate teachers for the wellness of long and healthy careers.

The fundamental premise of this paper is that a broad rather than a narrow definition of "competency" should inform discussions on "competencies-based education". Also, while we see value in drawing on a broad definition when designing curricula, we hold that it is not sufficient on its own for such design if education is to be a humanizing activity along with being a preparation for the societal demands of life. To take this position is to promote a curriculum studies perspective to analyzing competencies-based education. The paper clarifies what we mean by such a perspective. A variety of difficulties inherent in competencies-based education that have been outlined over the last thirty years by significant curriculum theorists are then outlined. The paper concludes with a brief exposition on how a broad-based view of competencies-based education can be accommodated within a curriculum framework that addresses these difficulties and views education as a liberating activity, while also allowing for its contribution to economic and social concerns.

This article outlines the current problems facing vocational education in China in order to raise the question as to how deep-seated and intractable they might be. In order to address this question a historical analysis of vocational education from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of Mao's period of office is undertaken. The rise of vocational education at school did not take place in China until 1905. Its successive development was pursued simply in a pragmatic way. It suggests that the impact of regular academic schooling on setting standards both for learning and for subsequent employment opportunities should not be underestimated. It argues that the preference for higher and formal education endangered what was seen as the lower level of vocational and informal adult education, which undermined China's skill formation system. In the light of this historical analysis, consideration is given to the prospects for the development of vocational and adult education in China today. (Contains 1 note.)