Education & Pedagogy

Drawing on comparative case studies of public higher education in Massachusetts and New York, examines recent policy initiatives to terminate academic programs, eliminate remedial education, and promote honors colleges. Describes how these policies contribute to increased stratification of programs and students within a state system as well as within campuses. Argues that higher education policy analysis should develop a more refined conceptualization of student access. (EV)

Information from 121 chairs of 1997-98 special educational search committees was collected. The majority of positions were at the rank of Assistant Professor and were left vacant due to faculty mobility. Seventy-three percent of searches ended successfully; 76% of those hired were women; and 20% were culturally or linguistically diverse. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Uses the demand-supply continuum to look at emerging reforms in the Japanese educational system. Data from fieldwork in major urban districts and their prefectures in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo highlight demand-driven reform (higher education restructuring), integrated governance (mediating demand and supply at the K-12 levels), and ongoing self-evaluation by school site personnel as a supply-side reform strategy. (SM)

Examined whether change occurred in the attitudes of Arab teachers in Israel toward Holocaust education following an inservice study course. Survey and interview data indicated that after the course, teachers had a better understanding of what occurred during the Holocaust, and their willingness to know about its effects on Jewish people increased. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impacted participants' views. (SM)

Critiques Larry Nucci's argument that for many religious believers, religion and morality cannot be separated. Believes that morality is only weakly independent from religion. Argues that moral education in U.S. public schools needs curricula that help students explore and understand moral rationales and motivations from various cultural and religious sources. (CAJ)

The severe under representation of Chicanas in higher education reveals the need to chronicle the evolution of the field of Chicanas and higher education. This article highlights key studies and significant events related to the field of Chicanas and higher education for three decades, beginning with the 1970s and ending with the 1990s. The author synthesizes the schools of thought influential for each decade and concludes with a summary and recommendations for further research.

The shortage of fully certified special education teachers, which has been described as severe, chronic, and pervasive, threatens the quality of educational services that students with disabilities receive. Over the last decade, researchers have investigated the magnitude of the special education teacher shortage problem and factors that contribute to the imbalance between supply and demand. This special issue includes research syntheses that critically evaluate the complex range of factors that contribute to teacher shortages in special education.

The aim of this article is to respond to Professor English, Professor D'Souza, and Dr. Chartrand's comparative review of research in the British Journal of Religious Education and Religious Education over the ten-year period from 1992?2002. Their analysis is for the most part extended and complemented, although critical questions are also raised and pursued. The article concludes with the identification of research trajectories in religious education and some personal comments on the direction future research should take.

One emergent issue in relation to research on Indigenous epistemologies and education concerns the extent to which Indigenous epistemologies lead to new kinds of educational experiences and outcomes and pose new research questions. This commentary responds to the sense of limits and possibilities for Indigenous education that are raised by the research in this theme issue, and suggests that there are indeed new questions to be asked and answered through research.

This article presents an action plan for establishing a system of quality assurance for Croatian higher education. The action plan is forward-looking rather than retrospective and draws on experiences with adopting continuous improvement practices in Australia, Turkey, and the United States. Numerous authors have explored the challenges facing Croatian higher education, so we do not duplicate that task. We propose to adopt a continuous improvement system which will help modernize the system of education in Croatia.

The paper begins by exploring the problematic nature of philosophy in Islam. The second section examines the resources that are available for a systematic exploration of the principles of Islamic education. The third section discusses three dimensions of education in Islam, one focusing on individual development, one on social and moral education and one on the acquisition of knowledge. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of differences between Islamic and liberal ways of understanding education and of the possibility of future dialogue with western philosophies.

This ethnographic study examines the educational experiences of 10 women who are both social service recipients and higher education students. Study participants view higher education in a variety of ways that include both instrumental and transformational purposes. By situating participants' experiences in the larger economic and social context of welfare reform and shrinking employment opportunities, this paper provides a critical analysis of their assumptions concerning higher education.

The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC) houses more than 24,000 mathematics and science curriculum resources in this national repository, with new items arriving daily. Identification of effective curriculum resources, creation of high-quality professional development materials and dissemination of useful information and products to improve K-12 mathematics and science teaching and learning is the mission of ENC.

The report of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education (PCESE) is questioned with reference to the achievement gap it identifies, its recommendations regarding prevention, its suggestion that many students are misidentified, and its concern for over identification of African American students in the category of emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The conclusion is that the PCESE report is disingenuous and devalues special education, particularly special education for children with EBD.

This article explores the civic republican conception of citizenship underlying the Labour government's programme of civil renewal and the introduction of education for democratic citizenship. It considers the importance of the cultivation of civic virtue through political participation for such developments and it reviews the research into how service learning linked to character education can lead to the civic virtue of duty or social responsibility.