Education & Pedagogy

A study was conducted to research and develop a statewide project for the improvement of home economics teacher education programs in Texas. The steering committee, composed of representatives from the Texas Education Agency, colleges and universities, and public school districts, directed a select group of forty-five state, area, and local home economics educators for a three-day workshop to begin development of competencies. Consultants assisted the groups to research, identify, and clarify desired and/or essential competencies of beginning teachers of home economics in the following areas: child development, clothing and textiles, consumer education, family life education, food and nutrition education, home management, housing, home furnishings and equipment, and teacher education. The competencies were distributed to teacher educators, subject-matter area persons, administrators, and teachers throughout Texas for review and validation. Revisions were made, a format was designed, and the resulting materials were field-tested. Data was collected and tabulated, and curriculum development teams revised the materials into instructional guides. (Samples of the competency-based home economics instructional guides, a list of basic competencies for beginning home economics teachers, field-test instruments, and a pamphlet which explains how to order the materials are appended.) (CT)

A program is described which enables mine workers in Sheffield, England, to participate in a day-release education program once a week for three years. Sponsored by the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, the program exposes workers to economics, politics, sociology, and labor education while they are receiving full wages. Tutors in the program hold regular university appointments and have backgrounds in industry. Many of them have working class backgrounds and several were students in the day release programs before receiving university diplomas. Courses deal with a wide variety of labor-related topics, including hazards at work, work processes, industrial relations, rights at work, shop steward training, involvement in community affairs, working class television drama, and independent political education. The program also encourages work-related training of high school students and full-time semi-credentialized higher education for working class adults. Workers who have participated in the day release program report that they are more interested in participating in trade unions and working class political and community organization and that they feel better able to promote working class awareness. One measure of success of the program is that there are consistently more than three times as many applicants as places in the program. (DB)

This booklet provides guidelines for developing policy concerning the implementation of equal vocational education opportunities for women in Colorado. It begins with some introductory information pertaining to the problems of sex bias in vocational education. Next, a state plan for eliminating sex bias and sex-role stereotyping is presented. Then follow a needs assessment form for collecting data to determine sex bias in vocational education and a form to use in the evaluation of vocational education programs. The remainder of the booklet makes suggestions regarding the following: the role of the state governing board in implementing the state plan; the role of state or local vocational education advisory councils in implementing the state and/or local plan; the role of the local school administration and school board in implementing the state and/or local plan; the role of local directors of vocational education in implementing the state plan; the role of instructional staff and curriculum development personnel in implementing the state and/or local plan; the role of the guidance counselors for vocational education in implementing the state and/or local plan; community action to stimulate interest in eliminating sex bias in vocational education programs; and assistance to displaced homemakers in obtaining marketable skills. Suggested resources are attached. (EM)

A comprehensive career education project in Maine was conducted on three levels: university/college-based activities; public school activities, K-12; and state department-based activities. The major objective for level I was to demonstrate to teacher educators and teacher trainees the philosophy, methods, and objectives of comprehensive career education. The major objective for level II was to demonstrate a comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated career education program in one local pilot school system (Bangor, Maine). The major objective for level III was to demonstrate procedures for initiating a Maine State Plan for Career Education. (Activities on each level are summarized by sub-objectives in this final performance report.) Evaluation plans for the public school activities utilized a pre- and posttest control group design. Several instruments were used to measure K-12 students' self-awareness, career awareness, educational awareness, decision-making skills, and appreciations and attitudes. The statistical treatments used to analyze the data were analysis of covariance, variance, and t-tests to determine if there were significant differences between the control and experimental classes (intact classes were the analysis units). (The evaluation plan is described in detail in this document; overall evaluation results are reported in CE 019 321.) Numerous related materials are appended. (BM)

A demographic survey of community education students enrolled at Kishwaukee College during fall 1975 through summer 1978 focused on the characteristics of and differences among community education, career, and transfer students; student enrollments in relation to the district and over time; enrollments at different centers and in different types of classes; and differences between students who withdrew and those who persisted. In each area of investigation, the following characteristics were considered: age, sex, marital status, race, first enrollment, years since attending school and last school attended, full- or part-time status, reasons for attending, educational background, residence, occupation, concurrent enrollment, and credits previously earned. Results of the study indicated that while career and transfer studnts seemed to be similar to others in their group, there was no typical community education student. The diversity in the characteristics of community education students, seemed to bring the college student profile closer to the demographic profile of the district. Evening enrollments in the career and transfer areas were reaching a significantly different audience than the day enrollments in all areas except sex. Community education students attending off-campus centers appeared to be especially non-traditional in their characteristics. Data tables are included. (MB)

The author assesses the career education movement during the 1970s by first reviewing financial support for career education during that decade and then by summarizing the evidence of success in attaining career education goals. Based on this assessment, the author predicts that career education will continue to flourish during the 1980s only if certain challenges are met and obstacles are overcome. These challenges include continued efforts to maintain equal emphasis on basic career education goals; increased efforts to provide a personally meaningful reward system for all participants; continued emphasis on the need for hard data demonstrating the worth of career education; increased involvement of parents, community groups, and the public sector; increased demonstration and implementation efforts at the postsecondary level; and continued importance of each of the ten employability/adaptability/promotability skills of career education. The obstacles include less federal financial support during the 1980s; pressures to increase emphasis on employability skills and school/community pactnerships at the expense of the goal of education reform; pressures to concentrate efforts on only certain portions of the population and at the secondary level; and pressures to move responsibility for providing persons with employability/adaptability/promotability skills to agencies outside the education system. The author concludes by presenting some key thoughts on how to keep the career education movement alive and well during the 1980s. (BM)

Part of a series of Unesco technical information reports, this publication presents information on educational practice in 71 countries. Both developing and developed nations are included. The information, which is provided in a table on each country, comes from the official Country Reports to the 36th Session of the International Conference on Education held at the International Bureau of Education in Geneva in September, 1977. The information provided on each country includes the democratization objectives of educational access, process, output, and participation. For some countries, constitution or laws, administrative regulation, and plan objectives are also provided. The description of education in Germany is a good illustration of the kinds of information provided. In Germany ten year secondary school education is compulsory; educational allowances and free study materials are granted according to social aspects; higher education is free; and there are special schools for the handicapped. Entrance qualifications to German universities may be gained through formal schooling but also by attending evening school, a trade or technical college, or special courses. In all educational institutions, education is linked to social practice. It is a principle to interlace learning and studying with productive work. In Germany, Parents' Councils at every school have the right to participate in school affairs. (Author/RM)

This overview about research and development for higher education in Sweden discusses the organization of research and development, questions of policy and control, and the nature of the program areas. The research and development department is divided into the following components: research into higher education; followup of the reform of higher education; research and development projects of the planning boards; local development work; and information, documentation, and library. Two thematic areas of these program areas are (1) the relationship between conception of knowledge, subject content, and learning arrangements, and (2) recurrent education. Questions concerning the purpose and direction of research and development activities are handled by several advisory bodies, which are described. Research into higher education are divided into the following problem areas: the role of higher education in society; higher education as a system: structure and governance; the environment and working conditions of research and teaching; and research and development organization and planning. The reform followup program concerns the following main problem areas: the organization of higher education, budgeting systems and the planning of activities, institutional self-evaluation, the content and forms of education, and social effects of the reform. Funds for local development work are intended for development projects and for partial sabbatical leave for the compilation of teaching materials. (SW)

Participants in a conference held in April, 1978, had four main objectives: (1) to help identify and become more aware of the current concerns in home economics education; (2) to value the role of home economics education in promoting needed social change; (3) to contribute during the conference to the generation of possible solutions and actions to be taken regarding current social problems; and (4) to make plans and feel committed to share the conference with others in their home state or region. To accomplish these objectives, speakers, beggining with keynote speaker Marjorie East, focused on issues such as the profession of home economics and how to build it; the future of education, including the importance of the affective domain, the accountability movement, and the National Institute of Education evaluation of consumer and homemaking education; and needs in secondary home economics education programs in the 1980s. Speakers also discussed recent legislation affecting home economics education. Sociologist Jessie Bernard closed the conference with a self-portrait of a family derived from more than thirty years of family letters. A summary of the conference and list of participants are included in these proceedings. (KC)

Provisions of the Education Amendments of 1980 (P.L. 96-374) are described. Contents of the legislation are as follows: Title I--continuing education program and planning; Title II--college and research library assistance and library training and research; Title III--institutional aid; Title IV--student assistance; Title V--Teacher Corps and teacher training; Title VI--international education programs; Title VII--construction, reconstruction, and renovation of academic facilities; Title VIII--cooperative education; Title IX--graduate programs; Title X--Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education; Title XI--urban grant university program; Title XII--general provisions; and Title XIII--miscellaneous provisions. The following grants to students are covered: Pell Grants; Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants; State Student Incentive Grants; TRIO--specia1 programs for students from disadvantaged backgrounds; special programs for students whose families are engaged in migrant and seasonal farmwork; and veterans' cost-of-instruction payments. Additionally, Guaranteed Student Loans, the College Work-Study program and National Direct Student Loans are covered. Eligibility criteria and administrative allowances for aid recipients are addressed. Information on 1981-85 authorization levels for the legislation by section is presented. (SW)

This report concerns first-year activities of a study of alternative futures. The study attempted to identify major trends and possible events that could influence vocational education in the 1980s and to analyze policy issues likely to be associated with them. Following the introduction, chapter 2 addresses procedures followed in each of three main tasks: (1) Delphi study, (2) analysis of external trends likely to influence vocational education, and (3) conference. Chapter 3 presents results from the third round of a Delphi study of estimates of the probability and impact of thirty-six possible events; the panel for this consisted of national leaders and scholars of vocational education. Chapter 4 contains an overview of the proceedings of the Conference on Alternative Futures for Vocational Education held at the National Center for Research in Vocational Education (January 8-9, 1980) and summaries of major presentations and discussions. One presentation summarizes main findings of the study of forecasts of trends likely to be of significance and the analysis of their policy implications. Appendixes, amounting to over one-half of the report, include the full report of the study on trends (also available separately as ED 189 370), National Institute of Education Vocational Education Study--A Progress Report, and Recommendations by the American Vocational Association Legislative Study Teams. (YLB)

Within the context of the reauthorization of the Vocational Education Act of 1963, as amended, the predominant issues for vocational education in the eighties will be refined into policies. Central issues related to reauthorization and to the larger picture of the future of vocational education can be generally grouped into four broad categories: (1) federal role and national purpose of vocational education; (2) governance of the enterprise; (3) equity, access, and civil rights; and (4) program improvement. The federal role should be one of stimulation, equalization, and improvement. A nationwide statement of purpose must emphasize the critical nature of vocational education. Governance includes both the sole state agency concept and linkages with other agencies and groups. Provisions for equity, access, and civil rights must clearly be spelled out and enlarged upon in the new legislation. As part of program improvement, new technology, productivity, and economic development should not be ignored as a dimension of the outreach capacity of vocational education. These issues are the basis for laws which generate policies. Vocational education will become a dependent variable in the educational, social, and economic subsystems of the country when it achieves a political posture based on program effectiveness. (YLB)

Purposes for multicultural education in recent educational literature are reviewed and a transformist conception of multicultural education is expounded. A review of educational literature published since 1968 indicates that several objectives have been touted as core purposes for multicultural education. These include developing student understanding and appreciation of various racial and ethnic groups, correcting misconceptions of the cultures and histories of ethnic groups, removing racial and ethnic prejudices, and incorporating existing ethnic cultures into the mainstream of American socioeconomic and political life. Because the author believes that none of these is the true purpose of multicultural education, he proposes a transformist conception of multicultural education--defined as underlying attitudes which encourage schools to change so that the educational process will be more meaningful and useful to the poor and disenfranchised and will provide students with a sense of social and political power. Major assumptions of this transformist conception are that American society perpetuates economic, political, and social inequalities by race and social class and that public education promotes this inequality. Suggestions for changing public education along lines dictated by a transformist conception include reorganizing the curriculum and structure so that members of poor and nonwhite communities are provided with access to social influence and power redistribution. (DB)

Representing over 72 different groups and agencies, 107 participants attended the May 29-31, 1979, National Seminar on Rural Education. Prior to the seminar, experts and practitioners in the fields of rural education and sociology were commissioned to produce 22 papers documenting, summarizing, and interpreting research and practice in 6 areas: equity for special rural populations; the financial status and needs of rural schools; vocational and career training in rural schools; delivery systems for rural educational services; assuring the quality of rural school programs; and linking rural development and rural education. The papers served as the focus of the seminar, the goals of which were to review, critique, and publish the papers and to establish and publish recommendations for a federal agenda on rural education. Participants approved a total of 28 recommendations calling for action to end neglect and descrimination against rural areas; provide special support for dealing with the unique problems of rural education; and recognize education as a critical component of any rural development strategy. The report presents the ERIC abstracts of the commissioned papers as they appear in "Resources in Education." The recommendations are presented in detail, including the results of the voting on each measure. (SB)

This is the eighth of eight volumes consisting of series of publications of the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults (CSLEA), such as Notes and Essays, Research Reports, Occasional Papers, and Conference Reports. These materials provide both theory and practice in the area of non-credit adult liberal education offered by colleges and universities. This volume contains four CSLEA Conference Reports. The Role of Liberal Arts in the University Evening College Curriculum, a report of a conference of liberal arts deans (October 1954), summarizes group discussions on university role in adult education, academic standards, special problems, and program merchandizing. Tradition and Innovation in University Adult Education, a teacher conference (October 1954), contains presentations and group discussions focusing on the adult student and social problems and adult learning. The University's Responsibility for the General Education of Adults, report of the third leadership conference for university adult educators (March 1955), examines current social trends and their significance for general education of adults. The Concerns of the Dean in University Adult Education, report of the fourth leadership conference for university adult educators (March 1956), presents recommendations related to the (1) total university, (2) adult education division, and (3) total adult education movement. Summaries of four papers presented are appended. (YLB)