Education & Pedagogy

With "basic education" now firmly a part of the current development discourse, this paper discusses how a selection of donors in Pacific education relate to this notion in terms of shifts in their development policy, their financial commitment and their underlying political agenda. With Levesque's (2001) notion of "perception gaps" in mind, discussion about the direction in which these priorities, objectives and obligations are pushing education development are considered and attention is drawn to the need for a loud local voice with increasing donor convergence. (Contains 13 footnotes.)

This article presents an interview by Gary E. Miller, executive director emeritus of Penn State World Campus, the online distance education campus of The Pennsylvania State University, with Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology in the United States Department of Education. She brings to the position a mix of corporate and public sector experience. Prior to joining the department, Cator directed Apple, Inc.'s leadership and advocacy efforts in education. In this role, she focused on the intersection of education policy and research; emerging technologies; and the practical realities faced by teachers, students, and administrators. In this interview, Director Cator discusses the role of distance education in the national educational strategy.

This paper outlines the connection between qualitative research methods in education and teacher reflective practices as they relate to Valli's ("Reflective teacher education: cases and critiques." State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992; "Peabody J Educ" 72(1): 67-88, 1997) model of reflection. Using the authors' own experiences in performing and guiding educational research, and existing research in the field of teacher education pertaining to reflective practitioners, explicit connections are made between the two paradigms. These connections illustrate the importance of integrating authentic research experiences into the teacher education curriculum outside the context of methods courses, much like models established in the sciences.

This article provides physical education teachers with a practical, sequenced Adventure Education unit they can easily integrate into a curriculum. This unit was developed for a two week (e.g., 10 days) Adventure Education camp at Hofstra University. Students in 3rd through 5th grades participated in daily adventure activities during a two-hour session. The unit presented is designed to show a sequential approach to Adventure Education programming. Each day of the unit builds on students' previous experiences, a typical "Project Adventure" (PA) sequence. The sequence is constructed and maintained throughout the unit to reinforce student learning. The author discusses the "low" adventure activities that can be utilized to meet the daily themes from Days 1 to 5. (Contains 3 figures.)

The recent structural reforms in New Zealand education have enabled the liberalisation of upper secondary school curricula to the point where schools can devise programmes that lead to nationally recognised vocational qualifications. Strategies include close relationships with further education providers whereby instructional materials or direct instruction for some courses may be provided by the further education provider, and schools gaining accreditation to conduct vocational education programmes. These various programmes are of demonstrated benefit to groups that have traditionally been under-represented in academic success, and may provide a means of addressing the growing problem of boys' underachievement. (Contains 2 tables.)

Despite policy provision enabling sexuality education to address more than disease and pregnancy prevention, this focus continues to permeate many school programmes. This paper problematises the danger prevention emphasis in sexuality education, examines school's investment in it and asks how useful it is. The ways this kind of sexuality education may inhibit the reduction of "negative" sexual outcomes and fail to support young people's sexual well-being is explored. Suggesting sexuality education might be conceptualisxed without this danger prevention emphasis necessitates an exploration of what might replace it. Foucault's work around an ethics of pleasure is drawn on as one example of how the objectives of sexuality education might be re-envisaged.

Special education services are shaped by legal parameters developed over the past 30 years. Many of those services give priority to process and compliance rather than to focusing on student outcomes. Today, reform initiatives to special education programs are well underway, many of them shaped by fundamental changes occurring in local education agency practice. This article provides an overview of how federal special education law supports many of the reform efforts underway in many school districts throughout the country. It reviews important legislative changes to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1997 and 2004, including the section of IDEA 2004 that permits the use of response to intervention as a basis for determining special education eligibility.

This paper is based on an observational study concerning the effectiveness of elementary education. It was conducted in a rural area near Alotau, the provincial capital of the Milne Bay Province, with a special focus on the Maiwala Elementary School. In this paper, the author first briefly describes what elementary education is and how it has been implemented in the Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. Then she clarifies the aims of elementary education. She also provides a brief history of the Maiwala Elementary School, and discusses the effectiveness of elementary education. Finally, she concludes this paper recommending some important points for the expansion of elementary education. (Contains 10 notes.)

This article explores policy and curriculum diffusion in southern and eastern Africa through an examination of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and outcomes-based education. The article argues that the NQF was adopted for different reasons in different contexts, but that discourse coalitions and conferences have been critical in spreading these ideas in a new regional political and economic context. It shows how South Africans have tried to export the idea at the very moment when evidence is revealing little relationship between policy intention and outcome, it is contested at home, and there is a retreat from it in some sectors of education.

This article discusses the impact of the Employment Equity Act, 1998 on the higher education sector of South Africa. An introduction to the background and development of affirmative action and employment equity is provided. The author then discusses the specialised constraints and challenges faced by higher education employers, separating them from traditional business employers, such as companies and factories. It is argued that these crucial challenges--specialized higher education legislation and policy developments, the "pool" issue, funding and rationalization, universities as a unique workplace, and the individual legacies of universities--define the space in which the Employment Equity Act may be interpreted in the higher education sector.

This piece considers a pivotal period in British social, political, cultural and educational history, the decades from 1945 to 1965. It reviews key policy documents (issued by the Board of Education in 1943 and 1944 and the Department of Education and Science in 1968) which can be said to "frame" the period and proceeds to examine the practices advocated and employed by two progressive teachers, Michael Duane and Kenneth Barnes. It implicates both Duane and Barnes in the development of sex(uality) education in the period but locates their motives in modernist and conformist, not radical, psychological and political/moral discourses.

Back when markets hinged on local contacts, product standardization wasn't a concern. When higher education was thought to be mainly about educating citizens, standardization wasn't much of a concern, either. Standardization has come later to higher education than to other commodities markets, but it has arrived. As with other commodities, unit cost matters, as do how "goods" are produced, measured, and sold. The author of this "point of view" piece asks whether we have arrived at a point in higher education where we will see increasing divergence between degrees meant for the masses and those for the elites, and states that when education turns into a commodity, it may change not just in quality, but also in kind.

This article suggests three ideas. First, under the pressures of the Ottoman and Iraqi state modernity projects, two types of cultural traditions in Iraq, namely Islam and Arab tribal values, were negotiated and re-negotiated. Second, the concepts of merit based on these values changed over time and were institutionalised in education. Third, these changes created contrasting forms of moral education in the state education, the Arab tribal "diwan" and in Shi'a religious "hawza" education. Overall, the article discusses how cultural traditions were adapted in these societies in times of rapid change, how they affected moral education and how these themes may be understood historically.

In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.

In the context of internationalisation, the delivery of higher education programmes increasingly combines open learning with collaborations among people of diverse languages and cultures. In this paper we argue that while the literature on international education focuses on mapping modes of delivery in international education, there is also a need to recognise that it is these modes, together with language and culture, which mediate the delivery of programmes. Drawing on data from a case study of collaboration between an Australian university and an educational institution in Malaysia, we argue that international education per force involves collaboration and that this collaboration is mediated.