Education & Pedagogy

In this article, the ways in which special education for students with learning disabilities was perceived as "special" historically and what we know about effective special education instructional practices for students with learning disabilities currently are summarized. The influence of monitoring progress, providing explicit and systematic instruction, understanding the critical factors associated with progress in academic areas such as reading and math, and teaching students in small groups with many opportunities to practice and obtain feedback are essential features of special education for students with learning disabilities. A model for providing integrated services between general and special education for students with learning disabilities is described.

This study examined perceptions of college of education students and their experiences with Channel One, a privately-owned news service used in public education. Given that about one-third of middle and high schoolers in the US view the broadcast every school day, the authors surveyed 172 freshmen to discern their views and attitudes toward Channel One programming and commercials and the role colleges and universities might play in relation to this media service. While most studies on Channel One have been conducted from a K-12 point of view, the goal of this study was to reconsider the topic from the perspective of prospective teachers and post-secondary education.

While considerable attention is being paid to reforming education systems to prepare students for the challenges of globalization and a knowledge-based economy, teacher education models in the Asia Pacific remain insufficiently critiqued. There is an urgent need to rethink teacher education as, in spite of decades of investment and development, major problems of inequality, attrition, incomplete and inadequate learning continue to blight our education systems. It is proposed that teacher education needs to become more culturally authentic as teaching and learning are best viewed as culturally scripted activities. The utilization of indigenous knowledge will be central to this task. The article concludes with some suggestions for how the task may be started.

This paper addresses the role of physical education in promoting physical activity and mobility. It is assumed that attitude is an important component that influences physical activity and, ultimately, mobility. A variety of factors and the way they impact children's attitudes toward physical education are discussed. In particular, the outcomes of physical education, motor skill development and student skill level, and student attitude are presented. The factors that influence student skill development and attitude are interrelated and occur over many years both in and out of school. I conclude that to promote physical activity, physical education must address attitude and be enjoyable. (Contains 2 figures.)

This article presents an interview with Mark David Milliron, board chair of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, a trustee with Western Governors University, and a member of the advisory board for the University of Texas (UT) TeleCampus. He is also president and CEO of Catalyze Learning International, a private consulting and service group working in K-12, community college, university, and corporate education. Milliron was interviewed by Darcy W. Hardy, executive director of the UT TeleCampus and assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs with The University of Texas System. She serves "The American Journal of Distance Education" as its interviews editor.

This article presents some of the latest news about the United States Department of Education. Secretary Margaret Spellings assigned an expanded role for correctional education to The Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) effective October 1, 2006. The correctional education direct grant programs currently in the Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools will move to OVAE, under the leadership of new Assistant Secretary Troy Justesen. Also, with regard to the Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners Program, the 2006 competition yielded 11 newly funded projects, three in State prison systems, with eight projects to be operated by units of local government. The Department of Education also sponsored a workshop on "Making Data Work for You."

This article analyses the role of educational opportunity in a time of globalisation, a new economy and life in a multicultural society, and gives an epistemological and semantic account of the concept "intercultural education", distinguishing it from multicultural and transcultural education. Starting with a historic overview of various conceptualisations of meetings/clashes among people with different linguistic, religious, cultural or ethnic features, distinctive theoretical elaborations are reviewed, above all in a European context and in the educational field. After outlining the development of intercultural education (main contents, methods and objectives, as well as limits), this article supports the thesis that education, in an intercultural sense, is currently the most appropriate answer to globalisation and interdependence. (Contains 4 notes.)

Despite unquestionably good intentions on the part of most people who call themselves intercultural educators, most intercultural education practice supports, rather than challenges, dominant hegemony, prevailing social hierarchies, and inequitable distributions of power and privilege. In this essay I describe a philosophy of decolonizing intercultural education--an intercultural education dedicated, first and foremost, to dismantling dominant hegemony, hierarchies, and concentrations of power and control. I argue that attaining such an intercultural education requires not only subtle shifts in practice and personal relationships, but also important shifts of consciousness that prepare us to see and react to the socio-political contexts that so heavily influence education theory and practice.

This article examines the approaches that Hong Kong and Singapore are taking to develop themselves as "regional hubs of higher education" and the implications of their approaches. It starts with a delineation of how the internationalization of higher education structurally alters the landscape of the global higher education market. These changes drive both Hong Kong and Singapore to compete for the higher education pie. Despite many similarities in the vision and policy instruments, the article argues that there are significant differences in terms of their implementation approaches. More importantly, such differences reflect the different mindsets of the two governments in their governance of the university sector.

This article reviews the effects of globalization on South Africa a decade after the transition to a post-apartheid system. It brings together some of the recent literature of the performance of the economy and concomitant changes in education. It shows the pervasive force of globalization on South African education and training and explores in particular how this has affected the political imperative to establish a non-racial socio-political order. It argues that the twin processes of globalization and socio-political transformation have often contradicted stated goals of equity and redress. (Contains 2 tables and 5 notes.)

The ability to care for oneself, near and distant others, animals, plants, human-made objects, and even ideas is an antidote for violence in its many forms as experienced in childhood as well as adulthood. This article makes a case for facilitating the development of the ability to care as children develop. The authors emphasize the importance of teachers facilitating this development. However, early education teachers may not be able to nurture the ability to care in others without the ability to care being facilitated in their own development. This article emphasizes the importance of creating caring teacher education programs as a model to foster its development in preservice early education teachers.

This paper addresses the importance of preparing prospective teachers for their responsibilities as future civic educators. Specifically, the authors explore children's construction of civic knowledge, identify a civics pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), outline four guiding principles that contribute to the development of civics PCK within a teacher education program, and present examples of civics-centered teacher education at two major public universities. The paper concludes by sharing prospective teachers' understandings of civics concepts garnered from their teacher preparation programs, and the authors present unresolved issues and caveats with regard to the challenge of preparing civic educators within large scale teacher education programs. (Contains 1 figure and 6 notes.)

This article argues that in moving from being self governed to being state governed the policy drivers for higher education are no longer those of the system itself but are derived from a set of policies designed for the reform and modernisation of the public sector of the economy. The formation of higher education policy therefore needs to be reinterpreted as an adjunct of public policy, rather than as something intrinsic to higher education. The impact of "new public management" approaches and of political interventions are explored in illustrating the consequences of the centralisation of the management of the public services and of higher education becoming an issue in national politics.

Government-provided services are caught in the jaws of a "cost-tax vice". On the cost side, the long-term trend of rising relative prices of services, including education, seems set to continue. The other jaw of the vice is the high efficiency cost of raising additional taxes. Recent research making the case for public provision of post-compulsory education has concentrated on the difficult task of quantifying its economic and social benefits. However, given the effects of the cost-tax vice, this paper argues that it may be wise to change the focus of research and to direct more attention to new ways of financing adult and community education.

Three interconnected aspects of higher education and information literacy are essential. The first is global educational goals and the place of information literacy within those goals. The second is new research on higher education effectiveness and the role of information literacy for successful learning. The third is the role technology plays in the rapidly changing environment in which we live and its impact on the development of information literacy, as well as on higher and global education. These three aspects are critically interwoven, as this article examines where higher education will take us in the future.