Education & Pedagogy

This study discusses the impact of John Dewey (1859-1952) on Turkey's teacher education system. In so doing, it heavily relies on the commissioned report "The Report and Recommendation on Turkish Education" prepared by Dewey in 1924. This paper documents Dewey's ideas about teacher education in Turkey and analyses their take up in practice. Based on the research findings, it could be argued that Dewey had a considerable impact on the transformation of teacher education system in Turkey. His most visible impact was best observed in the policies and practices in the training of village teachers. The Village Institutes Project, launched in the early 1940s to introduce a model specific to Turkey, was extensively based on Dewey's recommendations. In the Republican Era, Dewey's ideas and thoughts on education have been eagerly observed and implemented by Turkish authorities, who have openly recognised his competence and authority in the field of education. His impact on Turkish education system is still visible as the present policy makers make reference to his works. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

During the last 2 years, Britain's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has commissioned several pieces of research into various aspects of home education. These items of research have served to illustrate several of the most pressing local authority concerns with regard to the educational outcomes, socialisation and welfare of children educated in this manner. As a result, in part, of the publication of these commissioned studies, and because of the perceived anomalous regulatory situation regarding such educational practice when compared with state and private education provision (which is subject to significant levels of legislation), a full public consultation into legislation concerned with the regulation of home education has been widely anticipated. Instead, the government has recently launched a consultation on elective home education guidelines. This article seeks to explore the need for, and implications of guidelines, further regulation and legislation for the home-educating community, in the light of increasing levels of national and international research into the educational attainment, welfare and impact of legislation on education other than at school. (Contains 2 notes.)

Science education has an important part in developing understanding of concepts that underpin environmental issues, leading potentially to pro-environmental behaviour. However, science is commonly perceived negatively, leading to inappropriate and negative models of science that do not connect to people's experiences. The article argues that the cognitive and affective domains need to be explicitly integrated in a science education that informs environmental education, as a sense of relationship is essential for environmental care and responsibility leading to informed action. The features of such approaches to science education are discussed through analysis of the impact of modern and constructive postmodern science education models on environmental education, and possible strategies for making connections between cognitive and affective domains are proposed. The analysis incorporates the development of positive approaches to science and environmental issues through teacher modelling of biophilic behaviour, active learning through constructivist pedagogy, the politicisation of science education to address social and environmental issues, suitable experiences of natural environments and living organisms, and science curricula that emphasise conceptual integration to demonstrate complex environmental effects, including the environmental consequences of human behaviour. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

The perspectives of general and special education teacher educators, who are nationally recognized for their work in the areas of learning disabilities, inclusive education, and teacher education, were explored. Study participants were asked to reveal how the inclusion of students with learning disabilities has impacted their professional lives in ways they did not expect. In addition, they responded to questions about the unexpected outcomes of inclusion on students with learning disabilities and their typical peers. Results suggest that (a) preparing teachers, not only for inclusion, but also for the diverse classrooms of today, is challenging; (b) the real world of schools is where teacher educators believe they need, and want, to be because important questions can be posed and solutions found within schools; (c) colleges of education, like schools, need to be reformed to encourage and support intensive, prolonged site-based work; and (d) outcomes for students with learning disabilities included in general education classrooms cannot be de-contextualized. (Contains 1 table.)

This article has three purposes: to explain the two different uses of power analysis that can be used in health education research; to examine the extent to which power analysis is being used in published health education research; and to explain the implications of not using power analysis in research studies. Articles in seven leading health education journals ("American Journal of Health Behavior," "American Journal of Health Education," "American Journal of Health Promotion," "Health Education & Behavior," "Health Education Research," "Journal of American College Health," and "Journal of School Health") were analyzed for the years 2000-2003. For four of the seven journals, less than 5% of their research articles reported a power analysis. Only two journals ("American Journal of Health Behavior" and "Health Education Research") had a modest number of research articles (14-35%) that reported power analysis. This is the first reported examination of power analysis in health education journals. The findings indicate a potential problem with the quality of health education research being reported. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

This article addresses the context and challenges of small island developing states, focusing particularly on Cape Verde. After a general discussion of the characteristics of small island developing states, several development challenges such as poverty, unemployment and migratory issues specific to Cape Verde are evoked. Despite a period of relative economic growth since the early 1990s, Cape Verde remains vulnerable to external factors and dependent on international aid and remittances. As is the case for many small island developing states, education plays a key role in reducing this vulnerability. We demonstrate that although considerable progress has been made in access and gender parity in basic education, equity and the provision of post-primary and tertiary education remain problematic. In an effort to address these concerns in a cost-effective manner, distance education and ITC modalities have been implemented and may be a useful means of ensuring sustainability of provision in a time where Cape Verde's status will soon change from least-developed country (LDC) to middle-income country. (Contains 11 tables and 4 notes.)

In 1998 the Government of Uganda (GoU) began implementing an ambitious reform programme called the Education Strategic Investment Plan (ESIP) in order to effect Universal Primary Education (UPE). This paper offers a perspective on how the GoU has met the challenge of financing education reform, addressed the need to improve the quality of basic education and increased access and equity while improving efficiency at primary and post-primary levels of education. The development model described in this paper privileges good governance and donor co-operation within a Sector Wide Approach. Important lessons have been learned in Uganda including the need for political commitment to universal primary education within a clear conception of whole sector reform. However, the discourse of SWAPs tends to function primarily in the formal sphere and not at the level of the experience of most teachers, pupils and their families, yet it is at this level that national education policies have to be mediated in practice. More attention needs to be given in education sector reform to the processes as well as the context of change.

Migrant English as a Second Language (ESL) has been an important form of rural adult education in the United States for decades. This chapter provides a national and historical overview of rural and migrant ESL. The educational needs of the growing population of seasonal, migrant agricultural workers are discussed and situated in relation to the growth of adult education, literacy education, and ESL as professions in the United States. Then, the majority of this chapter describes and evaluates a migrant farmworker outreach and education program created at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and brought to migrant camps in Lenawee County in rural southeastern Michigan. This program, now in its tenth year, has had an important impact on both the university community and the Lenawee County organizations that serve the migrant farmworker populations there. The authors offer this account as a model for mutually beneficial collaboration among several groups of stakeholders who have provided migrant ESL and bilingual health and safety education to adults in rural areas in an era of continuing budget cuts for both adult education and migrant education.

This article compares the practices of teacher educators with those of academics working as educators on pre-service courses for nurses and social workers. It includes a framework for analyzing professional education work, which conceptualizes the educators as "second order practitioners." The findings of the study show that similar missions, composed of four elements--teaching in higher education, research or scholarship, contribution to the original professional field, and service to the university--underpin professional practices. Other similarities across the three groups included: engagement in complex pedagogies; struggling to engage in "valid" research; and perceptions that their departments had low status in higher education. The study shows the tensions created for professional educators when they attempt to meet the imperatives of both higher education and their original professional fields. The findings illuminate generic issues about what is termed "second order practice," and indicate directions for countering insularity in teacher education. (Contains 1 table.)

Globalization, accelerated time-based competition, qualitative dynamics, rapid development of technology and especially Information and Communications Technology (ICT) developments challenge engineering education and capability development of each engineer. The success and the competitiveness of companies are increasingly based on their employees. Thus, the question becomes: what kind of future engineering education should be, and should it be radically different than today? Seeking viable and rapid answers to this question poses serious challenges to current educational systems. This paper describes two on-going projects: development of Finnish engineering education policy and development of Industrial Management programs together with ICT-industry. These projects aimed at restructuring engineering education in Finland. Both projects are unique in emphasizing the importance of crossing organizational borders within and outside of traditional engineering education system. The paper also introduces recent initiatives of global ICT industry (IBM, Cisco, Nokia and Apple) that challenge the traditional practices and content of engineering education. Experiences from examples confirm that a dynamic and interactive approach is essential for the success of future engineering education. (Contains 2 figures.)

The complexity of the pedagogical process and the intricacies of a rigorous teacher education are central concerns of this article. What is a critical complex teacher education? What types of knowledges should professional educators possess? The author states that, in a climate as hostile as the first decade of the twenty-first century, the ability of teacher educators to articulate a case for particular knowledges is not merely important, it may be a survival skill. In its devaluation, pedagogy has been rendered invisible in many higher educational settings. Teacher educators, teachers, and teacher education students must not only understand the complexity of good teaching, but stand ready to make this known to political leaders and the general population. The vision on which this article is grounded involves the empowerment of teachers in an era where teacher professionalism is under assault. The author describes a meta-epistemological construction of the types of knowledges required in a critical complex teacher education. This educational knowledge base involves the recognition of different types of knowledges of education, including but not limited to, empirical, experiential, normative, critical, ontological, and reflective-synthetic domains.

The coupling of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and the No Child Left Behind Act has placed a large number of students with disabilities into general education settings. The continued trend toward educating students with disabilities in inclusive settings mandates that teachers be prepared to work with all learners. General education teacher candidates have voiced concerns over their levels of preparation in serving exceptional learners, a concern that may heighten their fear of the unknown when faced with increasing numbers of students with disabilities. For this reason, it is important to understand general education teacher candidates' attitudes toward inclusion in order to refine and augment existing personnel preparation programs. This article explores and compares perceptions of elementary and secondary education majors toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in their classrooms. Results reveal differing perceptions between majors and indicate several areas in need of attention. Findings are framed within teacher preparation programs of study. (Contains 2 tables and 1 note.)

In order to understand better the way in which the emerging field of citizenship education is being characterised we reflect on work emerging from a higher education network (citizED) for citizenship education. Three of the four authors of this article are closely involved in that network. CitizED was established with funding from the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (now the Training and Development Agency for Schools, TDA) in order to establish a network and provide resources to support the initial training of citizenship teachers. We analysed download data from the network's website, a sample of the resources produced by the network, and interviewed a sample of users and developers. In this article we identify who is using the resources, how they are using them and what form of citizenship education is developing as a result. We argue that there is now a clear citizenship teacher education community that uses common resources for a variety of purposes. We suggest that there is some consensus in relation to the official characterisation of citizenship, but that "turf wars" still exist in this contested field. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

There has long been controversy in this country about the implementation of school-based sexuality education. In recent years, however, the controversy has centered on abstinence education. Critics of abstinence education programs seem to have three major concerns relative to abstinence education programming: (1) promotion of religion; (2) provision of inaccurate information; and (3) ineffective programming. The focus of this article is on the charge that abstinence education programs are ineffective in reducing risky sexual behavior among teens. Since the federal government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programs that must meet the a-h definition of abstinence education this is an important public policy issue. This article includes a review of published evaluations of abstinence education programs (limited to evaluations that addressed behavioral outcomes), commentary on aspects of Doug Kirby's analysis of the effectiveness of abstinence programs, as well as commentary on Robert Rector's defense of the effectiveness of abstinence programs. Additionally, other evaluation issues are addressed, such as apparent opposition to evaluation efforts, concerns with the evaluations of state abstinence education programs, concerns with federally funded evaluation efforts, and evaluation requirements of federal funding agencies. (Contains 1 table.)

Focusing on the periodically polemic case in many countries of subjects related to religion, the present research analyzes the values in which the new curriculum of Catholic Religion teaching in Spain intends to educate. An axiological, analytical, and critical study of the legal text of the Resolution of 21 June 2022, of the Secretary of State for Education, by which the curricula for the teaching of Catholic Religion corresponding to Infant Education, Primary Education, Secondary Education and Baccalaureate is presented, specifically Annexe III, 'Catholic Religion in Compulsory Secondary Education'. The main objective of the work focuses on identifying the values, expressed and implicit, established by this resolution for the 12 to 16 years old stage, in accordance with an axiological model of comprehensive education, which has been validated. This is a documentary research, using the technique of content analysis, which is fundamentally qualitative. The results make evident the predominance of Social and Religious Values, followed by Intellectual and Moral ones, and the poor presence of Physical Values. Likewise, the results show that the representation of other values, such as Temporal and Aesthetic ones, can be improved.