Education & Pedagogy

The SSRC-NAE Joint Committee on Education Research, a multidisciplinary group formed in 2001, initiated an investigation of the complex and sprawling field of American education research organized into three general domains of inquiry: the social organization of education research, an assessment of the quality of education research, and a consideration of the politics and policy implications of education research. This article describes the organization of this effort, summarizes the major themes discussed, and describes the resources gathered and research projects suggested by these deliberations. (Contains 4 notes and 2 online resources.)

The author discusses current policies, philosophies, and educational practices of early childhood music education in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) and to what extent they meet the challenges of music education for young children. Nearly all children use day care provisions, and they are a governmental responsibility. The author reviews governmental policies regarding general pedagogical goals of day care and kindergarten in Scandinavia. During the last decade, teaching plans for preschool pedagogy were implemented and the author discusses to what extent the plans meet current challenges of music education. The author also discusses the challenges of teacher-training programs in light of current policies regarding music education in early childhood.

Today bilingual bicultural education is the single most important development in American education, because it represents a departure from the American ethnocentrism in previous decades, and increases respect for the rights of ethnic children, and a sensitive response to their needs. The little known about the effects of bilingual bicultural education in its short existence as an organized Federal and state funded major effort, leads to the belief that it has great potentiality, is not divise or wasteful, and could, in fact, be the answer to the deep cognitive and developmental problems of many ethnic children. (Author/NQ)

Describes a leadership institute in Science-Technology-Society (STS) education which was established to develop middle-school science teacher/leaders in STS education across rural areas of central Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. The program was comprised of professional-development activities and complementary research that used STS curriculum, development, and implementation as the means toward that end. Contains 34 references. (PVD)

Articles include: "Philosophy of Design, Design Education, and Educational Design: Introduction to the Special Issue"; "Opaque and Articulate Design"; "The Problem of Character in Design Education: Liberal Arts and Professional Specialization"; "'Dasein' Versus Design: The Problematics of Turning Making into Thinking"; "Donald Schon's Philosophy of Design and Design Education"; "Toward an Ethics of Technologies as Prostheses"; "New Technologies/New Literacies: Reconstructing Education for the New Millennium"; and "Whither Educational Technology?" (AEF)

To better prepare pre-service candidates for teaching in the information age, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has defined National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) to guide technology integration into teacher education programs. Based on these standards, Brigham Young University (BYU) has implemented strategies for technology integration into their teacher education program by creating curriculum design teams composed of School of Education faculty, public school personnel, and instructional design and technology specialists. This paper describes basic principles that have led to the successful development of curriculum design teams for systemic reform in teacher education.

In this article, 3 concerns voiced by legal analysts and advocates for students with disabilities regarding charter schools are reviewed, the extent of special education services in charter schools in Texas is reported, and the validity of those concerns is examined. Data submitted to the Texas Public Education Information Management System were reviewed, and interviews with charter school administrators were conducted. The author examined 5 principles of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act--zero reject; individualized education program; appropriate assessment; free appropriate public education; and least restrictive environment--as well as levels of expertise in federal disability law, fiscal barriers, disability categories, and regional variations.

Useful assessment of general education courses is one impotant tool of a successful approach to advising. This article describes two methods for evaluating the effect general education math and English courses are having on students. One procedure involves examining the grade distribution for students enrolled in math and English general education courses who have successfully passed prior general education courses. The second method describes how a logistic regression procedure is used to determine what factors influence the successful completion of math and English general education courses. Both of these methods produce results of interest to advisors.

This study identified pre-entry variables related to course completion and noncompletion in university online distance education courses. Four hundred and sixty-four students who were enrolled in online distance education courses participated in the study. Discriminant analysis revealed six pre-entry variables were related to retention, including cumulative grade point average, class rank, number of previous courses completed online, searching the Internet training, operating systems and file management training, and Internet applications training. Results indicate prior educational experience and prior computer training may help distinguish between individuals who complete university online distance education courses and those who do not.

The conceptual underpinning and the organizational structure of the existing system of higher environmental education in Russia are analysed. The system, embracing 129 universities, has been created in the last 10 years. At present there is a shift from general environmental education to education for sustainable development. The new system is based on the incorporation of natural, economic and social components into the curriculum. The paper also discusses the contribution of Russian scientists to the sustainable development concept (D.L. Armand's works of the 1960s) and Russia's participation in the development of the European Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Implementing environmental education is a complex, unpredictable and time-consuming process, which, despite the introduction of cross-curricular attainment targets, is often ignored in Flemish teacher training curricula. This article reports on implementing environmental education in two teacher training colleges using seven criteria: participant engagement, instructor credibility, intention, functionality, self-efficacy, school climate and evaluation. One college has a long history of cross-curricular education, whereas the other college has just started. It was found that the implementation processes in the two teacher training institutions stagnated owing to personal and organizational obstructions. To deal with these constraints, several recommendations are suggested.

This paper problematizes the issue of how decisions about the content of mathematics education can be made. After starting with two examples where research in mathematics education resulted in different choices on the content of primary school teaching, I explore where and how, in the scientific enterprise within the domain of education, issues of the what of mathematics education are addressed. My conclusion is that, although it is often thought that scientific research cannot resolve issues related to decisions about subject matter content and goals, there is a powerful movement, with its roots in the European tradition, that pleads for the further development of didactics as a scientific discipline.

Thirty-seven years ago, the Navajo people in Arizona created the first tribally-controlled college in the world. This birth fired the imagination of educators and community activists across the United States, who soon began creating their own colleges in the Northern Plains, Midwest, Northwest, and, most recently, in Oklahoma and the East. It is commonly believed that education is a path out of poverty, but this is not necessarily true in places where education is controlled by the colonizer. In many parts of the world, schools are designed to perpetuate the power of the dominant culture.

Since the 1980s, dozens of Chinese government documents on teacher education reform have been published. These documents have influenced the direction of teacher education change in China and will continue to do so in the years ahead. The first wave of documents focused on recovering the teacher education system. A second wave centered on building a mechanism of quality assurance for teaching as a profession. A third wave concentrated on raising the quality of teacher education. This paper summarizes the implementation of these documents and comments on the benefits and challenges of the major components of the three waves of reform as they relate to teacher education.

This paper discusses a teacher education course -- "Urban Education" -- which engaged teacher-candidates in critical reflections on their roles as teachers, their perceptions of the students they teach, and their preconceived ideas of the community in which the students reside. The paper discusses the content and activities of the course, then focuses on the reflections of four teacher-candidates in relation to the course and their experiences teaching in the "inner city" community. Their reflections indicate that the course helped to educate them in the principles and pedagogies of equitable and inclusive education which is responsive to the needs and interests of their students and takes into account the communities in which students live.