Education & Pedagogy

The social and political climate of sex education over the last two decades has dramatically changed, with parents now being encouraged to work in partnership with professionals. This paper seeks to further the argument that involving parents in their child's sex education does matter and can have an impact on their child's future sexual health. It discusses the reality of parents' roles and skills in providing sex education within the family. In particular, the discussion explores myths parents associate with sex education, involving fathers in provision, siblings as peer educators, health professionals' attitudes towards involving parents, and school partnerships. The author calls for professionals to involve parents alongside other sources of sex education in health and educational strategies to address sexual health issues and improve sex education. Otherwise future generations of children will experience a closed cultural attitude towards sexual matters and we will not achieve lower teenage pregnancy rates or view sex education positively. (Contains 1 table.)

As the trend to integrate science and agriculture education has reemerged, so has the research related to the integration of science into secondary agricultural education. The American Association of Agricultural Education responded to this trend by creating a special interest group called "Strengthening Academic Learning through Agricultural Education." In 2005, Myers and Osborne developed the "Conceptual Model for Strengthening Academic Learning through Agricultural Education" to guide this group in identifying existing gaps in the literature and to help provide a directional path for future research. The purpose of this study was to use that conceptual model to review research, to make conclusions regarding the outcomes of efforts to integrate science and secondary agricultural education, and to identify gaps in the existing research. Recommendations and future questions for integrating science and agricultural education were posed by the authors. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this research a number of approaches were used with pre-service physical education teachers in an attempt to foster inclusive and critical approaches to teaching physical education. Physical experiences, storytelling and lab school were used to highlight the multifaceted processes around students' engagement in physical education and relationship to physical activity. Pre-service physical education teachers were asked to respond to these activities as they developed knowledge around teaching and learning. Findings suggest that the strategies employed allowed insights into the intricate relationships that occur between school, culture and physical activity and worked to develop greater awareness of the variety of "lived" experiences, around physical education. Opportunities to connect theory to practice through lab-school were also found to be useful in developing practices and ways to make physical education a safer and happier place.

This article examines the perceptions of Accrediting Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) from the point of view of lecturers delivering higher education in further education institutions. Despite the fact that APEL is recognised as potentially providing a range of benefits for higher education providers, students and employers, little research has been carried out with those responsible for accreditation. Data were obtained using an online survey to collect information from lecturers about their awareness of and support for APEL. Analysis of this information reveals that confusion about the purpose and implementation remain the main barriers to APEL for this group, and that providing appropriate support for staff could be an effective mechanism for overcoming this. The implications of this study are discussed in relation to the higher education in further education context, with specific reference to the Foundation degree. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to identify physical education (PE) teacher educators and examine physical education teacher education (PETE) programs presently offered at undergraduate degree-granting Canadian universities. The investigation was conceptualized by issues related to the dislodging of PETE from a central to a marginal role in higher education, contrasting discourses, and the education of children and youth in a post-modern society. In an effort to examine the worldview orientation, underpinning discourses, curricula, structure, and organization of Canada's programs, 36 PE teacher educators from 20 universities completed an online survey. Results enabled a profile of Canada's PE teacher educators and the PETE programs in which they work. Collectively, the findings suggest a need for critical consideration and/or revisiting of programs in light of changing societal and student needs for global, socially, and culturally responsive PETE. (Contains 4 tables.)

This article employs Barnett's (2004) specifications of the aspects that describe the times of "supercomplexity." This term characterizes the challenges universities are facing regarding the expanding and competing forces that are affecting higher education, particularly in the West. Outside forces related to globalization, digital technologies, competition, marketization, systematic quality controls, the interpenetration of society into higher education, and equal opportunities for access and participation are changing higher education kinesiology, as we know it. These forces are challenging the ways we think about the academy, intellectual integrity, production of knowledge, delivery systems, and relationships with students, the wider society and others in academe. The authors include a discussion of the aspects of supercomplexity and the impact these aspects have on higher education, in general, and kinesiology departments and scholars, in particular. Literature in kinesiology and higher education cultural criticism is used to identify risks and offer solutions. (Contains 3 notes.)

Becoming a professional teacher is falsely understood to be a simple process: usually consisting of a transference of skills to execute classroom pedagogy or classroom management. This article begins by exploring the many forces which influence the curriculum of teacher education in higher education, signaling the complexity of the practice of teaching and the expected roles of teachers within a charged socio-political, ideological as well as educational research arena. It offers a definition of the scope of deep teacher professional development which embraces the complexities of these forces. It particularly addresses the theoretical underpinning that could inform the design and delivery of Initial Professional Education of Teacher (IPET) higher education curricula. The article draws on the experiences of enacting a reconceptualised teacher education curriculum at the University of KwaZulu- Natal, Faculty of Education showing the translation of these theoretical conceptions within a curriculum geared towards deep professional learning. (Contains 6 notes, 4 figures, and 1 table.)

Leadership in education, particularly special education, implies both knowledge and application of professional behaviors, decisions, and ethics within the field. University students look for best practices in education to be modeled by faculty; this, in turn, underscores a fundamental belief in inclusionary principles. Such modeling is important on every level in teacher education programs, particularly special education programs. The higher a student's level (i.e., undergraduate vs. doctoral), the more notice that student will take of disparities between rhetoric and actions. While reflective practices are explicitly taught in teacher preparation programs to enable professionals to reflect on their own personal and professional practices, teacher education faculty need to employ the same strategy to ensure that they are indeed modeling the practices they teach. This position paper documents the impressions of a doctoral cohort in special education in terms of inclusionary practices demonstrated in a real-life context.

This research documents long-run trends in between-country education inequality and proposes a method for doing so that accounts for the ways in which most education variables differ from continuous variables such as income. Historical, national-level estimates of primary schooling enrollment rates and years of completed primary, secondary, and total schooling are used to identify several problems that arise when formal measures of inequality are used to estimate intercountry education convergence, including violation of the welfare, scale invariance, and anonymity principles. An alternate measurement strategy shows that the intercountry trend in the dispersion of education has followed an approximately normal curve over the past 140 years, but with considerable variation across measures of education. These results are in contradiction to previous education inequality studies, which have reported either monotonically rising or falling intercountry inequality. (Contains 1 table, 6 figures and 11 notes.)

This paper analyses how historical narratives of the 1930s conflict between child-centred and social reconstructionist factions of US progressive education reinforce gendered constructions of education. The split between these two groups has been drawn along lines of gender with child-centred education associated with female educators focused on individual development and social reconstructionists comprised of university male faculty working for social justice. The work of Elsie Ripley Clapp, an active proponent of rural progressive education in the 1920s and 1930s, is used to illustrate the limitations of accepted categorisations of progressive education. The focus on Clapp points to new ways of framing the ideological tensions within the progressive education movement and highlights how the politics of gender influence which educators are remembered as leaders and activists. The paper argues that the recent renewal of interest in social reconstructionism should include a critique of its oppositional and hierarchical relation to female progressive educators. (Contains 1 note.)

This article explores the purposes of citizenship education and the forms it has taken in Scotland in the closing decades of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. Education has played a key role in defining Scottish identity. It is argued that there was, and continues to be in Scotland, a "Scottish myth" about the purpose of education. The politics surrounding education reform in Scotland shaped the forms and approaches to citizenship education. The important role played by the schooling system in maintaining Scotland's political, cultural and social distinctiveness has shaped the forms of citizenship education and also how it has been implemented. Education for citizenship was seen as a key overarching purpose of the curriculum. Greater professional input into the development of citizenship education, including teachers being able to adopt a flexible approach in interpreting the policy, has resulted in distinctive policy developments in Scotland. (Contains 59 footnotes.)

Inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classes is at the forefront of policy and practice; however, many general educators do not feel prepared to provide meaningful education to students with disabilities. It is critical, therefore, that administrators determine the specific professional development needs of their teaching population. A survey, developed from the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium principles of knowledge and skills that all teachers need in teaching students with disabilities, was administered to 857 general and special education teachers in Hawai'i. Two group comparisons were made: general and special education teachers, and general education teachers by years of experience. Data revealed that there were significant differences between general and special educators as well as patterns of responding across all groups of general education teachers reflecting similar perceived areas of less and more confidence. Recommendations for professional development are made. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

Integrating e-Learning in their educational delivery and support processes is one way of strategy formation higher education institutions can deploy to respond to their changing environment. In this article, the focus of such a strategy formation is on three strategic choices: traditional, face-to-face, campus-based education (back-to-basics), flexible on-campus delivery of education (stretching-the-mould) or anytime, anywhere education (worldcampus). Results of a quantitative study showed that higher education institutions with a worldcampus strategy differ from higher education institutions with a back-to-basics strategy because they have a stronger focus on "increasing access," "offering logistic flexibility," and "use of ICT for income generation." By doing so, these higher education institutions aim to respond to an environment that is becoming increasingly market-oriented and competitive. (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables and 1 note.)

This essay discusses a conception of the relation of philosophy to education that has come to be widely held in both general philosophy and philosophy of education. This view is approached here through the employment of Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of the "practico-inert" as the realm of consolidated social objects, part of which is the institution of education. It is shown that a rigid demarcation of the practico-inert, on the one hand, and praxis, on the other, lies at the heart of the contemporary philosophical stance towards education. Generally, philosophy today does not allocate redemptive-political space to education and its practices (such as assessment). Hannah Arendt's and Alain Badiou's ideas on knowledge, statistics and everydayness are used here as examples, and the received view is further criticised. Then, another possible connection of philosophy and education is examined, one that would attribute to education a more active, politically operative and central role in philosophy.

Most content knowledge (CK) courses in physical education teacher education focus mostly on knowledge of rules, etiquette, techniques, tactics, and performance of the activity. Much less emphasis is placed on error detection and instructional tasks. This article therefore presents teaching and assessment strategies that facilitate the acquisition of CK by teacher candidates (TCs), with special emphasis on error detection and instructional tasks. This article also focuses on five components derived from Shulman's (1986, 1987) discussion of CK, pedagogical content knowledge, and the knowledge bases for teaching: (1) the situation of CK course content relative to a particular curricular focus (e.g., adventure education or sport education), (2) the development of CK relative to that activity, (3) the provision of opportunities for TCs to gain competence in performing the activity, (4) the provision of performance analyses of beginners, and (5) the provision of feedback on TCs' basic instructional skills.