Education & Pedagogy

In 1974, the Education for all Handicapped Protection Act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford. This law which was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, established a federal entitlement to special education for eligible students with disabilities. In 1982 and again in 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the primary purpose of the law, that is the obligation of public schools to provide eligible students with a free appropriate public education. In this article we (a) examine the legal underpinnings of special education in the IDEA, (b) analyze legal challenges to IDEA, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court's efforts to define the IDEA-mandated free appropriate public education (c) focus on the limits of the law to require scientific solutions for improving special education and (d) offer potential solutions to these challenges in the law and in the federal government's efforts to improve special education.

The Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture is a non-profit organization that has been developing place-based education models since it was established in 1970. Situated in an urban environment, the Chicago Center operates at the intersection of higher education and place-based education with a pedagogical approach that centers and elevates community voices. Place-based education initiatives provide students with educational opportunities emphasizing active, experiential learning by immersing the participant in local communities and critically examining their context. The Chicago Center enriches place-based education by using a first-person instructional approach--First Voice Pedagogy--to expand the traditional classroom and link liberal arts education to applied learning through exposure to community-based leaders and organizations. In this article, I review relevant literature that centers on place-based education and propose a paradigm shift in place-based education that draws on critical service learning. The article grapples with several questions on the relationship between place, urban environments, and more inclusive approaches. It concludes by offering encouraging practices to establish more inclusive place-based initiatives.

Private supplementary tutoring, also known as shadow education, has had a profound influence on Chinese education during the past twenty years. The rapid expansion of shadow education has attracted the attention and increased regulation of the Chinese government. In July 2021, the Chinese government adopted one of the most restrictive legislative constraints on shadow education: the so-called 'double reduction' policy. This policy aims to reduce the dual burden for students of on-campus classes and off-campus tutoring. Through analysis of China's central and provincial double reduction policies, this study examines the policy goals, accompanying instruments, and delineated implementation strategies. Interviews with tutors from shadow education institutions in five major cities in China uncover the strategies shadow education tutors have applied to mitigate the policy constraints and offer criticism of the Chinese political system and deficiencies in the neoliberal education system.

Background: The US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that children with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education. However, it does not specifically include the subject of health education. Currently, 30 US states require public schools to teach sexuality education as a part of the health education curriculum, but 36 do not include youth with disabilities in their sexuality education requirements. Objective: The current situation is particularly concerning due to the higher rates of unplanned pregnancy, sexual abuse, and sexually transmitted infections experienced by teenagers with disabilities. Students from across several disability groups report societal barriers, physical barriers, and poor educational outcomes with respect to sexuality education. Results: This review article sought to investigate the current state of sexuality education for students with disabilities, as well as best practices to support the learning of sexuality education content. Conclusion: Focusing sexuality education classes on practical ways so as to develop relationships, promote self-advocacy and self-determination, and incorporate privacy messages, can support students with disabilities to make healthy choices.

Although Nordic countries are committed to developing inclusive education, a gap often exists between policy, ideals, and the realisation of inclusion in practice. In Finnish schools, part-time special education is an important tool for promoting inclusive education in the three-tier system. In this study, our research questions were: (1) What should be the main objectives of secondary school special educators' work in schools striving for inclusion? and (2) Should their work with these main objectives be called inclusive special education? A total of 102 special education teachers answered an electronic questionnaire. Qualitative content analysis was performed on the data. In terms of what the main objectives of special education teachers' work should be, four categories were found: support for students and teachers, guiding the school towards inclusion, special education in separative settings, and collaboration. Based on our results, we claim that special education teachers' work can to a certain extent be called 'inclusive special education'.

Return on personal investment is an important factor affecting the decision to invest in education. This article analyzes the personal education costs of no-fee preservice students, estimates and forecasts the return on their personal education investment, and compares the costs and benefits of for-fee preservice students and nonteaching students. It finds that the expected return on personal investment in education is higher for no-fee preservice students than for-fee preservice students, but lower for nonteaching students. This finding has reference value for attracting more outstanding students to choose no-fee teacher education. However, given that the expected return on personal investment in education is lower for preservice teaching students than for nonteaching students, we recommend that the Chinese government consider diverse methods to encourage no-fee teacher education. Reducing the personal cost of education and increasing teacher salaries and subsidies, for example, would increase the expected return on personal investment in education, thereby attracting more outstanding students to the teaching profession.

In the most recent Ministry of Education work plan seminar (Ministry of Education, 2010), a clear signal was sent out that arts education, primarily music and visual art, would become one of the key areas of focus in pursuing the goal of holistic education of a primary school child in the Singapore school system. This article, as part of a larger set of studies initiated by the UNESCO-NIE Centre for Arts Research in Education (Centre for Arts Research in Education, 2010) to map arts education research in Singapore, surveys research over the last three decades carried out in music education involving musical learnings from early childhood through tertiary education with a view to identify key areas of research interests and gaps. The content analysis serves also to assess and evaluate the matching of policy and practice in enabling a musical learner to make informed choices about that repertoire of musical possibilities the learner may carry into the later stages of his/her lived reality.

According to the United Nations, education is a right to which all human beings are entitled. Since 2000, the UN has been promoting the Millennium Development Goal to achieve free universal primary education for all, regardless of gender, by 2015. If the UN is correct to suggest that education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights, then there is an important need to question the role that governments should play to support the institutional reforms necessary to achieve basic primary education for all. Moreover, there is an important need to question the role all individuals should play to ensure that the institutional structure dedicated to the provision of basic primary education is set up not only to provide children with access to a vague notion of education but to a notion of basic education that can provide children with the freedom to do something with that education once they have obtained it. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper demonstrates how the research-practice nexus may be strengthened in higher education by harnessing the conceptual ideas and key findings of a special issue to engage private and public organisations as partners to organise a regional workshop that is followed up by a suite of activities for teacher education institutions and their leaders to develop pre-service teachers' ICT in education competencies. The three day education deans workshop in June 2011 was organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Education together with UNESCO, Microsoft and SEAMEO. By bringing together these organisations and the regional education and ICT experts, the Asia-Pacific Education Deans Workshop provided a unique regional platform to discuss and share promising practices and lessons learnt, co-create a vision of technologies in teacher education within a community of practice, and co-construct a strategic plan to achieve that vision. (Contains 1 figure.)

The 1980-81 annual abstract publication on Swedish behavioral science research reports is presented. The collection of data was completed on May 1, 1981. The more than 300 reports are grouped in categories according to Psychological Abstracts and EUDISED Thesaurus (multilingual thesaurus for information processing in the field of education). The ERIC Thesaurus was also used for the subject index. Author, subject, and institution indexes are included. The following categories are included: adult education, applied psychology, communication systems, compulsory education, countries, curriculum, developmental psychology, educational administration, organization, educational psychology, educational research, experimental psychology (animal), experimental psychology (human), experimental social psychology, general psychology, higher education, personality, personnel, philosophy of education, physical and psychological disorders, physiological intervention, physiological psychology, physiology, professional personnel and professional issues, psychology education, psychometrics, public administration and planning, social processes and social issues, sociology of education, teaching aids and teaching methods, teaching profession, treatment and prevention, and vocational education. (SW)

A 5-month program conducted in Israel for persons active in early childhood education is described in this report. The program, designed to present an overall view of early childhood education, was tailored to the experience and background of participants. Lectures were devoted to such topics as child psychology, teaching methods, curriculum development, principles of supervision, teacher training, adult education, individual development within society, special education, natural science, nutrition, and consumer education. Visits to early childhood centers augmented many of the theoretical aspects of the curriculum and provided a means for applying theory to particular situations. Visits were also made to places of general and professional interest, including several institutes of higher education, the Ministry of Education, instructional support centers, the Educational Television Center, a comprehensive primary school, day care centers, a center concerned with preventive health care, and a center for services to disturbed children. Students submitted a final paper on a topic selected from a list of problems in social, emotional, and cognitive development, learning processes, behavior, and language acquisition. (Author/DB)

The guide is designed as an analysis of current practices in teacher education to help educators deal with learning and behavior problems in the regular classroom. Special emphasis is directed to Teacher Corps staff. Chapter 1 reviews the concept of collaborative planning and notes its importance for the special education coordinator at an institution of higher education or local education agency. Examples of teacher competencies developed by several Teacher Corps projects are provided, and a rationale for competency development is presented (sample competencies listed). Procedures involved in successful needs assessment are reviewed. Elements of promising preservice education Teacher Corps programs are described, including content area objectives, suggested course structure, and opportunities for integrating knowledge. Inservice education considerations are examined, and a competency based approach is discussed. Planning for inservice is emphasized, and common threads of several Teacher Corps inservice approaches are noted. Included among four appendixes are a glossary of special education terminology and lists of teacher competencies. (CL)

This report, the third in UNESCO's series of World Education Reports, focuses on the largest single category of persons denied equality of educational opportunity in the world today: women and girls. The report examines global trends and developments in female access to formal education in both industrial and developing countries, focusing in particular on male-female disparities and gaps in key indicators (literacy rates, enrollment ratios, years of schooling, school retention and dropout rates, fields of study), as well as on girls' experiences in the educational process itself (such as pedagogy, testing, and assessment) and on the relationship between this process and adult life chances. Numerous figures, boxes, and tables are contained within the four chapters. Appendixes offer statistical notes, regional tables, world education indicators, and national reports and UNESCO reports, publications, and periodicals concerning education, 1993-95. (MLF)

This Education Policy Perspective serves as Part B in a two-part series of policy papers on "Promoting Quality and Excellence in Higher Education and VET". This paper (Part B) examines a wide range of quality-focused policies, other than quality assurance, used by governments to promote pedagogical innovation and enhancement in higher education and vocational education and training (VET) in ten European jurisdictions: Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Scotland (United Kingdom). This report was prepared by the OECD as part of the Project "Strengthening the system of evaluation and quality assurance in higher education and vocational education and training in Lithuania", funded by the European Union's Technical Support Instrument, and produced at the request of, and in close collaboration with, the Lithuanian Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (ŠMSM), and the European Commission. [This paper was prepared by the OECD Higher Education Policy Team, in collaboration with the OECD Vocational Education and Training (VET) Team.]

The concept of technical assistance predicates that international experts have information that the host country community of practice lacks. At the same time, elementary education is deeply personal and familiar to everyone in the post-Soviet environment; it was a point of pride in the USSR. Navigating this territory requires patience and thoughtful partnership with the Ministry of Education officials and host communities. The post-Soviet environment has documented achievement of universal primary education and near-universal literacy. However, new forms of testing and literacy measurement indicated that literacy rates in the former Soviet Union did not necessarily represent functional composition and comprehension skills. At the same time, many of the smaller former Soviet republics lack the financial resources to support their education systems to the level provided by the USSR. This presents unique challenges in providing technical assistance in education. [For the complete volume, "Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2018. International Perspectives on Education and Society. Volume 37," see ED667018.]