Education & Pedagogy

This manual describes the basis for a working relationship between institutions of higher education, particularly a continuing education office, and citizen groups engaged in community action. The guide is based on discussions that took place during four meetings involving approximately 20 administrators of higher education and 10 citizen group leaders. The first section of the manual explores the potential for and benefits to be derived from cooperation between continuing education and citizen groups. Discussed in the second section are the following stages of citizen involvement and action: arousal, protest, organization and self-education, community education, and resolution. The third section describes the services needed most by citizen groups that higher education may be equipped to provide, proposes criteria for administrators of continuing education to apply in deciding whether the institution should get involved, and weighs the risks and benefits of such involvement. Examined in the final section are some important considerations about linkage with higher education, concerns about higher education, and techniques for developing strategies for approaching higher education (technical assistance, internal group maintenance, and education of the community). (MN)

This report by the Urban Education Network describes educational programs in the Midwest having the potential to ameliorate urban school problems. The programs are grouped into the following 11 sections, according to content: (1) alternative schools and programs/arts; (2) bilingual education/special education/student behavior and discipline; (3) computer technology; (4) effective schools/school improvement/instructional management/curriculum design; (5) environmental education/science/social studies; (6) gifted and talented/vocational education; (7) institutional description/policy/desegregation/public relations; (8) reading/mathematics/writing/language arts; (9) research/evaluation/testing/dissemination; (10) staff development: teachers and administrators; (11) urban education/business partnerships. For each program the following information is provided: a brief description; staff size and composition; scope; number of individuals served; number of schools served; whether evaluation reports and/or descriptive materials are available; and an address for further information. There are two appendices: a list of programs by district and state and an index by topic area. (RDN)

As education reform continues among the states, the scope of federal support for education is becoming clearer. The Regents of the New York State Education Department believe that the federal government has a historically defined educational role that should be maintained and coordinated with state and local activities. The brochure outlines the Regents' education positions and proposals likely to be considered in the second session of the 101st Congress. The federal government should provide national leadership in addressing: (1) comprehensive child development; (2) academic competencies and the workplace; (3) national literacy improvement; (4) the status of the teaching profession; (5) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act; (6) improvement of underrepresented groups' educational access; (7) education research and development; (8) reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act; (9) improvement of informational and cultural services; (10) improvement of educational and cultural opportunities for elders; (11) work transitions for disabled persons; (12) state efforts to provide appropriate educational services under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act; and (13) improvement of education for international communication and American economic competitiveness. An appendix provides a chronology of federal involvement in education. (MLH)

The central issue of this article is the coordination between special and general education in curriculum planning for pupils with special educational needs. The focus is on individual education plans (IEPs) in special education and work plans in general education. This is also viewed in relation to how special and general education teachers cooperate on planning. The analysis is based on a qualitative interview study with special and general education teachers in four primary and lower secondary schools in two municipalities. A clear pattern is shown in the study, where curriculum planning for special and general education is not very coordinated and cooperation between special and general education teachers is often very limited. Thus, curriculum planning within special and general education appears to be more separated than coordinated. The two groups of teachers appear to adopt traditional and partly separate roles, and tend to plan individually rather than together. Responsibility for the education of pupils with special needs seems to be more divided than shared.

Japan is famous for technological advancement, spanning from high-speed trains, the automobile industry, and medical equipment to portable gaming and music devices. With this wealth of sophisticated technology at its disposal, people outside of Japan often may assume that this technological prowess is also well integrated into every phase of Japanese people's lives, including the education system. In point of fact, however, the integration of technologies in Japanese education, particularly within the higher education segment, is far behind that of other highly developed countries. Japanese online education has therefore also been lagging due to the low adoption of technologies in Japanese higher education settings and various cultural challenges surrounding education and employment present in the country. This article presents a basic overview of the Japanese educational system, highlights two Japanese institutions that have "found their niche" within online and distance education and promising future outlooks for high-quality online education, and concludes with a brief examination of the pedagogical and cultural shifts and collaboration between government, industry, and higher education, which are all essential to make online education a viable option for Japan's future.

Since 1980 when Zimbabwe obtained political independence, special education has not received the same priority as the entire education system. One of the manifestations of this discrepancy is the shortage of qualified special education teachers in the country. In order to address this trend and promote the development of special education, researchers have suggested the need for professional development in the area of special education. The purpose of this study was to identify the special education professional development needs of both special and general education in-service teachers in Zimbabwe. A semi-structured survey instrument, developed by the first and second authors, which included open- and closed-end questions was used in this study. The sample consisted of 204 schoolteachers drawn from two school districts of Zvishavane and Gwanda. The participating schoolteachers overwhelmingly expressed the need for more professional development in the area of special education. The schoolteachers also identified several topics that they considered to be important for professional development.

'Environmentalizing' curriculum in Brazil is a worthy goal of global educational reform for sustainability but is challenging given the limits to rational change thesis already argued in critical social science and post-structural deconstructionism. The federal government mandate to environmentalize undergraduate physical education programs poses the question of which aspects of physical education are conducive to change. "Nature" sports, or outdoor/adventure activity education, is the most likely candidate. In Australia over the past three decades, the environmentalization of "old" physical education outdoor activities has led to the development of "new" discourse practices that integrate environmental studies and outdoor education and are designed for ecological responsibility and social sustainability. In this culturally comparative light about the possibilities for curriculum change in environmental, outdoor and physical education, we examine the potential for change in Brazilian approaches to physical and sport education by critiquing broader "environmentalizing" issues as they have occurred historically within the Australian outdoor education context in the university and secondary schooling sectors.

This article analyses the depth of engagement with climate change education policy across all 13 provinces and territories in Canada. A comparative content analysis of 13 climate action plans (CAP) and 90 K-12 education policy documents shows a major gap existing between Canada's climate and education policies. While subnational climate policy calls for education to contribute substantially to addressing climate change, education policy is not aligned towards this call. Three themes emerged within the overview of the provinces and territories: shallow engagement with climate change within education policies; the predominance of energy efficiency upgrades for schools as a foremost education sector objective; and policy gaps that show a lack of attention to many areas of climate education. Further detailing the climate change education objectives in four provinces identified as playing a leadership role in climate policy, this research suggests that even among these climate leaders, K-12 education policy minimally attends to climate change. Alignment between Canadian and international trends in climate change education is also assessed.

The aim of this study is to determine whether distance education is a viable option for music department students to receive an adequate piano education. Furthermore, the study seeks to discover encountered in distance piano education and to make recommendations about how piano education could best continue during the current pandemic. The study examines the conditions under which university students who receive piano education through distance education are affected either positively or negatively. It highlights the importance of student attitudes toward distance learning as this can determine student feelings, expectations and the desired outcomes of their education. The findings were obtained by conducting qualitative research using the phenomenological design method. For this study, an interview form was prepared and used as a data collection tool to gather student perspectives about piano education. The results of the study revealed that students found piano education through distance learning as not beneficial overall, the overall achievement of students was found to be negatively affected in distance education. Significant disadvantages of piano education were found through distance learning platforms. According to the results of the research, further recommendations are made to improve the current distance education methods.

This article reports a study that investigated secondary school students' higher education aspirations (towards university studies, ISCED 6 and above) and how these differ between student groups as well as how these are impacted by values of education. Panel data of more than 300 secondary school students in two countries, Luxembourg and Switzerland (the Swiss Canton of Bern) was analysed. Schools are structured differently in the education systems of Luxembourg and the Swiss Canton of Bern. The results of our analysis show that students in the Luxembourgish sample more often aspire to higher education than in the Swiss sample. Disparities in higher education aspirations were also more pronounced in the Luxembourgish sample, boys and students from families of low socio-economic status (SES) were less likely to aspire to higher education. While the effects of values of education are generally scarce, stimulation in terms of anticipated enjoyment and interest derived from participation in higher education seems to have a positive effect on higher education aspirations.

To start off this special issue on COVID-19 and K-12 arts education, this article places the impact of COVID-19 on public education into context, and drills down to how the pandemic affected the delivery of arts education. The article begins with an overview of the inequities revealed in our public education system by COVID-19. While many of these have been revealed and studied before, the pandemic brought them to the routine attention of the public in a way that earlier advocacy and research efforts have not. The article then addresses how these inequities have influenced the availability and quality of arts education offered during the pandemic, showcasing the continued "second class" status of arts education in public education planning and delivery. Finally, the article ends with some positive outcomes one year into the pandemic for arts education, suggesting possibilities for the future post pandemic, as well as implications and potential warning signs for the next 24 months to come.

The purpose of this article is to examine how signifiers and empty signifiers may contribute to the mainstreaming of environmental and sustainability education in teacher education. We argue that the moniker of environmental and sustainability education is an empty signifier in that it fails to convey meaning about what it signifies. Tracing the history of the pre-sustainability, sustainability, and post-sustainability field signifiers, and their respective subfield signifiers (e.g., environmental education and education for sustainable development), we conduct a philosophical inquiry, augmented by a modified form of semiotic analysis, to expose the degree to which these signifiers are empty. The limitations and benefits of empty signification are explored through philosophical interpretation. Implications of empty signifier limitations are considered in teacher education and the manner in which they may contribute to the unsuccessful mainstreaming of environmental and sustainability education in teacher education. We conclude that a core or compulsory environmental and sustainability education course should be mandated in teacher education to ensure that all teacher candidates receive the education they require to educate future generations of children to live well on Earth.

Education commonly is positioned as central to developing citizens who can address so-called global challenges. Responses are identifiable in global citizenship education, which may recruit mathematics into interdisciplinary relationships, and within mathematics education itself. However, if notions of the global and local, the citizen, mathematics, and mathematics education, are brought together uncritically, responses may inadvertently reproduce the inequities they seek to disrupt. In this conceptual article, we interrogate how and with what implications these notions are given meaning in mathematics education. We also think toward notions of place, subjectivity, relations, mathematics, and mathematics education, in a way that recognises power and differences that matter, without one place being synonymous with the universal, and one peoples considered superior. We articulate these ideas in questions for provoking scholar-practitioners' critical, reflexive thinking. For our contribution, we think from critical scholarship on mathematics education within the sociopolitical, global citizenship education and decoloniality.

The new normal in education has been in the spotlight since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mainstream discourse is in favor of online education as the new normal during the pandemic crisis and even in the post-pandemic world. This reflection first examines education in its broad sense, i.e., in the context of the United Nations' 2030 agenda through the lens of social justice. It then makes a strong case for a caring, inclusive and equitable approach to education as the new normal for the post-COVID-19 era. The role of technology in the new normal as well as in education in general is discussed with six lessons drawn from the past experiences. It is argued that the normal - whether new or old - in education should first and foremost embody care, inclusion and equity and that technology is but a means, not an end, although education would be unimaginable without technology. The reflection concludes by appealing to stakeholders in education to learn from decades of research and practice in the field of open and distance education.

Forest ecosystems play a fundamental role in mitigating global environmental changes. The development of environmentally sound behavior, and inter- and intragenerational equity can help counteract these global changes. One type of formal and non-formal environmental education is forest education, which aims to promote the achievement of sustainable development in forest-related ecosystems. We conducted an empirical study among forest educators in Austria, using a mixed-method approach, to investigate the potential of forest education to promote education for environmental citizenship. Our findings suggest that forest education and encounters with nature can lead to increased self-responsibility and contribute to critically reflect experience-based changes in behaviour. In conclusion, forest education is a useful tool for environmental citizenship education that contributes to improved understanding of forest ecosystems and non-anthropocentric perspectives for future development. However, forest education lacks funding, integration into formal education curricula, and the harmonization of framework conditions in non-formal education.