Education articles from September 1997

Education archives from September 1997

Education as play for moral stakes.
September 22, 1997... Years ago when I was writing my first books and essays on the poetry of Robert Frost, I kept before me on the desk the perspicacious comment from Frost's controversial poem "Two Tramps in Mud Tune": "Where love and need are one,/And the work...

It's how you play the game. (educational games)
September 22, 1997... After reading Roy Schwartzman's article on using gaming as a model for the educational process, I initially said to myself, "What a convincing metaphor, although I certainly would never have thought of it." After some additional reflection,...

Gaming serves as a model for improving learning.
September 22, 1997... It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors. (Borges, 1964, p.192) Rhetoric and education suffer a shared plight. In attempting to establish themselves as...

Education and assessment: how do we measure a game?
September 22, 1997... Understanding education as a game (metaphorically, of course) raises the question of how best to measure a game, or at least its outcomes. Rather than address this question directly now, I would like to reframe the discussion in terms of...

The next move in the metaphoric game. (educational games)
September 22, 1997... Metaphors, especially powerful ones, begin to take on a life of their own after becoming entrenched in a language or culture. Kenneth Burke (1969) recognized the importance of metaphor as a device to structure thought. Identifying metaphor as...

Using fiction to enhance multicultural education.
September 22, 1997... Introduction Many educators are calling for teachers to promote a more in-depth understanding of other cultures that exist within our own society. This emphasis has commonly been referred to as multicultural education. NCSS guidelines...

Novelty and it's relation to field trips.
September 22, 1997... Go my sons [and daughters], Bum your books Buy yourselves stout shoes Get away to the mountains, the deserts And the deepest recesses of the earth In this way and no other Will you gain true knowledge of...

Improving the school culture.
September 22, 1997... Much is written about the culture of a school in terms of maintenance as well as change. Cultures tend to be stable and yet subject to change. When technology changes rapidly, culture tends to change more quickly. The latest in home...

Global perspective developemnt. (international educational policies)
September 22, 1997... Introduction Generally speaking, a global perspective has been associated with the field of international education. A single, professionally accepted definition of this perspective does not exist. The majority of the discourse on this...

E-mail, computer usage and college students: a case study.
September 22, 1997... Introduction The explosive growth of the Internet and electronic mail (E-mail) is causing many educators to try integrating electronic materials and communication into their classrooms. Many of these educators are implicitly assuming...

The consequences of freedom without structure.
September 22, 1997... Is freedom a good thing? The obvious answer to most persons is a resounding yes!!! Yet to ascribe to such an answer in all situations is to misunderstand the concept of freedom. The purpose of this article is to identify the consequences...

Social studies and the spiritual nature of civic behavior.
September 22, 1997... Introduction There are many intense debates today concerning American education -- What is wrong with it -- What should be done about it -- and so forth. Increasingly these important conversations regarding our schools touch upon the...

A teacher's story of working in a non-supportive environment.
September 22, 1997... As a new elementary school teacher with only 1 year of preschool experience behind me, I entered the school I had been assigned to with many different feelings. This was a fairly small school for an urban school district in a large city,...

Another look at literature-based instruction.
September 22, 1997... It seems indisputable that increasing numbers of individual teachers and entire schools are moving today toward literature-based instruction (Maples, 1994), a phenomenon described a decade ago by one pundit as a "passing fancy" (Lieberman,...

The community review board offers students fairness in college administrative decisions.
September 22, 1997... Colleges and universities have long ago seen the need for a system for handling student grade appeals in which challenged academic decisions are settled by individuals not involved with the original determination. Department chairs and...

Race, denial and the American nightmare.
September 22, 1997... Shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King I sat in a university classroom and listened to a black civil rights worker predict that South Africa would elect its first black president long before the United States. I challenged this...

Teacher participation in decision-making - its relationship to staff morale and student achievement.
September 22, 1997... "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." --...

The play of metaphors.
September 22, 1997... As I read Professor Schwatzman's provocative essay, I found myself ready both to cheer and to argue. The game metaphor for the educational process is certainly not new; indeed, it has a respectable antiquity. Certainly it was "in play" in the...

Accountability in person-centered teacher preparation.
September 22, 1997... Democracy has been sometimes defined as "The interdependence of independent individuals." Elementary teaches, like other individuals in a democracy, must be able to function effectively under such condition as well as serve as role models for...

A biophysical approach for dealing with somatization disorders in health care the Cassel BioSensors.
September 22, 1997... Psychological and social stressors are a recent element which we have learned often provoke our bodies into an accompanying uproar linked to mere thought (Sapolosky, 1994). That uproar in our bodies is directly associated with the principle of...

Effective test item discrimination using Bloom's taxonomy.
September 22, 1997... Introduction Data collected and analyzed by the Operator Licensing Branch at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has shed additional light on the discriminatory effectiveness of validated, modified, and new test items in...

Significance of formal instruction for information skills in elementary schools.
September 22, 1997... Introduction The New Concept of Curriculum Traditionally, the goal of curriculum has been to transmit knowledge and facts from teacher to students, where students were expected to learn facts as accurately as possible. This...

Children's literature for developing good readers and writers in kindergarten.
September 22, 1997... Introduction Many teachers who work with young children in preschool and kindergarten ask: (1) What is the most beneficial way for children to learn to read and write in the classroom, (2) what are the most effective approaches for...

The dangers of the self-esteem rhetoric in educating children with disabilities.
September 22, 1997... Self-esteem: the American panacea The evolution of the self-esteem debate regarding if and how schools should improve student self-esteem is fairly elaborate. According to Beane (1991), the concepts that schools could impact...

An evaluation study of the teaching of hands-on investigative biology in high-schools "on a shoestring".
September 22, 1997... In this project -Biology On A Shoestring,the National Association of Biology Teachers recruited excellent, experienced high school biology teachers to develop and field test investigative laboratory activities that would require only limited...

Newspaper coverage of learning disabilities.
September 22, 1997... The term learning disabilities is misunderstood by the general public and many educators. (Gearheart & Gearheart, 1989). Perhaps lack of knowledge and experiences with learning disabilities causes the public to stereotype persons with learning...

Shared decision making in schools: effect on teacher efficacy.
September 22, 1997... The Call for Reform There is a widespread public concern regarding the status of American schooling. Media reports daily chronicle these various concerns: violence in schools; lack of parental input; falling SAT/ACT scores; failure to...

The current state of education in Russia.
September 22, 1997... Introduction The author has recently completed the last of a series of studies on modem Russian education under the sponsorship of the Eurasia Foundation. These studies were undertaken from 1994 to the present with the cooperation of...