Disciplines have contrasting substance and syntax, ways of organizing themselves and of defining rules for making arguments and claims that others will warrant. They have different ways of talking about themselves and about the problems, topics, and issues that constitute their subject matters. The evolution of a discipline begins with knowledge…

The first article in this series traces the initial development of the concept of evaluation use. As a field, evaluation has always paid attention to the potential for use, both in decision-making and in changing people's thinking. The broad history of the field as we know it today stemmed from two streams: one focused on tests and measurement,…

This article argues that ideas from the ancient past supply insight about the future of Chinese universities. I make this case by outlining three claims about the nature and purpose of education in Homer, Plato, and Augustine. I propose that conversations based on these ideas illuminate central underlying problems facing Chinese higher education…

The 1966 Anglo-American Seminar at Dartmouth certainly stands as a landmark event in the history of English teaching. For the purposes of this Special Issue, however, I want to unsettle some familiar interpretations of Dartmouth by reading with and against a range of American responses to the conference published in the late 1960s and 1970s. As an…

Why is it important for us to consider the history of media literacy? Beyond forging connections of the past to the present, exploring the history of the field can deepen intellectual curiosity and understanding for those who work in media literacy education, ignite interest in others, and drive investigation into understanding the relationships…

John Henry Newman was one of the most outstanding figures of the social and religious panorama in the nineteenth century in Great Britain. His educational approaches framed in the movement of Catholic education and his influence on the Oxford Movement, his intellectualism and reflections on faith, reason and education, and participation and…

In 1795 America's premier scholarly association, the American Philosophical Society (APS), posed the following question: [Write] an essay on a system of liberal education, and literary instruction, adapted to the genius of the government, and best calculated to promote the general welfare of the United States; comprehending, also, a plan for…

Micro social work practice can be understood in the context of its historical professional traditions and dialectics as well as the environmental pressures and demands placed on the profession. In becoming a profession, social work relied heavily on principles drawn from medicine and science. Although these bodies of knowledge provided the…

Although the Greek roots of the word pedagogy refer to teaching children, until the second half of the 20th century it was applied to any teaching-learning transaction regardless of the age of the learner. Some educators still use pedagogy in this generic way. A neologism is a newly coined word or phrase that is just emerging into mainstream use,…

Constructivist thought and practice connect easily with forms of art education that emphasize choice and student agency. This article traces the contemporary forms of constructivism that vie with more structured pedagogical approaches in American schools and recommends policies and procedures that may preserve the qualities of constructivist…

Action research as a methodology is suitable for use within academic library settings. Its theoretical foundations are located in several disciplines and its applications span across many professions. In this article, an overview of the theoretical beginnings and evolution of action research is presented. Approaches generally used in conducting an…

As an academic discipline, the philosophy of sport has been in existence for a relatively short period. Although the philosophy of sport as an academic endeavour is relatively young, the philosophical view of sport itself is not new. Although sport was a major activity according to the Greeks and Romans, it lost its importance during the Middle…

Inaugurated in 2013, this collective research programme aims to construct an international mapping of the history of education that accounts for recent developments in the field. Our goal is to create a current and retrospective assessment of the discipline's institutional grounding and of the knowledge produced by its practitioners,…

Over the last century, school library standards have gone through a number of iterations, and expectations for student learning have evolved. While the school library of today looks and functions differently from the school library of the early 1900s, the vision surprisingly is still very similar. The goal of today's school library is to provide…

The issue of leadership in mathematics education--always a matter of some contention--has been complicated by developments in the field over the past half century or so. When mathematics education began to emerge as an academic field at the beginning of the twentieth century, so few people were seriously concerned with either its practice or its…