This article develops the ideas of perfection and education in Spinoza and Maimonides. Both thinkers identify human perfection with intellectual knowledge and a transformation in affect. They accordingly envision education in terms of enhancing cognition and shaping the desire to know. The first steps are a critical evaluation of imagination and…

Alignment between curriculum standards and teachers' classroom instructional practices is critical in assessing curriculum implementation effectiveness and students' learning. Using a modified version of the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) for music, this study explored the alignment between the enacted curriculum and the national curriculum…

An international consensus seems to have developed in educational research--and among educational planners and policymakers--during the last 10-15 years proclaiming that learning is, and must be, a visible phenomenon. This paper questions this predominant view and serves an assemblage of points offering educational scientists at least four…

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition" was published and its…

Chaos in the home is a key environment in cognitive and behavioural development. However, we show that children's experience of home chaos is partly genetically mediated. We assessed children's perceptions of household chaos at ages 9 and 12 in 2337 pairs of twins. Using child-specific reports allowed us to use structural equation modelling to…

The article discusses aspects of the definition of "learning disabilities". The process of learning is discussed including such themes as social interaction, personal reflection and response, integration, transformation/growth, and ecological wholeness, balance, and fit. Encouraged is a nonproblematic definition of learning disabilities. (DB)

Notes contemporary models of human development have expanded to address a wider set of issues underlying personal change. Discusses the social cognitive model of self-regulatory development. Emphasizes the crucial development of self-regulatory competence: the point at which the processes of development become fully and reciprocally interactive…

The article examines learning and identity formation for young people in an Australian surf club. Drawing on Lave and Wenger's notion of situated learning, it identifies how membership in the surf club from an early age involves highly significant and meaningful learning and identity formation, where learning is co-constructed with other members…

Used path analysis in two experiments to examine possibility that age difference in infants' long-term retention were artifacts of correlated differences in learning rates or learning opportunities. Found that developmental declines in forgetting rates between 12 and 18 months were independent of developmental differences in learning. Age…

This article briefly summarizes educational techniques used in America and what can be done to best implement them. (JD)

Notes that Halford's book does not really address children's own understanding but rather the psychologist's attempt to understand children from the outside. Discusses the five major sets of ideas at the core of Halford's explanations of capacity, complexity/dimensionality, development, and learning. Examines two arguments against Halford's…

Describes how complex thinking evolves during the 20s based on a longitudinal study with 39 men and women age 18 to 30. Themes that characterize this epistemological and intrapersonal growth are translated to implications for student affairs. (Contains 22 references.) (Author/GCP)

Noting that understanding a child's brain and the way it develops is the key to understanding learning, this book explores the relationship between brain physiology and children's learning processes. The book first translates the most current scientific theories on nervous-system development into practical information for parents. It then details…

Part of the monthly Saturday Review supplement, "Education in America," sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.