Anyone familiar with Matthew Lipman's Community of Inquiry is likely to acknowledge that it cultivates open-mindedness. Even so, bare recognition of this fact is not the same as having a detailed knowledge of what open-mindedness involves and how the Community of Inquiry helps to foster it. To extend our knowledge of these matters, we will conduct…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to provide answers to the research question, "What teacher characteristics do London upper Secondary school students value?" Using convenient or opportunity sampling, 51 Grade 12 and 13 students ages 16-18 in a south-west London secondary school were interviewed using a face-to-face method. The…

The 20th century brought about the development of an increased climate of capitalist influence on every aspect of American life, including and especially on higher education. Simultaneously, as more and more purposes of higher education have come to reflect values of capitalist culture, a movement towards new ways of teaching and learning has…

Caring and curiosity are fundamental to learning and working well with others. Individuals who are both caring and curious have empathetic curiosity and want to know about other people and take the initiative to learn about perspectives, needs, and goals of those around them. Empathetic curiosity can be enhanced through activities in schools. The…

Studies of teachers in higher education have acknowledged the relationship between teaching and teacher identity. Teacher identity is seen as dynamic, context-specific, and encompassing a teachers' sense of meaning, values and self-esteem. This article considers the relationship between the values dimension of teacher identity and the use of…

The end of the 19th and early 20th centuries is characterized by justification of reforming pedagogical trends in Western Europe and accumulation of relevant ideas required to create a new type of school, educate independent and initiative individuals and improve teacher training. Based on comparative pedagogical analysis of the mentioned period,…

This study aimed to determine both the importance order of qualities that effective teachers should have and differences between perceptions based on gender, branch and school types. Results indicated that the most important quality perceived by teachers was classroom management. Other qualities were respectively the planning of instruction,…

Character education is described as curriculum specifically developed to teach children about the quality and traits of good character. One means in which children can learn about good character is through the pages of high quality children's literature. In this study, the author defines the characteristics of an effective character development…

In this article the author looks at a particular episode of the television show, Breaking Bad, as a means to explore the pedagogical implications of the Kristevan notion of abjection, and its relation to the emotions of love and hate, and the emergence of teacher narcissism as an inevitable offshoot of the antagonisms in learning. This particular…

There's no doubt that children's home environments have a huge impact on the kind of people they become. But so do their educational environments. A number of schools are beginning to realize it's worth it to spend the time on "soft" skills such as empathy. Even forgetting the recent scary headlines about bullying, teachers know that a classroom…

Higher education is a distribution center of knowledge and economic, social, and cultural power (Cervero & Wilson, 2001). A critical approach to understanding a higher education classroom begins with recognizing the instructor's position of power and authority (Tisdell, Hanley, & Taylor, 2000). The power instructors wield exists…

"A Guide to Better Teaching" is a self-help book that provides anyone teaching a college course with a thorough understanding of what it takes to be an effective teacher. Derived from the authors' extensive research, several interactive assessment tools are included that measure levels of effectiveness according to learner preferences. Each…