Although the cradle of university education is traced to Africa, modern university education in Africa emanated from European systems which set the tone for their replication on the continent through colonialism. For ideological and other reasons, African universities were subjected to significant violations of their institutional autonomy after…

Bourdieu's version of field theory has had an impressive impact on the ways that sociologists of education conceptualize educational practices. These accounts tend to focus on the varying levels of ontological complicity established between students' cultural dispositions and educational institutions. In this paper, the wisdom of these…

This paper suggests that historical ontology, as one form of reflexive critique, is an instructive research design for making sense of the political and historical constitution of the Academic Language and Learning (ALL) educator in Australian higher education. The ALL educator in this paper refers to those practitioners in the field of ALL, whose…

Perfectionism consists of personal predispositions and attitudes toward performance. Although there is some disagreement in the field regarding how to best define and measure perfectionism, most studies have supported a distinction between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. The current study examines a model in which students' perceptions of…

Young fanfiction writers use the Internet to build networks of reading, writing and editing--literacy practices that are highly valued in schools, universities and workplaces. While prior research shows that online spaces frame multiple kinds of participation as legitimate, much of this work focuses on the extensive contributions of exceptional…

This article directly resulted from the teacher/researcher experience, describing new analyses resulting from subtitling a film for curriculum incorporation: "Tango feroz, la leyenda de Tanguito" (1993). Set in Argentina in the sixties and loosely based on the life of José Alberto Iglesias Correa, also known as Tanguito, this film…

When directed to ignore evidence of a witness's previous bad character because of a violation of the rules of evidence, are jurors' beliefs still affected? The intuition is that they will be because in everyday argumentation, fallacies, like the ad hominem, are effective argumentative strategies. An ad hominem argument (against the person)…

Narrative learning is strongly allied with transformational learning and adult development (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007), given that it creates context for adult meaning making. Through the use of narrative writing, adult students have the opportunity to engage multiple aspects of learning. Many colleges and universities allow…

This paper reports on an aspect of a broader study that investigated teacher educators' uptake of learner-centred pedagogy in post-apartheid Namibia. The paper shares part of the study that illuminated the path traversed by Namibian teacher education policy from 1990 to 2010, two decades into the country's post-apartheid self-rule. It argues that,…

This paper argues that science education has overemphasized the importance of construction at the expense of critique. In doing so, it draws on two key premises--Ford's argument that the construction of knowledge requires a dialectic between construction and critique and Mercier and Sperber's theory of argumentative reasoning that critique is…

The advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has challenged the traditional notion of literacy as print-based reading and writing. In this article, I discuss why integration of ICTs into language and literacy curricula is important from the perspectives of the pedagogy of multiliteracies and sociocultural theories of…

Many music educators address aural skills and analysis by drawing on strategies designed for the realm of Western classical music. Focusing solely on aural skills and analysis within paradigms of Western music can limit students' musical learning and engagement to particular ways of knowing music. To diversify and broaden the types of aural skills…

This paper will explore ideologies of nature including the "Garden of Eden" and "wildernesses." It locates these ideologies as morphing to accommodate the later trajectory of the Enlightenment Project and its endorsement of modern Western scientific and technological principles. Beginning with the premise that nature is…

Islamic education of children is a common problem faced by Muslims living in western, European and other developed countries as minority. It can be due to a number of factors such as unavailability of Islamic schools at a particular location, lack of enough number of students to warrant opening a full-fledged Islamic school, curriculum legislated…

This piece looks at how banned books can offer an illuminating glimpse into social constructions of "healthy" and "normal" adolescent development. Unease with certain materials and topics in the secondary classroom can provide productive points of inquiry for both teachers and students.