Three writers debate whether English teachers should depend on external or internal criteria when analyzing and teaching literature. Each writer discusses the meaning of Elinor Wylie's poem, "The Eagle and the Mole," according to his particular view of literary analysis. Edward Ducharme, in "The Evasion of the Text," submits…

Len Barton is acutely aware of the power of the academy to either enhance critical thinking or to depress it. He is a true academic, never accepting the received wisdom or perspective of any given sociological standpoint, no matter how powerful or fashionable it was at the time. He has encouraged and promoted a unique blend of professional and…

This paper examines indirect discrimination in Australian universities that tends to obstruct and delay women's academic careers. The topic is defined and contextualised via a 1998 speech by the Australian Human Rights Commission's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, juxtaposed with a brief contemporaneous exemplar. The paper discusses the prevalence…

Every article sent by an author to a reputed scientific journal undergoes a rigorous editorial evaluation. The editor has the final responsibility of accepting or rejecting manuscripts and thus can confer authority and validity on the author's research and help to disseminate new knowledge. In this task, editors make use of a panel of expert peer…

The idea that education should equip people to lead flourishing lives and help others to do so is now becoming salient in policy-making circles. Philosophy of education can help here by clarifying what flourishing consists in. This essay examines one aspect of this. It rejects the view that wellbeing goods are derivable from human nature, as in…

Single-case research designs are often applied within school psychology. This article provides a critical review of the scientific merit of both concurrent and nonconcurrent multiple baseline (MB) designs, relative to their capacity to assess threats of internal validity and establish experimental control. Distinctions are established between AB…

Stasis theory is a powerful tool for rhetorical analysis, recently under fresh consideration by rhetorical theorists (e.g. Gross) and scholars who identify its utility in the writing classroom (e.g. Carroll). In this study, the author applies stasis theory to a paleontological argument involving a controversial fossil, "Protoavis texensis."…

This article began as a response to the article "Action research as narrative: five principles for validation" by Heikkinen, Huttunen and Syrjala, which appears in this issue of "Educational Action Research". In so doing it addresses the question "How can we tell whether an action research study is good?" by arguing that validity is a construct…

This article presents the authors' response and clarifications to the comments of Margaret E. Gredler and of Karen A. Krasny, Mark Sadoski, and Allan Paivio on their article "Schema Theory Revisited." The authors first respond to Gredler's criticism contending that they "transmogrified" Harre's (1984) "ignominiously named...Vygotsky space" in…

This paper argues that an emerging framework for studying social episodes known as "positioning theory" is a rich tool for practical reasoning. After giving an outline of the Aristotelian conception of practical reason, recently developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, it is argued that positioning theory should be seen not as a detached, scientific…

Comments on the article by Vasquez and Jones, in which they put forward the argument that standardized tests do not evaluate much of anything worthwhile and do not assess merit. The current authors argue that Vasquez and Jones support their argument only through highly selective citations from the literature, and they discuss Vasquez and Jones'…

The interpretation of the history of rhetoric was the subject of the seminar reported in this document. After a preface and a discussion of the "promise" of rhetoric, abstracts of seminar presentations are grouped under the headings of rhetoric and culture, rhetoric and philosophy, methodological considerations, and discourse analysis.…

The contributions of Cicero and Quintilian, the two leading Roman rhetoricians, were based on their acceptance of the prior philosophical theories of Isocrates, which emphasized a cultural approach to rhetoric. Cicero and Quintilian, drawing from Isocrates, sought prospective orators who had a natural talent for eloquence and who could adopt a…

Barthes'"S/Z: An Essay" offers ways of approaching critical problems not well dealt with in Anglo-American criticism.