Presents classical definitions and explanations of distance education selected from pioneers of the field or those who have made seminal contributions to the conceptualization of distance education and related fields. Discusses definitions by Desmond Keegan, Michael G. Moore, Borje Holmberg, and Otto Peters. (AEF)

Notes the inevitable tensions between the interests of teachers and administrators on the one hand and individual constitutional rights of students on the other. Uses an incident at a Florida high school to discuss 4 basic premises explaining why school administrators must adopt a "preferred position" in support of student…

The Hyde School is scarcely typical of schools professedly dedicated to character education; it is, if anything, the extreme case, where principles that elsewhere have been applied halfheartedly have been most deeply considered and uncompromisingly followed. Hyde is, in fact, so peculiar, so supremely dedicated to its eccentric founding…

In this paper we present three cases of instructional design that illustrates both horizontal didactising, the activity of using already established principles to design instruction, and vertical didactising the activity of developing new tools and principles for instructional design. The first case illustrates horizontal didactising by…

Traditional approaches to teacher education are increasingly critiqued for their limited relationship to student teachers' needs and for their meager impact on practice. Many pleas are heard for a radical new and effective pedagogy of teacher education in which theory and practice are linked effectively. Although various attempts to restructure…

Everything a persons needs to know in life is learned in Kindergarten is a popular adage among teachers. In this article, the author relates how everything she needed to know about teaching she learned from her own children. She relates that from the moment of their birth, she had determined that her four children would learn to read before they…

Through an exegetic reading of Peirce's minor texts on higher education, I find that Peirce's conception of a "Liberal Education" is close to the Herbartian conception of "Bildung." Peirce calls for a general education with the ambition of qualifying critical thinkers with the capacity to go beyond the strict rules and narrow borders of the "artes…

Innovation of education is highly topical. It is obviously boosted by a range of new technologies, which enable new modes of learning that, are independent of time and place through Web-based delivery and computer-mediated communication. However, innovators in education often encounter intrinsic conservatism or even deliberate obstructions. For…

Recently, much e-learning research has been devoted to producing e-content, describing it with metadata, and to constructing e-learning systems. Considerably less attention has been paid to integrating technology to improve the learning process in terms of depth and scope. In this paper, that gap is filled by considering learning support from a…

Fads are common in every area of education. The problem with fads is that even promising developments are quickly abandoned to make room for the next innovation. Educational innovations become fads partly because they are without a firm foundation in theories of learning, or because that foundation is not fully identified and communicated. There…

Theological studies as a discipline committed to religious practice has come increasingly under fire from both adherents of dispassionate "religious studies" and partisans of ecclesial communities. A false solution is on offer that also emphasizes religious practices; this move, however, reinscribes the problem it seeks to solve because of its…

In this article, the author comments on Professor White's response to his criticisms of White's attack on compulsory religious education (White, 2004). Religious education, the author contends, raises questions of fundamental importance and complexity that compulsion is necessary if people are to create anything resembling a religiously literate…

Ordinary performance improvement tips, techniques, and principles that are taken for granted today have their roots in extraordinary research. Today, the learning principle that states that things that occur together tend to be recalled together is widely accepted, and this principle of association as an instructional technique is often used. How…

This account describes and analyses some of the processes which are important for teachers to maintain a creative role in promoting learning while in a climate of managerialism and performativity. It does so from the stance of someone who works with teachers and schools on a minority interest in current times--learning. Processes needed to combat…

The purpose of the research was to get insights into the ways learning strategies typically used by adult learners can be taken into consideration when designing web-based courses to facilitate learning in teacher education. Teacher students wrote narratives in discussion forums by completing various types of group projects. The relevant…