Examines how the word "professionalization" is used within the social and political contexts in which teaching occurs, both historically and in current debates over educational reform. Argues that professionalization itself has no intrinsic meaning but is defined by the social, political, and economic relationships of a given society.…

Discusses folk and outsider art and the relationship between the two art forms. Considers the inclusion of folk and outsider art in the curriculum, focusing on issues such as multiculturalism and social reconstructionism. Explores applications of folk and outsider art in the classroom. (CMK)

Argues that the idea of virtual universities supporting the formation of skilled and educated personnel is unfeasible. Reports on a qualitative study of the views and experiences of a small sample of Northern Ireland university staff who have been engaged in the instructional applications of the World Wide Web. (CMK)

Reports on a pilot survey of the authors of three sets of textbooks used in Australia and Canada, which have previously been shown to include a relatively high proportion of Indigenous and other minority groups' knowledges, cultures and sciences. Explores issues of voice and power in the production of textbooks. (MM)

Describes an experience of trying to publish a book whose contents are in some ways marginal to what is normally considered science or science education. During the publishing process, ideas about what counts as science got tangled up with what counts as "credible" science, "marketable" literature, and academic competence. (Contains 26…

Postmodernism has been welcomed in some quarters of educational research and practice and seen as offering scope for challenging accepted structures and practices, highlighting some of the ambivalence and uncertainty and challenging orthodoxy, but to what effect? Research on inclusion increasingly mirrors the "inward turn" (Page, 2000) of…

The author reviews the literature related to life roles and describes a variety of techniques that can be used from a constructivist career counseling perspective. Seven counseling techniques are included: life space map, life line, life-space genogram, life roles circles, life roles assessment, life role analysis, and goal map. Framed from the…

This article examines the interplay of power, identity and culture within online learning in higher education. Specifically it addresses the relation between online learning, or e-learning, and the apparent disappearance of ideology within postmodernity, in the context of teaching highly diverse cohorts of students. This conjunction is theorised…

Theorists have usurped English composition. They have banished great literature as the residual oppression of dead white males. They control groups like the NCTE and MLA, which announce that exercises in grammar and the mechanics of writing are "deleterious" for students tantamount to "malpractice." Nan Miller reminds those…

The differences between present-day post-modern students and educators from older generations require changes in educational approach, but also challenge post-modern trends. Students' postmodern experiences may lead them to seek individuality among diverse sources of identity, seeing knowledge as a throwaway consumption good, and education…

This paper seeks to explain why the subject media studies looks and sounds the way it does today through the production of a genealogy of the subject. The questions addressed are first, why was this subject introduced into the curriculum in the 1970s? Secondly, how has knowledge in the subject been defined and contested, how and why has it changed…

In attempting to reach their students, college English teachers must take seriously the postmodern sensibility as it is oriented to a culture of commodification. Instructors should face this commodification head-on, using it to show students that they have agency as consumers. This forthright acceptance of the 1990s orientation does more to help…

Science, particularly the physical sciences, has undergone several paradigm shifts during history. The modernistic and mechanistic world that was viewed through the lens of Newton's laws no longer offers valid answers to present-day questions. This paper examines four themes: the evolution of physics, the evolution of chemistry, the evolution of…

In the new historical and sociocultural context, one of the most outdated foundations of education and social movements is the traditional subject-object perspective of transformative leadership. Three ways to deal with this dilemma of "decentering" the subject are as follows: to maintain traditional convictions and assumptions, to deny the…

Constructivists believe that counselors and therapists help clients with the construction of knowledge by helping clients expand their alphabet into more flexible, viable, and complex acts of telling (language, conversations, narratives). Ways in which professionals can deconstruct the fundamental assumptions of the mental health professions and…