This article reviews the effects of globalization on South Africa a decade after the transition to a post-apartheid system. It brings together some of the recent literature of the performance of the economy and concomitant changes in education. It shows the pervasive force of globalization on South African education and training and explores in…

What brain mechanisms underlie autism, and how do they give rise to autistic behavioral symptoms? This article describes a neural model, called the Imbalanced Spectrally Timed Adaptive Resonance Theory (iSTART) model, that proposes how cognitive, emotional, timing, and motor processes that involve brain regions such as the prefrontal and temporal…

P. Ia. Gal'perin was involved in the beginnings of the formation of a new psychological theory based on ideas of social-historical and activity-oriented approaches to the understanding of the mind, its origin, functions, and development. In his works, Gal'perin made use of the genetic method in the form of experimental instruction that made it…

The previous article in this series introduced the triune brain, the three components of which handle specialized life tasks. The survival brain, or brain stem, directs automatic physiological functions, such as heartbeat and breathing, and mobilizes fight/flight behaviour in times of threat. The emotional (or limbic) brain activates positive or…

In this article, the authors discuss the problems of professional education. They state that, the source of these problems--the violation of the constitutional rights of citizens to obtain an education accessible to all; the commercialization of education; and the worsening of the financial, material, technical, and cadre support of the system of…

The brain gets fed first! That is an important idea that directly relates to the nutrition/cognition connection in schools. As the education community faces the challenges of childhood obesity, malnutrition of the brain, food allergies, disorders of metal metabolism and biochemical imbalances, educators are eager to learn about how to guide…

It is the belief of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child that better public understanding of the rapidly growing science of early childhood and early brain development can provide a powerful impetus for the design and implementation of policies and programs that could make a significant difference in the lives of all children.…

Background: The clinical and neuropathological features associated with dementia in Down's syndrome (DS) are not well established. Aims: To examine clinico-pathological correlations and the incidence of cognitive decline in a cohort of adults with DS. Method: A total of 92 hospitalized persons with DS were followed up from 1985 to December 2000.…

Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with childhood cognitive achievement. In previous research we found that this association shows neural specificity; specifically we found that groups of low and middle SES children differed disproportionately in perisylvian/language and prefrontal/executive abilities relative to other neurocognitive…

The author's secondary school mathematics students have often reported to her that quadratic relations are one of the most conceptually challenging aspects of the high school curriculum. From her own classroom experiences there seemed to be several aspects to the students' challenges. Many students, even in their early secondary education, have…

A common strategy employed by wealthy industrial nations for dealing with short-term skill deficits is to recruit internationally; such was the case, around the millennium, when a teacher supply crisis occurred in the United Kingdom (UK). That immediate crisis is now over; yet irrespective of peaks and troughs, international teacher migration is…

This document, which is designed for adult literacy practitioners, differentiates between the different types of literacy, explains the principles of neurobiological learning and their relationship to the development of literacy and numeracy skills, and presents a neurobiology-based technique of literacy instruction. The differences between…

This paper examines the "brain drain" phenomenon particularly in the context of Chinese students studying in the United States and the People's Republic of China's attempts to respond. An opening section critiques the "brain drain" notion arguing that it is an inadequate construct for the actual flow of personnel and ideas…

A study determined if relationships exist between learning styles and academic achievement and brain hemispheric dominance and academic performance in the courses of principles of management, business law, intermediate accounting, and principles of economics. All second-year accounting students (64 students) at Northeast Iowa Community College…

The left side of the brain has been said to process speech along with logical, rational, convergent, objective, and sequential tasks. The right side of the brain is thought to process nonverbal, spatial, musical, and analogical information. This paper discusses the research on brain hemisphericity from the perspectives of traditional and…