In a recent flurry of e-mails and conversations about promotion policies in their school of education, the authors realized that their colleagues differ sharply in their notions of how scholarship should be evaluated. They agree on the importance of high-quality work, but they disagree on how to determine whether high quality has been achieved.…

When the author became a professor with interests in literature, composition, technical communication, speech, and rhetoric, he little anticipated the extent to which book collecting could affect research and teaching, but his finds increasingly enlightened him. As he gravitated toward composition, technical communication, speech, and rhetoric in…

This research investigated levels of moral judgment among public elementary school principals as measured by the Defining Issues Test Version 2 for occupationally relevant and other moral dilemmas. The participants scored lower (38.7) than the predicted average P score (postconventional thinking) for individuals who have attained graduate level…

In this article the author explores two aspects of his identity as an educator: (1) his identity as a classroom music teacher back teaching at Somerset Primary school; and (2) his identity as a music teacher educator upon his return to full-time university employment following six months of substitute teaching, including the block of teaching at…

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics are vital areas of learning and research. The loss of physics, chemistry and engineering departments in many British universities has been pitiful to observe. But the recent announcement of funding for universities highlights the disastrous effects of the decision to prioritise these "STEM"…

The author wrote a piece called "What Our Children Should Learn about 9/11." In that piece, the author made just four simple points. These include: (1) children should know the facts; (2) once they had a grounding in the facts, the children should not abjure moral judgment; (3) children should learn to make both analytical and moral…

When assessment tasks are set for students in universities and colleges, a common practice is to advise them of the criteria that will be used for grading their responses. Various schemes for using multiple criteria have been widely advocated in the literature. Each scheme is designed to offer clear benefits for students. Breaking down holistic…

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of…

Staff and students grumble about how research allegedly obscures the merits of exemplary teaching at universities. Modern efforts to move teaching from the periphery to the centre of the university were marked by books on the scholarship of teaching (SoT). Starting in the 1990s it became possible for academic staff to cite their SoT in claims for…

Judgments about actual and hypothetical events were examined. The study, conducted in elementary (first, third, and fifth grades) and junior high (seventh grades) schools, included behavioral observations and assessments of judgments. Observations were conducted of 108 events classified as moral, as conventional, and as mixed type. Participants'…

This paper presents methodology and findings from three product efficacy studies that verify the quality of life benefits resulting from prior research, development, and transfer activities. The paper then discusses key lessons learned with implications for product evaluation practice. The studies assessed the quality of three assistive technology…

Museum leaders around the country are in the midst of examining and changing their business models in response to new economic realities. Museum educators have an opportunity to play a leading role in this endeavor. To do so educators must understand the relationship between money and mission. For too long there has been a belief that the…

The sampling approach [Fiedler, K. (2000a). "Beware of samples! A cognitive-ecological sampling approach to judgment biases." "Psychological Review, 107"(4), 659-676.] attributes judgment biases to the information given in a sample. Because people usually do not monitor the constraints of samples and do not control their judgments accordingly,…

Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements. Given that repetition leads to greater experienced processing fluency, the author proposes that fluency is used in truth judgments according to its ecological validity. Thus, the truth effect occurs because people learn that fluency and truth tend to be positively correlated.…

In her 1993 text "Educating For Intelligent Belief and Unbelief," Nel Noddings advocated an ambitious plan to challenge the students; she wished to engage them in a dialogue on the religious issues that define those questions, which "matter deeply to everyone." This was seen as a dialogue that can take place at all levels of education, but was…