A commitment to either traditional or innovative education practice virtually defines the professional identities of most educators, writes Ferrero. Traditional practices emphasize basic skills, ability grouping, subject-matter disciplines, academic mastery, standardized testing, and a canonical curriculum; innovative practices focus on…

This article asks how good video and computer game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex and difficult games. The short answer is that designers of good games have hit on excellent methods for getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. The longer answer is more complex. Integral to this answer are the good principles of…

Continuing education offers one of the most convenient and accessible ways to bring people from diverse backgrounds together for the purpose of learning. Ironically, courses that directly address cross-cultural exchange are not easily found among program offerings. Recent world and local events have made it increasingly important for Canadians to…

Under the leadership of Frederick Paul Keppel (1875-1943) Carnegie Corporation's Dominions and Colonies Fund supported a vast array of philanthropic projects in the dominions and colonies of the Britain's interwar empire. The career of F. P. Keppel is important to historians of education because many of the interwar Carnegie initiatives…

Although he may not have spoken quite as eloquently as the Bard of Avon, Ernie Page, the author's methods instructor at Penn State, once said that teaching English was less a subject and more a predicament. He was alluding to the many complexities and range of subject matter that constitute teaching the English language arts. In the 30 years since…

The tally of occurrences of a PC buzzword on academic and other websites seems to corroborate the suspicion that we're quickly abandoning "e pluribus unum" as the governing principle for treating individuals justly. In its place is the new image of America as a melange of competing interest groups. In this NAS research on comparative…

The idea of "the African university" is usually accompanied by an emphasis on Africanisation of education, and of knowledge, on changing the demographic profile of student, staff and administrative bodies, educational syllabi and curricula, and the criteria for research activity and for throughput. The idea of "Africanising"…

This paper describes the journey of a mid-size community college towards developing and institutionalizing a core set of values into the culture. The aim is to establish a common guidepost to integrate planning, decision-making and behaviour within the learning community of Red Deer College (RDC). Consultative process was used to engage staff and…

My subject is what the practice of education can learn from the arts. I describe the forms of thinking the arts evoke and their relevance for re-framing conceptions of what education can accomplish. (Contains 1 note.)

The present paper explores the relevance that brain data have in constructing theories about the human mind. In the Cognitive Science era it was assumed that knowledge of the mind and the brain correspond to different levels of analysis. This independence among levels led to the epistemic argument that knowledge of the biological basis of…

This collection of articles offers some practical responses to what is broadly termed internationalisation in higher education. They relate to work done at a research-intensive university in southeastern Australia, with a specific focus on the student learning experience. Various local interpretations of internationalisation are exemplified and…

This paper will concentrate on the current shift from teaching to entitlement learning that has become a significant part of our educational discourse and culture. With increasing emphasis on accountability and high test score, students have become active recipients in "assessing" and "evaluating" the effectiveness of their learning experiences.…

Management's current self-consciousness as a young but privileged discipline situated among other fields of knowledge is critically interpreted. The praxis of management is found to lack characteristics of stability and self-reflection belonging to other, older academic disciplines. The use of the concept of "gods of mismanagement" is an…

In this article, the author relates an incident at the elementary school in Maryland where she was teaching 3rd grade at the time. After the author finally managed to get her students to read--and enjoy it--the principal insisted they watch TV instead. Odd as the accusation was, it was made even odder by the fact that her students were reading…

This paper offers a review on effective instructional methods from educational and psychological research. Thirteen instructional principles are presented which should help teacher and educators to improve the quality of their instruction. Principles 1 to 4 concern general conditions of successful instruction. Principles 5 to 8 consist of…