Toward the end of the nineteenth century, legal and sociopolitical sectors began to view children as a social group of their own, and European countries passed laws for the protection of children and introduced compulsory school attendance. This paper asserts that measures like these led to a far-reaching new definition of childhood on a…

Having taught for nearly 30 years in Britain's first Rudolf Steiner school, Francis Edmunds founded Emerson College, an adult education and teacher training center where he was active until his death in 1989. This book contains a collection of Edmunds' writings on Steiner education mostly excerpted from "Child and Man,""The Michael…

This paper presents a description and brief history of the concept of "racial uplift" and describes its implications for a contemporary, Black college professor. The phrase "racial uplift," for 19th-century Black women, describes almost any type of political activity designed to improve conditions for Black people during the…

The goal of this guide is to make a distinction between religious faith and scientific knowledge and to dispel the belief that evolution conflicts with religious principles. The seven chapters of the book are designed to help ensure that students receive an education in the sciences that reflects the distinction. Topics covered include the basic…

This report examines the importance of learning communities within institutions of higher education. It identifies two important dimensions of learning communities: (1) primary membership, which differentiates based on the characteristic that group members hold in common; these include learning organizations, faculty learning communities, and…

A discussion of whether teaching is a science, an art, or both, and the extent to which it is either and why, is presented in this paper. Teaching-as-a-science (TAS) and teaching-as-an-art (TAA) are not specific teaching methods but rather two different ways to find teaching methods. Whether students learn as a result of the teacher's scientific…

This paper examines the contributions of the two dominant theories of school improvement--effective schools and school restructuring--to education. The first section reviews effective schools theory; the second section reviews the school restructuring literature, with attention to its extension of tenets of the effective schools paradigm. Each…

Many educators concerned with the quality and quantity of arts education believe that collaboration among the disciplines is necessary to improve conditions. Current probable visions for the future of visual art education are cloudy because of ambiguity surrounding the concept of collaboration. In order to explore this concept, this paper is…

The influence of John Dewey's educational theory on curriculum development in South Africa is examined in this paper. The two main streams of thinking about curriculum theory in South Africa include the traditional perspective, which is heavily influenced by the national Christianity movement, and the alternative curriculum development…

The project group "Preparedness for Peace" at the Malmo School of Education in Sweden studies ways of helping children and young people to deal constructively with questions of peace and war. As part of this work, experts with special interest and competence in areas related to peace education are interviewed. This publication explores…

This paper describes how poststructuralist thought informed one educator's thinking about teaching and the relevance of poststructuralism to teaching, especially through the educator's experience at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT). NCCAT was created to reward outstanding North Carolina teachers for their service…

Reflective practice is a mode that integrates thought and action with reflection. Learning is dependent upon the integration of experience with reflection and of theory with practice. Experience is a basis for learning but reflection is the essential part of the learning process because it results in making sense or extracting meaning from the…

This paper lists and discusses, in historical progression, books and other writings that are considered to cover the major developments of education in the United States in the 20th century. The paper is intended to help professional educators to know better the great ideas, themes, and books that laid the foundations of education in the United…

This paper outlines a neo-Deweyan strategy to transform American public schools into genuine community schools that function as central agencies for the development of a democratic welfare society. John Dewey's thesis was that a well-functioning school system constitutes the necessary, though not sufficient, condition for a well-functioning…

This paper notes that gifted education has been dominated by psychology and proposes, in contrast, to de-psychologize the concept of "giftedness-at-risk" with an alternative model which sees ontological giftedness, becoming the best one can be, as not the property of an elite few but a permanent positive human possibility for all.…