The purpose of this paper is to explore the principles of Assessment for Learning (AFL) in light of John Dewey's writing about the purpose and possibility of education. In this paper, we compare Dewey's ideas to the goals of assessment for learning (AFL)--a practice emerging globally and, more locally, moved forward by the Alberta Initiative for…

The researchers investigated the reflections of preservice middle school teachers (PSMTs) who were enrolled in an activity-based middle level social studies methods course. These reflections concerned the students' past educational experiences. Through weekly journals, the PSMTs were encouraged to reflect on course activities and relate them to…

The author has attempted over the years to make a case for educators to work within a revolutionary critical pedagogy that examines the economic, cultural, social, and political purposes of education. Acknowledging the fact that education is a necessary but not sufficient weapon in history's arsenal of social revolution, it is clear that educators…

This article analyses reforms addressing and affecting the curriculum and organisation of Swedish upper secondary education over 40 years, up to an initiative by the present non-socialist government. The aim is to analyse the current reform of upper secondary education and relate it to previous reforms during a 40-year period in terms of…

The history of education in France, with its inherited link between the Republic and the religion of knowledge, produces a specific form of educational functioning, consubstantial to a tradition of selection and a symptomatic lack of what elsewhere is called a curriculum. While the recent introduction of the "common grounding of knowledge and…

Critical pedagogy believes education to be a form of cultural politics that is fundamental to social transformation aiming to cultivate human agency and transformative activity. The explosion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has provided ordinary people with unprecedented opportunities to take on the ruling educational power…

The humanist movement of the Northern Renaissance--often called "Christian humanism" or "Erasmian humanism" (after its most famous member, Desiderius Erasmus)--had a lasting impact on many areas of European intellectual and cultural life. This paper reviews the contribution of Erasmus and his circle to the theory and practice…

The idea of emancipation plays a central role in modern educational theories and practices. The emancipatory impetus is particularly prominent in critical traditions and approaches where the aim of education is conceived as that of emancipating students from oppressive structures in the name of social justice and human freedom. What is needed to…

This paper makes a contrastive study of learning styles between China and the U.S. from five aspects and recognizes that the differences are due to the influence of cultural diversity such as individualism and collectivism, Confucianism, utilitarianism and pragmatism etc.

Women music educators in the USA have been active in public and private schools, churches, and community organizations. In the nineteenth century, Julia E. Crane founded the Crane Institute of Music, the first institution to train music supervisors; and women developed kindergarten programs throughout the US. In the "private sphere," women taught…

In this article I offer a defence of cosmopolitanism as an enabling condition for university education in Africa. Recent xenophobic outbursts in South Africa suggests that the enactment of defensible virtues in societies remain distant from the practices of many people. My contention is that university education ought to take seriously the…

This article opens by raising a need to examine today's moral education for a new century. John Dewey insists that "arts are educative," so that "they open the door to an expansion of meaning and to an enlarged capacity to experience the world." This insight retains remarkable implications for today's moral education. Aesthetic experience is…

This essay explores how the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, especially Richard Rorty's work on social hope late in his career, could be relevant to community literacy. Pragmatism does not prescribe a particular approach to community literacy but, unlike many kinds of critical pedagogy, affirms a role for patriotism and liberalism…

International teacher education is very topical. A recent article by Roberts (2007) in "Teacher Education Quarterly" concluded that teacher educators face difficulties in creating structures and activities and finding the time, energy, and financial resources to promote a deep level of understanding for world dilemmas and events. But…

This paper discusses a teaching model called community of mathematical inquiry (CMI), characterized by dialogical and inquiry-driven communication and a dynamic structure of intertwined cognitive processes including distributed thinking, mathematical argumentation, integrated reasoning, conceptual transformation, internalization of critical…