This paper attempts to reconcile the notion of a planetary future with shamanism, presenting the theme that any planetary future will be severely diminished unless shamanic experiences and outcomes are considered in the understanding of education. Methodology was based on participant observation conducted at a medicine lodge at Bengal Mountain,…

As Lewis Thomas has maintained, much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that the whole is being overlooked by an endless, obsessive preoccupation with the parts, and this is a suitable analogy for composition teaching. Students and teachers alike tend to fret endlessly over minute details of writing, like grammar,…

Findings of a study that examined effective approaches to the professional development of teachers are presented in this paper. Methodology involved a survey of principals in New South Wales, Australia, and the United States; an evaluation of 379 inschool staff development programs in New South Wales; case study analysis of 8 New South Wales…

The act of reading is holistic and involves acquisition of facts, concepts, and generalizations. With Instructional Management Systems (IMS) and state mandated testing, however, reading too frequently becomes a means of appraising the achievement of students in acquiring word recognition skills as well as diverse comprehension abilities. School…

This digest issues a call to make good on the rhetoric of "integrated attention to the whole child" and provides some suggestions about how that might be done, beginning with combined interventions aimed at improving the nutritional status and the psychosocial development of the young child. After an introductory chapter that provides a…

Conventional research strategies typically emphasize behavior-determining tendencies so strongly that the person as a whole is ignored. Research strategies for studying whole persons focus on symbolic structures, formulate specific questions in advance, study persons one at a time, use individualized measures, and regard participants as expert…

Improvisational gaming is a technique involving the use of theater and drama in the teaching of other subjects. The student uses intuition, sense-memory, and imagination in a holistic approach to learning which teaches social skills while it teaches subject matter. Everyone can act and improvise; getting everyone involved is seldom a problem as…

Although college faculty may hesitate to evaluate each others' teaching, it is a sensible alternative to evaluation by students or by administrators. Peer evaluations are not only useful for improving teaching, but also affect promotion and tenure decisions. When faculty are rated by observation, repeated visits and rater training are required in…

The purposes of this investigation were to describe the curricular elements of a museum and to determine if the framework for interpreting a school curriculum found in "A Study of Schooling" (Goodlad & Associates, 1979) is applicable to the informal curriculum of the non-school setting. Eight museums were studied; curators were…

This study intoduces a strategy for analysing different kinds of phenomena by building "information structures" for analysing how parts make a whole in complex systems. The strategy introduced may be of use when there is a need to understand complex systems or situations; e.g., in various studies of adult education when education is seen as…

Environmental education ideally involves a holistic integration of all school subjects, but in reality the curriculum structure is very segmented. Traditional approaches to the study of environmental degradation have not recognized the interrelatedness of the system: problems in the biosphere have been addressed from the perspective of the…

Media historians have been criticized for their inability to ask substantive questions, for ignoring underlying conditions in media's past, and for their failure to relate the narration of technological developments to existing social and cultural tensions. One problem media historians confront is the scope of their research--many media histories…

Dialogics as a philosophical principle is, like the dialectics predominant at present in all industrialized countries, based on the duality of life and thought. Dialogics postulates that two thoughts, or two aspirations, or two concepts together make up a whole, simultaneously, each being of equal importance. Play is a dialogic of doing and…

The implications of the interaction between knowledge acquisition and problem solving are discussed. Options for the teaching of problem solving are listed including: giving students the opportunity to solve many problems, facilitating students' exploration of the mental processes used to solve problems, and providing explicit training in the…

Recent psychological and educational research suggests that, in order to tap the mind's potential, people must employ information processing which uses both hemispheres of the brain, positively engage feelings in learning, and provide a rich and loving environment. Examines learning experiences which encourage success and presents the Integrative…