Jack Mezirow's theory of transformative learning has evolved into a description of how learners learn by integrating new knowledge with their existing knowledge, beliefs, and experiences. Centrality of experience, critical reflection, and rational discourse are three common themes in Mezirow's theory, which is based on psychoanalytic theory and…

This book offers a reflective examination of the purposes of undergraduate education and argues for an integrated pedagogy that is intersubjective, interdisciplinary, and intercultural. The book is divided into three general parts. The first four chapters offer a systematic search for the first principles of education, including the educational…

The goal of this paper is to show how experience transcends subject-matter planning. Indeed, there is a paradox in planning authentic experiences; hence the word "quasi-authentic" in the title. Subject matters are defined here as disciplinary genres. They are integrated into a new framework for semiotic research into disciplinary…

This study investigated students' metacognitive and intellectual development within the context of academic training, achievement, and personality type, using two longitudinal data sets from a four-year public institution. The first set included 408 male students of the 1996 cohort; the second was comprised of 419 male students of the class of…

This document contains four papers from a symposium on organization development and change. "The Effectiveness of Total Quality Management: A Response to the Critics" (Douglas H. Smith, Ralph G. Lewis) identifies four effectiveness principles: customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, speaking with facts, and respect for people. "Fast Cycle…

Experiential or work-based learning has been touted as imperative for the development of students and their preparation for the workplace. However, work-based learning does not always occur or occur to a significant extent merely because a student is in the workplace. What matters is the nature of the student's participation in workplace…

The ways male and female students communicate in computer-mediated distance education courses were examined through a comparison of the communication techniques used by 15 females and 4 males enrolled in a computer conferencing course that required students to share their thoughts regarding a weekly reading assignments and related discussion…

A study investigated the acquisition of grammar-based reading routines in both first and second languages (L1 and L2). The objective was to determine whether routine integration of grammatical information to construct a semantic representation of the text is a matter of general cognitive development or language-specific learning. Subjects were…

School board members' perceptions of the socialization process involved in the learning and development of their roles are described in this report. Methodology involved indepth interviews with 28 school board members from two rural and three suburban public school districts in Pennsylvania and New York, document analysis, and observation.…

An overview of current theories of reading and the acquisition of literacy skills by children is presented. A research framework in which reading can be described in terms of the processes employed in other language uses is introduced and used to explain the failure of some children to learn to read. An ongoing research program is described that…

This paper proposes a theory that can account for differences between everyday and formal mathematics knowledge and a set of processes by which informal knowledge is transformed into formal mathematics. After an introduction, the paper is developed in five sections. The first section lays out the nature of informal, everyday mathematics knowledge.…

Interest is examined in relation to its role in the learning process. A broadly based model of learning is presented, and implications of the model for the educational context are considered. In the framework presented, learning involves the perception, interpretation, and storage of information about the environment under particular motivational…

Previous research has cast doubt on children's ability to use specified evidence when making causal inferences, or, indeed, to differentiate between the specified evidence and their own preconceptions, or "prior theories." The present study continues previous work by distinguishing between children's reasoning in conditions where…

Findings of a study that explored the ways in which teachers' understandings about pedagogy evolve are presented in this paper. Previous teacher development research suggests that teachers' understandings evolve in a lawful, linear way. Although the expression of the different levels is clear, the evolution process is not. Methodology involved a…

In response to the search for ways to create forms of schooling that are more holistic and natural, and more integrated and interwoven, this collection of articles pulls together elements of the multifaceted concept of curriculum integration. Divided into six sections, the chapters explore the reasons and rationale for moving toward more holistic…