Continuing education module: finding the path

In this guest editorial, the challenges and pain of childbirth are presented as essential components of important life transitions. The role of pain in childbirth is explored. Childbirth is discussed as a "flow experience," and recommendations for assisting women to meet the challenges of labor and birth are presented.     

Condescension and critical sympathy: Historians of education on progressive education in the United States and England

Although progressive education was an international phenomenon, historical interpretations of it may be affected on the national level by academic and institutional contingencies. An analysis of how US and English historians of education interpret progressive education reforms in their respective countries identified a strain of condescension toward progressive education in history of education scholarship in the US, which often resulted in misrepresentations of the historical record. English historians of education tend to regard progressive education with critical sympathy. These findings are possibly explained by different institutional and academic circumstances of historians of education in England and the US.     

Transdisciplinarity in STEM education: a critical review

ABSTRACT

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education garnered significant attention in recent years and has emerged as a key field of research globally. The goal of this article is to offer a critical review of how STEM education and its transdisciplinarity were defined and/or positioned in empirical studies published during the early formulation of the field. In particular, we sought to identify how these studies conceptualise learners and learning and portray the underlying assumptions in light of the macrosystemic discourses that often serve as ideological forces in shaping research and practice of STEM education. We examined 154 peer-reviewed articles published between January 2007 and March 2018 and analysed them along several emergent dimensions: their geospatial focus, focal disciplinary areas, methodological and theoretical assumptions, and major findings. Grounded in a critical transdisciplinary perspective, we used critical discourse analysis to identify how macrosystemic and institutionalised forces – overtly and implicitly – shape what counts as STEM education research, including its goals and conceptualisations of learners and learning. Our analysis highlights the need for aesthetic expansion and diversification of STEM education research by challenging the disciplinary hegemonies and calls for reorienting the focus away from human capital discourse.     

Population education in the United States

The most significant expansion of population education in the U.S. has occurred over the past 5-year period. The environmental movement of the 1960 decade established a foundation on which population education quickly developed in the 1970 decade and gained acceptance in the population establishment and among funding agencies. During the years 1970-1976, several private organizations became actively involved in the population education field. Several viewpoints and population education approaches are now evident in the U.S. These approaches stress different aspects of the issue: extension of family planning, individual and social awareness, demography, behavioral objectives, value analysis, environmental strategy, and inquiry. Although these approaches are diverse, the U.S. has provided a basic framework for population education. Research in population education has consisted of little more than review studies, knowledge and attitude surveys, and several studies on the appropriateness of population education in the formal college school setting. Further research is needed to identify the goals, objectives, and strategy of population education, and these studies would have to be linked to the cognitive and moral development of the student.     

Emergency education: a critical review of the field

Emergency education, (that is, education in emergency situations) came to the fore in the 1990s. Defining this new field is not free from contestation. This article describes the trajectory and characteristics of the field and issues arising, focusing on different international discourses as well as contents of teaching and learning, and pedagogy. A key issue addressed is the underpinning concept of development in discussions of emergency education. This article is critical of the narrow focus on economic development and suggests that emergency education needs to address comprehensive development towards quality of life for all. It also suggests that participation is key to sustainable initiatives.     

Evaluation of adult literacy education in the United States: A review of methodological issues

This is a critical review of methodological issues in the evaluation of adult literacy education programs in the United States. It addresses the key research questions: What are the appropriate methods for evaluating these programs under given circumstances. It identifies 15 evaluation studies that are representative of a range of adult literacy contexts at various evaluation levels; and reviews each study regarding evaluation designs, data sources, learner assessment tools, and indicators of program effectiveness. It summarizes methodological lessons learned regarding the evaluation of adult literacy education and identifies areas for further research.     

Mathematics education in the United States: past to present

This article presents a historical review of mathematics education since the late 1950s in the United States. Three themes are used to organize the literature reviewed in the article: (a) broad sociopolitical forces, particularly highly publicized educational policy statements; (b) trends in mathematics research; and (c) theories of learning and instruction. At times, these themes coincide, as was the case in the 1990s. In other cases, such as the recent push for educational accountability, these themes conflict. Nonetheless, the themes go a long way to explain the serpentine nature of reform in the United States over the last 45 years. This article also attempts to account for developments in special education as well as general education research, something that does not appear in most historical presentations of mathematics education.     

Higher education recruitment in the United States: a chronology of significant literature

ABSTRACT

Given the absence of a chronology of the historical philosophies, perspectives, and practices of recruitment within the higher education institutions in the United States, the authors have assembled an overview of the material on recruitment strategies and ideologies of American higher education institutions. Literature from and about the past aids in illuminating the current context while helping to navigate the future of higher education recruitment. The authors have identified five general periods: prior to 1920, 1921 to the end of the Second World War, the post-War decade, mid-1950s through the 1970s, and 1980s to the present. Documentation for each period varies significantly in quality and amount, with the densest data found for the two later periods. Future researchers may explore how recruitment practices and language encourage or discourage under-represented populations in higher education. Further research in other areas of educational recruitment is also suggested.     

Supporting productive collaboration in a computer-supported instructional activity: peer-feedback on critical incidents in health care education

One important feature of vocational education is to provide students with solid conceptual knowledge along with substantial practical experience, acquired in school and workplace contexts, respectively. However, the research provided evidence that students do not spontaneously articulate the knowledge acquired in different contexts, and that specific instructional activities have to be designed and introduced. The present study deals with this type of activity conducted in a vocational school for health and social care assistants, which involved the use of collaborative writing about workplace critical incidents. The goal was to identify the patterns of interactions, and specifically the type of peer-feedback that engage students in productive collaboration. Qualitative analyses show that the writing productions could be categorized in four collaboration patterns differing in the level in which students would elaborate on their peers’ experience and profit from the peers’ suggestions in order to improve their understanding. On this basis, we propose a series of recommendations for implementing effective and instructionally relevant collaborative writing activities in vocational education.     

Academic versus vocational education in the United States

Starting from the statistically supported trend of post-secondary education in the United States from the academic to the vocational area, this author investigates:

1. the causes of this wide swing of the pendulum towards vocational education;
2. the resulting assumption that education is merely a preparation for an occupation and has no intrinsic value. Three main reasons are given for this development: First, the effort made by schools and universities to fulfil their certification function has resulted in their giving precedence to selection rather than to the education of pupils and students and to equalization of opportunities. Second, the general tendency of society to exclude youth from responsible participation in the life of adults is leading to a change in the societal work process and to a gradual breakdown in the family structure. The third factor is the increase in juvenile delinquency and criminality.

     

Teacher education in the United States of America

Teacher education in the United States, and undoubtedly in other countries as well, is more profoundly affected by shifts and developments in the wider intellectual and social world than by any changes, no matter what their magnitude, in educational theory and teaching techniques. Current practices in the preparation of teachers, therefore, cannot be understood without references to such external influences as, to cite only a few, the teacher shortage of the fifties and early sixties, the post-sputnik anxiety about how well our schools were doing, the efflorescence in the behavioural sciences, the so-called explosion of knowledge in all fields, and the concentration of educationally disadvantaged children in the central cities. Once it is assumed that teacher preparation reflects changes in the broader world, any attempt to outline recent trends and developments inevitably becomes arbitrary and partial. However, the factors enumerated and discussed below are, at least, germane to the problem. Dr. Schaefer has been Dean of the Teachers' College at Columbia University in New York since 1963. This article consists of extracts from a paper presented by the author before an expert committee which met at Unesco to consider problems of general primary and secondary education.