The Effectiveness of Radio as an Educational Medium

Abstract

Radio is a mass medium that can be harnessed to enhance an education campaign since it can span great distances and reach a large number oflisteners. Because of its wide coverage, relatively low unit cost, ability to reach those who are illiterate and without the use of mains power, it has proved to be an effective educational medium. The features of the radio medium are: it is a ‘blind’ (ie non‐visual) medium; it functions in real time; and its codes are purely auditory, consisting as they do of speech, music, sounds, noises and silences.

The fact that it is non‐visual can be harnessed to improve education quality since the listener is compelled to support the sound message by using his/her own imagination. No other medium has this educational power of stimulating and developing the abstract thinking of its audience and enriching and activating the listener's imagination.     

Changing Teacher Education through Technology: a study of the Remote Area Teacher Education Project

ABSTRACT

Despite the overall proliferation of technology and its impact on people's everyday lives, tertiary education institutions generally have yet to utilise the educational potential of information technology. There is an enormous disparity between technology as an educational resource outside of these institutions and as a medium for learning inside. The same is generally true for teacher education programmes within institutes of higher education.     

The icelandic educational network: incidents reported as fostering successful use of educational networks

Abstract

Telecommunications have moved into the world of education, and educational networks have arisen in many countries. The Icelandic Educational Network (IEN) is one of these, and a recent study was undertaken to examine its role and its impact on the educational community in Iceland. A critical incident study was conducted to determine what activities educators felt have led to their successful use of the IEN. Participants were asked to describe two critical incidents that fostered their successful use of the IEN; 580 critical incidents reported by 290 subscribers at the IEN were analyzed. The data, recorded and presented in narrative and visual form, revealed six categories that foster successful use of the IEN, and frequency distribution charts showing the frequency of each incident are included here. Participant feedback has provided information regarding instructor training for telecommunication technology, and has indicated possible areas for inclusion in teacher education, and professional development activities     

Educational Value and Models-Based Practice in Physical Education

Abstract

A models-based approach has been advocated as a means of overcoming the serious limitations of the traditional approach to physical education. One of the difficulties with this approach is that physical educators have sought to use it to achieve diverse and sometimes competing educational benefits, and these wide-ranging aspirations are rarely if ever achieved. Models-based practice offers a possible resolution to these problems by limiting the range of learning outcomes, subject matter and teaching strategies appropriate to each pedagogical model and thus the arguments that can be used for educational value. In this article, two examples are provided to support a case for educational value. This case is built on an examination of one established pedagogical model, Sport Education, which is informed by a perspective on ethics. Next, I consider Physical Literacy which, I suggest, is an existentialist philosophical perspective that could form the basis of a new pedagogical model. It is argued, in conclusion, that a models-based approach along with a reconstructed notion of educational value may offer a possible future for physical education that is well grounded in various philosophical arguments and the means to facilitate a wide range of diverse individual and social educational ‘goods’.     

The electronic mirror and emotional growth

Abstract

The article examines the use of information and communication technology to enhance the educational achievement of a group of students evidencing a variety of EBD in a mainstream school setting. It is believed that ICT will have just as important a part to play in the education of students with EBD as it will with other sensory or physical special educational needs. The article examines within-child factors which make a cognitive-behavioural approach potentially powerful. It suggests that ICT can enhance the educational experience of EBD pupils if careful attention is paid to the creation of a therapeutic teaching environment and the interaction of the student/curriculum and teacher/student interfaces. The article discusses the implementation of an integrated learning system in an inner London comprehensive school and its effects on those pupils presenting with emotionally disordered learning difficulties.     

高校电视台归属对其功能实现度的影响

高校电视台是一种传播校园信息、丰富高校文化生活的重要手段,高等学校对其要求不断趋向于普遍意义的教育电视媒体。高校电视台是否充分实现教育电视的功能、是否满足高等学校的发展建设需要成为了制约其发展壮大的瓶颈问题,而高校电视台归属是对其功能实现产生影响的本质原因。     

Changing the rules: from textbooks to PLEs / Cambiando las reglas de juego: de los libros de texto al PLE

Abstract

This article is a pedagogical contribution to the debate about the meaning, usefulness and possible integration of PLEs into formalized education. We assume that PLEs represent a change in the rules of traditional teaching taking place in formal educational contexts. We use the comparison of a solid knowledge taught in textbooks compared PLEs in the context of the liquid culture of cyberspace as a metaphor for learning. The article provides an overview of the features and elements of a PLE in formal education and suggests that the educational objective of PLEs is the formation of digital citizenship. This concept implies that learners must become aware of their digital identity and develop competence in five dimensions for an intelligent use of digital technology and culture. We conclude by referring to PLEs as an educational ideology and its potential evolution from the deschooling theses and educational reform in schools.     

Education for citizenship

ABSTRACT

It is increasingly maintained that cost–benefit analysis (CBA) should play a greater role in educational policy-making. This article critically examines the rationale guiding CBA and its compatibility to educational settings. Drawing on philosophical discussions, it argues that the rationale guiding CBA has some fundamental limitations that render the use of it in education beneficial only under certain restrictive circumstances.     

Aversive education: Emersonian variations on ‘Bildung’

Abstract

The paper discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thought in relation to the German Bildung tradition. For many, Bildung still signifies a valuable achievement of modern educational thought as well as a critical, emancipatory ideal which, frequently in a rather nostalgic manner, is appealed to in order to delineate problematic tendencies of current educational trends. Others, in an at times rather cynical manner, claim that Bildung through its successful institutionalization has shaped vital features of our present educational system and has thus served its time and lost its critical potential. When thinking through Emerson’s variations on Bildung I argue against the nostalgic appeals to Bildung that the criticism against it has to be taken seriously. Against the cynical assessment of Bildung having run its course, I will hold that with Emerson we can develop the idea of an ‘aversive education’ as a call for Bildung to be turned upon itself, allowing to revive it as a conceptual tool for transformation, drawing particular attention to its political dimension.     

A Moral Education in an Ethical System

This article raises a number of interrelated issues. It first considers the need for a disability-aware education for everyone, including post-school leavers. This has both structural and curricular implications. At the structural level, it is argued that if we are to move towards a more ethical educational system, institutional discrimination must be dismantled. At the curricular level, the notion of a "culture of resistance", with distinctive moral characteristics, is explored. The article next considers the moral education of disabled people, covering such issues as recognition of alternative perspectives, building on life-experience and the development of self-confidence and self-esteem. In conclusion, it is suggested that a moral education in an ethical system would integrate universalising understandings of the principle of justice, and its application, with the development of contextual thought which can take account of the value and uniqueness of individuals and the particularity of their educational needs.     

A history of the right: The battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.     

The Economics of Education: From a Free Social Benefit to the Commercialization of Educational Services

Abstract

The article discusses the specific features characterizing the development of the market for commercial educational services under modern Russian conditions. The study finds that many parents have reacted negatively to the introduction of market forces to the education sector. Paid educational services provided by the school are not popular despite the fact that they offer a number of advantages. The results of the study have revealed a number of factors that have led to the expansion in the sector of informal education, includeing low teacher salaries, difficulties in registering a tutoring service business, the desire to reduce financial costs, and the fact that schools insufficiently prepare students to pass the Unified State Exam. The movement of students who seek assistance from the informal educational sector has placed a strain on the institutional relationships between students and teachers.     

Confronting the Absurd: An educational reading of Camus’ The stranger

Abstract

This article examines the concept of the stranger and the experience of strangeness in Albert Camus’s The stranger. These themes have a range of synergies with educational thought. They also lead us to other concepts that may have a place in educational debate, in particular the concepts of the absurd and rebellion. This train of thought also has potential for educational practice. If we accept that strangeness has a positive place in education, Camus is insightful in allowing us to examine its pedagogical foundations and the wider conditions necessary to give rise to the experience of strangeness.     

Television as a training and educational medium

Summary and Conclusions An attempt was made to summarize the implications of television research to date upon the training or educational use of the medium. The instructional and administrative advantages of television were discussed with respect to their potential teaching applications. In addition, research findings on instructor and student requirements and subject matter selection for television teaching were developed. Finally, the importance of testing and developing test-measurement procedures adapted to television was emphasized. There is general agreement that television has a promising future both for military and civilian training and education. There are many important areas of research and evaluation which remain to be explored. But research to date has already uncovered information and methods which permit both military and civilian users to bridge the gap between television research and its application to many everyday instructional and educational situations. This paper summarizes the implications of TV research upon training and education. It draws particularly from the authors’ own studies in the military use of TV. Joseph H. Kanner is Chief of the Training Section, Television Branch, Army Pictorial Service Division, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, U. S. Army. Richard P. Runyon and Otello Desiderato are research psychologists with the Pictorial Evaluation Office, Signal Corps Pictorial Center, Long Island City, New York.     

Chinese parental involvement and class-based inequality in education: the role of social networking sites

ABSTRACT

Based on an ethnographic study, this article presents the class-based disparities of Chinese parents’ usage of WeChat, the dominating social networking mobile application in China, in their educational involvement. We find that middle-class parents are the privileged ones who have exploited the use of WeChat not only as a medium for communication, but more as a mode of influence. Through WeChat, their various forms of capital are channelled to catalyse changes in their children's education. In contrast, working-class parents tend to act as absent participants in using WeChat for their educational involvement. We argue that WeChat has brought forth the consequence of widening the arena for winning or losing at the educational game for parents from different social classes. We call for corrective policies and guidelines on the usage of WeChat and other SNSs technologies in home–school dynamics.     

Envisioned and enacted practices: educational policies and the ‘politics of use’ in schools

ABSTRACT

It is widely known that there is a discrepancy between educational policy on the one side, and teaching and learning practices on the other. Most studies have been focusing on the sociocultural and micropolitical frames that shape teachers’ understandings and enactments of teaching, and that cause the vast diversity of classroom practices around the world. This article wants to draw attention to the ‘politics of use’ in teachers’ work: how teachers mobilize larger political narratives when implementing curriculum reform. Arguably, these narratives provide a shortcut between the central government and street-level actors, thus circumventing the logics of these actors’ immediate institutional environments.

In order to showcase the politics of use, the article uses the case of education for creativity as it is designed for and practiced at Chinese schools. The case reveals how education for creativity is compromised by requirements emanating from larger political programs when implemented in Chinese classrooms. The article challenges the view that educational policy necessarily moves through a trickle-down process, from higher to medium to lower-level actors. In cases of strong ideological alignment between street-level actors and central state actors, educational policy may in fact sidestep and hence neutralize important institutional actors.     

Television and Secondary School Children

Abstract

The way in which children judge the general output of television, and the way in which it affects them, should be prime factors in considering programming for educational television, particularly in areas where educational television is still in its infancy, asin the Third World.

Dr Collin's article looks at the effects TV can have on young people, and considers the general programme output. From survey results he draws important lessons about these effects and how, for young people, the world of television translates into real life.     

A History of the Big Ten Body-of-Knowledge Project in Physical Education

This paper examines the relationship between coaching and teaching. By examining the content of physical education and sports programs and the methods through which this content is engaged, the conception of coaching is expanded to include attributes that are typically viewed as having to do with the “educational enterprise.” Physical education must take seriously the teaching of sport as the competitive activity it is meant to be if physical education is to fulfill its role as an educative activity.     

Post mortem or post modern? Some reflections on British sociology of education

Abstract

The current state of British sociology of education is reviewed; noting its decline, but suggesting that its influence has been dispersed throughout educational research in Britain. It is argued that its fate is not simply a product of external attack but also derives from internal problems. Against this background, it is suggested that postmodernism can be treated as a stimulus for a fundamental reconsideration of the proper nature and role of academic research on education.     

The development and application of progressive education in the Netherlands and some implications for South Africa

Abstract

The charge that schooling is poorly adapted to modern conditions in South Africa and abroad has been debated since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the result that two strands of competing paradigms - traditional and progressive - crystallised from the discussion. This article delineates the salient features of progressive education to prepare the ground for a comparison of outcomes-based education (OBE) in South Africa with education in the Netherlands and thereby determine the influence, if any, of progressive education on OBE and Dutch education respectively. The data gathered to determine the progressive influence on Dutch education showed that some elements of progressive education had been combined with traditional (tried-and-tested) practices to create an effective primary educational system. The implication for South Africa is that teachers should be allowed to adapt their teaching styles and curriculum development to accommodate learners who cannot benefit optimally from progressive teaching, and that progressive principles can be implemented in South Africa, provided it is done as in the Netherlands without trying to force everybody into the same mould (i.e., on the crude principle that ‘one size fits all’),