An experiment in environmental education for citizen advocates

The paper describes a prototype of a college level adult-centered environmental education program. The target population is comprised of citizens who serve as volunteers in local planning boards, conservation commissions and environmental organizations. The educational model embodies the concept of the double flow. Citizens with extensive community experience are enrolled in university courses while graduate students are brought into community organizations as interns. Program effectiveness is evaluated with regard to course content, mixing of citizens with regular university students, and motivational factors related to the issuance of academic credit.Dr. Sheldon Krimsky is currently Associate Director in the Program in Urban Social and Environmental Policy at Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155. Dr. Judith deNeufville, who worked on the project while an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Tufts University, is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkley 94720.The environmental education project was funded through grant No. G00-75-02105 from the Special Community Services and Continuing Education Project of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare Office, and implemented jointly by Tufts University's Graduate Program in Urban Social and Environmental Policy and the Lincoln Filene Center for Citizenship and Public Affiars.     

The correlates of consultation: American academics in “the real world”

More than one-third of American academics perform consulting services for fees. Academics who consult have been criticized by persons who believe that they become less effective members of the academy, and that their consulting activity is generally detrimental to the health of the academic community. This paper begins to address that issue by analyzing data collected through a sample survey of American college and university teachers. The extent to which American academics consult, the types of consulting in which they are engaged, and the characteristics of the academics who consult are described. The paid consultant tends to be an academic who is active in a variety of areas. He is a person who publishes more books and articles, who teaches graduate students rather than undergraduate students, and who is both younger and higher in rank than his colleagues.Mr. Marver is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Patton is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana.     

USA: Worldwide school reform movements and students with disabilities

Robert A. Henderson, Professor of Special Education and Educational Administration (Emeritus) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, considers the implications for students with disabilities of school reform movements.     

Sampling Common-sense

This article reports on a novel approach to teaching ideas of sampling to college students studying Urban Regional Planning.     

Third Graders' Interpretations of Equality and the Equal Symbol

This paper analyzes the interpretations of equality and the equal symbol of the third-grade children who participated in a year long whole-class socio constructivist teaching experiment. These children initially interpreted the equal symbol as a command to perform an arithmetical operation; it was less natural to them to interpret it as a relational symbol to compare two quantities. By the end of the school year, children were able to conceptualize the quantitative sameness of two numerical expressions and describe it by using the phrase is the same as, the words equal or equals, or the symbols = or =s. These children expanded their conceptualizations of equality due to their active role in class discussions, the arithmetical tasks that took into account children's difficulties, and the teacher's intellectual sensitivity to strike a delicate balance between the force of teaching and the freedom of learning (Freudenthal, 1991, p. 55).     

The evaluation of a special educational opportunities program for disadvantaged college students

This paper analyzes the early academic achievement of disadvantaged, mainly black, students admitted to the Special Educational Opportunities Program (the SEOP) at the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois in the fall of 1968 and 1969.High school percentile rank and standardized test scores predicted the early overall academic performance of SEOP students. Validities, though significant, were not high and were possibly attenuated by use of too difficult test instruments and by inflated grading practices. Nevertheless, the data indicate that recruitment people should not abandon customary merit selection based upon these types of measures. Test scores were found to be more valid for predicting the GPA of regularly admitted students than for the prediction of GPA for SEOP students; the predictive effectiveness of high school percentile rank was greater for regularly admitted students.The research reported herein was performed, in part, pursuant to a contract with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Office of Education and no official endorsement by the Office of Education should be inferred. Project No. 9-E-136/Contract No. OEG-5-70-0005.     

A Comparison of Student Achievement and Satisfaction in an Online Versus a Traditional Face-to-Face Statistics Class

In this study we examined differences between online distance education and traditional classroom learning for an introductory undergraduate statistics course. Two outcome dimensions were measured: students final grades and student satisfaction with the course. Using independent samples t-tests, results indicated that there was no significant difference in grades between the online and traditional classroom contexts. However, students enrolled in the online course were significantly less satisfied with the course than the traditional classroom students on several dimensions. This finding is inconsistent with the no significant difference phenomenon, described in Russells (1999) annotated bibliography, which supports minimal outcome differences between online courses and face-to-face courses.Jessica J. Summers and Tiffany A. Whittaker are Assistant Professors, and Alexander Waigandt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Dr. Summers holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include the study of social contexts of motivation, academic classroom community, and cooperative learning. Dr. Waigandt holds a Ph.D. in Community and School Health from the University of Oregon. His primary research interest is in demographic analysis. Dr. Whittaker holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include model selection methods in structural equation modeling and multiple regression, interpretation of score reports in computer-based testing, and the effects of missing data on the recovery of item and person parameters in the item response theory framework.     

Beware comparing salaries

Comparing salaries is a favorite pastime among employees and a necessity for day care center administrators, as qualified employees become increasingly difficult to attract and retain.Denise Nitterhouse is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Accountancy at DePaul University. She is on leave from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.     

Use of situations in mathematics education

Situations are often regarded as the panacea which guarantees concretisation of abstract notions. Recent research results have led us to qualify this opinion. After analysing briefly the notion of situation, we raise various issues on the basis of the responses of children aged 11–15 to the racing car problem. We observed various limits brought about by the situation in the abstraction prócess, and also that the task involved more abstract notions (even pictorial) than expected. The conclusion singles out some principles ensuring a better use of situations and points out key problems such as the role of mental images and the importance of the spoken language.     

Critical Race Studies in Education: Examining a Decade of Research on U.S. Schools

In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.Marvin Lynn is an Assistant Professor of Department of Curriculum & Instruction in University of Maryland, College Park. He completed his B.S., at DePaul University, Chicago, IL, M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY and Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. He has published articles in the area of Critical Race Theory and education and critical race pedagogy. He has also written a number of articles that explore the work and lives of Black male teachers.Laurence Parker is Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He completed his B.A., at Earlham College, Richmond, IN, M.A. and Ph.D. in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current research examines Critical Race Theory and its connection to educational research, policy and practice in the k-12 and post-secondary settings. His research also examines social justice perspectives in educational administration, leadership and policy, particularly with respect to race and social class     

Context and individualism: Critical issues for contextualist counsellors

Constructivist and interactionist models have been heralded as part of a new contextualist trend for counselling. They were developed in reaction to traditional organismic agestage theories of development which neglected important environmental influences. This paper will show that these new approaches are limited in the same way that the earlier developmental theories are: that they absolve and discourage looking at destructive social circumstances and arrangements that lead to problems that get defined in individualistic terms. Thoughtful attention to the concepts of context and individualism is essential to establishing the criteria that a more adequate contextual theory must satisfy.     

Understanding Scientific Methodology in the Historical and Experimental Sciences via Language Analysis

A key focus of current science education reforms involves developing inquiry-based learning materials. However, without an understanding of how working scientists actually do science, such learning materials cannot be properly developed. Until now, research on scientific reasoning has focused on cognitive studies of individual scientific fields. However, the question remains as to whether scientists in different fields fundamentally rely on different methodologies. Although many philosophers and historians of science do indeed assert that there is no single monolithic scientific method, this has never been tested empirically. We therefore approach this problem by analyzing patterns of language used by scientists in their published work. Our results demonstrate systematic variation in language use between types of science that are thought to differ in their characteristic methodologies. The features of language use that were found correspond closely to a proposed distinction between Experimental Sciences (e.g., chemistry) and Historical Sciences (e.g., paleontology); thus, different underlying rhetorical and conceptual mechanisms likely operate for scientific reasoning and communication in different contexts.

Interactive fiction: An experience of the ‘Writers in education’ scheme

The idea of bringing children, students, and teachers into contact with living writers was initially implemented by the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1969, but since 1980 the scheme had devolved upon the Regional Arts Associations, embracing single visits, workshop sessions, talks, readings, and short-term and long-term residences and attachments of various kinds, with the Regional Arts Association generally bearing half the cost of fees, plus travel. The scheme now operates in a wide range of venues in addition to schools and colleges, incorporates in-service and residential courses, and includes illustrators, storytellers, dramatists, and performance poets alongside novelists, poets, and short-story writers.Fay Sampson is the author of 16 books for young people. For many years she has combined teaching and writing in England, winning awards from the South West Arts regional council for her work. She is currently a full-time writer and an adult education tutor in writing.     

Theoretical Eclecticism in the College Classroom

In this article we argue that student learning is enhanced by theoretical eclecticism, which we define as intentionally drawing on different theories of learning when making instructional decisions to provide students with the instructional support they need to be successful. We briefly review the literature on four views of learning and on learner-centered approaches to instruction and then integrate this literature with Barr and Taggs (1995) distinction between the instruction paradigm and the learning paradigm. Finally, we present examples from a teacher education course to illustrate how theoretical eclecticism can be used to support student learning.Anastasia S. Morrone is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in the School of Education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She received her B.S. degree in Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota and her Ph.D. degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests center around instructional practices that promote college student motivation and learning. Terri A. Tarr is the Director of the Instructional Design and Development unit of the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Director of Associate Faculty Development at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She is also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. She earned the Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Purdue University as well as an M.A. in School Psychology and a B.A. in Psychology from Ball State University. Her special interests are individual differences in learning and effective practices in faculty development     

中美高校农业经济管理专业本科课程设置的比较——以扬州大学与伊利诺伊大学香槟分校为例

文章对伊利诺伊大学香槟分校农业、消费经济学和扬州大学农业经济管理学本科课程设置进行了全面的介绍和比较,分析两国高校相同专业课程设置的异同,找出目前我国高校在课程建设中存在的不足和与国外大学的差距;并对我国大学课程改革提出了思考和建议。     

Educating Leaders in Developing Nations

The University of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio, Texas, is making an effort to enroll international students from China, Taiwan, and South America into its "Organizational Leadership Doctoral Programme". In undertaking this task, the University is also assuming some responsibility for the future ethical behaviour of the leaders it trains and launches. But how should teachers go about developing the cultural and linguistic sensitivity that they will need to participate in the training of international students? The University polled its doctoral students to derive some ideas on this subject. The questions and the answers elicited are described.     

Analysis of external degree student participation and attitudinal variables

Adult student participation and attitudinal variables were examined in a university external capstone degree program utilizing Cross's Chain-of-Response model. Future goal orientation, anticipated educational benefits, attitude toward prior learning, program barriers, and program supports were all examined. Demographic characteristics were cross-tabulated with the responses to the variables and no differences were found. A number of important variables were identified and discussed using Cross's Chain-of-Response model.     

The status of training and performance research in the AECT journals

“HPT has had a significant impact on the instructional design and technology field.” Cynthia Conn is working on her Ph.D. in educational technology at the University of Northern Colorado Jacqueline Gitonga is currently working on her Ph.D. in human resource education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are in training and development, instructional design and human performance technology.     

基于柔性管理的大学生成才规划的设计与实践

基于柔性管理的大学生成才规划是指大学生通过指导教师的帮助,在自我认识和了解社会的基础上,确立职业生涯发展目标和人生发展方向,制定大学期间学习和发展的总体目标和阶段目标的成长成才方案。山西大学商务学院通过建立学院领导、辅导员、专业教师、大学生全员参与的大学生成才规划实施体系,为大学生提供了广阔的实践平台,形成了大学生成才规划的考核监督体系;根据大学生生涯的阶段性特点和大学生自身的特点进行课程改革,促进了大学生的成长成才。     

中外合作办学体制下的党建工作实践与思考

中外合作办学是我国教育对外开放的重要举措,在办学过程中,如何筑牢思想政治工作阵地、把牢意识形态关口,如何在多元文化共存的体制下做好学生和教工的党建工作,如何进一步发挥党组织的战斗堡垒作用,这几项工作是当前合作办学需要重点解决的重点和难点。该文通过总结浙江大学伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳香槟校区联合学院党建工作的实践经验,为探索新形势下中外合作办学党建工作提供了参考和借鉴,有助于推动构建适应新时代要求的中外合作办学高校党建工作新机制。