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.     

At the Precipice: The Story of Mathematics Education in the United States

The role of education in fostering economic growth and social development is universally recognized. Although history places the provision of education firmly within national control, countries increasingly search outside national borders for alternative distribution frameworks. Tellingly, the World Trade Organization recently included education as service trade sector in the General Agreement for Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations. Such activity increases debate about control as countries struggle to create policies that balance nationalism with economic responsiveness. This study employed multivariate data to question whether trade openness in 162 countries was associated with openness to trade in education, and whether countries' commitments to lower barriers to education trade paralleled the strength of their commitments to lower barriers to all trade.

Among the findings were the following: (a) On average, countries with education commitments experienced slightly higher levels of general trade openness than those without education commitments; (b) in lower-middle-income countries, education trade openness and general trade openness were positively related; and (c) when controlling for education, population, geography, and income, lower levels of education trade barriers were the single best predictor of countries' having made education commitments under GATS. A model for systemic improvement in education trade policymaking is also presented.     

Mathematics Achievement of Children in China and the United States

First and fifth graders in Beijing and Chicago were given a battery of mathematics test. Whether tested with problems requiring solely computation or with ones requiring application of knowledge about mathematics, American children's performance was consistently inferior to that of Chinese children. Interviews with American children suggested that they like mathematics, believe they are doing well in mathematics, and do not perceive mathematics as a difficult subject. American children's poor performance appears to be attributable, in part, to low motivation for devoting more attention to mathematics. Low standards held by American parents for academic achievement and lower interest in teaching mathematics by American teachers appear to contribute to American children's poor performance.     

The past in the present: historicising contemporary debates about gender and education

History is often embedded, explicitly or implicitly, in discourses on contemporary aspects of gender and education, but relatively few scholars engage critically with history as they grapple with current issues. This article posits ‘historical sensibility’ as a means of engaging constructively with the past when scrutinising and working on current issues in gender and education. Four features of historical sensibility are mapped out and compared with established ways of approaching the relationship between the present and past. The utility of historical sensibility is demonstrated with reference to ongoing debates about the feminisation of schooling, the sexualisation of children and the leisure pursuits of young women.     

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.     

Uses of the past: Reflections on United States physics curriculum development 1955 to 1990

A personal assessment is made of the United States experience in physics curriculum development and teacher education over the past 35 years. It is concluded that, although substantial improvements were achieved in the development of hands-on primary and secondary school curricula, their effectiveness was in large part negated by logistic problems in implementation and deficiencies in teacher preparation. At the college/university level, existing materials tend to cover far too much material far too rapidly, and, except for small, separated pockets of promising activity, inadequate attention is being paid, in the aggregate, to students' levels of cognitive development and to the learning problems revealed in research on teaching and learning. Some directions of effort that might prove helpful are described.