Vignettes of Haeckel’s Contributions to Biology

Ernst Haeckel was a very versatile and complete biologist, equally at home with imaginative leaps of conceptualization, serious natural history in the wild, and meticulous experimentation in embryology. His work shaped the development of a holistic evolutionary perspective that brought ecology, ontogeny, phylogeny, and biogeography together into a unified explanation of the patterns of diversity seen in the living world. He, along with Darwin and Mendel, was perhaps one of the three most consequential biologists of the nineteenthcentury, in many ways the golden age of biology.     

Contributions of morphological skill to children’s essay writing

Morphological skills have previously been found to reliably predict reading skill, including word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension. However, less is known about how morphological skills might contribute to writing skill, aside from its well-documented role in the development of spelling. This correlational study examines whether morphological skill, as measured by a sentence generation task tapping both derivational morphology and meta-syntactic skills, predicts performance on a standardized essay writing task for fifth- and eighth-grade U.S. students (N = 233), after controlling for grade level, comprehension, and writing fluency. Multilevel analyses indicated that morphological skill and writing fluency were each uniquely predictive of essay quality, and this finding was consistent regardless of whether accurate spelling was required in the morphological task. Our results suggest that morphological skills play an important role in writing, as has been previously documented in reading and spelling.     

The Application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Educational Settings

Hierarchy of Needs,one of the most influential motivation theories,was developed by Abraham Maslow in 1940-50’s USA.Hi erarchy of Needs theory has great significance in understanding human motivation,management training and personal development.The purpose of this paper is to investigate briefly the application of the theory to educational settings so as to guide a more effective education.     

Welcome to BOBO’s Kindergarten

虽然每年的年龄都在长,不过,大家的童心并没有随之越来越少,每年的六一,有很多"超龄儿童"依然过得不亦乐乎,我们这里的两位——井宝同学、包子同学,聊起小时候的事情也是童心未泯。     

Ethnography’s capacity to contribute to the cumulation of theory: a response to Hammersley

My aim in this paper is to raise the question of educational authority in terms of a philosophical and historical understanding in the context of a democratic polity. In particular, I wish to advance the view that educational authority in England is not well-founded since it resides increasingly with the Secretary of State for Education. This fails to reflect the public nature of education and also local conditions. The lack of appropriate authority contributes to many problems, the most prominent of which are the contested nature of education and schools provision and the frustrating fact that policies at national level change so frequently. Drawing on the discussion in Amy Gutmann’s Democratic Education, it examines differing conceptions of educational authority and proposes a tentative solution, which draws on the experience of the School Boards movement in England, 1870–1902.     

A model of women’s educational factors related to delaying girls’ marriage

Delaying girls’ early marriage is a critical public health and education goal in developing countries, in which their own or their mothers’ education may play an important role. This paper reviews the existing evidence of any relationship between girls’ schooling or women’s literacy education and delayed marriage for themselves or their daughters. The majority of research reports focus on the correlation between girls’ schooling and brides’ age at first marriage. But it is conceivable that adult women’s/mothers’ literacy education also has considerable influence on the age at which their daughters are married. Since this aspect has hitherto not been explicitly investigated, the authors propose a model – based on relevant research about the outcomes of girls’ schooling and women’s literacy education – of the mechanisms that mediate between women’s education and delayed marriage for their daughters. The authors argue for research that will inform policy makers interested in helping girls complete secondary schooling about the potential contributions of adult women’s literacy education to this goal.     

President Bush’s State of the Union Letter to Children

Dear Young Americans:Since September 11,2001,many of you have sent cards,letters,and drawings to express you love for our great Nation and for the famlies of the victims.Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas with me.     

‘Who’s Afraid of Secularisation?’ A Response to David Lewin

This response to David Lewin states the purpose of my critique of some aspects of Liam Gearon’s work. It clarifies my position on the aims of ‘inclusive’ religious education, rejecting Gearon’s view that REDCo researchers shared a common pluralistic theology, regarding religious education as having a single political aim. It reinforces Gearon’s misrepresentation of the development of the Toledo Guiding Principles. In addressing the concern that religious education serves political ends, I acknowledge that much educational discourse has a political dimension but, in the case of ‘inclusive’ religious education, I argue that an approach based on John Rawls’ view of political liberalism can facilitate understanding of religions. I respond to Lewin’s assumption that my own view of religious language is entirely propositional and I compare the view of religious language expressed by Morimoto, quoted with approval by Lewin, with that of D. Z. Phillips, noting that its adoption implies that religious ‘insiders’ and those with no religious commitments are incapable of mutual understanding. I introduce the interpretive approach as an impartial methodology for religious education. Finally, I invite Lewin to engage with empirical research informing European policy on religious education, relevant to issues of secularity and secularism.     

Deconstructing Arsovski’s proof of Snevily’s conjecture

The combinatorial problem discussed in this article is very simple to state but needs the algebraic machinery of characters of abelian groups.     

Approaches to the study of pragmatism in today’s China

To explore the key approaches to pragmatism is not only a logical requirement of the development of pragmatism itself, but also necessary for Chinese pragmatism to progress. There are three major necessary and feasible approaches to the study of pragmatism, which will play a very important role in the development of Pragmatism in today’s China: Firstly, the approach through the history of Western philosophy and logic of thinking; Secondly, the approach through comparative research in the context of contemporary academic dialogs, and thirdly, the approach through comprehensive interdisciplinary research. The approach through the history of Western philosophy and thought helps us ascertain the status of pragmatism in Western philosophy. Meanwhile, comparative research in the context of contemporary academic dialogs is necessary for resolving cultural conflicts and for the integration of and dialogs between cultures in an age of globalization. Finally, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and comprehensiveness are intrinsic to pragmatism, and scholarly circles in China have tremendous room for research characterized by the same.     

The contributions of Bernstein’s sociology to education development research

Global and national agendas to improve the ‘quality’ of Education For All have brought focus to pedagogic processes in developing country contexts. How can development research pay attention to the social and political significance of pedagogical projects and understand the micro-processes of classroom reform? This paper considers how Basil Bernstein’s sociological theories helped develop a nuanced account of pedagogic reform in a study of Indian primary education. I explore how the analysis encouraged by Bernstein’s concepts of recontextualisation and educational codes may contribute to current thinking on the role and significance of pedagogy in development research and evaluation activities. The paper also raises caution about the selectiveness and limits of efforts to capture, identify, measure or assess pedagogic processes and change. A Bernsteinian research approach is not immune from producing the kinds of reductionist accounts of pedagogy of which the analysis is wary.     

The Necessity of an Anthropomorphic Approach to Children’s Literature

The study focuses on the necessity of an anthropomorphic approach in deconstructing the symbolic understandings of animals in children’s literature, and considers how such an approach can be used to draw ethical attention to the unnatural history of animals in the Anthropocene. The paper analyses three children’s novels that depict animals without representing their subjectivity in characteristically human terms. These novels are Eva Hornung’s ferality tale Dog Boy (2009), Sonya Hartnett’s fable The Midnight Zoo (2011) and Kate Applegate’s animal autobiography The One and Only Ivan (2012). Informed by Jacques Derrida’s anti-anthropocentric views and the ethical discourse of creaturely vulnerability, this essay argues that the world’s present state of cascading environmental impoverishment demands an anthropomorphic approach that is not inherently anthropocentric, along with an emerging kind of creaturely consciousness.

     

Children’s and Adults’ Views of Punishment as a Path to Redemption

The current work investigated the extent to which children (N=171 6- to 8-year-olds) and adults (N = 94) view punishment as redemptive. In Study 1, children—but not adults—reported that “mean” individuals became “nicer” after one severe form of punishment (incarceration). Moreover, adults expected “nice” individuals’ moral character to worsen following punishment; however, we did not find that children expected such a change. Study 2 extended these findings by showing that children view “mean” individuals as becoming “nicer” following both severe (incarceration) and relatively minor (time-out) punishments, suggesting that the pattern of results from Study 1 generalizes across punishment types. Together, these studies indicate that children—but not adults—may view punishment as a vehicle for redemption.     

Reply to Sun Luyuan’s Questions

十八大期间,小学生记者孙露源得到了提问机会:"我们中小学生多数在学校吃饭,怎么能让我们的午餐吃得安全放心呢?另外,我也爱吃零食,我们怎么才能吃到放心的食品?"教育部部长袁贵仁回答了她的问题。假如你是教育部部长,你将怎样回答她提出的问题?     

Tess’ s Losing of Virginity in Kant’s Eyes

Tess is a pure girl in Hardy’s eyes, as it shows in the book’s subtitle. She is sinned in Victorian’s time, however, she is still pure in Kant’s eyes.Key words: Tesss purity; Kant     

Preschool children’s use of meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions

In collaborative decision-making, partners compare reasons behind conflicting proposals through meta-talk. We investigated UK-based preschoolers’ (mixed socioeconomic status) use of meta-talk (Data collection: 2018–2020). In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads (N = 128, 61 girls) heard conflicting claims about an animal from two informants. One prefaced her claim with “I know”; the other with “I think”. Dyads identified the more reliable informant through meta-talk (“She said she knows”). In Study 2, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 64, 34 girls) searched for a toy with an adult partner making incorrect proposals. Children refuted this through reporting what they had witnessed (It cannot be there because “I saw it move”, “she moved it”). In preschool period, children start using meta-talk to make rational collaborative decisions.