Cognitive development of intellectually gifted: A Piagetian perspective

This article explores some of the materials prepared for parents of gifted children and examines the explanatory language and concepts used in terms of their potential for shaping parental attitudes and affecting the adjustment of gifted children. The author argues that the conceptual frameworks used to explain giftedness, nongiftedness and the nature of differences have powerful effects on societal and educational attitudes, including the willingness to provide differentiated services for gifted children. A strong plea is made for professional sensitivity and responsibility in describing giftedness in ways that do not isolate gifted children or their parents and which potentiate shared advocacy with other educational advocacy groups.     

Curriculum and assessment for the knowledge society: interrogating experiences in the Republic of Ireland and Queensland,Australia

The ‘knowledge society’ has become a central discourse within educational reform. This article posits that the impact of the knowledge society discourse on curriculum and assessment has led to the emergence of what the authors term a new-form/re-form curriculum, and it asks whether what is transacting in contemporary movements in curriculum is less the reform of curriculum and more the emergence of a new-form/re-form curriculum. What is emerging is well beyond the discussions of outcomes and curriculum alignment that characterised much curriculum reform effort in the late 1990s. In this new-form/re-form curriculum ‘content’ is displaced by ‘skills’ and ‘knowledge acquisition’ by ‘learning’. Curriculum coverage is replaced by learner engagement. In this context, assessment also begins to take on new-form/re-form. Assessment now engages and promotes learning as process rather than as product. Two cases – the Republic of Ireland and Queensland, Australia – are analysed and compared to illustrate this shift in the conceptualisation of curriculum and assessment. Consideration is given to the possibility that this new-form/re-form curriculum represents a settlement in the contestation associated with learning outcomes and their perceived technical rationality and market focus. The paper concludes that the new-form/re-form curriculum is emerging in locations as diverse as Ireland and Queensland.     

Complicity and control in the workplace: a critical case study of TQM,learning, and the management of knowledge

This article analyses how a Total Quality Management process with an embedded workplace literacy programme was implemented in an industrial manufacturing plant. Designed as an insider/outsider team research project, data were collected through interviews with management personnel, education and training providers, and hourly workers. Findings reveal that the Total Quality Management process and the literacy programme were implemented under the guise of providing education and training for workers, but were driven by corporate policy to reduce labour costs. The study also examines the way in which adult education was complicit in controlling workplace knowledge.