Arts education partnerships: sources of harmony and dissonance with cultural institutions’ collaborative efforts

ABSTRACT

Due to budget constraints, schools in the United States have increasingly turned to community arts organizations for support. School-community arts partnership stakeholders collaborate because of shared missions to provide students with valuable arts learning experiences. Investigations of these initiatives indicate that these partnerships improve arts learning opportunities and increase public support and resources for arts education. However, not much is known about the experiences and perspectives of the arts organizations that participate in these partnerships. Coordinating collective efforts with a multitude of institutions and interests poses challenges. In this study, we examine survey data collected from arts organization administrators who participated in a large-scale school-community arts partnership initiative. We find that these organizations are generally positive about their impacts on students’ educational outcomes, but there is substantial variation in these views. We also find that organizations differ in their levels of support for these collective efforts. Sources of this variation appear to be attributable to organizations’ preexisting resources and extent to which they are established. While this difference in levels of support is potentially inevitable, we find evidence that the operations handled by the “backbone” organization, i.e. the initiative’s facilitators and overseers, can significantly influence organizations’ levels of support for these efforts. Organizations are more likely to support these collaborative efforts when they believe the backbone organization ensures transparency with initiative operations, provides regular, effective communication, and effectively resolves competing priorities.     

Debates About the Reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The author contemplates the fate of Russian science in the light of the reforms that are going on today, and the requirements of bringing it into conformity with this country’s traditions as well as with international practices.     

Counseling With HEART: A Relationship Violence Prevention Program for College Students

Relationship violence is a salient concern on college campuses today, and psychoeducational groups may be an appropriate prevention format. This article describes a study measuring the impact of college student participation in the HEART (Help End Abusive Relationships Today) program, a series of group sessions designed to increase knowledge and awareness of relationship violence. Findings indicated significant changes for group participants postintervention. Implications and recommendations for college counselors are discussed.     

Language Acquisition Assisted by the Internet

Abstract

The authors focus on exploiting new methods of language acquisition with the help of the possibilities offered by the Internet. As a new option for computer‐assisted language learning, the Internet is considered to be a source for individual learning and problem oriented teaching in many other areas. Expanding knowledge in parallel in informatics and the English language is an asset. In addition to pointing out starting off sites for ESL teachers and introducing some interesting examples, some criteria of constructing language teaching WWW pages of our own are also listed.     

Teaching of biological inheritance and evolution of living beings in secondary school

The purpose of this investigation is to examine some solutions to the problems involved in the learning and teaching of biological inheritance and the evolution of living beings at the secondary school level. For this, we implemented a teaching programme which takes into account a constructivist approach to learning and analysed the progress in students' knowledge at different times (pre-test, post-test and retention test). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results show that the programme instilled a knowledge close to what might be considered adequate for this educational level. As a follow up, we propose certain disciplinary criteria for selecting and sequencing the content to be taught and discuss the educational circumstances which favour the construction of student knowledge on these topics.     

Science textbooks for lower secondary schools in Brunei: issues of gender equity

This paper is concerned with issues affecting equity in science education for girls and boys. In the paper the results of an investigation into the recently published (1998–2000) series of textbooks entitled Lower Secondary Science for Brunei Darussalam are presented. In the first part of the paper, background issues of continuing gender inequality in science education and of the nature and scope of textbook analyses are outlined. Then the representation of males and females in both illustrations and text in the Bruneian textbooks is discussed. From this analysis a picture emerges of the extent to which science is portrayed as a pursuit of equal appropriateness for both boys and girls. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of the findings presented within the wider context of gender and education in Brunei.