Histories of Romani Education in Slovakia: A Kazamian Perspective

Using the critical work of Andreas Kazamias on the history and methods of comparative education as conceptual framework, we investigate the education (over a 200-year period) of the Slovak Roma. We position our story as paradigmatic of the dual processes of enlightenment and obscurantism with which we are familiar in thinking about the history of racial violence. The article describes the encounter of a young British doctor, Richard Bright, with Roma and Slovaks in 1814, and explores the Enlightenment thinking about Roma in specific, and race in general, in Bright’s travelogue. We juxtapose these historical investigations with qualitative findings from research conducted recently in the same region of Slovakia. Our goal is to show that Kazamias’s calls for a return to the historical in educational research, and greater attention to the “paideia of the soul,” have relevance in considering the discouraging past and present of Roma in Slovak schools and society.     

THE DELPHI: EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT IN INSTITUTIONAL GOAL SETTING

This paper describes and analysies the use of a delphi research methodology to assess faculty perceptions of institutional needs and goals in an osteopathic medical education program. Use of the delphi to educate faculty in the administrative and political functioning of the institution as well as to involve all faculty in the refinement of specific needs and goals is discussed. Full‐time clinical and basic science faculty of the New Jersey School of Osteopathic Medicine provided an example of the varied uses of the delphi research methodology in higher education and specifically in profesiional higher education. The three rounds of the delphi procedure produced faculty consensus on the following institutional variable items: (a) the philosophical and functional orientation of the curriculum; (b) location and design of the physical campus facilities and environment; (c) faculty issues of tenure, promotion, salary and merit; (d) teaching, and the evaluation of teaching; (e) student characteristics and admissions policies; and (f) administrative structure and communication networks.     

Vocational-technical programs: follow-up of students with learning disabilities

Recent research has examined the role of vocational-technical training in facilitating the transition from school to work of adolescents with learning disabilities. The present study provided 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up data on such students who had attended vocational-technical programs. Matched groups of students without disabilities from vocational-technical programs, as well as randomly selected students without disabilities from regular high schools, were also included for comparisons. Results of the study raised several questions about the value and purpose of vocational-technical training for adolescents with learning disabilities.     

开放在线课程教法的适应性变革:从OCW到MOOC

文章旨在通过对OCW和MOOC所采用的教学方式的对比,探索开放在线课程在由"重资源"向"重服务"变革的过程中,其教学方法所发生的适应性变化。文章通过四个常用的开放在线课程搜索引擎,随机抽样出51门OCW课程和51门MOOC课程作为研究样本,并从课程说明中获取课程周数、建议学时、学习方式、教学手段等信息。结果表明:与OCW相比,MOOC建议以较短的周数、每周投入较多的时间来完成课程,以提高课程完成率;少量课程采用了基于项目、基于研究和基于团队的学习方式,但MOOC环境下的在线协作学习仍存在难度;在线论坛和讲座视频是MOOC中使用较多、发展较成熟的教学手段;社会媒体和位置地图等则是OCW中未出现而在MOOC中发展形成的。最后,文章根据研究结果提出了相应的教学建议。