John Dewey's “Wholly Original Philosophy” and Its Significance for Museums

Abstract John Dewey's lifework was to create a philosophy that encompassed both life‐experience and thought. He attempted to construct a philosophical system that incorporated life as it is lived, not in some ideal form. He rejected all dualisms, such as those between thought and action, fine and applied arts, or stimulus and response. An analysis of “experience” (defined as almost synonymous with “culture”) is central to Dewey's writing and leads him to emphasize process, continuity, and development, rather than static, absolute concepts. This paper examines the significance of Dewey's educational views for museum exhibitions and education programs, and his complex definitions of relevant concepts, with special emphasis on his interpretation of “experience.” Dewey's faith in democracy and his moral philosophy require that the value of any educational activity depends on its social consequences as well as its intellectual content, a proposition that is discussed and applied to museums. This argument suggests that exhibitions and programs can strengthen democracy by promoting skills that improve visitors' ability to become critical thinkers and by directly addressing controversial issues, taking the side of social justice and democracy.     

Emergence of morphographical markers in written French: what children following a special education programme say about plurals

Research conducted with average apprentice writers demonstrated that the main difficulty they are facing in the acquisition of written French is the acquisition of the morphology of the writing system, hence studies with slow writers show that morphological traces are late to emerge and often fail to meet the grammatical demands of French. This exploratory research conducted with slow mono- and multilingual learners attempts to identify the qualitative aspects of the emergence of morphological traces, which in the written French system are most often mute. The linguistic concept of the plural was therefore chosen not simply to observe the appearance of plural grammatical markers in productions, but also in order to stimulate apprentice writers to give so-called ‘metagraphical explanations’ in other words, they were asked to explain verbally their own written productions. We observed the written productions and the metagraphical explanations of the participants irrespective of whether these were standard or non-standard written productions. The results show that the verbal explanations, rather than being related to the grammatical case of plural, for the participants frequently refer to their concrete knowledge of number. The fact that these slow learners possess general cognitive abilities which are substantially more developed than their linguistic abilities suggests that the processes used to acquire the linguistic notion of plural in French are based on structures established by analogy, taking their roots in a cognitive notion of number which seems common to all apprentice writers.     

Recent policy,the numbers game and the schooling of the hearing impaired: a study of one teacher's career

ABSTRACT

This paper describes and analyses the fate of an educational innovation, namely the mainstreaming of hearing impaired children into a primary school. Set in the context of recent State policy, it is a critical case study of a ‘caring’ organization staffed by ‘professionals’ engaged in work upon children with special needs. The data presented are derived from ethnographic interview with a specially qualified teacher of the hearing impaired. Primarily, it explores the teacher's interaction with her male headteacher, from her perspective. Conflict developed between the two around the meaning of integration, and the use of the hearing impaired children as a resource to preserve the school, at a time of threatened closure. Eventually, there was a polarized antipathy between teacher and head; and a consequent teacher career failure and head career success, resulting in the ultimate resignation of the teacher. As such, the paper is a critique of the socially oppressive schooling of those children deemed to have special needs.     

Creative learning and teaching of the gifted through sketchbooks

Teachers can enhance the talents of artistically gifted students by encouraging them to maintain sketchbooks for their projects, ideas, and visions.     

ACCURACY AND SPEED OF MEMORY IN DEPRESSED AND ORGANIC AGED

Forty‐three subjects aged 50 and over were tested on a Sternberg recognition‐memory task to explore the relative effects of depression and altered brain function on short‐term memory in later life. Organic, depressed, and control subgroups were compared on accuracy and speed of response. Speed‐of‐memory scanning was differentiated from other speed‐of‐response components; separate estimates of memory efficiency and subjective response criteria were calculated from accuracy data by signal‐detection methods. Organic subjects performed much less accurately and quickly than others, showing great variability of response speeds. Depressed subjects performed less accurately and quickly than controls, particularly on negative trials, but did not differ in rate of memory scanning. Depression was associated with poorer memory efficiency and laxer response criteria (greater tolerance for false‐positive errors). Slower and less accurate responding was also associated with a poorer educational background. Many performance differences were best accounted for by the additive effects of depression and educational background, rather than by either variable individually. The association of laxer criteria with depression alone, however, was discussed in terms of a possible acquiescent response bias in depression.