The Cambridge controlled choice plan

Parent choice in education is enjoying growing support among both minorities and whites. The greatest practical impetus to the extension of parent choice in public schools has been the use of magnet schools in desegregation plans. This study analyzes the history of parent choice in Cambridge, Mass. and its outcome. Parent choice in the Cambridge public schools has produced greater interracial exposure than the prior mandatory reassignment plan, as well as increased student achievement.     

Cognitive style and complex concept acquisition

College undergraduates classified by the Hidden Figures Test as high, medium, or low analytic studied one of two lesson types. Both lessons taught four complex nondimensioned concepts from the area of social learning by presenting a definition followed by either positive examples or positive and negative examples. Immediate acquisition was assessed by a test requiring subjects to identify positive and negative examples. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant interaction on the dependent variable requiring the identification of positive examples.     

Bridging the Challenges of Transnational Education and Accreditation

Between 1985 and 1996, the world population of kindergarten through to higher education students grew from 919 million to 1.13 billion. There are at least three typical global higher education student profiles. Distance education - the delivery of education courses from one location to students at another location - is an alternative way to reach many students within these profiles. Distance education has a different set of characteristics from that typical of place-bound education, and transnational education brings yet more features. Regardless of the ways in which education is delivered, its quality assurance and maintenance of standards is of paramount concern among many national and international institutions, organizations and private sector companies, and students. Organizations such as the Global Alliance for Transnational Education (GATE) provide a prototype for achieving such standards.     

A study of auditory preferences in nonhandicapped infants and infants with Down's syndrome

11 infants with Down's syndrome (MA 9.2 months, CA 12.7 months) and 10 of 11 nonhandicapped infants (MA 9.6 months, CA 9.3 months) demonstrated that they could operate an automated device which enabled them to choose to listen to 1 of a pair of auditory signals. All subjects showed preferential responding. Both groups of infants showed a significant preference for nursery rhymes sung by a female voice rather than played on musical instruments. The infants with Down's syndrome had much longer response durations for the more complex auditory stimuli. The apparatus provides a useful technique for studying language development in both normal and abnormal populations.     

Scorched Earth: prelude to rebuilding Marxist educational theory

This paper focuses on the internal degeneration of the Marxist educational theory flowing from Bowles & Gintis (1976) and Willis (1977). It explores five interlinked ‘debilitating problematics’ ‐‐ the base/superstructure metaphor, Left functionalism, relative autonomy, resistance theory and the education for autonomy/revolution dilemma ‐‐ which have simultaneously formed the backbone of Marxist educational theory and constituted the roots of its theoretical weaknesses. The general argument is that these weaknesses are so deep‐seated that Marxists interested in theorising capitalist schooling need to start afresh. The paper points towards some possible starting points for new Marxist thinking on capitalist schooling, the preferred option being an analysis of labour‐power. One consequence of taking labour‐power as the starting point for a Marxist analysis of education is that it entails the dissolution of Marxist educational theory’. Instead, educational theory and politics become subordinated to a concern with the social production of labour‐power in capitalism.     

Computer Anxiety and Student Teachers: antecedent and intervention

We argue in this article that student teachers’ anxiety about computers can be properly understood only through an examination of cultural and historical antecedents concerning fears of technology. This perspective provides us with a context to examine the development, implementation and evaluation of a computer education course for student teachers over a 2‐year period. The results of the evaluation indicate that the methods adopted have been successful in promoting computer literacy and reducing computer anxiety. The empirically‐based approach to course development and evaluation adopted in this study provides a model for other tertiary educators.