Utilization of Analogies to Teach Critical Thinking Skills

The question is no longer whether American industry and technology can successfully compete with the Japanese–at present, it is evident that we cannot. At stake is the very survival of our national economic well-being as we move from a post-industrial economy to a high technology model. For education, the issue is whether we can learn from the Japanese and, in doing so, improve the quality and productivity of American education.     

Learning in and for cross‐school working

In this study we report some of the outcomes of a study of professional learning that took place in cross school partnerships as they worked towards promoting creativity in schools. The methodology developed by Engeström and his colleagues at The Centre for Developmental Work Research in Helsinki was adopted. This form of intervention involves the preparation and facilitation of workshops in which the underlying structural contradictions that are in play in emergent activities are highlighted and articulated in such a way that participants may engage with what may otherwise remain hidden and unexamined tensions. This approach is based on the writings of the early 20th‐century Russian school of social scientists—Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev. A principal claim is that the development of creativity requires tools and contexts for such innovatory forms of practice. This study suggests that this claim is a partial representation of the development of creative activity.     

The Vietnam Syndrome* and the American People

*This essay is the opening chapter of On Strategy II: A Critical Analysis of the Gulf War (Dell, 1992: 7–21). It is published here by generous permission of Colonel Summers.     

The dangers of corruption in special needs education

This article is based on the text of the Gulliford Lecture given by Professor Harry Daniels at the University of Birmingham in October 2005. Professor Daniels takes, as his starting point, Ron Gulliford's assertion that teachers need to learn from their experience of trying to teach children who are 'hard to teach'. He goes on to look at the process of categorisation, which he identifies as a sociocultural and highly context-dependent process. Harry Daniels explores the pressures in favour of categorisation experienced by parents and professionals alike and notes some of the uses to which categorisations of learners are put. In concluding his article, Harry Daniels contrasts the current rhetoric about the personalisation of learning with the kinds of 'simplistic protocols or magic answers' that are often assumed to follow from categorisation. He argues that glib responses like these run counter to the reflective and dialogic principles established by Ron Gulliford and colleagues two decades ago.