Learning-centred Teaching

Distinctions are drawn between different kinds of learning (such as ‘understanding’, ‘factual knowledge’ and ‘skills’) and between different kinds of learners (such as ‘holist’ versus ‘serialist’ learners, and between ‘visualizers’, ‘verbalizers’ and ‘oers’) so that teaching methods can be matched to them. Learning-centred teaching therefore involves adopting teaching methods, such as ‘student-centred learning’, ‘active learning’, ‘didactive teaching’, ‘problem-based learning’, etc., where they are appropriate, but not where they are inappropriate.     

The Effect of Changing Competition Points in the English Football League

There is a growing trend to ask students to carry out their own project work in statistics. Often they choose examples from sport. This article shows the sort of analyses that might be done.     

Education and the Market Model1

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the underlying conflicts between the principles of education and the market. After identifying an international movement towards justifying excellence in education in terms of a goal external to education, namely “to compete effectively in the international marketplace”, the paper shows that: (i) this justification of education has been increasingly presupposed or prescribed by corporate, government and educational leaderships, and (ii) education as a social institution has been correspondingly subordinated to international market goals, including the language and self-conceptualization of educators themselves. The argument of the paper demonstrates that there are fundamental contradictions between the market and education models in terms of (1) Goals, (2) Motivations, (3) Methods and (4) Standards of Excellence. Counter-arguments to this analysis are presented, and replies are given. The article concludes that the long-term development of education and of civilization itself requires the autonomy of education from market command.