Technology and educational empowerment: Students' perspectives

As part of a two-year investigation of technological innovation in one secondary school, nine senior students participated in one-hour interviews that explored their perceptions of the proper role of technology in their schooling. Student responses were analyzed and compared to those of their teachers for similarities and differences in perceptions about desirable uses and goals for technology. Like their teachers, a majority preferred to adapt technology to support traditional, teacher-centered instruction. A minority valued technology as a facilitator of student-centered inquiry and appeared to differ from the majority in beliefs about schooling and in dispositional tolerances for uncertainty.This paper is based on work done as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Georgia. Portions of the paper were presented at the 9th Annual International Qualitative Research in Education Conference, Athens, GA, January, 1996.     

Sociology and Music Education: a response to Swanwick

This paper is a response to Professor Swanwick's critique of our sociological perspective on music education. A detailed presentation of the sociology of music thesis demonstrates that accusations of ‘social determinism’ and ‘referentialism’ are both misconceived. Moreover, Swanwick's position leads to difficulties in his approach to music aesthetics, where at times he makes assumptions concerning the work of theorists such as Meyer and Keil which these authors have themselves explicitly repudiated. We then relate certain observations which Swanwick makes concerning the processes of schooling to wider sociological theories of schooling that help make sense of the kinds of constraints Swanwick correctly identifies. Finally, we accept Swanwick's challenge to be more explicit concerning both our response to his charge of relativism and our practical recommendations for the reform of music teaching.     

Harnessing the power of superheroes: An alternative view

Superhero play offers opportunities for superfun and superlearning     

Holland environments as reinforcement systems

Holland's (1973, 1985) theory of vocational choice stipulates that model environments seek toreinforce the characteristic predispositions and attitudes of their corresponding personality types. The results of this longitudinal study of the self-perceptions of more than 2,000 graduates from eight types of colleges and universities (Carnegie Commission, 1971) generally support the validity of this premise. For example, graduates prepared in investigative environments have higher intellectual self-esteem scores and those prepared in artistic environments have higher artistic self-esteem scores, when pre- and postcollege measures are controlled. These general patterns are consistent for graduates from the eight institutional types. The implications of these findings are discussed for those who study the intra- and interinstitutional diversity of colleges and universities and their differential impact on student developmental patterns.