Fun with Computers and GNVQ: Performing to Criteria and the Confidence to Improvise

This article examines the development and assessment of communication skills at GNVQ. It does this by reflecting on a project using multi-media technology to deliver communication skills to ESOL students. The author argues that current models of communication skills in GNVQ can be narrow and limiting and suggests that stimulating imaginative uses of language is more constructive in raising student confidence and achievement.     

The new revisionists and the history of U.S. higher education

This paper presents the traditional history of the development of higher education in the United States, especially during the nineteenth century, and then examines at the findings of the new revisionist historians regarding the content of the curriculum, the mode of instruction, the believed theory of learning, the quality of college leadership, and their egalitarianism. While the revisionists' evidence discredits some of the traditional interpretation of events, some of their data are questionable and some of their methods are found wanting. This paper focuses on the implications of the disparities and advances a thesis.     

Group status and attitude change in desegregated classrooms

One thousand thirty-three ninth-grade students from Western and Middle-Eastern ethnic background in 30 classrooms responded to a questionnaire assessing ethnic attitudes. The questionnaire was administered at the beginning and again at the end of these students' first year in ethnically desegregated classrooms. No marked changes in ethnic attitudes were noted as a function of the students' individual academic or social status in the classroom, but there were noteworthy changes associated with the relative status in the classroom occupied by the students' ethnic groups. Positive attitude change among Western (majority) students occurred when both ethnic groups in the classroom were of equal status, and when the MiddleEastern (minority) group was of superior academic status to the Western group. Positive change among the Middle-Eastern group occurred when it occupied superior status in the classroom.