The rights to educational self-determination under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

ABSTRACT

The United States Senate's unwillingness to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) notwithstanding, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) contains significant safeguards protecting the rights of students with disabilities, acknowledging their participation rights in decisions about their futures. In the first of just two examples, as students ‘age out’ of special education, they participate in developing individualised transition plans guiding their movements to post-school activities. Second, the IDEA transfers parental access rights to students, granting them sole control over their educational records on turning 18 unless they are adjudicated incompetent under state law.

Against this background, this paper opens by considering the U.S. Senate's reluctance to ratify the CRC. The paper next reviews the history of rights in the U.S. before examining how the IDEA affords students with disabilities considerable opportunities to participate in planning their futures both through transition planning and taking control over their educational records. The article ends by reflecting on how the IDEA comports with the CRC in protecting the rights of students with disabilities to self-determination.     

Who gets what? Impact of financial aid policies

Because of the radical reorientation of financial aid policies in the eighties, loan indebtness and the amount of federal subsidy of loans have increased dramatically. Paralleling these developments has been the growth of the proprietary sector of postsecondary education and the use of federal-supported financial aid by this sector's students. This article examines the impact of current financial aid policies on different sectors. Evidence appears clear that new policy is required to serve equity and human and social capital development. The success of the proprietary sector in growing its market share at the expense of other sectors—in particular, community colleges—provides some useful lessons about aggressive recruiting.     

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE FRIENDS FOR LIFE PROGRAM IN PORTUGUESE SCHOOLS: STUDY WITH A SAMPLE OF HIGHLY ANXIOUS CHILDREN

The FRIENDS for Life program is a cognitive–behavioral group program that targets anxiety in children. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of the Portuguese version of the FRIENDS for Life Program, which was implemented in schools to reduce anxiety problems in a group of highly anxious children. The study used a quasi‐experimental research design with two groups of children, an intervention (n = 17) and a wait‐list control group (n = 21), aged 8 to 12 years old. The impact of the program in reducing anxiety symptoms as assessed by children and mothers was analyzed through the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders‐Revised (SCARED‐R). The results show a statistically significant post intervention effect on anxiety symptoms evaluated by the child, but not by the mother. The implications of these results for the prevention of anxiety disorders in Portuguese schools are discussed.     

Ex Corde Ecclesiae and American Catholic Higher Education: The Calm Before the Storm or Dead in the Water?

Amid the struggle that Catholic colleges and universities, especially those in the United States, face as they seek to preserve their religious identities, Rome formally entered the fray on August 15, 1990, when Pope John Paul II promulgated the Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Ex Corde) (literally, “from the heart of the Church”). John Paul II wrote Ex Corde in an attempt to reinvigorate the debate over how Catholic colleges and universities can remain true to their religious missions while being viable institutions of higher learning wherein faculty members are free to work as researchers and teachers who can meet the same objective performance evaluation criteria as their professional colleagues in the world of academics. In reviewing the status of Ex Corde over the more than 5 years that expired since the controversy over the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines designed to implement Ex Corde began, this article is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the basic elements of Ex Corde while the second examines both the events surrounding the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines along with their subsequent (non)implementation in the United States. The third part of the article reflects on the current status of Ex Corde in American Catholic colleges and universities, revealing that its critics have little to fear for academic freedom and/or job safety unless its terms are expressly included in employment contracts—a prospect that is not even remotely on the horizon.     

To have or to be? The interplay between knowledge structure and market identity in knowledge-based alliance formation

We explore how a firm’s knowledge structure characteristics and market identity—as reflected in its position in the industry value chain and market status—influence knowledge-based alliance (KBA) formation. We propose that a firm’s propensity to form KBAs is affected by the congruence (or misalignment) between its knowledge structure characteristics (i.e., knowledge depth and scope) and the role it plays in the industry, as demanded by its position in the value chain. We further argue that while a firm’s market status can amplify the positive effect of the congruence, thereby enhancing a firm’s proclivity to form KBAs, being prominent can also hurt a firm when it faces a misalignment between its knowledge structure characteristics and externally induced expectations related to its value chain position. We validate our arguments using panel data on 1051 firm-year observations for 197 firms patenting in the global fuel cell industry for the period 1999–2009. By developing a richer understanding of the relationship between a firm’s knowledge-based resources and KBA formation, we answer the call for a better understanding of how and when firms can leverage their internal knowledge configurations to improve their proclivity to form alliances.     

Emerging patterns of abstraction in environmental education: A review of materials,methods and professional development perspectives

The epistemic unconscious is the history of the field. And it is clear that, to secure some chance of really knowing what one is doing, one has to unfold what is inscribed in the various relations of implication in which the thinker and his thoughts are caught up, that is, the presuppositions he engages and the inclusions and exclusions he unwittingly performs. (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 99)     

The impact of social media on informal learning in museums

This paper posits that social networking can take a central role in learning in informal environments such as museums, libraries and galleries. It argues that social media offers young people agency previously unavailable in informal learning environments in order to explore complex responses to and participation with cultural content. The paper will consider transformations in digital literacy and the processes by which young learners can connect with knowledge in informal learning environments to become active cultural participants.

Die Wirkung sozialer Medien auf informelle Bildung in Museen

Dieses Papier postuliert, dass soziale Vernetzung eine zentrale Rolle im Lernen in informellen Umgebungen wie Museen, Bibliotheken und Galerien annehmen kann. Es behauptet, dass soziale Medien jungen Leuten als Agentur in informellen Lernumgebungen dienen können, die zuvor nicht verfügbar sind, um komplexe Antworten zu erkunden und Beteiligung mit kulturellem Inhalt zu erkennen. Die Autoren betrachten Transformationen in digitalen Fähigkeiten und den Prozessen, durch die junge Anfänger sich mit Wissen in anderen informellen Bildungsumgebungen verbinden können, um aktive kulturelle Teilnehmer zu werden.

L’impact des medias “sociaux” sur l’apprentissage informel dans les musées

Le présent article affirme que la mise en réseau humain peut jouer un rôle central pour l’apprentissage dans des environnements informels comme les musées,les bibliothèques et les galeries. Il avance que les medias “sociaux” offrent aux jeunes des moyens qui n’existaient pas auparavant dans les environnemetns d’apprentissage informels pour permettre d’explorer des réactions complexes et d’interagir avec le contexte culturel. Les auteurs examinent les mutations de la compétence numérique et les processus par lesquels les jeunes apprenants peuvent se brancher sur la connaissance dans des environnements d’apprentissage informels pour devenir des acteurs culturels dynamiques.

El impacto de los medios colectivos sobre el aprendizaje informal en los museos

Esta artículo postula que la creación de redes humanas puede desempeñar un papel central para el aprendizaje en entornos informales como los museos, las bibliotecas y las galerías. Apunta que los medios sociales ofrecen a los jovenes capacidades que antes no estaban asequibles dentro de los entornos de aprendizaje informal para explorar las respuestas complejas y interagir con el contexto cultural. Los autores consideran las transformaciones en el alfabetismo digital y los procesos a través de los cuales los jovenes alumnos pueden conectarse con los conocimientos dentro de esos entornos informales de aprendizaje para convertirse en actores culturales dinámicos.