Reweaving the tapestry of teacher education

Abstract

This article describes what happened to an elementary education preparation program when a few faculty members started asking questions, looking at practice, making changes, and collecting data based on the changes. The current program has many outstanding attributes; but when student perceptions were examined, holes were found and ways to mend these holes have been implemented. The authors describe the process of weaving concept Strands throughout the entire four‐year program.     

Family Metaphors and the Nation: Promoting a Politics of Care through the Million Mom March

The causes for which maternity has been invoked are as divergent as they are ubiquitous, yet the popularity of maternal politics among activists is not matched by an equally enthusiastic or unified assessment from scholars. On the contrary, scholars vigorously debate maternal appeals' strategic efficacy as well as their implications for gender norms. In this essay I argue that George Lakoff's discussion of the nation-as-family metaphor illuminates the political potency and the potential effectiveness of maternal appeals as well as their implications for gender norms. I illustrate my argument through an analysis of the Million Mom March.     

Delivering reading intervention to the poorest children: The case of Liberia and EGRA-Plus,a primary grade reading assessment and intervention

As governments, donors and implementation organisations re-focus Education for All Goals in terms of quality of education, increasing concerns have been raised over low literacy levels in developing countries. This paper provides key learning from the application of an early reading intervention applied in post-conflict Liberia, which included a robust assessment tool (Early Grade Reading Assessment) to measure the impact of the programme on students’ reading levels. A rationale for the design and methodology applied by the two implementing organisations (Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and Concern Worldwide) is provided, situated within the Liberian education context. The paper demonstrates the positive impact on programme quality, contextual relevancy and scale-up that a diagnostic baseline assessment has when linked to a tailored literacy intervention. Lessons learnt are presented to guide the identification of best practice in early literacy interventions at national-level and internationally.     

New interests in old issues: Antiprotection and the end of the manufacturing clause of the U.S. copyright law

The manufacturing clause of the U.S. copyright law, which prohibited the import of most books by U.S. authors that were not printed in the United State or Canada, expired on July 1, 1986. It expired despite initial congressional support and strong efforts by printing industry and union interests to expand its scope and make it permanent. The expiration occurred largely because of the emergence of new interests: industries whose exports were threatened by possible European Community retaliation and those concerned about international property rights issues. Those groups joined forces with top officials of the Reagan administration to gain the expiration of the clause. The analyses and conclusions of this paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Department of Commerce or the U.S. Government.