The Value of Education: A Reply to Andrew Reid

Andrew Reid's essay on the value of education in this journal distinguished the intrinsic features of education from what education is for, the latter being ultimately located in the promotion of personal well-being. At a meta-ethical level, this response accepts Reid's claim about ultimate location, but challenges his view that prudential goods are desire-independent, arguing for a desire-dependent conception based on supra-individual, but not always universal-human, preferences. It also questions his claim that the source of educational value lies in the intrinsic features of education, rejecting the suggestion that epistemological rather ethical considerations should be the starting-point.     

The Tutoring Network: A unique nonprofit educational/civic/professional organization

The Tutoring Network is a nonprofit organization that emphasizes rigorous screening of educational therapists and careful matching of their expertise with the needs of learning-disabled students. It operates a clearinghouse for information pertinent to learning disabilities and strives to facilitate better communication among professionals concerned with the learning-disabled. This paper chronicles the birth and growth of The Tutoring Network and explores possibilities for replication.     

Feedback complexity and corrective efficiency

College undergraduates read a 2400-word passage, responded to 16 multiple-choice questions, and received one of four types of feedback following their responses. Complexity of feedback was inversely related to both error correctability and criterion efficiency taken as a ratio of feedback study time to post-test corrects. The results were discussed in terms of depth of processing and instructional comprehension.     

Artful Language: Academic Writing for the Art Student

The task of writing about the process of making and contextualising art can be overwhelming for some graduate students. While the challenge may be due in part to limited time and attention to the practice of writing, in a practice‐based arts thesis there is a deeper issue: how the visual and written components are attended to in a manner that neither is subjugated and both are fully realised. Helping students to revision art and writing as similar creative processes that can be structured around a framework designed to address both processes can override the conception that writing and art are polarising forces. This article describes one such framework that was found to be effective from both the perspective of the professor and the student in fleshing out the heart of both artistic processes and finding an integrating structure that moves a thesis to fruition.