Contributions to the Study of Education – serie

Named for the man who brought free higher education to city youths unable to afford the two local private colleges, Townsend Harris High School reminded generations of New Yorkers of the city's debt to him. Its mission was to prepare young men for success at City College, where education was free to graduates of the city's public high schools. The school's three year course was tough and rigorous. Students learned to survive and perform, or they left.By the 1930s, Townsend Harris was synonymous for bright boys, students who scored high on the yearly Regents examinations, but whose athletic ability, hard as they tried, was something of a joke. The author traces the development of the preparatory school from the first years of its beginning in 1849 to its 1942 closing by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia amid much controversy.

Resource allocation decisions made by school boards, principals, and teachers are critical for they determine the adequacy and equity of resources actually made available for specific schools, educational programs and individual students. The most important resources are often concealed by aggregate state or district measures such as dollars per student. For these decisions, the most important resources are elements such as basic and supplemental staffing levels, staff time, funding amounts for textbooks and supplies, selection of new equipment (particularly technology), and support for new or renovated facilities.The authors review current practices at each important decision-making level in school districts, from the school board to the classroom. At each juncture, the findings are interpreted to reveal both the causes of the practices and their implications for improving school effectiveness. This book provides new research in helping to inform and improve resource allocation practices in schools. The general conclusion is that improvement in the resource allocation practices in education requires a shift in focus to results instead of inputs, a strong emphasis on student learning as the primary focus of decisions, and systematic evaluation of results.

This book provides a timely review of learning style research. It examines those approaches that purport to promote effective learning. It affirms the need for instructors and trainers to recognize the importance of individual learning differences and to use methods that help create a learning climate which increases the potential learning for all students or trainees regardless of their preferred way of learning.The ability to understand and to teach to the various learning styles of students is essential to improving the effectiveness of college-level education. In this book, Sims and Sims bring together significant research to aid academics and organizational trainers in understanding and applying learning style research and knowledge to program, course, and class development.

Labeled A Nation at Risk, Americans are urgently seeking reform in their public school systems. While many promising programs are being developed, they have not yet been validated. The national conference Making Schools Work for Underachieving Minority Students shared the best of what is presently known and deliberated on the implications for research, policy, and practice. Sponsored by CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation Standards and Student Testing), The National Urban League, and the National Council of LaRaza, the conference was financed by the U.S. Department of Education. Closely following the structure of the conference, this volume's contributors examine education's current status. They then investigate potentially promising approaches to specific problem areas. Contributors treat issues of evaluation and testing, and conclude by addressing the potential of collaborative efforts.Responding to a major challenge, community groups and organizations throughout the country are seeking answers to the problem of underachieving minority students. This volume builds on these shared interests and is a first step toward an intervention process. Topics covered include: creating effective instructional programs; reducing the dropout rate; preparing students for secondary and postsecondary success; helping limited English proficient students; and improving teacher quality. The volume's contributors hope to promote dialogue on promising practices, foster collaboration, identify critical R & D needs and collaborative arrangements, and identify testing and evaluation issues for subsequent inquiry.

This book is a basic treatment of faculty performance appraisal in higher education. It is written for those scholars faced with the need to understand the issues and solutions to the often thorny problems posed by having to judge the performance of their colleagues in teaching, service, research and citizenship. Neophyte administrators, committee members, and those facing evaluation are often perplexed by the range and depth of the questions concerning what constitutes an effective and reasonable performance appraisal system. This book provides answers to the most common of these questions and integrates current thinking from education literature with models of strategic management from business administration.

Moral Development Theories—Secular and Religious introduces readers to 13 secular models and 13d religious theories in a wide-ranging comparative study of the roots of moral development. The secular models include attribution theory, cognitive-structural views, social-learning and social-cognition approaches, Freud's psychoanalysis (plus Erikson and Fromm), Marxist beliefs, a composite theory, Hoffman's conception of empathy, Anderson's information-integration view, Gilligan's gender distinction, Sutherland and Cressey's explanation of delinquency, and Lovinger on ego development. Religious theories represent the Judaic-Christian-Islamic line, Hinduism and derivatives (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism), Confucianism, Shinto, and four minor theories drawn from the belief systems of the Navajo, Zulus, Vodou adherents, and Okinawans.The description of each theory is designed to answer a common set of questions introduced in Chapter 1. The closing section of each chapter evaluates that chapter's theories in terms of a series of assessment standards described in Chapter 2. The book's final chapter inspects all of the theories from the viewpoint of five desires that people often hold in relation to their conceptions of moral development. The desires are: (a) for immanent justice; (b) to understand the causes of the consequences that result from people's behavior in moral situations; (c) to become immortal; (d) to enjoy a happy life, and (e) to understand the moral-development process in order to help others who need moral guidance.

The ideas, people, and events that developed art education are described and analyzed so that art educators and educators in general will have a better understanding of what has happened (and is happening) to visual art in the schools. Peter Smith raises the issue of art education's inordinate emphasis on Eurocentric art. He challenges the often expressed notion that the field of education is the cause of art education's problems and proposes that confused conceptions within the art world are just as much a root of the difficulty. No other book in art education history gives such close and analytical attention to the careers of women in the field. The materials on Germanic cultural and historical influences are unequaled as is the scholarly treatment of Viktor Lowenfeld, probably the most influential single figure in 20th-century American art education.

The lives and contributions of eight female educators who influenced modern American schools are described, as well as the historical context in which the women lived and worked. These women challenged the male establishment, broke barriers, and utilized techniques heralded today as radical reforms, such as teacher facilitation, student initiative, active learning, meaning construction, and practical applications of knowledge. They stressed open-ended research, creativity, and the integration of subject matter, and they promoted critical thinking, peer cooperation, and shared teacher/student decision-making. The women's methods were radical in their own day, and in many ways still are.The female reformers described in this book opened the doors of education to the larger public, often working with people excluded from traditional institutions, including females, the very young, the mentally disabled, immigrants of all ages, homemakers, and African-American youth. Without government subsidy, most of these educators had to work with meager resources and constantly raise money for their schools and other projects by giving speeches, writing books and articles, soliciting wealthy donors, and even organizing bazaars and bake sales. With enormous confidence in the worth of their endeavors, they persevered despite many hardships and gave their entire lives to creating new educational and career opportunities.

This book was written for sociologists concerned with education, but should be read by anyone interested in learning disability as a concept, either from a practical or theoretical standpoint. It is especially recommended for special educators and other professionals concerned with children who experience difficulties in school learning, as well as for the parents of such children. . . . Carrier has written an intelligent, well-documented, and important book that should provoke a great deal of controversy for some time to come. Contemporary SociologyJames G. Carrier presents a detailed historical description of the social and educational assumptions integral to the idea of learning disability. Drawing upon the works of leading authorities in the field, Carrier addresses a number of questions from an essentially Marxist perspective. His discussion revolves around the way in which social order structures reality, how that structured reality affects daily social practices, and how this, in turn, perpetuates the social structure which conditioned the practices in the first place. Dividing his discussion into three parts, Carrier first examines the contrast between structure and process in the theory of learning disability espoused by Burke and Boudrieu, moves on to consider the structural approach to the content and meaning of the theory, and finally provides a processualist consideration of why different groups came to support it. Finally, the author presents some of his conclusions about the conflict he has described.

Effective Education analyzes the ways in which majority and minority interests interact in the educational system. It outlines the concepts, goals, and policies of effective educational environments, and examines teaching and learning strategies for diversified groups of students. Despite the additional challenges presented by diversified student populations, author Charles Vert Willie demonstrates the advantages which may also derive from these groups, and shows how minority students can make general contributions to educational reform.

Through an investigation and description of the campaign conducted by the Rockefeller-funded English Language Exploratory Committee (ELEC) to revolutionize English-language-teaching practices in Japan, Henrichsen addresses the issue of how internationally oriented reformers of educational systems and practices can go about creating change and dealing with resistance to it. Henrichsen contends that innovation alone is rarely sufficient to bring about change and that simply communicating the innovation to the target audience is usually inadequate. He argues that creating change across cultural boundaries requires both a careful analysis of the target setting, one which takes into account the potential barriers to change, and an appropriate implementation strategy to overcome those barriers.In analyzing the ELEC reform campaign, Henrichsen develops and employs a hybrid diffusion-of-innovations model which represents both the diffusion/implementation process and the multitude of factors which affect it. This model, coupled with the example of the ELEC effort, provides planners of other reform campaigns with an understanding of what these factors are, how they are interrelated, and how to deal with them. Henrichsen's study is divided into six chapters, beginning with a justification for studying the diffusion and implementation of innovations. Chapters Two and Three provide background information and a chronological overview of the ELEC effort and introduce the model that is used as the framework for subsequent chapters. In Chapter Four the historical development of the Japanese English-language-teaching system and the influence of socio-cultural forces on language teaching in Japan are considered. Chapter Five analyzes the ELEC effort including characteristics of the innovation (Charles Fries' Oral Approach), the ELEC resource system,the Japanese English-language-teaching user system, and a number of other critical inter-elemental factors. Finally, Henrichsen discusses the consequences of the ELEC effort and draws some general principles from the particulars of this historical case study. This unique work will be of interest to anyone involved in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages or interested in the promotion of innovations in education or other fields.

Community development depends on effective social action, and effective social action requires the acquisition of related knowledge and skills. While other studies of community development stress the role of economic and political factors, Hamilton develops an educational model for promoting change within the community. The focus of the study is not so much on formal education, but on the role of nonformal education in fostering community development. Hamilton argues that through effective adult education, citizens can be empowered to improve their communities. His argument is grounded on a theoretical model that recognizes the intrinsic motivation of many adult citizens to improve their surroundings and which acknowledges that motivation must be matched with information.The book begins with an overview and analysis of the conceptual, operational, and theoretical dimensions of adult education and the development of communities. The chapters that follow discuss issues ranging from theories of social change to the identification of community needs. At the heart of the work is a description and analysis of an educational community development model that can be modified to suit the needs and philosophies of particular groups. Anyone interested in urban studies or education will find Hamilton's book unique, insightful, and inspiring.

Kaminsky provides a new intellectual history of educational philosophy in the context of a comparative examination of educational philosophy in the United States, Britain, and Australasia. Throughout his work he challenges those involved with educational philosophy to take a different view of the discipline and its intellectual mission. Kaminsky argues that the intellectual mission of education is different from that of philosophy. He believes that the legitimate audience of educational philosophy is made up of professional educators.The new history of educational philosophy suggests a profound alignment with social science; the discipline being part of an attempt to define and realize a social politic for the Common School. The conduct and invention of philosophy of education in Britain is drawn from an attempt to restore the classical reassurances of the English concept of a liberal education to the conduct of teacher education in particular and the conduct of English versions of education in general. In Australasia, Kaminsky argues, the discipline was initially dependent upon the work of R.S. Peters and the establishment of the university study of education in Britain. Later developments are attributed to a defensive two-class politics that came out of convictry and began to find expression in Old and New Left politics in the late 1960s and beyond. In offering a new interpretation of educational philosophy which traces its origins to both social science and philosophy, Kaminsky has provided a work of value to all involved with educational philosophy.

The ideas, people, and events that developed art education are described and analyzed so that art educators and educators in general will have a better understanding of what has happened (and is happening) to visual art in the schools. Peter Smith raises the issue of art education's inordinate emphasis on Eurocentric art. He challenges the often expressed notion that the field of education is the cause of art education's problems and proposes that confused conceptions within the art world are just as much a root of the difficulty. No other book in art education history gives such close and analytical attention to the careers of women in the field. The materials on Germanic cultural and historical influences are unequaled as is the scholarly treatment of Viktor Lowenfeld, probably the most influential single figure in 20th-century American art education.

This book is the framework for a new theory of moral development that combines components from a variety of existing theories of human development with the author's original research. The detailed description of the theory is divided into five sections: (1) foundations of development, (2) long-term memory, (3) the influence of environments, (4) working memory, and (5) progressions and stages of development. Each chapter concludes with an exercise demonstrating the application of the new theory, and the final section of the book employs the theory as a lens through which the moral development of four historic figures can be viewed afresh.

Named for the man who brought free higher education to city youths unable to afford the two local private colleges, Townsend Harris High School reminded generations of New Yorkers of the city's debt to him. Its mission was to prepare young men for success at City College, where education was free to graduates of the city's public high schools. The school's three year course was tough and rigorous. Students learned to survive and perform, or they left.By the 1930s, Townsend Harris was synonymous for bright boys, students who scored high on the yearly Regents examinations, but whose athletic ability, hard as they tried, was something of a joke. The author traces the development of the preparatory school from the first years of its beginning in 1849 to its 1942 closing by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia amid much controversy.

The lives and contributions of eight female educators who influenced modern American schools are described, as well as the historical context in which the women lived and worked. These women challenged the male establishment, broke barriers, and utilized techniques heralded today as radical reforms, such as teacher facilitation, student initiative, active learning, meaning construction, and practical applications of knowledge. They stressed open-ended research, creativity, and the integration of subject matter, and they promoted critical thinking, peer cooperation, and shared teacher/student decision-making. The women's methods were radical in their own day, and in many ways still are.The female reformers described in this book opened the doors of education to the larger public, often working with people excluded from traditional institutions, including females, the very young, the mentally disabled, immigrants of all ages, homemakers, and African-American youth. Without government subsidy, most of these educators had to work with meager resources and constantly raise money for their schools and other projects by giving speeches, writing books and articles, soliciting wealthy donors, and even organizing bazaars and bake sales. With enormous confidence in the worth of their endeavors, they persevered despite many hardships and gave their entire lives to creating new educational and career opportunities.

While it is assumed that American undergraduates who study abroad derive unique benefits from the experience, until now its actual impact has not been assessed. This book, which presents the findings of a long-term evaluation project, provides the kind of systematic and comprehensive data needed to document and give future guidance to programs of study abroad. Using comparative measures, the authors examine the effects of overseas study in terms of education, career, personal satisfaction, and cultural values.Undergraduates in four U.S. college and university programs involving nearly thirty European institutions were chosen for the study. The focus of the research is the role of study abroad in students' acquisition of foreign language proficiency, knowledge of and concern for foreign cultures and international issues, attitudes toward their home country and its values, and career objectives and accomplishments. Student profiles indicate consistent patterns in motivation, achievement, and satisfaction that relate to the experience abroad. In their conclusion, the authors look at the implications of their findings in the context of our times and society and offer suggestions for some new directions for study abroad in the coming years. This analysis will be relevant for educational decision-makers, funding organizations, government, and the research community.