Many medical schools offer pre-professional programs to undergraduate students. The main purpose of the university pre-professional program (UPPP) is to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills required to successfully cope with the academic demands of further education provided by professional colleges. The aim of this commentary…

In this essay, a high school senior reflects on her educational experience as a journey beginning with her difficult decision to stay at Francis W. Parker School for high school and ending with her current search for a college where she can continue to explore the nature of education. Her narrative focuses on her experience in an elective course…

This article reports on a collaborative research project which involved first-year distance learners of Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish at a New Zealand university. Drawing on the principles of Allwright's exploratory practice, the study aimed to gain an insight into the learners' experiences and conceptualisations in terms of their…

Between 2001 and 2007 I conducted a self-study action research enquiry into my practice as a primary school teacher. The research had a collaborative aspect to it, in so far as my pupils and colleagues were invited to participate in the research, although I was the focus of the enquiry. I was unhappy about my teaching: I felt I dominated the…

Grounded in a narrative account of the author's own development as a counselling practitioner, it is argued that a programmatic developmental path for therapy practitioners can be singularly inappropriate. Such a route to practitionerhood threatens to interfere with, and even fundamentally to undermine, the necessarily unique idiosyncrasies of…

The author, a programme leader for a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE), hears a complaint from her colleagues that undergraduate students require "spoon-feeding". Accepting structuralism's argument that language does things, not just describe them, the author examines "spoon-feeding" in more depth.…

Social-assisted learning means that social forces provide tutorial activities for self-study through television, face-to-face instruction, audiotapes, and videotapes. The instruction is based on requirements in specialized majors, courses, and outlines of self-study examination. (JOW)

Self-instruction, more likely applied to adult learners, depended on the extent to which learners more or less consciously make decisions about aspects of the learning situation and control them. Issues of control are discussed and examples of relevant learning situations are offered, including group work and computer-assisted learning. (16…

This paper discusses copyright laws in Hong Kong, and how they are an impediment to self-access learning centers. Most of the published materials needed for use in self-access centers are not suitable without some adaptation. Such adaptations often involve photocopying parts of a book or the whole thing. In addition, it is often felt that it is…

The concept of independent learning is discussed. Independent learning is defined as learning in which the learner, in conjunction with relevant others, can make the decisions necessary to meet his or her own learning needs. This must be regarded as a direction or goal to be pursued, not as an absolute standard and not as a set of identifiable…

A detailed, nonimpressionistic assessment checklist is presented for teach-yourself language packages. Two example research applications are given: a survey of a range of course packages, and an analysis of the patterns of materials used by an individual learner of Hungarian. (39 references) (Author/LB)

Comparison of nineteenth- and twentieth-century promotion of self-help learning shows that the aim and outcome can be socialization and order rather than social advancement and autonomy. Successful self-help schemes are rarely based on self-help alone, which calls into question the morality and financial wisdom of promoting a concept without…

This paper on quality and distance education argues that if the goal of education is to produce an independent learner, distance education is ideally suited to encourage effective independent learning when the instruction and programming is of a high quality. The paper first notes the Australian government's interest in promoting distance…

Argues that teaching innovation in the university is influenced by teacher attitudes and the existence of satisfactory teaching materials. Teaching packages from the Open University in England are described. (JJD)

Describes the new direction in Canadian continuing education for German teachers. Autonomous learning and collegial collaboration at the regional level are at the center of this re-orientation. At the national level, networking among regionally-active teacher groups that will lead to a new organizational structure and to new forms of cooperation…