Are instructional aides colleagues of teachers, bridges to the school community, both, or neither? This study addresses this question by asking instructional aides about their relationships with teachers and parents and about their status in schools, and suggestions are made to create stronger bonds among these partners in education. This paper…

Focusing on academia as an organizational entity, this paper discusses feminist standpoint epistemology (FSE)--defined as the idea that the world looks different depending on the individual's vantage point--and offers tools to transform teaching and research endeavors in organizational communication. It also offers extended excerpts about the…

This paper explores how various perspectives influence inquiry in education. Normative perspectives function as implicit theories of inquiry as a researcher undertakes formal inquiry, and such theories should be acknowledged. Epistemological as well as methodological issues raised by conceiving of such theories as normative rather than merely…

This paper presents four philosophies of science teaching for teachers to use that encourage optimal learner achievement. Information is provided on an experimentalist or problem solving approach, an idealistic or subject-centered science curricula, a decision-making approach, and criterion-referenced procedures for learning. Two psychologies of…

These five issues of "Research in Developmental Education," examine the theoretical models and foundations of developmental education. Included are the following: (1) "Theoretical Foundations of Developmental Education," by Hunter R. Boylan, which examines the behaviorist, humanist, and developmental theories underpinning developmental education;…

This book describes the Reflective Judgment Model (RJM) and provides a comprehensive review of the research on it and the Reflective Judgment Interview (RJI). Chapter 1 defines reflective judgment as an often neglected aspect of critical thinking. Chapter 2 discusses stage-related assumptions that underlie RJM and relates RJM to current work in…

Six separate studies were conducted using judgments from academic and practitioner experts to determine the knowledge structure of the Certified Financial Planner Professional Education Program (i.e., the organization of discipline topics and the relationships among them). The program consists of six sequential financial planning knowledge…

Sex differences on Perry's stages of epistemological development were investigated in a study of 100 freshmen (50 men and 50 women) at a large midwestern university. A semi-structured interview probed six domains related to Perry's theory, including the role of the learner, instructor, and peers in the learning situation, the question of…

In making a case for the liberal arts in teacher education, the point is made that the liberal arts contribute to the professional qualifications of teaching. If teachers are to be more than mere technicians, the professional skills of problem solving, analysis, and critical thought are needed. A discussion is presented of the specific need for…

Exploring many possible relationships among language, thought processes, and education, this book is designed to synthesize modern views of language and linguistics, literature and semiotics, and thinking and knowing that are pertinent to education. It develops theoretical positions about language and thinking in school, proposes practical…

Focusing on computers and television and their applications both on campus and for distance education, this Unesco report on the role of instructional media in the system of higher education in the USSR argues that the new technologies are capable of performing three main instructional functions within the context of any teaching-learning process:…

This teacher's guide was developed for the third of four courses in Valencia Community College's Interdisciplinary Studies program, a 2-year core general education curriculum which chronologically examines the major developments in the evolution of human knowledge. The guide provides an introductory overview of the course's topic (i.e., Western…

In response to theories of learning that attempt to get rid of contents, two arguments are provided which suggest that it is theoretically disputable that knowledge develops along the same kind of process for biology and history, physics and mathematics, or the geometry of the triangle, and the geometry of space. The first is that empirical…

A study examined the phenomenon of burnout in social service agencies, approaching burnout as a symptom of organizational communication patterns rather than a characteristic inherent in or developed within a particular individual. Sixteen working teams (defined as three or more people in a person-oriented service, who are perceived as a team by…

If curriculum designers conclude, as Jacob Bronowski (author of "The Identity of Man," 1965) does, that the mind is not a machine and that knowledge cannot be programmed into humans like computers, then a model for education must be adopted which takes into consideration Bronowski's definitions of knowledge and self. This model must consider the…