The "no-excuses" model of education has become one of the most prominent educational alternatives for urban youth. Recently, notable no-excuses charter schools have begun a concerted effort to develop students' character strengths, striving to increase their chances of future success. In this article, we situate the no-excuses approach…

This article reasserts the centrality of reasoning as the focus for moral education. Attention to moral cognition must be extended to incorporate sociogenetic processes in moral growth. Moral education is not simply growth within the moral domain, but addresses capacities of students to engage in cross-domain coordination. Development beyond…

Practitioners of education in South Africa (SA) struggle painfully between the extremes of its authoritarian and deeply religious roots that prescribe blind obedience to people in authority and their elders, and the demands of open-mindedness, critical thinking and also solidarity required for democratic citizenship. A particular pedagogy was used…

The Social Intuitionist Model (SIM) of moral reasoning proposed by Jon Haidt and colleagues (Haidt, 2001; Haidt & Bjorklund, 2006) is criticized on the grounds that (1) its conclusions concerning moral reasoning are unwarranted by research reporting 'dumbfounded' responses by subjects whose initial judgments are challenged and judgments…

Is it feasible and appropriate to develop a sustainability metrics which captures cosmological-spiritual dimensions of un/sustainability? Departing from the supposition that the crisis of unsustainability is a crisis of worldview and misguided cosmology which needs redirection on a cultural and global scale, this essay introduces the notion of a…

Nihilism is the fundamental movement in the history of the West. Materialism is a symptom of nihilism. Materialism is the view that all meaning has gone from the cosmos, nature, and culture. Values are objective, explicit options which imply the existence of choice. (JN)

Describes the value reasoning approach to values education in which students learn to reason logically about values issues. The approach helps students to think more clearly about their own and others' value judgments, to examine value systems objectively, and to deal constructively with value conflict. (Author)

Justifications are given for the development of philosophy courses for inclusion in the high school curriculum. Various subjects such as mathematics, science, and language can be given more unity and meaning through the teaching of philosophy. (JN)

This article describes an innovative curriculum module the first author created on the two-way exchange between statistics and applied ethics. The module, having no particular mathematical prerequisites beyond high school algebra, is part of an undergraduate interdisciplinary ethics course which begins with a 3-week introduction to basic applied…

In this discussion of ethics instruction in a distance education course the question is raised of how to develop a "fit" between the objectives of a course and the strategy for instruction, interaction, and evaluation. The paper discusses specific problems confronting distance education course planners. First, while the objectives of…

This monograph sets forth a theoretical basis for advocating a program of disciplinary arts education as an integral part of general education from kindergarten through grade 12. The title, "The Role of Imagery in Learning," indicates the centrality of aesthetic perception of images. To make the case, it is necessary to show by analysis,…

Analyzes the art criticism of nine university art education students writing about the work of Robert Rauschenberg. Identifies the students' use or nonuse of thematic unity, intertextuality, opposition, and description. These thinking strategies are primarily found in the works of three professional art critics. (MJP)