This article presents a historical description of and research related to the development, validation, and combined use of the multiple editions of the Bracken Basic Concept Scale and its companion curriculum, the Bracken Concept Development Program. In tandem, the scale and curriculum were designed to assess and teach more than 300 basic language…

Modern cooperative learning began in the mid- 1960s (D. W. Johnson & R. Johnson, 1999a). Its use, however, was resisted by advocates of social Darwinism (who believed that students must be taught to survive in a "dog-eat-dog" world) and individualism (who believed in the myth of the "rugged individualist"). Despite the resistance, cooperative…

One of the most significant theoretical contributions to welfare analysis across a range of disciplines has been the development of the capabilities framework by Sen and others. Motivated by the claim that freedom should play a key role in social evaluation, the capabilities framework suggests that we consider what it is that people are free to…