A framework for curriculum design and a set of guidelines for curriculum development in gifted education are presented. The major dimensions guiding curriculum development for gifted students are: content, process, product, and learning environment. Curriculum content should be developed in such a way that it becomes more abstract, complex,…

The growing demand for preschool education has prompted states to examine the feasibility of, and in some cases to enact legislation regarding, early childhood education programs. An effective policy must reconcile the following three primary issues: (1) the historical rift between the educational and custodial models of early childhood education;…

The assertion that American schools serve the political structure by ignoring the core part of their mission, the nurture of intellect, forms the basis of this critique. An analysis of the educational mission, the effect of teacher characteristics on student outcomes, and academically gifted student programs leads to the conclusion that education…

In response to the broad question of what is needed to ensure quality instruction into the next century, this paper addresses three related issues. First, it is suggested that radically different inquiry and research perspectives, based on the quasi-anthropological concept of schools as culture systems, need to be subsumed into educators'…

This document offers a detailed description of the Oak Park, Michigan social studies program. The program is built around four goals: knowledge, skill, value, and participation. Knowledge goals pertain to acquiring facts, concepts, or generalizations from history and the social sciences. Skill goals pertain to the ability to collect, organize,…

This examination of the application of the products and processes of science to the field of education argues that education is entrenched in an outdated scientific mode--that of a Newtonian model--and proposes a more contemporary model of relativity which purports that wholes cannot be broken into parts, that variables are not isolatable but…

This paper places inquiry into teacher education in an historical and critical context, raising questions and themes which are of interest to teacher educators as well as historians. The social contexts and human factors that influenced the development of teacher education in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries are examined. An…

The central premise underlying gifted education is that gifted students can and should be distinguished or differentiated from the larger, non-gifted population, and once identified, should receive specialized services. This paradigm is strongly rooted in the psychometric tradition and draws upon the "medical model" by defining characteristics or…

This report summarizes recent research about the effective education of poor minority students in rural areas. Significant barriers to high student performance are briefly discussed and research findings about strategies designed to overcome these barriers and to lead to high performance are reviewed. Solutions for educating disadvantaged students…

This paper argues that schools need to help students acquire knowledge and skills for two purposes: (1) to function effectively in a variety of contexts (including work) as they presently exist, and (2) to adapt to changing situations in the future. Effective functioning in the present requires a common body of knowledge, including mathematics,…

This article argues that students are not receiving a high quality social studies education and are not being prepared for citizenship in a democracy; that the most serious failings of social studies courses are conceptual, philosophical, and ideological, and that what social studies experts want students to learn is not what parents and other…

Small schools (with enrollments of 300 or less) are being rediscovered as models for effective schools. Currently 26.9% of America's school systems enroll over 500,000 students in more than 26,000 small schools staffed by 50,000 teachers. Small schools have pioneered many educational "innovations": non-graded classrooms, individualized…

In the first of this presentation's two parts, an attempt is made to clarify the meaning of constructivist education, an approach based on a theory which explains learning as a process of construction from within the individual, rather than one of internalization or absorption from the environment. In the second part, a personal view of why…

Developed as an EPDA (Educational Professions Development Act) inservice training activity, the conference discussed in this report was designed to primarily determine those basic beliefs, principles, and concepts of vocational education subscribed to by region V conference participants, and secondly to discuss the relationship of policymaking to…

Condensed from "Internships in Teacher Education, the 47th Yearbook of The Association for Student Teaching, NEA, Washington, D.C., 1968, 1-15.