Mantua Township is a small rural town located in southern New Jersey, about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Students in the township attend one of three neighborhood schools, pre-K through sixth grade. Sewell School educates students in grades pre-K to K, Centre City School educates students in Grades 1 to 3, and J. Mason Tomlin School…

Although schools' relative contribution to pupils' progress is increasingly used in accountability systems around the world, momentum for value-added models (VAM) has not been reached in Chile. This small-scale study explores qualitatively the policy context in which this omission takes place, by analyzing policy documents and interviewing local…

Motivated students have been shown to persist longer in post-secondary education. As a multidimensional psychological construct, motivation is shaped by within- and between-person perceptions of context. Empirical measures of distinct workplace and trade school subjective task values (STVs) were examined, and their predictions of apprentices'…

In the mid-Meiji period, the leading scholar Kato Hiroyuki proposed relying on religion in moral education as he was dissatisfied with the Ministry of Education's inclination towards Western ethics in their reform. Triggered by Kato's proposal, there arose an intense debate over the 'standard' for moral education in the educational circles. The…

The social justice leadership research recognizes the pivotal role that educational leaders play in mobilizing the discourse and achieving social justice in schools. However, current social justice leadership studies may be seen as limited in that the variety of important themes and issues identified in the discussions of social justice within…

This article argues that many young people (11 to 19) in Europe articulate a construction of their identity that includes a European element. This articulation is often initially made in instrumental terms, but through deliberative discussion can move to become more idealistic. The data is drawn from over 300 small discussion groups across 29…

The role of exemplification and exemplars is receiving increasing attention in educational theory. Usually, this is connected to emulation models in character and moral education. Exemplars in this framework are those who show us how to act and what to do, and inspire us emotionally to improve. In Hannah Arendt's unfinished work on judgement, the…

While Spinoza stipulates an ideal moral person in the propositions on the 'free man' in "Ethics" IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of political relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza's…

In this paper, I defend the viability and relevance of Heidegger's philosophy of technology and consider its emancipatory potential in the field of education. First, I situate Heidegger's philosophy of technology within the broader emancipatory project of his early work--the fundamental ontology of Being and Time--and emphasise the role of…

This Introduction to the Special Issue, "Teaching and Learning: Epistemic, Metaphysical and Ethical Dimensions," ponders the truism that education is of fundamental importance in human life--and its relation to philosophy. No credible natural-historic description of what a human being is could fail to give education a central place. Yet…

As the first impressions, introductory courses in college play an influential role in students' decision to persist in science majors. We use students' open-ended explanations to understand how students make persistence decisions at the end of their introductory courses, based on Eccles' Expectancy-Value (E-V) Theory. Participants (N = 2737; 45.6%…

As the media landscape is increasingly populated by less than reputable sources of information, educators have turned to argument evaluation training as a potential solution. Unfortunately, the bias literature suggests that our ability to objectively evaluate an argument is, to a large extent, determined by the relationship between our own beliefs…

Relations between music education structures and teacher agency are under-researched and under-theorized, and scholars have indicated that the traditions and competitions of school bands in the U. S. may constrain educator agency. The need for research on teacher agency in competitive environments is compounded by policy trends toward…

The purpose of this study was to discover and uncover elementary teacher descriptions of their experiences with receiving and acting on principal feedback through the Instructional Coaching and Feedback Cycle (ICFC). The ICFC is a feedback cycle that consists of short principal observations of teacher instruction followed by immediate feedback to…

Nel Noddings, Lee Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, agrees with Professors Lapsley and Woodbury that moral aims are central to education. She has argued that the main aim of education is to produce better people--better in "all aspects of a complete life: moral, physical, social, vocational, aesthetic,…