This paper presents a study of dominant educational discourses through textual critique and argues that such an approach enables education studies to preserve an important distinction from teacher training. The texts deconstructed here are specific to English education, but the discourses at work have international relevance as the rhetorics of…

Understanding the nature of bullying in schools can assist in understanding aggression between nations. Although there are substantial differences between bullying behaviour practised by school children and bullying attributed to nations, there are some commonalities. This article examines seven basic elements that help in identifying and…

This paper considers the tension that can exist in the aims of religious education between the desire to encourage open-minded, critical thinking through exposure to diverse traditions, ideas and cultures and the encouragement, overt or otherwise, into uniformity whereby learners take on the values of a particular tradition, culture or ideology…

This paper explores the possibilities of teaching Genesis and the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation account, in an interdisciplinary course at a church-related institution. The course is part of an alternative, interdisciplinary core curriculum typically taken by two hundred students a year at the university. A comparison of the Popol Vuh with Genesis…

Critical thinking is conceived in the theories as a skill that students consciously learn and practice while the teacher is positioned as the one who can teach students how to critique. However, one of the major insights gained through research conducted at a university in the Northern Territory is that students are already critiquing what they…

This paper describes the development of a needs assessment guide that is user-friendly, facilitates the development of the youth-counsellor relationship, and is sensitive to gender, sexual orientation and cultural diversity. Through a three-phase collaborative process with counsellors and youth, the major issues in needs assessment were uncovered…

Over the decade of the 1990s, the student body of Prince George's Community College underwent dramatic shifts in its demographic makeup, as did the school's service area. This paper illustrates the importance, especially in these circumstances, of systematically comparing college enrollment trends with the demographic vectors of the surrounding…

With the recent technological developments, an opportunity has emerged to introduce more efficient instruction into the classroom. The traditional blackboard approach is gradually giving way to more interaction between the instructor and students. Multimedia can be defined to be multiple forms of media (text, graphics, images, animation, audio and…

This article focuses upon the development of transformative teacher professionalism. It explores issues of teacher professional identity and the ways in which this is contributed to by teacher responsiveness to the changing and demanding educational environments in which they find themselves. It includes a review of significant literature within…

This article describes a problem-based learning (PBL) project that incorporates active learning into an organizational behavior (OB) course. It describes a six-step process for designing a course around problems that students identify in their work, school, or personal lives. In addition to researching an OB concept to address their problem,…

Studs Terkel explores the motivation to work in his classic book "Working," compiling more than 100 interviews of workers across America. The author has found "Working" to be a useful vehicle for exploring organizational issues and for confronting students with the realities of the workplace. Terkel's interviews are honest, earthy, seasoned with…

During three series of molecular genetics experiments, our students engage in ungraded discussions of research articles related to their experiments. The research articles are selected less for their relevance to students' laboratory experience than for their focus on experimental design and the clarity of data presentation. By discussing these…

After spending most of the day in school, students are given additional assignments to be completed at home. It is worth asking not only whether there are good reasons to support the nearly universal practice of assigning homework, but why it is so often taken for granted--even by vast numbers of teachers and parents who are troubled by its impact…

So often teachers say that motivation is the key to everything they do in the classroom. They want to motivate kids to read, write, and solve problems. They want to inspire them to take pride in a fluently-read paragraph or a simple act of kindness. They hope that their encouragement will help students to find their passions so they can become…

This article on problem-based learning (PBL) explores the advantages of its use as a teaching/learning strategy for introducing information literacy to students. The author reviews the various methods presented in the literature for integrating PBL and information literacy, examines the unique challenges PBL presents for instructors, librarians,…