Examines trends toward more central regulation of schools and greater decentralization of authority to schools, teachers, and parents. Examines policy changes in those areas in Great Britain and the United States. (SK)

A first-year course for teacher trainees at the University of Warwick (England) involved students interviewing each other about educational life histories, school organization, school and community, teaching styles, and personal crises. The experience suggests a way to develop critical reflection on assumptions and conventional wisdom about…

Recent curricular innovations in Sri Lanka are prevocational education and life skills, both focusing on the articulation of education with the world of work. The relative success of life skills may be a result of its not being perceived as a threat to or dilution of academic education. (SK)

An attitude questionnaire completed by 60 British teachers of English and a media education survey completed by 20 of them indicated they do not agree that the national curriculum should be revised by returning to narrow prescriptions and dropping media education. Teachers support a broad-based approach including personal response and critical…

Attitude surveys of 91 boys and 76 girls were completed in their second (age 7) and fourth (age 9) years of primary school in Britain. Girls became significantly more negative toward mathematics, boys toward writing poems. However, attitudes between the sexes were not significantly different for 63% of school activities. (SK)

Focus group discussions with 14 participants in the University of Pittsburgh's Semester at Sea (a global education and travel program) showed most students did not change dramatically on five dimensions of global perspective: fear/openness, same/different, naivete'/cross-cultural understanding, nationalism, and ethnocentrism/globalcentrism. Some…

A case study of a teacher committee collaborating on development of school policy illuminates such barriers to teacher collaboration and school-based management as time constraints and lack of inservice support. A major difficulty is that the culture of teaching is based on privacy and individualism. (SK)

An Australian action research project to explore the construction of gender in elementary education experienced difficulties resulting from external management and funding. Some project managers had expectations of the participants that resembled a top-down approach to change. (SK)

A survey of 56 British secondary teachers found that traditional literary study is the most popular approach to Shakespeare, performance-based strategies less popular and dramatic recreation of the text through audio or video the least popular. The rich potential of experiential methods is clearly not being realized. (SK)

Poetry to be used with primary school children should be selected by the same criteria as other literature, so it neither promotes bias nor omits reference to diversity. Poems should be selected for their intrinsic quality and their potential as a resource in the curriculum for equality. (Author/SK)

Examines the ideology and expectations of early screening for linguistic difficulties in young children, discusses effective intervention, and presents an alternative to screening: formative assessment. (SK)

Traditional professionalism and reflective practice are inadequate and less than empowering models of teaching expertise. Teacher expertise will be more open and foster democratic relations in education if professionalism takes seriously social antagonism and social difference. (SK)

The mythical purity of research and scientific method leads to limited practice. Teacher researchers should question the universality of findings and recognize their position as researchers and as classed, raced, and gendered subjects, moving the focus away from policymakers and toward a wider constituency. (SK)

Teacher education should be based on theoretical knowledge about practice, of which there are at least three kinds: self-reflection, dialog, and scientific research. Theory can be integrated into practice if practitioners recognize themselves in theoretical knowledge and if the theoretical knowledge is practiced. (SK)

First-hand experience of artworks and natural and made objects increases young children's aesthetic awareness as well as giving them a vocabulary to describe them. Discussion helps children understand and extend their powers of imagination, reasoning, and problem solving. (SK)