What should be the continuing role of founders in schools supporting self-directed learning? To answer this, the founders' views of two North American schools for self-directed learners will be compared. One school is exam-focused and private; the other is, test-free and public. The founders of both schools have comparable beliefs regarding…

This study provides insight into equity issues in post-secondary education by exploring and assessing the history, the reality and the potential developments in higher education for minority students in China, in comparison to post-secondary education for aboriginal students in Canada. It highlights access to post-secondary education by these…

In this paper I consider how Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics can complement the pragmatic theory that has informed the field of service-learning, and with its emphasis on community and respect for others, can offer an orientation to further the work of service-learning and community engagement in a mutually satisfying way for…

Archetypal psychology suggests the possibility of a punishment archetype representing the unconscious preferences of human beings as a species about what constitutes appropriate ways for leaders (students, teachers and educational leaders) to correct followers who do harm to others. Mythological analysis compared God's process of punishment, in…

Although Imre Lakatos described the work published in his book "Proofs and Refutations" as a study of mathematical methodology, work which has been responded to and criticized by philosophers and historians of mathematics more on its own terms, a significant body of writing in the 30 years since its appearance has used it as a pertinent cognate…

This paper argues by way of analogy that the psychological descriptors of "masochist" and "sadist", a person who submits or dominates, respectively can aptly describe many aspects of the power relationships teachers and students experience within institutions of public education. Teachers operate in an often ethically contradictory position, torn…

First an overview is given about the actual national and international situation concerning standardized testing. Then two major reasons are presented why accountability systems based on standardized testing have become so widespread: (a) the missing validity and reliability of teachers' assessment of students' achievement, and (b) the important…

Modern education is in a state of global crisis partially because of the absence of a value-based design of its strategic functions. Education affects the whole spectrum of human values, namely, creative, experiential, aesthetic, material, instrumental, ethical, social, and spiritual values. A student whose educational experience involves this…

The article deals with the question of living with others, one of the most significant relationships of human life, and challenge the common understanding of the origins of living with others, where a human being is not just becoming a social but also a moral being through social institutions of societies. This common understanding of a social…

The objective of this study is to provide in-service teachers an opportunity to become familiar with the controversial nature of progress in science (growth of knowledge) and its implications for research methodology in education. The study is based on 41 participants who had registered for a nine-week course on Methodology of Investigation in…