The aim of this article is to articulate the basic elements of a comprehensive ethic of academic administration, organized around a set of three cardinal virtues: "commitment" to the good of the institution; good administrative "judgment"; and "conscientiousness" in discharging the duties of the office. In addition to explaining this framework and…

If a pluralistic democratic state such as the United States wishes to move beyond coexistence and toward a more reflective religious pluralism, then public schools must take epistemic issues seriously. Taking a cue from multicultural education, many have called for including the study of religion from a cultural perspective. I argue instead that,…

The Federal District Court decision in "Kitzmiller v. Dover" halted a school board's attempts to introduce an "intelligent design" account of human origins into science classrooms as an alternative to evolution. The judge's opinion judged the Board members' actions by implicit standards of deliberative democratic discourse, which this article…

Liberals champion the view that promoting autonomy--seeing to it that our children develop into individuals who are self-governing in the conduct of their lives--is a vital aim of education, though one generally accredited as being subsidiary to well-being. Our prime goal in this article is to provide a partial validation of this liberal ideal…

This article examines two basic questions: first, what constitutes a gifted person, and secondly, is there justification in making special educational provision for gifted children, where special provision involves spending more on their education than on the education of "normal" children? I consider a hypothetical case for allocating extra…

According to one recently influential version of liberalism, law and public policy in a democracy should be justified independently of the controversial ethical or religious beliefs that divide citizens, because political membership is coercive, involuntary and profoundly influential to our overall well-being. For children, however, the…

In this article I offer a framework for thinking about how public schools in liberal societies ought to respond to instances of arranged marriages for girls from deeply communitarian cultural groups. Focusing on three cases of culturally and religiously arranged marriages from the Hmong, Islamic fundamentalist and Mormon fundamentalist…

Background: Today, for most of us, technology is a vital and inevitable part of our lives. Due to its widespread use, a great emphasis is being given to educating generations about technology. And, every individual has his/her own style of organizing and collecting information. Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to identify the…

Background: Nanotechnology education has become an urgent priority to nurture skilled human resources for the rapidly developing nanotechnology-related industries. The promotion of popular science education focusing on nanotechnology is an ideal approach to bridge the gaps in formal curricula, and to stimulate curiosity about and interest in…

Background and purpose: The purpose of this exploratory case study is to describe how scholars negotiated disciplinary divides to develop and communicate to their students an understanding of the basic features of scientific knowledge. Our goals were to examine boundary crossing in interdisciplinary collaboration and to assess the efficacy of…

Background: Despite the large body of literature regarding student misconceptions, there has been relatively little cross-cultural research to directly compare the prevalence of common scientific misconceptions amongst students from different cultural backgrounds. Whilst previous research does suggest the international nature of many…

Background: Supporting pre-service teacher (PT) collaboration as a means of professional learning is a challenging but essential task for effective practice. However, teacher placements or practicums in schools, which is common practice within teacher education programmes, can often isolate PTs from sharing their experiences with each other.…

Background: Many researchers agree that students, especially primary students, have learning difficulties on the "Particulate Nature of Matter" unit. One reason for this difficulty is not considering individual differences for teaching science. In 4MAT model learning, environment is arranged according to individual differences. Purpose:…

In the UK, further education (FE) colleges play a key role in providing literacy programmes. This article draws upon our research in FE, with a focus on literacy, learning and identity, to explore how different learners are positioned differently depending on the value of the literacy practices they bring with them from home. Indeed, it is…

Higher apprenticeships are celebrated in current policy discourses as an alternative to traditional higher education, with the claim that they will prepare higher apprentices for their future careers and enhance industrial productivity through higher skill levels. This paper aims to scrutinise these claims using notions developed by Bernstein and…