Survey data from 174 university students are presented, on a scale designed to measure preference for absolute knowledge and perspective in instruction, including online discussions. Results demonstrate a strong effect of class level such that students in lower grade levels reported a greater preference for instruction involving unambiguous…

E-learning and distance education can play a role in helping older adults become integrated with the rest of society. As demographic and cultural changes affect the place of older adults in society, online learning programs become increasingly appealing to older adults. In this article, I discuss (1) the changing notion of work and learning in…

Instructors commonly assume that the successful online course must replicate its live counterpart by including a variety of interactions among student, instructor, and computer. Given the changing lifestyles prompted by an evolving Internet, an increasing student need for autonomy, and student learning styles, highly interactive courses may not…

Web-based distance education has become a "real" teaching alternative which has instigated more research particularly in the past decade. This research has commonly focused on four major perspectives: (1) information-technology; (2) course management systems (including course communication tools); (3) information design; and (4) online learning.…

With the increasing number of online courses within many higher education institutions, experienced instructors are facing the possibility of teaching online. These faculty members may face the task of converting their well-established face-to-face teaching strategies into an online environment. To better understand this transition, we analyzed…

Standards are the results of concerted efforts to improve the quality of education found in distance education. Legal and ethical standards are needed to ensure a positive educational environment. Participants from different cultural, physical, economical, and intellectual backgrounds should have equal access to all the positive aspects of…

This paper, which is particularly centered on the student's learning process, is the first half of a detailed study of selectivity in Whitehead?s philosophy of education. Here, by setting forth the analogy between the creative process exhibited in Whitehead's Theory of Prehensions and the learning process through an interpretation of the term,…

Recognizing the challenge of adequate evaluation in higher education, this essay introduces some of the critical, alternative-seeking conversation about educational measurement. The thesis is that knowledge, value, and meaning emerge in the relational dynamics of education, thus requiring complex approaches to evaluation, utilizing relational…

A central thesis of this paper is that the mind and its thought evolve out of the experience of the whole person in their unique surroundings. It attempts to articulate the meaning and value of Emotional Education, especially in its relation to thought processes. It shows the value of learning from the particular, and from awareness of feeling…

In this paper, we analyzed the descriptions of learning provided by 234 College of Education students from Finland and Canada and compared them with Whitehead's (1932/1962) epistemological theory of the rhythm of mental growth. The students were asked to "Give a concrete example of a situation in which you really learned something." The…

In this paper, I will address a constructive criticism of the papers that appeared as a Symposium on Whitehead's Process Philosophy of Education (Interchange, 26(4), pp. 341?415, 1995). In his criticism of those papers, George Allan (1998) claimed that the contributors to the Symposium were not as Whiteheadian as they thought they were because…

Besides learning transmitted content, university students develop learning patterns through pedagogical processes designed into the structure of their courses. Courses shaped within the assumptions of epistemologies and ontologies that only afford narrow learning patterns can eschew learning as valuing processes. However, university courses can be…

On the basis of insights provided by Whitehead and John Cobb, I show how the People's Free University of Saskatchewan (PFU) is a working model of free, open, community-based education that embodies several characteristics of Whitehead's philosophy of education. Formed in opposition to the growing commercialization at the original "people?s…

This article attempts to demonstrate the intelligibility of Bergson's philosophy by analyzing his philosophical method and then applying it to the notions of biological time and of temporal hierarchy in biology. Bergson's philosophical method contains three parts: the first is factual and scientific, the second intuitional and reflective, and the…

In this paper, I combine aspects of process philosophy and elements from philosophies of difference in order to give some indication of how we might begin to construct a metaphysics of contemporary science. I will focus on the work of Whitehead and Deleuze as representatives of each respective tradition and try to show how their work can be…