In large measure the authors agree with Tobias and Fletcher's (2012) comments stating that clearer operational definitions of game features are needed to enable research on games and learning. The authors cannot accept that games are a subset of simulations, preferring to identify instances when games and simulations overlap and when they do not.…

The author discusses the evolution of ideas about the relationship between national and international development and educational change since World War II. He critically reviews relevant literature in comparative and international education, focusing on the concept of teachers' work. The analyses draw on theories of postcolonialism. The author…

A key goal of much educational policy is to help parents become involved in children's academic lives. The focus of such efforts, as well as much of the extant research, has generally been on increasing the extent of parents' involvement. However, factors beyond the extent of parents' involvement may be of import. In this article, the case is made…

This article presents the authors' response and clarifications to the comments of Margaret E. Gredler and of Karen A. Krasny, Mark Sadoski, and Allan Paivio on their article "Schema Theory Revisited." The authors first respond to Gredler's criticism contending that they "transmogrified" Harre's (1984) "ignominiously named...Vygotsky space" in…

A major problem in understanding a new theory is that rapid gains in popularity are accompanied by misconceptions and distortions (Valsiner, 1988). A developmental theorist, Lev Vygotsky, has rapidly become a much repeated name at all levels of educational psychology: theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical. And once again, inexplicable…

This article presents the authors' response to McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek's "Schema Theory Revisited." In "Schema Theory Revisited," McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek (2005) proposed a rearticulation of schema theory intended to encompass the ideas that schemata and other cognitive processes are embodied, that knowledge is situated in the transaction…

Explores the nature of a synthetic review of research. A review is "gatekeeping, policing, and productive rather than merely mirroring." A review can inform analyses of policy areas as it recognizes and fosters quality published work. The critical review can provide a basis from which new work can spring. (SLD)

A review is a tool of "recasting" of both literature and "the lived"--that location of social relations that mediates the recognition, reckoning, and witness of experience. The reviewer-researcher can be seen as a grammarian of the order, both handler and maker of the research tool. (SLD)

Argues that today's educational reform image of the teacher who collaborates and constructs knowledge in a decentralized system of education is used in different ideological images of school reform. Four principles of reason that function as unquestioned assumptions in reform are discussed. (SLD)

The new editors of the "Review of Educational Research" recognize their charge to be comprehensive in the process of review of educational research and to be of service to educators. They also acknowledge the challenge to be nurtured by the scholarship of the times and innovations in education. (SLD)

The complex relationship between cognitive developmental research and children's science curricula is explored, focusing on the tendency to attribute shortcomings in performance to the child's age, the confounding of weak knowledge with developmentally based deficiency, and emphasis of stage-based constraints on children's thinking. (SLD)

Factors that might influence the editorial process of peer review of articles are explored. These include the willingness of reviewers to perform the review, uninformed reviews, ideological or political bias, ethical conflicts of interest, and mistaken views of fairness. Awareness of these factors can help ensure article quality. (SLD)

A re-engineering of the educational system is proposed that focuses on mastery and more substantial learning activities and eliminates the constraints to learning that arise from the current insistence on grouping children by age. It is argued that eliminating age-based grouping has advantages that outweigh social disadvantage. (SLD)

This paper analyzes the teaching of reasoning and civility (citizenship) from the historical perspective of psychology. Three perspectives of human rationality--humans as rational, boundedly rational, and collectively rational--have differently defined the learner, the task, the teacher, and educational research. Unwillingness to address humans as…

Literacy, reasoning, and civility in education are discussed from the perspective of social organization and cultural patterning. Schools are part of the larger social environment and perpetuate social class and rank as well as teach the curriculum. Reforms should change the social relations between teachers and students as well as instructional…