Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an…

Scandinavia has long been admired by American liberals and sex education advocates who cite comparable rates of adolescent sexuality, yet lower rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion in Scandinavia. The United States has, however, two variables with which Scandinavia in general, and Norway in particular, has not…

Quality assurance in medical education is a complex matter. Institutions and external critics of accreditation processes often question the objectivity of peer judgements. Members of accreditation panels similarly often feel at a loss for a lack of mechanisms to help them arrive at a collective assessment of the performance of an institution. In…

Education in the United States is becoming increasingly standardized, with the standards being initiated at the national level and then trickling down to the state level and finally the local level. Yet, this top-down approach to educational standards carries with it significant limitations, such as loss of local autonomy and restrictions on the…

PBL is described as small-group collaborative learning; however, literature on how collaboration is enacted in PBL contexts is limited. A two-year ethnographic study examined the experiences and responses of Asian students to the obligations of PBL in a Western context. Participant-observation, videotape data, and video-stimulated recall…

The specific purpose of education is to "prepare" children so that they are able to maximise their potential and participate in the society or community around them. In order for many Third World nations to access information technology, the provision of language programs, particularly English, has become necessary. However, in the…

Background: Scholars are bringing much-needed attention to the persistent problem of academic underachievement among African American children in the United States, who continue to lag behind White school children in all socioeconomic groups. This is especially true of impoverished African Americans. Although some link these outcomes to poor…

A facilitator is considered to act intentionally when they are deliberate about what they are doing and can provide rationales for their actions. The same facilitator is said to practice intuitively when they are not able to articulate a clear rationale for their actions, yet they are still able to facilitate effectively. A review of the…

Responds in an ongoing dialogue with Peter Gronn about the need for self-critical inquirers who emphasize openness and skepticism in research methods and ideas. (MLF)

Chapters in this volume provide an introduction to qualitative research in higher education, organizing the discussion around four central themes. Part 1, Situating Ourselves and Our Inquiry, contains: (1) Objectivity in Educational Research (Elliot Eisner); (2) Truth in Trouble (Kenneth Gergen); (3) Beyond Translation: Truth and Rigoberta Menchu…

The article offers guidelines for researchers using qualitative research methods, including interviews, with retarded populations whose verbal skills are limited. It is important for the researcher to supplement information received through verbal discussion with observations of home and workplace. (Author/DB)

In this article, the author discusses the importance of Viktor Lowenfeld's influence on her research, describes visual anthropology, gives examples of her research, and examines the implications of this type of research for teachers. The author regards Lowenfeld's (1952/1939) early work with children in Austria as a form of participant observation…

Many anthropologists have turned to creative writing as they struggle to represent experiences/encounters with other cultures. Study abroad students, while not necessarily anthropologists-in-the-making, are also representers (and representees) of exotic cultures while abroad. This paper explores creative writing as a strategy to help study abroad…

The article examines "task" as research construct as predominantly conceived in terms of task-as-workplan in the task-based learning/second language acquisition literature. It is suggested that "task" has weak construct validity and ontology in an overwhelmingly quantitative paradigm because the construct has a "split personality."…

Multi-class teaching is a common phenomenon in small schools not only in Fiji, but also in many countries. The aim of the present study was to determine the teaching styles adopted by teachers in the context of multi-class teaching. A qualitative case study research design was adopted. This included a school with multi-class teaching as the norm.…