Review of ten Years of Educational Reform in the Federal Republic of germany or was there an Educational Catastrophe?

In one fell swoop, the revolution may accomplish what 10 years of education reform could not, the authors predict. The preparation that we have traditionally provided for teachers no longer allows them to maintain the status of with any credibility, because they cannot know as much as the Internet can make available to their students. HERE ARE THREE scenes that might well strike a fa-miliar note with Kappan readers. After you've read them, ask yourselves, What's wrong with these pictures? Scene 1. Private individuals and businesses, eager to keep their technological edge, frequently upgrade their technological equipment. They often donate used or broken computer equipment to schools and receive tax deductions. A few male teachers at a local school, who for idiosyncratic reasons are semiskilled computer users, are drafted into the role of school computer technicians. A district committee forms whose members are largely confused nonexperts who are assigned the task of creating yet another boring document: the district's plan. The world is changing fast, and, once again, these educators know they are playing catch-up. While talk among education policy makers moves from how computers can influence subject-matter instruction to establishing principles for distance learning, the teachers are spending fruitless hours trying to get odd bits of equipment to network, using old modems to access the Internet, and coaxing decrepit printers to print. In the end, skeptical veteran teachers at the school have even reason to believe that integrating technology into their lessons is going to be a waste of their time. Scene 2. One Saturday morning in the spring, a group of middle-grade teachers from the region gather on a campus of the University of California for a series of workshops on ways to teach sixth-graders about the ancient world. The first presenter has planned to demonstrate how her students do research on ancient Rome via Internet sites, but frustrated university staff members can't figure out how to get the room's network to access the Internet. A campuswide default setting that searches all modems for an open net connection is not yet in place in all classrooms. In the end, the harried presenter keeps her audience waiting while she photocopies the home pages of various sites and settles for describing the process to the group. Teachers leave the campus with an uncomfortable realization: not even the University of California can make this stuff work for teachers. Scene 3. About the same time in the spring, a major conference is held at Stanford University that is specifically designed for teacher leaders in technology. During a plenary session, computer guru Alan November describes the future: economically advantaged students and their parents will have access to up-to-date and exciting information on almost any subject via the Internet than most teachers or schools will be able to provide. A bewildered coordinator from a leading high school sees the implications and raises her hand to ask, Why will kids come to school? * * * At least since the Carnegie Commission's 1986 report, A Nation Prepared, education reformers and policy makers have been campaigning for a changing role for teachers - but for reasons other than the impact of and computer use. Teachers have been encouraged to become a guide on the side rather than the traditional sage on the stage. Shortly thereafter, in 1988, Kathleen Devaney and Gary Sykes described a new conception of teaching that emphasizes the continual and changing interplay between thought and action, based on close observation and reflection about the encounter or 'match' between students and subject matter, so that teaching would be more than skilled transmission but would become principled action.1 In one fell swoop, the revolution may accomplish what 10 years of education reform could not. …

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how mathematics secondary schools' teachers in \hbox{Jordan} perceive critical thinking and compares teachers' perceptions before and after educational reform. Data were collected from 12 schools twice: in 1988 and in 2004 by interviewing 47 Mathematics teachers. The interview included questions related to teachers' understanding of critical thinking, its role and importance in learning Mathematics, and instructional strategies that could help improve students' critical thinking skills. Results found no improvement in secondary Mathematics teachers' perceptions of critical thinking despite 15 years of educational reform. The majority of Mathematics teachers seemed not to have a clear and adequate understanding of critical thinking. Though most of the teachers claimed they have to teach critical thinking, more than half of them could not suggest any learning situation that could help in fostering critical thinking in Mathematics classes. Also most of the teachers claimed that critical thinking would help students in learning Mathematics; yet less than half were able to give a convincing justification for that. A small percentage of the secondary Mathematics teachers believed they can help all students to foster their critical thinking. It is thus recommended that the concept of critical thinking be transferred from the realm of rhetoric to the field of practice. The paper ends with some recommendations related to the Mathematics teachers training programs in view of the results of this study.

Reviewing one hundred years of educational reform in Israel requires the assessment of the impact of the three ideological trends that drove its development. Each of these trends, or waves of reform, is each distinguished by particular theoretical concepts, the nature of the educational work it inspired, the educational discourse it initiated, and the criticism it received that eroded, over time, its standing and contributed to its replacement.

(2012). Looking Back at Thirty Years of Educational Reform and Development in China. Chinese Education & Society: Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 3-6.

1. Innovation in Education through Action Research 2. 30 Years of Educational Reform through Action Research: Traces in the Austrian School System 3. Addressing End of Life Issues through Peer Education and Action Research 4. The International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research: Legitimating the Science and Ensuring Quality 5. Research as Empowerment: Blending PAR with Community Development 6. Empowering Young Care Leavers Through Peer Research 7. Powerful Partnership in a School-University Research Collaboration 8. Camera, Action! Teaching Documentary Video as a Tool for Empowering Weak Students 9. Reflective Processes in Action Research and in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies - Two Approaches for Teaching Professionals 10. Learning to Guide Open Inquiry: From Self-Experience to Transfer into Teaching 11. Action Research in Science Education - From General Justifications towards a Specific Model in Practice 12. Action Research with Chemistry Teachers in Israel 13. Critical Action Research and the Challenge of Postmodernism: Perspectives and Limitations 14. What Is Good Action Research? Reflections about Quality Criteria

The past two decades have been a period of active education reform throughout much of the world, and East Asia is no exception. This paper synthesizes findings from a series of empirical studies of educational reform in Thailand where an ambitious educational reform law was adopted in 1999. The purpose is to identify lessons learned about educational leadership and change that may be applicable both in Thailand and other parts of East Asia. The studies reveal successful reorientation of the nation’s educational system around a new vision and education goals. However, the vision of change has been much slower to penetrate the daily practice of Thailand’s 35,000 principals and 400,000 teachers. The paper identifies factors that are impacting successful reform in Thailand and draws implications for leading educational reform and change in the East Asia region.

This article explores the European-wide educational reform known as the Bologna Process in order to provide an understanding of the methodology that will be used by European countries to assess course credit hours as well as degree programs. The Bologna Process is culmination of years of educational reform within the European Union (EU) and more generally Europe aimed at harmonizing educational standards to promote student mobility and more recently quality assurance. The Bologna Process will eventually have an important impact on how international admissions offices and ultimately advisors assesses course and credit transfer. This article examines the development of the Bologna Process by first tracing the origins and logic of the European Credit Transder System (ECTS). While the Bologna Process entails sweeping curricula reform, ECTS started out with a narrow mandate to standardize the methodology for credits in order to facilitate student and credit transfer among European universities. The second part of the article explores the Bologna Process and its implication for credit transfer, study abroad and international admissions. While Bologna is still at a nascent stage, it has already engendered important state-level reforms in higher education. The article concludes by examining how this reform is currently being viewed in the US as well as providing some issues of concern for American administrators as sell as advisors.

Drawing on a four-year study of the last 40 years of education reform in Los Angeles, Learning from L.A. captures the sweeping change in American education. It puts forth a provocative argument: while school reformers and education historians have tended to focus on the success or failure of individual initiatives, they have overlooked the fact that, over the past several decades, the institution of public education itself has been transformed. Colorful characters, dramatic encounters, and political skirmishes enliven this rich account of the wrenching transformations that took place in the Los Angeles Unified School District from the 1960s onward. The book focuses particularly on four key ideas that emerged through a succession of reforms beginning in the 1990s decentralization, standards, school choice, and grassroots participation. Though the particular plans that gave rise to these ideas may have faded, the ideas themselves have taken root and developed in ways that those who inaugurated or participated in these reforms never anticipated. Winner of Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Districts in Research and Reform Publication Award, American Educational Research Association

Facing the industry and train high quality applied talents, thi s is one of the important transformation of higher education in China. In fact, since 2008, began to explore the transformation of the local undergraduate universities in our province, established the applied undergraduate colleges and universities alliance, clearly put forward the collective transformation, the means of development, the resources sharing. Anhui Polytechnic University also explicitly proposed the high-quality applied talents training goal. Why transformation in local colleges, some scholars from the perspective of higher education reform two 30 the reflection, believe that after thirty years of education reform, adhere to the three facing, is actually for 30 years before the combining education with productive labor education idea of major innovations. We believe that this kind of reflection to the transformation of the local colleges and universities are ongoing, undoubtedly have important reference.

Policy-oriented research in education covers a very short period indeed. Research deliberately and systematically geared to provide an extended knowledge base for reform and improvement in education initiated by public policymakers is hardly more than 25 years old. Over the last few years, I have had opportunity to ponder about this in conducting a study on how research and policymaking in education interrelate in Sweden, the Federal Republic of Germany, Britain, and (at the federal level) in the United States (Husen & Kogan, in press). Because I have been able to follow what has happened in educational research as well as to study its impact on educational policy in these four countries, the study has a comparative dimension. The comparisons have been made under two major aspects: (a) intrascientific or internal conditions, such as research paradigms, schools of thought, influential researchers, and (b) extrascientific or external conditions, such as availability of research funds and institutions, the market for research, the ideology of the state in terms of propensity for social intervention and the setting within which liaison between researchers and policymakers could be established.

教育改革の25年 －政策、成果、展望－

As the age of educational reform begins the new millennium, years of educational reform in mathematics and science have not yielded anticipated results. The performance of students in the United States, compared to students in industrialized nations, demonstrates that American students are not acquiring the math and science knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy. The Partnership Award, a collaborative initiative between Mississippi Valley State University and NASA, provides a unique solution to a multi-faceted problem. Pre-service and in-service teachers, working in rural Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities (EZ/EC), are provided with opportunities to acquire specialized training in math and science instruction with hands-on activities included in the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program. The resources of NASA, especially remote sensing, are utilized to enhance curriculum and to increase student performance on standardized tests.

The Transformation of Technological and Vocational Education Under Taiwan’s 30 Years of Educational Reform

In this paper, the application-oriented non-computer professional undergraduate students being the objects, the college computer-based courses' construction being the main line, innovation idea of the Practice Guidance is advocated. Talking about the orientation thinking in personnel training, the context structure in teaching material, and the supportable measures in its system, etc., the experience and gain from full four years of education reform in the process of Practice Guidance that brings both teachers and students pleasant and easy will be explained for reference to the similar courses and institutes in their teaching reform practice.

Despite years of education reform, America's public schools continue to provide an unequal education to many low-income and minority students. Although urban schools receive millions of dollars to correct disparities, the standardized test scores for African-American and Latino students remain much lower than those of white students. This chapter discusses the influence race and discrimination have on the achievement gap in public education. It includes a description of the gap's emergence during the 1970s, the social and political changes the caused it to widen during the 1980s and strategies for closing the gap.