This dual methods study explored one social studies teacher education program as it attempted to incorporate a cycle of practice-based teacher education into a methods course for the purpose of democratizing the teacher education experience. In addition to detailing the pedagogical decisions of the course instructor, researchers followed two social studies teacher candidates into their student teaching experience. Findings suggested that promoting social studies practice through a pedagogy of enactment is not enough. Rather, mentor teachers, course instructors, and teacher candidates (...) need to be aligned pedagogically as to the purposes and practices of social studies education. (shrink)

By means of data from the most comprehensive source of teacher data in the nation, Schools and Public School Teacher Staffing Survey (SASS), we designeda follow-up quantitative study to test the effects of two decades of national policy mandates on instructional time allotments for core academic subjects. We used data from the SASS data from National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) (1993/1994, 1999/2000, 2003/2004, 2007/2008) to examine national trends of continued marginalization of social studies by exploring the influence of recent (...) educational policy on defining elementary curricula in the 21st Century. With the reauthorization of NCLB in 2007 and newly mandated science testing in grades 3 through 5, we sought to understand statistically how this policy change has affected instructional decisions regarding time allocated to core academic subjects (ELA, mathematics, science and social studies) in elementary schools. Findings provide evidence of the national trend of the declining role of social studies in an era in which testing is associated with importance. Moreover, grade level disparities unique to social studies intensified the effects of 2007 NCLB policy mandates of science testing for 3rd through 5th grade students. Results provide a broader and nationally generalizable understanding of the declining role of social studies in elementary schools and the reduction of time practitioners spend teaching social studies. Thus, the growing imbalance in instructional time distributions for social studies and the tipping of the time distribution scales in favor of science document teacher responses to the expansion of testing mandates and the continued absence of studies from the national testing landscape. (shrink)

Using an Item response theory (IRT) analysis, this study examined ethnic and gender groups differences in exposure to content material (i.e. access to curriculum) assessed on the 12th grade NAEP US History 2010 exam. Employing multi-step data analysis procedures, authors examined race and gender using the NAEP Item Mapping Tool available through NCES. Results revealed item-level patterns, which suggest that females and Black students are more likely to answer questions, related to social history, particularly the Civil Rights, when accounting for (...) student achievement. While instructional exposure matters, how students of similar performance differentiate themselves on item response is related to demographics. These findings have substantial implications for social studies, which include the need to develop a more democratic curriculum that reflects the cultural identities of students in order to make history and history knowledge meaningful. Additionally, results have implications for tests. Assessments should be mindful of cultural validity of items and become more inclusive; perhaps aligning with a more culturally relevant curriculum. (shrink)

The WHO Simulation Initiative is a transnational project looking to support the establishment of simulations of the WHO World Health Assembly across all WHO regions.

Using data from the Survey of the Status of Social Studies ( S4), this article describes the instructional decisions and practices of elementary teachers in two neighboring states, one where social studies is tested and another where it is not. We define students’ opportunity to learn within these states as a composite of three variables: time allocations for social studies (teacher reported instructional time), methods for teaching social studies (teacher reported instructional strategies), and content focus (teacher reported content emphases and (...) state-mandated curriculum standards). Our guiding research question for this study was: To what extent do teachers’ perceptions of elementary school social studies instructional practices and content vary between two states with different testing policies for social studies? Initial findings revealed notable differences that could not be explained by testing policies alone. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory content analysis of the elementary social studies curricula in these neighboring states. We uncovered curricular differences that suggest that state standards influence teachers’ decisions in both what and how they choose to teach social studies. However, there were curriculum differences that did not align with S4 instructional methods and content focus output. Thus, we concluded that other factors apart from the curriculum guide teachers’ decision-making. Results provided evidence that students have different opportunities to learn based on (1) state testing policies in social studies, (2) curriculum content, (3) how social studies is delivered (e.g., stand-alone versus integration), and (4) time allocated to social studies. We concluded that these variables constrict or expand students’ opportunity to learn social studies and may influence teachers’ pedagogical and content choices in elementary social studies. (shrink)

Previous research has examined the role of formal classroom economics education on student learning. However, few studies have examined the role of both in school and out of school economics education exposure on student learning. Using data from the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-Economics 12th grade assessment, we conducted an analysis using multilevel modeling to examine both student- and school-level effects on economics content knowledge. We analyzed the relationship among student-level variables including demographics, economics course structure, and instructional (...) exposure. Unlike prior studies, we accounted for the nesting of students in schools and determined significant building-level effects associated with NAEP-E outcomes. We included district and state accountability policies (e.g., required testing and graduation requirements) as well as contextual variables (e.g., percent minority and percent college bound) at the building level. Findings offered a more nuanced interpretation of earlier NAEP-E studies and extended earlier analyses to include instructional exposure and building-level effects. (shrink)

For several terms at Cambridge in 1939, Ludwig Wittgenstein lectured on the philosophical foundations of mathematics. A lecture class taught by Wittgenstein, however, hardly resembled a lecture. He sat on a chair in the middle of the room, with some of the class sitting in chairs, some on the floor. He never used notes. He paused frequently, sometimes for several minutes, while he puzzled out a problem. He often asked his listeners questions and reacted to their replies. Many meetings were (...) largely conversation. These lectures were attended by, among others, D. A. T. Gasking, J. N. Findlay, Stephen Toulmin, Alan Turing, G. H. von Wright, R. G. Bosanquet, Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, and Yorick Smythies. Notes taken by these last four are the basis for the thirty-one lectures in this book. The lectures covered such topics as the nature of mathematics, the distinctions between mathematical and everyday languages, the truth of mathematical propositions, consistency and contradiction in formal systems, the logicism of Frege and Russell, Platonism, identity, negation, and necessary truth. The mathematical examples used are nearly always elementary. (shrink)

Rates of deceased organ donation in the UK fall well short of those reported from other parts of the world, and result in unnecessary deaths and avoidable morbidity. A particular feature of the UK problem is that its total potential for donation is lower than the actual number of donors reported in the highest-donating countries. This implies that while the identification, referral and conversion of recognized potential deceased donors is an important component of any strategic effort to increase donation, more (...) fundamental is an understanding of why some countries have a greater potential for donation, particularly donation after brain death. While it is possible that these differences reflect a difference in the incidence catastrophic brain injury or the outcomes from it, it is also possible that it reflects different approaches to the care that such patients receive when they are dying. (shrink)

Since of much of modern discourse, extending from cognitivism to connectionism to deconstructivism, has been greatly inclined to look at reality in relation to processes where the personal factor plays little if any causal role, the pursuit of wisdom today has become primarily identified with the logos or the pursuit of a rational account of reality and the rule governing principles behind it. Although there is not space enough to traverse all that is involved here, it will be argued in (...) this paper that the secrets of wisdom will never be revealed if its nature is limited to a singular description of just one function of thought. What is needed if the love of wisdom is to be regained is a more dynamic and symmetrical account—one that considers the reconstructive e nature and generative e capabilities of the human mind as well as the flexibility and complexity of thought; one that realizes that the end stages of logos are only the by-product of insight obtained from more personal and emotionally charged meaning; and one that takes seriously the role of mythos in the thinking process. (shrink)

The present trend towards an atheoretical statistical method of psychiatric classification has prompted many psychiatrists to conceive of "mental disorder", or for that matter any other psychopathological designation, as an indexical cluster of properties and events more than a distinct psychological impairment. By employing different combinations of inclusion and exclusion criteria, the current American Psychiatric Association's scheme (called DSM-III) hopes to avoid the over-selectivity of more metaphysical systems and thereby provide the clinician with a flexible means of dealing with a (...) wide diversity of cases. In the hope of redirecting future inquiry, the paper will argue: (1) that this recent trend might appear to be clinically beneficial, but in point of fact it is riddled by unsound theoretical conclusions which leave the field without a deeply reaching base for understanding and treating mental disorder, and (2) that, a fortiori, "mental disorder" is best conceived as not a cluster of properties and events, nor a metaphorical reaction to a breakdown in social interpersonal relations, but as a deeply laid condition characterized by the absence of an imaginally integrated system. (shrink)

As I put down my copy of The Making of Men and take up Volumes III and IV of Philosophy in Process, the period of the diary when Weiss was writing the book, I wondered whether the longer work showed more awareness of human weakness and disability. The philosophic program calls for the overcoming of bias and achievement of neutrality. Has Weiss ever admitted that men are sometimes born tired, suffer weaknesses, yield to the temptation of aiming low rather than (...) high, fail to put out much effort in capturing "the free energy" that Weiss ascribes to us all? If Weiss doesn't correct his account of human life that is too much based on his own great strengths, then the philosophy must be criticized as one-sided. Even if he has swept aside laziness as subhuman, much as a good teacher encourages students by expecting the superhuman and ignoring the subhuman, this practical encouragement cannot fully excuse theoretical failure in adequacy. For surely we who know Weiss know that he is not merely a performing artist who sometimes takes the classroom as a stage, but rather is a coach who knows how to bring the best performance out of his team of intellectual athletes. Most coaches expect to win every game and have a philosophy that never anticipates or prepares for failure. Is that why Weiss found himself so much at home in the world of Sport? (shrink)

The role of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in neurotransmission is well known. But long before synapses are formed in vertebrates, AChE is expressed in young postmitotic neuroblasts that are about to extend the first long tracts. AChE histochemistry can thus be used to map primary steps of brain differentiation. Preceding an possibly inducing AChE in avian brains, the closely related butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) spatially fore-shadows AChE-positive cell areas and the course of their axons. In particular, before spinal motor axons grow, their corresponding rostral (...) sclerotomes and myotomes express BChE, and both their neuronal source and myotomal target cells express AChE. Since axon growth has been found inhibited by acetylcholine, it is postulated that both cholinetsreases can attract neurite growth cones by neutralizing the inhibitor. Thus, the early expression of both cholinesterases that is at least partially independent from classical cholinergic synaptogenesis, sheds new light on the developmental and medical significance of these enzymes. (shrink)

I examine whether it is possible for content relevant to a computer''s behavior to be carried without an explicit internal representation. I consider three approaches. First, an example of a chess playing computer carrying emergent content is offered from Dennett. Next I examine Cummins response to this example. Cummins says Dennett''s computer executes a rule which is inexplicitly represented. Cummins describes a process wherein a computer interprets explicit rules in its program, implements them to form a chess-playing device, then this (...) device executes the rules in a way that exhibits them inexplicitly. Though this approach is intriguing, I argue that the chess-playing device cannot exist as imagined. The processes of interpretation and implementation produce explicit representations of the content claimed to be inexplicit. Finally, the Chinese Room argument is examined and shown not to save the notion of inexplicit information. This means the strategy of attributing inexplicit content to a computer which is executing a rule, fails. (shrink)

The Reformed Ecumenical Synod has published a Testimony on Human Rights written by a team of twenty-two Christian scholars from various areas of the world. Paul G. Schrotenboer has produced this pre'cis, selecting key passages from the full 160 page report, which is published by the RES Secretariat, 1677 Gentian Drive S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA 49508, $8.00 post paid. The numbers in brackets refer to pages in the full report.

Most literature on the ethics of global warming focuses on the obligations of industrialized states to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and to help poor countries do likewise. These books are no exception, arguing that the issue is a matter of international justice and equity.

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.