Adults spend most of their conscious life speaking, comprehending, writing, and reading discourse. It is entirely appropriate for cognitive science to investigate discourse especially as transmitted texts or printed media, such as books, newspapers, magazines, and computers. However, there is another reason why text understanding has been one of the prototypical areas of study in cognitive science: Interdisciplinary work is absolutely essential. As cognitive scientists have unraveled the puzzles of text comprehension, they have embraced the insights and methodologies from several (...) disciplines. (shrink)

On taking power the coalition government embarked on what many commentators believe is a radical programme of public policy reform. Under Michael Gove, education policy has become totemic to those arguing that Britain?s classrooms are mired in academic mediocrity and behavioural failure. One policy response by the government has been to propose fast-tracking ex-armed services personnel into schools in England as teachers, especially in inner-city areas. This paper examines the educational and pedagogical merits of this proposal and the underlying beliefs (...) that underpin it. Based on a critical evaluation of the literature, it argues that rather than representing a genuinely radical and innovative attempt to tackle educational underachievement, the Troops to Teachers initiative is deeply reactionary. One, based on discredited pedagogical philosophies which fail to address what the educational community believes a ?good? education is, devalues teaching as a profession and ignores the socio-economic factors that primarily determine academic performance. (shrink)