Search results for: Role of education

In this article, the author explores the role of the arts in education through the lens of current research in cognitive neuroscience. The article explains that although arts education has largely used multiple intelligences theory to substantiate its presence in classrooms and schools, this relationship has ultimately hindered the field of arts education's understanding of the relationship between the arts, human development, and learning. The author argues that as we strive toward the new theory of whole-mindedness, learners can be freed from their labeling - and so can the arts in education. The arts not only represent a wide spectrum of crafts and domains valued by society in so many ways, but also represent core modalities that align with cognitive constructs in the mind-brain - constructs that are critical to our development as individuals and to a society that has entered a visual revolution.

In this article, the author describes his experiences as a suburban high school humanities teacher struggling to engage students with issues of social justice. The author is influenced by Freiré (1974/1998), who encourages socially conscious educators to place issues of social injustice at the center of pedagogy. However, the author works as an educator in a school primarily serving affluent white students. He finds that his students resist this multiculturally based social justice approach to humanities education. In this article, the author has described how he changed his selection of texts in response to student needs.

This article draws on the Scottish experience of undertaking research as part of the reforming process of an undergraduate program in initial teacher education. The article examines the tripartite tensions created by differing perspectives and rationales with respect to teacher education: policy, research and practice. The authors' experiences and reflections lead them to some conclusions about the nature of research-based practice in a policy-driven initiative.

In this article, the author suggests parables as means for enlivening teacher education and for stretching understanding. The author starts by offering a definition of parables. Then, the author presents an analysis of three examples—The Storm, The Sower, and The Fish and the Turtle—to illustrate some of the rich interpretative possibilities they offer for thinking critically and imaginatively about teaching and learning. Finally, the author considers a few reasons why parables have potential for enhancing teacher education, including as a means for exploring moral commitments and beliefs and for generating theories about teaching and learning.