Suchergebnisse

Homeschooling is increasingly becoming an exercised option by parents for a variety of academic, religious, political, and social reasons. Currently, 2% of US school children are schooled at home. This project focuses on families who have chosen a city or county-sponsored homeschool program and compares them to parents who have chosen a traditional school. This comparison allows an exploration of how school structures and practices impact family-school relations. There are both external and internal pressures that ensure that homeschool families conform to traditional ideas of education. However, through defining activities, cracks in this reproduction appear. In defining practices as "doing school" or as "having fun," families and homeschool programs delineate who is responsible and what expectations are placed on the activity. In arenas defined as "doing school," the program has more control, whereas in arenas defined as "having fun, " families assume more responsibility. In homeschool programs, cross-generational and cross-peer interaction facilitates authentic learning practices, which departs from traditional conceptions of education. However, parents can maintain traditional ideas because the project -based learning is defined as "having fun" and is not understood to be as serious as "doing school" which is done at home and involves book work and evaluation. Parents point to outcomes of higher self esteem and a personalized learning experience for their homeschooled students. The project uses interviews and participant observation to understand how meaning is created and how it informs practice. Examining how parents construct the meaning of education gives us further understanding of the place of education in families' lives, the meaning people assign to education, and the practices that accompany this meaning-making activity. Understanding how people create meaning within social institutions can also be a stepping stone to understanding how practices and meanings change, and how schools can address the changing social demands of what education means

Education is negatively associated with mortality for most major causes of death. The literature ignores that cause-specific hazard rates are interdependent and that education and mortality both depend on cognitive ability. We analyze the education-mortality gradient at ages 18-63 using Swedish register data. We focus on months lost due to a specific cause of death which solves the interdependence problem, and use a structural model that derives cognitive ability from military conscription IQ scores. We derive the educational gains in months lost and the selection effects for each cause of death, and quantify the selection contribution of observed characteristics and unobserved cognitive ability. In a standard Cox model that controls for observed IQ, primary education was associated with 6 months lost when compared to secondary education. In a structural model that accounts for cognitive ability the difference was 43% larger. In addition, the largest educational gains were achieved for the lowest education group in the reduction of external cause mortality. The educational gains in cardiovascular mortality was small, mainly due to large selection effects. These results suggest that educational differences in cause specific mortality may be biased by conventional Cox regression analyses.

One of the greatest proponents of public education, Thomas Jefferson, believed that only an educated population could assure the survival of democracy. His Bill for the General Diffusion of Knowledge in 1778 attempted to establish an elementary grade of instruction in Virginia that would enable citizens to "understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self government†(Jefferson, 1984). In a time when liberty, freedom, and democracy were a common concern, the purpose of education was to prepare individuals for civic duties.

The promise that education holds out for many parents is that through a sustained effort and investment in school work on the part of their children, these can hope for a better quality of life than they themselves had. One of the predominant concerns of educational theory and research in the last four decades has been that schooling, rather than bringing about social equality and equity, serves to reproduce privilege from one generation to the next. This problem was also brought up at a political level when in the 1950s and 1960s in such countries as the USA, the UK, Sweden and Australia the prevalent belief was that schools and education could bring about an open society where effort and ability rather than accidents of birth would determine one's occupational future. Citizens would therefore move upwards or downwards socially according to their success at school rather than because of inherited privilege. It was for this reason that in those countries by the 1960s - and in Malta in the 1970s - schools were restructured through the introduction of comprehensivization and the removal of streaming and tracking to enhance an 'open' school system. ; peer-reviewed

Young people's distance from politics is seen as a central problem of democratic societies. Compared to the first IEA-study in the era of political mobilization during the early seventies the results for today's young Germans are worse. Regarding political knowledge, the results for young Germans are mediocre; conspicuous and alarming is the unwillingness of German youngsters to participate in school, politics and society. These results can be explained by using data and relations found by the international comparative project Civic Education about the specific meaning of conditions and results of political education in different school systems and societies. This paper discusses several results and questions and shows that one-dimensional explanations are hardly possible in the complex field of political education.

A review essay on two books by Birgit Brock-Utne, Educating for Peace & Feminist Perspectives on Peace and Peace Education (Oxford: Pergamon, 1985 & 1989, respectively [see listings in IRPS No. 62]). Despite the similarity of titles these books are considered complementary, rather than overlapping: the first describes women's actions for peace & against armament & violence; & the second analyzes different perspectives on the position of women, & the concrete consequences of the author's broad notion of peace (absence of violence & equality of rights). Brock-Utne's standpoints on the sources of the underprivileged living conditions of women & on gender-specific socialization determinants, her analyses of historical perspectives on pioneer female peace activists, & of the effects of televised violence, & her concept of peace as absence of violence are criticized. The second book's analysis of peace education in the formal school system, it is suggested, lacks sufficient reference to relevant research. While the books contribute to peace education & research on it, the interrelation between individual, social, & national violent interactions requires further research. 5 References. I. Shagrir

Using the example of ghosts and religion, this paper argues for the importance of social context and background operative in Hobbes's account of social life and, in particular, the role of environment, education, and language in explaining much of what we think we know, and much of what we believe. The paper looks to aspects of Hobbes's epistemology and his account of belief, to make the case that he recognizes how a kind of social conditioning is required to sustain certain beliefs. The paper briefly concludes with a focus on the commonwealth itself and how the example of religion and religious belief extends to the commonwealth and the kinds of beliefs required for the commonwealth to sustain itself.

THE PAPER ESTIMATES THE CONTRIBUTION OF ELASTICITY OF TAX REVENUES TO THE GROWTH OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURES IN THE 50 STATES SINCE 1960. THE ANALYSIS SUGGESTS THAT FEDERAL AID, RATHER THAN TAX ELASTICITY, IS THE BEST PREDICTOR OF STATE EXPENDITURE GROWTH, WHILE LEGISLATIVE CHANGES IN TAX STRUCTURE HAVE HELPED STATES KEEP PACE WITH RISING DEMAND FOR REVENUE DUE TO GROWTH IN POPULATION AND REAL INCOME.

In response to recent developments in the labour market, in occupational structure and in occupational practice, many aspects of vocational education and training are subjects of discussion and in transition. The tertiary sector is growing, some occupations are integrating while others are differentiating. New methods of production and organization require new types of employee competencies: problem-solving and social-communicative skills are becoming more and more important. The article focuses on the importance and the possibilities of shaping these developments from a gender perspective. First, the significance of changing qualification requirements is discussed for the technical sector, the service and care sector and the economic-administrative sector. Second, two innovations in vocational education and training are discussed: the recognition of prior learning and the development of flexible, modular educational pathways.

The article presents the main aspects of theoretical and experimental study of the conditions for the "soft skills" formation of future athletes and physical education teachers in higher education institution. The content and features of the "soft skills" formation of a professional are revealed. The place of "soft skills" in the professional structure of the athlete and teacher personality and the role in the implementation of professional activities is determined. Complex multi-level solution of problems; critical thinking; creativity; people management; cooperation with others; emotional intelligence; judgment and decision making; customer orientation; ability to negotiate; cognitive flexibility; stress resistance; effective job search have been chosen for criteria of "soft skills" formation of university students majoring in physical culture and sports. Levels of formation of "soft skills" are ranked according to the degree of manifestation into initial, low, medium and high.With the help of these indicators, the conditions for the effective "soft skills" formation of modern students in the field of physical education and sport of higher education institutions are experimentally tested.It is recommended to supplement part of the educational components of the professional training of the educational program with topics that will contribute to the formation of "soft skills". It is important to target students to participate in soft skills training, and also to bring up the need for self-improvement as soft skills are crucial for graduates in employment and career development in the context of globalization.

""To claim that Christianity ought to restrict itself to the narrow circle of the elect, and not influence the nations themselves, is to wish that this religion which has, by its divine nature, the most powerful effect on man, should have less effect than all other religions." Frédéric DeRougement As American Christians, individualism is the air we breathe. In particular, the revivalism of the nineteenth century has made us think that saving individuals is all that matters, and that church and government are distractions from true Christianity. Swiss Reformed writer Frédéric DeRougement saw the rampant revivalism and libertarianism of his day and offered a careful theological critique of it. DeRougement's arguments are more relevant than ever for Christians who have swallowed the lies of secularism and libertarianism"--

Recursively in the literature, public spending on education is found to have an ambiguous impact on economic growth. Using World Development Indicators from the World Bank, we revisit an endogenous growth model from Blankenau et al. (2007), over the last thirty years. Considering the fiscal effect, we analyse the empirical relationship between public spending on education and economic development. Despite having a positive and significant impact on the overall group of 65 countries belonging to upper-middle and high-income countries, our main results are not robust to subgroups , focusing on the economic development. Once we control for the performance of public expenditure, to effectively generate human capital, we find a positive and significant impact from increasing expenditure on education, in what we call "performing countries". Our results demonstrate that increasing spending on education cannot be growth enhancing without considering the prism of performance.