Suchergebnisse

Why don't political science teachers teach their students about many of the important policy issues that political systems face today? Why is it uncommon in undergraduate political science classes to find discussions of the population explosion and famine in the Third World, and of acid rain and toxic wastes in the First and Second worlds? Why aren't our students knowledgeable about the arguments for and against nuclear power and acquainted with the problems the world faces as it moves from a reliance on oil to a reliance on renewable fuels? And why do we often ignore such awesome issues as those connected with the greenhouse effect and nuclear war? I believe that the answer to these questions is that political science teachers often don't know how to deal with these subjects in a respected, scholarly way — in a manner that will prevent the class from just becoming a forum for the discussion of current events. I believe also that we have a concept — development — which can serve as the necessary tool we need to allow us to approach these issues in a responsible manner.

This article presents a career development consultation skill training program for enhancing the professional growth of beginning teachers by master teacher mentors trained by counselors and counselor educators.

Members of the Department of Communication Disorders and Special Education and the Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsburg University developed a computer-based interactive videodisc instructional program to teach speechreading skills. Speechreading Challenges on Videodisc provides users with practice in speechreading words, sentences, and stories presented by over 150 people in a user friendly environment. Unlike traditional videotapes, videodisc technology provides immediate feedback to the user. To determine the program's effectiveness in teaching speechreading, a comprehensive evaluation of the program was undertaken. Seventy-four college students participated in a study using the program to learn speechreading. Results indicated a statistically significant improvement in speechreading ability from pretest to posttest measures on both the videodisc program evaluation as well as on the Costello Test of Speechreading.

The need configurations underlying the motivations of public school teachers are examined here with regard to teacher perceptions of pay equity relative to other factors such as work autonomy, intrinsic work elements, and satisfaction of so-called higher-order needs. A Q sort forced distributions research instrument containing 37 attitudinal statements was administered to a group of 167 teachers of a medium-sized city in Oklahoma. The survey netted 135 usable questionnaires (76%). The data were R factor analyzed producing six clear factors, which dealt with: social variables and collegial support; positive supervisor relations; gratification from intrinsic work elements and dissatisfaction with extrinsic elements such as pay and benefits; interesting work and appropriate responsibility levels; opportunities for learning and development combined with negative attitudes about day-to-day duties; and job security, clear expectations, and excessive workloads. The study concluded that teacher motivation is based in the freedom to try new ideas, achievement of appropriate responsibility levels, and intrinsic work elements. The latter were of transcendent importance to our respondents. Based upon our findings, schemes such as merit pay were predicted to be counterproductive in service organizations which employ professionally trained people.

This article focuses on anxiety in teaching and learning. It argues that in essence the teacher's role is to contain anxiety for the sake of learning. The teacher's skill in setting up and maintaining a "containing space" is the keystone on which the various aspects of the art of good teaching rest. Within this space, learning can be experienced as the expansion of potential, not merely the mastery of content and predefined competencies. Despite the differences in aims, a strong "family resemblance" exists between teaching and psychoanalysis in terms of setting, role, transference, and underlying notions of human development.