Contribution To Education

This book summarises and discusses key findings from the learning sciences, shedding light on the cognitive and social processes that can be used to redesign classrooms to make them highly effective learning environments.

This classic work first published in 1965 presents three explosive ideas' that should be at the centre of the school curriculum: culture, class and evolution. Brameld, a pioneer of the idea that education can be used to transform society, with schools helping individuals to develop socially and learn responsible citizenship, is still relevant in today's dicussions of bilingual education in the US, the lack of resources in poor school districts and the teaching of evolution. A timely exploration into how to foster democratic principles through education.'

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.

Science Teaching explains how history and philosophy of science contributes to the resolution of persistent theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues in science education. It shows why it is essential for science teachers to know and appreciate the history and philosophy of the subject they teach and how this knowledge can enrich science instruction and enthuse students in the subject. Through its historical perspective, the book reveals to students, teachers, and researchers the foundations of scientific knowledge and its connection to philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and broader social influences including the European Enlightenment, and develops detailed arguments about constructivism, worldviews and science, multicultural science education, inquiry teaching, values, and teacher education. Fully updated and expanded, the 20th Anniversary Edition of this classic text, featuring four new chapters—The Enlightenment Tradition; Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis; Science, Worldviews and Education; and Nature of Science Research—and 1,300 references, provides a solid foundation for teaching and learning in the field.

This publication contains original research targeting scientific specialists in the field of education, through research endeavours grounded on a philosophical basis, as well as being embedded in the empirical. The research methodology of each chapter emanates from applicable philosophical assumptions in the form of an applicable theoretical and conceptual framework. The latter forms a firm basis for the application of sound empiricism. The content of this book adds to the body of scholarly knowledge in education. In his evaluation of the book, Acting Executive Dean, Faculty of Education and Training, Professor Akpovire Oduaran, made the following remarks: ‘To a large extent, the ideas put together in this book have come from data generated not just from literature found in books and journals but actual interactions with educators and the learning environment. So then, what the reader is offered in this volume is the articulation of ideas that have been interrogated, structured and presented in surprisingly simplistic and yet incisive and academically enriching content that can match the standards of scholarship that is available in the Western World. Yet, what makes this book so welcome, relevant and timely, is the fact that it is built around Afrocentric theories and practices such as one may find in imported literature.’