Looking To The Future

In advocating an action-oriented and issues-based curriculum, this book takes the position that a major, but shamefully neglected, goal of science and technology education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to confront the complex and often ill-defined socioscientific issues they encounter in daily life as citizens in an increasingly technology-dominated world carefully, critically, confidently and responsibly. In outlining proposals for addressing socioscientific issues through a curriculum organized in terms of four increasingly sophisticated levels of consideration, the author adopts a highly critical and politicized stance towards the norms and values that underpin both scientific and technological development and contemporary scientific, engineering and medical practice, criticizes mainstream STS and STSE education for adopting a superficial, politically naïve and, hence, educationally ineffective approach to consideration of socioscientific issues, takes the view that environmental problems are social problems occasioned by the values that underpin the ways in which we choose to live, and urges teachers to encourage students to reach their own views through debate and argument about where they stand on major socioscientific issues, including the moral-ethical issues they often raise. More controversially, the author argues that if students are to become responsible and politically active citizens, the curriculum needs to provide opportunities for them to experience and learn from sociopolitical action. The relative merits of direct and indirect action are addressed, notions of learning about action, learning through action and learning from action are developed, and a case is made for compiling a user-friendly database reflecting on both successful and less successful action-oriented curriculum initiatives. Finally, the book considers some of the important teacher education issues raised by this radically new approach to teaching and learning science and technology. The book is intended primarily for teachers and student teachers of science, technology and environmental education, graduate students and researchers in education, teacher educators, curriculum developers and those responsible for educational policy. The author is Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), Adjunct Professor of Science Education at the University of Auckland and Visiting Professor of Science Education at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include considerations in the history, philosophy and sociology of science and their implications for science and technology education, STSE education and the politicization of both students and teachers, science curriculum history, multicultural and antiracist education, and teacher education via action research.

Throughout his career, Michael Reisman emphasized law’s function in shaping the future. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, major thinkers in the international legal field address the goals of the twenty-first century and how international law can address the needs of the world community.The result is a volume of outstanding scholarship that will appeal to all those – lawyers, political scientists, and educated laymen— interested in international law, legal theory, human rights, international investment law and commercial arbitration, boundary issues, law of the sea, and law of armed conflict.

Throughout his career, Michael Reisman emphasized law’s function in shaping the future. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, major thinkers in the international legal field address the goals of the twenty-first century and how international law can address the needs of the world community.

"This book evaluated the incorporation of technology into educational processes reviewing topics from primary and secondary school to higher education, from Second Life to wiki technology, from physical education to cultural learning"--Provided by publisher.

Looking for a future is not just a story. This story is a true story of a 13-year-old boy named Abdul who wanted a simple future like everyone else. Abdul left his hometown of Keren with his grandmother to look for his own future. This book tells how he crosses four different countries to get to the land he dreamed of. Abdul recounts the difficulties he faced alone trying to escape over the various borders. How it feels to walk on thorns and drive through the Sahara heat to reach Europe. Abdul also recounts some scenes he saw along his way that are hard to believe and impossible to forget.

We Americans approach -- not a crossroads -- but a branching of our political road where several destinations are possible. One requires surrendering power to what has become our de-facto governing or ruling class. Another takes us to an expanded democracy where the gap between the “have much” and the “have little” has been greatly reduced. In between are byways that eventually will trend one way or the other. The choices will be selected, in the way democracies have always selected, their paths, by the ongoing clash of economic interests. This book is a meditation about our nation, its ruling class now made up of what the book calls “warriors” and former President Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex,” and the rich, about our incessant warring around the world, about the fateful political and Constitutional presence of the South, and about our American way of religion and its church. Leslie Dunbar’s Looking for the Future is a memoir only to the extent that the author’s four score and eleven years of experience give insight to the rumblings of discontent and the disparities of power and wealth that undermine our national unity. This is, finally, a meditation on prospects for that unity and fraternity among us.

Science fact, not science fiction, on the cutting–edge developments that are already changing the course of our future Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live. Yet it isn’t every day you hear from the scientists themselves! Now, award–winning author Jim Al–Khalili and his team of top-notch experts explain how today’s earthshaking discoveries will shape our world tomorrow—and beyond. Pull back the curtain on: genomics robotics AI the “Internet of Things” synthetic biology transhumanism interstellar travel colonization of the solar system teleportation and much more And find insight into big–picture questions such as: Will we find a cure to all diseases? The answer to climate change? And will bionics one day turn us into superheroes? The scientists in these pages are interested only in the truth—reality–based and speculation–free. The future they conjure is by turns tantalizing and sobering: There’s plenty to look forward to, but also plenty to dread. And undoubtedly the best way to for us to face tomorrow’s greatest challenges is to learn what the future looks like—today.