AACSB International–The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is a nonprofit association of approximately 900 educational institutions, corporations, and other organizations dedicated to the promotion and improvement of higher education in management, accounting, and business administration. AACSB International serves as a professional association for college and university …
The role of the academic adviser shifts as student populations and administrative conditions in universities change over time. Faculty members are increasingly committed to teaching undergraduates, and academic advising is an innovative form of teaching that helps students become involved in their own choices. Instilling students with a sense of commitment to their future plans and responsibility …
Academic calendar use at the higher education level has followed a consistent and non-varied path over the last few decades. Five types of calendars have been principally used. These include the early semester, traditional semester, quarter system, trimester, and "4-1-4" calendars. A longitudinal review of use patterns revealed that the traditional semester (a calendar that divides t…
Academic deans are typically the highest ranking academic officials in an institution, next only to the president or chancellor and the provost or chief academic officer. Academic deans preside over colleges, schools, or divisions comprised of a cluster of disciplines or disciplinary specialties, such as arts and sciences, engineering, fine arts, business, natural sciences, education, and health s…
Discipline is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a branch of learning or scholarly instruction." Fields of study as defined by academic discipline provide the framework for a student's program of college or postbaccalaureate study, and as such, define the academic world inhabited by scholars. Training in a discipline results in a system of orderly behavior recognized…
Professors have a variety of responsibilities, which generally fall within one of three main areas: research, teaching, and service. In research and teaching, and sometimes in service, inquiry is the key aspect of what professors do. In research, professors examine traditional and new ideas and draw conclusions; in teaching, professors share information and knowledge with students, raising questio…
The process by which colleges and universities acquire qualified applicants and hire faculty members, and by which academics seek and gain academic employment, is known as the academic labor market. Few general elements characterize the academic labor market. Depending on their mission, colleges and universities seek faculty with diverse backgrounds to perform different institutional roles. Likewi…
The major field of study is the most prominent and significant structural element of the American baccalaureate degree. For students it is often a key tp> choosing which college or university to attend. College catalogs frequently claim certain types of learning result from study in a particular academic major. They also often suggest that study in specific majors prepares individuals for graduate…
Accelerated Schools emerged from a national school reform movement established in 1986 to replace academic remediation for at-risk students with academic enrichment. Research studies done in the 1980s documented a growing population of students who were at risk of educational failure because they lacked the experiences in their homes, families, and communities on which school success is based. The…
The objectives of colleges and universities differ from those of commercial enterprises for which profit is the primary motive in that colleges and universities seek to provide educational services within the existing levels of revenues available, although a slight level of excess revenue may be desired by some governing boards. A balanced budget where expenditures remain within available revenues…
The United States, and a small but increasing number of other countries, use the process of voluntary accreditation to assure minimum standards of quality in the operation and delivery of educational services. The idea of having institutions do self-policing through accrediting associations is not universal, and most countries accomplish quality assurance via recognition or approval by a governmen…
The word accreditation is derived from the Latin credito (trust). Its application to American schools dates from 1871, when, on the basis of on-site visits by representatives of its faculty, the University of Michigan began "accrediting" secondary schools entrusted with providing adequate preparation for university studies. The practice was soon taken up by universities in nearby sta…
The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology (ACCSCT), formerly known as the Accrediting Commission for Business Schools, is the accrediting authority for private postsecondary technical and vocational schools, colleges, and programs of instruction. Its more than 700 participating institutions of various types range from one-year vocational programs to continuing educati…
Adapted physical education (APE) is specially designed instruction in physical education intended to address the unique needs of individuals. While the roots of adapted physical education can be traced back to Swedish medical gymnastics in the 1700s, adapted physical education, as practiced today, has been significantly shaped by the mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDE…
Founder and driving force behind Hull-House, the pioneer American settlement house, Jane Addams is best known for her contribution to urban social service; however, she was also an important and influential educator who espoused Progressive educational ideas and practice. Born in the small northern Illinois village of Cedarville, Addams was deeply influenced by her father, John Huy Addams, a succe…
Pursuing a college education requires adjustment on the part of all students, though the type and degree of adjustment experienced by each student will vary depending on background, experience, and prior schooling. Adjustment to college will also vary depending on the size, mission (e.g., research intensive versus teaching intensive), affiliation (e.g., religiously affiliated institutions), and co…
The view that peers play a central role in adolescence is widely accepted as fact. In the popular image of adolescence, however, adolescent peer groups often play a negative role in adolescent development. Traditionally, the adolescent peer culture of modern society has been perceived as a primarily negative influence, separate from that of adults and often leading to problem behaviors. Alcohol ab…
Development of the Advanced Placement program came about because of a perceived need to provide motivated high school students with an opportunity to earn college credit. In 1954 the Educational Testing Service (ETS) was given a contract to develop exams in a group of experimental high schools and to compare the results of the high school students' scores on the exams to those of freshmen i…
Affect is a general term that encompasses mood and emotions. Mood is a feeling state that extends over a protracted period of time and is not about any particular object. An emotion is generally considered a transient feeling state that is usually about one particular object. Beyond these generalities, the definition of emotions and their development depends on whether one takes a functional persp…
Affirmative action is a government policy that seeks to remedy long-standing discrimination directed at specific groups, including women and racial and ethnic minorities. The basic purpose of affirmative action policies and programs is to increase access to, and ensure the equitable distribution of, opportunities in higher education, employment, government contracts, housing, and other social-welf…
African-American studies (also known as black studies) is an inter/multidisciplinary field that analyzes and treats the past and present culture, achievements, characteristics, and issues of people of African descent in North America, the diaspora, and Africa. The field challenges the sociohistorical and cultural content and definition of western ideology. African-American studies argues for a mul…
Educational and psychological research conducted from the 1960s to the 1990s has established that academic underachievement in the elementary school years is associated with the failure to make adequate educational progress in adolescence and young adulthood. This research also demonstrates that in itself early problems with underachievement may not be the main cause of later-occurring educational…
Agricultural education encompasses the study of applied sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics), and business management principles. One of the major purposes of agricultural education is to apply the knowledge and skills learned in several different disciplines to agricultural education. Agricultural education goes beyond knowledge and skills development in that students are able to develop …
Harold Bernard Alberty, professor of education at The Ohio State University, was a pioneer in the field of curriculum. Born in Lockport, New York, Alberty attended rural schools in northeastern Ohio. In 1912 he graduated from Baldwin University (now Baldwin-Wallace College) in Berea, Ohio. He began teaching the eighth grade during his senior year of college. In 1913 he graduated from Cleveland Law…
The term alternative schooling has always referred to nontraditional public and private educational approaches available by choice to parents and students. These programs, ranging from actual schools to programs within schools to single classrooms, began to evolve during the late 1960s and grew from a few isolated innovations in local communities into an educational reform involving millions of st…
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an international learned society dedicated to the promotion of critical analysis of the important social and intellectual issues of the day through the free exchange of ideas and perspectives. Through its publication, Daedalus, as well as its meetings, conferences, and symposia, it strives to develop useful policy initiatives while encouraging the devel…
The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD) is the only voluntary professional organization in the world that brings together teachers, students, administrators, and practitioners in these related fields. AAHPERD's mission is to promote healthy lifestyles by supporting quality programs in health, physical education, recreation, dance, and sports. AA…
The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) is an independent professional membership organization that promotes change and reform in higher education, fosters quality teaching and learning at the college and university level, and promotes public awareness of the value of higher education in the United States. The AAHE's objectives include identifying and analyzing critical problem…
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, pronounced triple-A-S) is the largest general scientific organization in the world. Its objectives are to further the work of scientists and promote cooperation among them, to foster academic freedom and responsibility, to improve and reform science education, and to encourage and facilitate better understanding about the nature of sci…
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), formally established in 1948, exists to enhance the condition and improve the quality of education schools in the nation's colleges and universities. With offices in Washington, D.C., AACTE serves as the voice for its members at the national and federal level. Always seeking to strengthen teacher and principal preparation p…
The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) is a nonprofit, national organization representing pharmaceutical education in the United States. Its mission is to serve its member colleges and schools and their respective faculties by acting as their advocate and spokesperson at the national level, by providing forums for interaction and exchange of information among its members, by recog…
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), a nonprofit, advocacy organization, represents more than 1,100 two-year, associate degree-granting, public and private, community, junior, and technical institutions with more than 10 million students from diverse age groups and a variety of socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. The AACC serves as the national voice for its member ins…
The fundamental objectives of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) are the advancement of the teaching of physics and the furtherance of the role of physics in our culture. The association serves as the spokesperson for physics teachers at all levels of education and welcomes to membership all physicists who are interested in education. The AAPT is one of the founding-member societi…
The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) was founded in 1865. AASA is the professional organization for more than 14,000 educational leaders across America and in many other countries. Its members are superintendents of public school systems, assistant and associate superintendents, principals, graduate students, and professors of educational administration, as well as others inter…
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) is a Washington, D.C.-based organization whose more than 430 members include U.S. public colleges, universities, and thirty systems of higher education. More than half of the students in public four-year institutions in America are enrolled in colleges and universities that belong to AASCU. According to the AASCU website, as of 20…
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) held its first meeting in 1915, in response to a 1914 call by a committee of full professors at Johns Hopkins university to organize a national association of professors. Concerned about the faculty role in college and university decision-making, the committee members made clear that the new organization was to serve university professors in…
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is an education organization open to women who hold baccalaureate or higher degrees from a college or university on the AAUW list of qualified institutions or from foreign institutions recognized by the International Federation of University Women. In keeping with its purpose of practical educational work, the association develops programs that e…
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private, nonprofit federation of sixty-six national scholarly organizations in the humanities and social sciences. The object of the council, as set forth in its constitution, is the "advancement of humanistic studies in all fields of learning and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national societies devoted to such…
The American Council on Education (ACE) is a national association of accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities, higher education associations, and other educational organizations. ACE is the premier public voice for higher and adult education, a definer of issues, and a leader in coordinating higher education policies and in representing higher education to government. The chief execut…
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is a nationwide union of more than one million public school teachers, higher education faculty and staff, public employees, nurses and health care professionals, and paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel. The AFT is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a federation of trade…
American overseas schools are kindergarten through twelfth grade institutions that have U.S. sponsorship through private businesses, churches, parent groups and/or government agencies and serve eligible U.S. students in foreign nations. In Latin American nations, however, such schools are not classified as overseas. These schools typically have a basic American curriculum. Instruction is in Englis…
The treatises are investigative reports, describing a method of inquiry and the results reached. Each treatise includes: (1) a statement of the aim of the subject matter; (2) a consideration of other thinkers' ideas; (3) an examination of proposed principles with the aim of determining the one that has the best prospect of explaining the subject matter; (4) a search for the facts that illus…
Art is more than creative expression, which has been the dominant theme of art education for much of the twentieth century. Expression is important, but researchers are also finding connections between learning in the visual arts and the acquisition of knowledge and skills in other areas. According to a 1993 Arts Education Partnership Working Group study, the benefits of a strong art program inclu…
Classroom assessments are those developed or selected by teachers for use during their day-to-day instruction. They are different from the standardized tests that are conducted annually to gauge student achievement, and are most frequently used to serve formative purposes, that is, to help students learn. However, classroom assessments also can be used summatively to determine a student's r…
The place of psychometric and statistical tools in assessment must be understood in terms of their use within a process of evidence gathering and interpretation. To see this, consider the assessment triangle featured in a recent National Research Council Report and shown in Figure 1. The central problem in assessment is making inferences about cognition from limited observations. Psychometric and …
Assistive technology is a relatively new term used to describe devices and services that lessen or remove barriers faced by persons with disabilities. Although the term is contemporary, the use of assistive technology is not new. For centuries, individuals with disabilities have used a variety of assistive devices to help them overcome demands in the environment. For example, years ago individuals…
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is the national association that works to advance and strengthen undergraduate liberal education for all college students, regardless of their academic specialization or intended career. Since its founding in 1915, AAC&U's membership as of 2001 included more than 735 accredited public and private colleges and univer…
The Association of American Universities (AAU) is a Washington, D.C.-based organization representing sixty-one of the most prestigious North American higher education institutions, fifty-nine in the United States and two in Canada. Membership is by invitation only, with an approximately 50 percent split between public and private institutions. A majority of 75 percent of the current members must a…
Because some forms of learning are critically dependent upon attention, it is important for educators to be familiar with modern developments in this field. The most widely known definition of attention extends back to the late 1800s. The psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) defined it as "the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of wha…
The most common reason that children are referred to child-guidance clinics is for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is a behavioral disorder with a strong hereditary component, which likely results from neurological dysfunction. According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), there are…
St. Augustine was bishop of Hippo, in North Africa, and his writings established the intellectual foundations of Christianity in the West. He was born in Thagaste, a town forty-five miles south of Hippo in the Roman province of Numidia, which is now Algeria. His father, Patricius, was a pagan, and his mother, Monica, a Christian. In his late teens he went to Carthage for further study, and through…
Though autism is a familiar term in the early twenty-first century, it was only recognized in the 1940s as a severe disability. Since that time, there has been extensive interest in and professional activity concerning autism. Children with autism have difficulty communicating, playing, and establishing relationships with others. Autism, often referred to as a neurological disorder, is usually evi…
Professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University (1917–1940), William C. Bagley is commonly referred to as the founder of essentialist educational theory. Bagley was born in Detroit, Michigan, and after his family relocated to the east coast, he attended elementary school in Weymouth, Massachusetts. When his family moved back to Detroit in 1887, Bagley attended high school th…
"A visionary art educator at Ohio State University" who had "designed a model of art education that combined the teaching of art history and art criticism with art making activities" (J. Paul Getty Trust, p. 39), Manuel Barkan recognized the role of disciplinary structures of knowledge in guiding curriculum decisions but his views on curriculum reform embodied a synthes…
A participant in the field of public school management, Beacon Education Management managed twenty-five charter schools of approximately 7,500 students in Michigan, Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia as of April 2001. Beacon was incorporated as a for-profit company in Delaware in December 1999, and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts; its pre…
Harold R. W. Benjamin was a professor of education and university administrator whose written work spoke to educational policy concerns. He was born in Gilmanton, Wisconsin and received degrees from Oregon Normal School, the University of Oregon, and Stanford University. Benjamin had a long and illustrious career in education as an elementary and secondary school teacher, a school administrator, a…
Kenneth D. Benne is well remembered as both an influential philosopher of education and a theorist of organizational change. The thematic link between these two domains was, for Benne, theorizing the practices of democratic life. Born in 1908, Benne began his early career as an elementary and secondary school teacher in rural Kansas and went on to become a cofounder of three major scholarly organi…
Known for its unique approach to service learning, Berea College provides an education to those traditionally denied access because of race or poverty. Founded in 1855, the college was fully incorporated on April 5, 1866, with the first bachelor's degrees granted in 1873. Berea began as a one-room school in Berea, Kentucky, under the direction of the abolitionist Reverend John G. Fee. Edwar…
After establishing himself as an academic historian, Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr. achieved national renown during the 1950s as a critic of Progressive education. In the 1920s Bestor attended the Lincoln School at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received a Ph.B. and Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1930 and 1938, respectively. In 1959 Bestor earned an LL.D. from Lincoln University. Af…
A leading African-American activist and educator, Mary McLeod Bethune was born in a log cabin near Mayesville, South Carolina. Bethune was the fifteenth of seventeen children born to Samuel and Patsy McLeod. Her parents and several of her older siblings had been born slaves, and the family was scattered as the children were sold to different owners. After the Civil War, the McLeods managed to reas…
Bilingual education is a broad term that refers to the presence of two languages in instructional settings. The term is, however, "a simple label for a complex phenomenon" (Cazden and Snow, p. 9) that depends upon many variables, including the native language of the students, the language of instruction, and the linguistic goal of the program, to determine which type of bilingual edu…
The term bilingual refers to individuals who can function in more than one language. The category of bilinguals is very broad–encompassing individuals who are sophisticated speakers, readers, and writers of two or more languages, as well as those who use a limited knowledge of a second language (L2) for purposes such as work or schooling, and who may be literate in only one language (or eve…
Best known for his development with Théodore Simon of the first standardized intelligence test, Alfred Binet can be considered one of the few "renaissance" psychologists of the twentieth century. His research included the measurement of individual differences in reaction times, association of auditory times with specific colors, auditory and visual imagery, and children'…
Renowned as the architect of the taxonomy of educational objectives and famous for his work on mastery learning, Benjamin S. Bloom was a true educational researcher, who thrived on questions to guide his inquiry. His research revolved around the following queries. These are but some of the questions that Bloom asked, and answered, during a career that spanned five decades, the vast majority of whi…
A defender of Friedrich Froebel's original German methods, Susan Blow was an influential educator who helped start public kindergartens in St. Louis and trained many younger kindergarten directors. She was the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis businessman and Republican politician, Henry Taylor Blow, who served two terms as a U.S. Congressman and as minister to Brazil. Her mother, Minerva Gri…
Independent, nonprofit, and public colleges and universities utilize a board format for their governing structure. These boards are often referred to as a board of trustees (similar terms include board of regents or board of visitors), and they act as the legal agent or "owner" of the institution. As a collective body, the trustees hold the authority and responsibility to ensure the …
Professor of educational administration at the University of Chicago, Franklin Bobbitt played a leading role during the first three decades of the twentieth century in establishing curriculum as a field of specialization within the discipline of education. Born in English, Indiana, a community of less than 1,000 people in the southeast part of the state, Bobbitt earned his undergraduate degree at …
A leading spokesperson of Progressive education and a founder of American pragmatism, Boyd H. Bode was born Boyo Hendrik Bode in Ridott, Illinois. Bode was the eldest son in a family of eight children of Dutch parents, Hendrik and Gertrude Weinenga Bode. His father, both a farmer and minister in the Christian Reformed Church, fully expected Bode to follow him into the ministry. To this end, Boyd w…
President of two historically black colleges from 1939 to 1957, and dean of the School of Education at Atlanta University from 1957 until shortly before his death in 1972, Horace Mann Bond was also a historian and social scientific observer of the condition of African Americans. He was born on November 8, 1904, in Nashville, Tennessee, the sixth of seven children of a Congregationalist minister an…
Economist Howard Bowen was a notable figure in university administration and the author of several classic works on the economics of higher education. Born in Spokane, Washington, he married Lois B. Schilling of Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1935; they had two sons. Bowen earned his B.A. in 1929 and his M.A. in 1933 from Washington State University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 1935…
An innovator of secondary and postsecondary education, Dr. Ernest L. Boyer served as U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1977 to 1979 and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching from 1979 to 1995. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Boyer finished high school early to study at Messiah Academy in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He completed his studies in Illinois at Greenville College in 19…
The overall goal of brain-based education is to attempt to bring insights from brain research into the arena of education to enhance teaching and learning. The area of science often referred to as "brain research" typically includes neuroscience studies that probe the patterns of cellular development in various brain areas; and brain imaging techniques, with the latter including func…
A philosopher and visionary educator who developed the reconstructionist philosophy of education, Theodore Brameld spent a lifetime working for personal and cultural transformation through education. Influenced by John Dewey's educational philosophy, Brameld urged that schools become a powerful force for social and political change. He welcomed reasoned argument and debate both inside and o…
The Brookings Institution is a private, independent, and nonpartisan research institution dedicated to the study of policy issues of U.S. national interest. It conducts research and disseminates its findings to the nation's leadership as well as to the general public, in the hope of offering practical solutions to problems in the areas of government, economics, and foreign policy. It prides…
Relatively late in a career that spanned seven decades of academic writing and public speaking, Harry S. Broudy became in his time a prominent philosopher of education in the United States. He achieved this status in part by writing and speaking to many audiences about popular educational debates of the day, including the purposes and practices of general education, teacher education, aesthetic ed…
Scott Milross Buchanan shaped the Great Books program in American higher education as it developed at the People's Institute (New York City), the University of Chicago, and St. John's College (Annapolis, Maryland). A philosopher, critic, author, and educator, Buchanan promoted and experimented with the pursuit of the liberal arts through discussion of classic texts in philosophy, lit…
Founder of the Institute of Mental Measurements, Oscar Krisen Buros produced the first major source of evaluative information on tests and test products. Born at Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, he was the fourth oldest of the nine children of Herman and Tone (Tillie) Buros (both immigrants to the United States from Norway). In 1925 he graduated with a B.S. with distinction from the University of Minnes…
SCHOOLTena B. CrewsWanda L. Stitt-Gohdes COLLEGE AND GRADUATE STUDYKwabena Dei Ofori-Attah PREPARATION OF TEACHERSJudith J. Lambrecht For many years, business education has been defined as the courses at the secondary level that prepare students for the business world. While that definition continued to have validity at the beginning of the twenty-first century, by then the range of the courses ha…
The focus of this entry is on business involvement in influencing state and federal elementary and secondary education policy since 1983, the year the landmark report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, was released. No education report in U.S. history has galvanized national attention like A Nation at Risk did when banner headlines in newspapers across the country declared t…
President of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, Nicholas Murray Butler was a prominent figure in the development of the modern American university and of public secondary education. Born into a religious and politically active middle-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Butler valued public service from an early age. He graduated from Paterson High School in New Jersey at age thirteen. Follo…
Born in Ogden, Utah, Roald Fay Campbell was reared on a farm near Aberdeen, Idaho, and first attended Idaho Technical Institute (now Idaho State University) in Pocatello. He took several years off from college to serve as a Mormon missionary in Texas and to teach school, then resumed his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University. After graduating from Brigham Young at age twenty-four, Camp…
As in all immigrant societies, the spread of formal education in Canada followed a predictable pattern as religious orders and missions attempted to "civilize" both the aboriginal and the settler communities. All levels of formal education from the seventeenth century onward had their roots in Catholicism, Anglicanism, and after 1763, when the British assumed control, a whole range o…
In higher education, capstone courses, also known as senior seminars, offer undergraduate students nearing graduation the opportunity to summarize, evaluate, and integrate some or all of their college experience. The First National Survey of Senior Seminars and Capstone Courses conducted in 1999 suggested that these courses place the highest priority on culminating learning in the academic major. …
The career services office supports the educational mission of a college or university by helping students to develop, evaluate, and pursue career goals. In the process, students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to make lifelong career decisions. Career services offices accomplish these goals through career counseling and a range of programs and services designed to help students make th…
The Carnegie Classification (of Institutions of Higher Education) is a taxonomy of U.S. colleges and universities. The categories are based on information about the institutions, such as types of degrees conferred, academic disciplines offered, and specialization. The classification system shows the diversity of American colleges and universities. The purpose of the Carnegie Classification system …
Adopted in the early 1900s to both standardize and ensure the quality of high school education, the Carnegie unit is viewed almost a century later by critics as an impediment to flexibility. Yet, for all of its limitations, the Carnegie unit remains the putative guarantor that students have invested in each of their courses an amount of time that warrants the credit that so many colleges and emplo…
Education in every form entails the acquisition and modification of conventional categories and labels, as well as processes for inferring category membership. Consider these statements: "Fractions are numbers between two integers"; "Plants get energy through photosynthesis"; and "A noun is a person, place, or thing." The first claims a formal relation bet…
In 1783 Philadelphia Catholics established the first Catholic parish school in the United States, and over the next two centuries, Catholic parochial schools would educate tens of millions of American citizens. By the middle of the 1960s, when the Catholic parochial school movement had reached its high point, there were more than 5.7 million children in parish elementary schools–12 percent …
Although teaching has been at the core of faculty life from the beginning of the modern university, emphasis on teaching improvement is a more recent phenomenon. Centers and programs that support excellence in college and university teaching have grown substantially since the mid-twentieth century, and offer a broad range of services and resources to various constituencies. Teaching-improvement su…
Leading teacher, researcher, and writer in the field of reading, Jeanne S. Chall held views on the importance of direct, systematic instruction in reading that were slighted in the 1980s but justified in the late 1990s. She was deeply committed to teaching; to the importance of children's successful reading acquisition and the need to address failing readers; to the power of research to ans…
When a person is said to have character, it usually implies they have distinguishing moral qualities, moral virtues, and moral reasoning abilities. Less frequently used terms include morality, virtue, and ethics. A moral person understands right and wrong and willfully chooses what is right; a virtuous person engages in good behavior intentionally, predictably, and habitually; an ethical person fi…
Professor and director of the Bureau of Educational Research at Ohio State University, Werrett Wallace Charters contributed to the fields of curriculum development and audiovisual technology. Born in Hartford, Ontario (Canada), Charters earned his A.B. in 1898 from McMaster University, a teaching diploma from the Ontario Normal College in 1899, a B.Pd. from the University of Toronto, and his M.Ph.…
A college's chief academic affairs officer, often referred to as the chief academic officer (CAO), fulfills the essential role of ensuring that an institution's educational mission is achieved. Successful completion of this overarching goal involves work across multiple constituencies and the use of a number of measures, such as personnel and budgetary decisions, to influence educati…
The concept of child abuse and neglect is relatively new to American society. Although children have been neglected, beaten, exploited, and even murdered by their parents and caregivers for hundreds of years, it is only since the mid–twentieth century that legislation requiring the reporting and prosecution of child abuse has been enacted. In 1974 Public Law 93-247, known as the Child Abuse…
AVAILABILITY AND QUALITYAmy Harris-Solomon COST AND FINANCINGAmy Harris-Solomon Child care is a broad term used to describe any number of arrangements or settings where the primary responsibility is caring for young children. There are as many different settings as there are definitions of quality in child care. The number of young children under the age of five who are cared for during part of th…
Definitions of stages of growth in childhood come from many sources. Theorists such as Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Erik Erikson have provided ways to understand development, and recent research has provided important information regarding the nature of development. In addition, stages of childhood are defined culturally by the social institutions, customs, and laws that make …
HISTORICAL OVERVIEWWilliam Wesley Patton CURRENT SYSTEMWilliam Wesley Patton No ancient civilization considered child protection to be a governmental function. In ancient Rome, for instance, fathers were vested with an almost unlimited natural right to determine the welfare of their children. The welfare of minors was a family matter, not a governmental interest or obligation. Most other governmen…
Children's literature is any literature that is enjoyed by children. More specifically, children's literature comprises those books written and published for young people who are not yet interested in adult literature or who may not possess the reading skills or developmental understandings necessary for its perusal. In addition to books, children's literature also includes ma…
Professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, John Lawrence Childs was a leading member of the New York Progressives from the 1930s to 1960. Childs was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he learned the value of hard work, which was for him both a moral and social obligation. Raised as a Methodist, he spent four years at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, graduating in 1911 …
For more than 200 years–from the time of the country's founding to the early twenty-first century–Americans have believed that the primary purpose of U.S. schools is to educate young people for responsible citizenship. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others of the nation's founders realized that the establishment of well-constructed political institutions was not i…
An expert in rural Progressive education in Kentucky and West Virginia, Elsie Ripley Clapp was director at the Arthurdale School in West Virginia; she documented her experiences in The Use of Resourcesin Education (1952) and Community Schools in Action (1939). Elsie Clapp was born in the exclusive area of Brooklyn Heights, New York. Her father, William Gamwell Clapp, was a stockbroker and her moth…
An educator and civil rights activist, Septima Poinsette Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was Peter Poinsette, a former slave, and her mother was Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, a free woman who had spent her early years in Haiti. Although better known for her civil rights activism, Clark used her experiences as an educator as the basis for much of her activism, especia…
Classroom management is the orchestration of the learning environment of a group of individuals within a classroom setting. In the early 1970s classroom management was seen as separate from classroom instruction. Teachers' management decisions were viewed as precursors to instruction, and were treated in the literature as if they were content-free. The image was of a teacher first attending…
Systematic classroom observation is a quantitative method of measuring classroom behaviors from direct observations that specifies both the events or behaviors that are to be observed and how they are to be recorded. Generally, the data that is collected from this procedure focuses on the frequency with which specific behaviors or types of behavior occurred in the classroom and measures their dura…
When people really want to learn something, they ask questions. They ask questions to become skilled in using new software, or to figure out the norms of courtesy in another culture, or to master the fine art of parking a car. It is not surprising that for many, questioning is at the very heart of learning, the central skill in the teaching-learning process. Teachers have been described as "…
The class unit is the basic unit of organization for instruction; therefore class-size information should be foundational knowledge for educators. Yet between the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Education in 1971 (see John Reisert's entry on class size, pp. 157–160) and its second edition in 2002, understanding of class size and its actual use have arguably seen both the greates…
Many schools and community organizations sponsor clubs for children and adolescents. These clubs provide opportunities for youth to participate in activities, interact with peers in a supervised setting, and form relationships with adults. Some clubs focus on a specific area, thus allowing members to develop their skills and interests in that area. Other clubs provide an array of activities from w…
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is a grass-roots network of approximately 1,000 schools and twenty regional centers around the country that seek to enact a set of ideas put forth by the American educator Theodore R. Sizer in Horace's Compromise (1984). Sizer found that, despite their differences in location and demography, American high schools, by and large, were remarkably simila…
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) was founded in 1984 with the financial support of several national foundations as a secondary school reform organization. It built on the research conducted during the preceding five years by Theodore R. Sizer, Arthur G. Powell, and their colleagues in A Study of High Schools, research that was cosponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Pri…
A major twentieth-century figure in the sociology of education, James S. Coleman was a social theorist and an empirical researcher with a prevailing interest in social problems in education–tackling issues that were sometimes unpopular. Richard Elmore describes Coleman as a "person who said what he thought and what the evidence said, regardless of whether he felt it was the right thi…
Applying for admission to colleges and universities has evolved from a relatively straightforward process to a complex rite of passage that causes anxiety for many high school students. Increased media attention about college admissions during the late 1980s and 1990s facilitated the growth of a booming college admissions industry. Commercial test-preparation courses, independent counselors, annua…
The ACT Assessment and SAT are the most popular college entrance tests administered in the United States. The ACT Assessment, formerly called the American College Test, is a standardized examination required by many colleges and universities in the United States for admission to their undergraduate degree programs. The test was developed in 1959 to measure the academic abilities of prospective col…
Among the earliest systematic analyses of college outcomes are those of C. Robert Pace (1941, 1979); James Trent and Leland Medsker (1968); and Kenneth Feldman and Theodore Newcomb (1969). Focusing on both longitudinal changes and cross-sectional differences, this body of research generated some of the first significant impressions of the efficacy of college attendance. By and large, these studies…
When the English colonized North America, they brought with them the educational traditions and concepts of England. In 1636 the Congregationalists founded Harvard University, using Oxford and Cambridge Universities as their model. With the exception of the Philadelphia Academy and the College of William and Mary, the original nine colonial colleges were founded by graduates of either Oxford or Ca…
THE ROLE AND SCOPE OF INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS IN U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIESBradley James Bates HISTORY OF ATHLETICS IN U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIESJohn R. Thelin Jason R. Edwards ACADEMIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR ATHLETESRobert E. Stammer Jr. ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPSBradley James Bates COLLEGE STUDENTS AS ATHLETESBradley James Bates INTRAMURAL ATHLETICS IN U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIESRachel M. M…
The College Entrance Examination Board, or College Board, is a national, nonprofit membership association with a mission of preparing, inspiring, and connecting students to college and opportunity. The College Board assists students in the school-to-college transition by helping them prepare academically for, and enter, colleges and universities. It also endeavors to aid international students in …
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many colleges and universities have a broad educational mission: to develop the "whole student." On college campuses, extracurricular involvement is a key tool in this personal development. For the majority of college and university students, involvement in extracurricular activities plays an integral role in the collegiate experience. St…
Despite the fact that college tuition rose much more rapidly than either consumer prices or family incomes during the 1980s and 1990s, few college students paid the full cost of higher education during this period. Those who attended public colleges and universities paid relatively low tuition, with state taxpayers funding much of the cost of running these institutions. Students enrolled in privat…
David Webster stated in 1986 that there are two elements that define college rankings. The first is that academic quality can be measured by selected criteria. For example, in many studies the reputation of the faculty and the selectivity of students are used as measures of an institution's quality. The second element is that using these measurements leads to an ordering of institutions. In…
College recruitment practices are as distinctive as the scope and breath of the more than 3,200 accredited colleges and universities in the United States. With more than 2.5 million students matriculating to a college campus for the first time each year, the role and responsibility of admission and enrollment personnel in higher education has become increasingly critical to the success of the inst…
The organizational structures of American colleges and universities vary distinctly, depending on institutional type, culture, and history, yet they also share much in common. While a private liberal arts college may have a large board of trustees, and a public research university nested in a state system no trustees of its own, the vast majority of public and private universities are overseen by …
The landscape of higher education in North America first began to take shape at the start of the colonial period as religious communities and individual religious leaders realized the need to bring Western education to what was for them a newly discovered land. The motivation for the education varied. Some communities began schools as a means for training religious leaders. The first college, foun…
The decision to attend a college or university and admission to an institution of higher education has important outcomes for individuals and for society. Most of the attention given to these decisions by researchers and by public policymakers has focused on how high school graduates (often referred to as traditional-age students) make their decisions. Attention has also been given to how the inst…
The successful transition from secondary school to the collegiate environment for students has been the topic of much research, many articles and books, international conferences, and a plethora of newspaper articles at the beginning of each new academic year. First-year seminars have become a common approach adopted by higher education institutions in their efforts to ease the transition to colle…
Why do students leave college before completing a degree? This question is of interest not only to scholars, but also to employers, institutions, students, parents of students, and spouses. A student who leaves college before graduating paid tuition that will probably not be made up for through employment, for a person who lacks a college degree will have diminished lifetime earnings (compared to …
ACCOMMODATINGTroy R. Justesen SPECIAL LEARNING NEEDSFrances K. StageMagdalena H. de la Teja Before the 1970s, more than half of the children with disabilities in the United States did not receive appropriate educational services that would enable them to have full equality of opportunity. More than one million of these children were excluded from the public school system and did not go through the…
College teaching is a very complex activity that cannot easily be defined or measured. Part of the reason is that teaching at any level cannot be divorced from the context in which it takes place and particularly from the teachers and learners who are involved. Good teaching in a graduate seminar in physics is not necessarily the same as good teaching in a large, introductory physics course, and i…
A founder of and one of the most significant contributors to the discipline of visual anthropology, John Collier Jr. applied still photography and film to cross-cultural understanding and analysis. He used photography for education in two ways. First, his principle work, Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method (with Malcolm Collier, 1986[1967]), defined the discipline for many years,…
A prolific scholar on pedagogical, spiritual, and social reform, Johann Amos Comenius was born in the village of Nivnice in southeast Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), and became a minister in the Unity of Brethren church, a Protestant sect. Political and religious persecution during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) drove Comenius from his homeland in 1628, and despite his e…
The culmination of education for the high school student, the commencement ceremony, or graduation, is a major event and transition point for students, parents, and teachers. It is a time for students, parents, and teachers to celebrate their hard work and accomplishments. Students take pride in having met the graduation requirements that were established by their state and local board of educatio…
By the end of the twentieth century, the world economy had shifted in two important ways. First, the free flow of capital had created a high level of global interdependency. Second, production and distribution were no longer regionally bound within the nation-state. Trade agreements provide evidence of these trends. Educational commodities in the global marketplace are evident as services and good…
