The United States is often called a "nation of immigrants"; more accurately the nation always comprised both newcomers and those who worry about the impact of the newcomers on the existing society. The relationship between newcomers and established families has always been in some sense filled with tensions, uncertainties, and even bitter conflicts. It has also been characterized by …
With the exception of safe water, no other public health intervention has had a greater impact in reducing deaths related to infectious disease than vaccinations. Smallpox was eradicated in 1977; wild-type poliomyelitis was eliminated from the Western hemisphere in 1991. Among children under five, measles and invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) have both been reduced to record low numbers…
Public Laws 81-815 and 81-874 were approved by the U.S. Congress in 1950 to assist local school districts with the construction and cost of public educational activities impacted by federal defense efforts. The so-called impact laws were an extension of a 1941 federal emergency measure, the Lanham Act. The precedence of the Lanham Act, the rising educational burden placed on local school districts…
Independent study programs are found at nearly every level of education in the United States, from elementary school through graduate school. Although the concept of independent study was not new, a spectacular increase in interest in the subject occurred in elementary and secondary schools in the 1960s. In the early twenty-first century, many courses delivered within a traditional format are expe…
Abilities are cognitive or mental characteristics that affect one's potential to learn or to perform. Aptitudes are sometimes treated as interchangeable with abilities, particularly when they focus on prediction of performance in other settings or on other occasions. Cognitive abilities have been conceived very broadly (e.g., intelligence) and also in terms of specialized abilities such as …
The improvement of instruction has been a goal of educators as far back as the teachings of the Greek philosopher Socrates. Although there are a wide variety of approaches, in most cases instruction can be characterized by the following tasks: setting objectives, teaching content based on these objectives, and evaluating performance. This formula is indeed the most common; however, there have been…
Infant schools in England provide publicly funded education for children age five to seven and represent the first level of compulsory education in England. Infant schools and junior schools are often housed together in primary schools. Together, they furnish education to children until they reach eleven years of age. As of 1998 there were 18,230 primary schools in England providing full-time educ…
The Institute of International Education (IIE) is a world leader in the international exchange of people and ideas. Its mission is to foster international understanding by opening minds to the world. It does this by assisting college and university students to study abroad; advising institutions of higher education on ways to internationalize their student body, faculty, and curriculum; fostering …
With the rapid increase in the costs associated with higher education, there has been an ever-increasing pressure placed upon colleges and universities to raise funds for institutional support. Fund-raising drives in excess of $1 billion are commonplace among top tier institutions in the early twenty-first century. The responsibility for identifying individuals capable of making gifts to the insti…
Institutional research is research activity carried out in colleges and universities to collect and analyze data concerning students, faculty, staff, and other educational facilities. The primary purpose of institutional research is to promote institutional effectiveness. It does this by providing information for institutional planning, policy formation, and decision-making within the college or u…
Instructional-design theory provides guidance on how to help people learn (or develop) in different situations and under different conditions. This guidance includes what to teach and how to teach it. To do this, instructional-design theory must take into account both methods and situations. Just as a carpenter uses different tools for different situations, so do instructional design theories offe…
Most people would agree that the goal of education is learning. Most would also agree that education is likely to be more effective if educators are clear about what it is that they want the learners to learn. Finally, most would agree that if teachers have a clear idea about what learners are expected to learn, they can more easily and more accurately determine how well students have learned. Ent…
Since the inception of formal, classroom-based instruction, a fundamental aspect of teaching has been the way teachers arrange the classroom environment so students can interact and learn. The instructional strategies teachers use help shape learning environments and represent professional conceptions of learning and of the learner. Some strategies consider students empty vessels to be filled unde…
Intellectual property law, once thought of as an arcane and unpopular area of law, came to the fore-front of legal disciplines in the 1990s, in large part due to the increased use of computers and the commercialization of the World Wide Web. Because of the widespread use of technology and computers to conduct research and teach, intellectual property law greatly impacts the educational enterprise …
The term emotional intelligence was introduced in a 1990 article by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. They described emotional intelligence as a set of skills that involve the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and action. Salovey and Mayer introduced the term as a chall…
Interdisciplinary studies, broadly defined, is the process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a problem that is so broad or complex that it cannot be addressed through a single discipline or field. In higher education in the United States, interdisciplinary studies are conducted through individual courses, including independent studies; in specific programs of study such as …
Relationships between branches and levels of government are important in the administration and delivery of educational services in all countries. National ministries of education may wish to control all phases of education, but they inevitably must delegate significant aspects of the operation and delivery of educational services to lower levels of government. The more decentralized the governanc…
The use of government financial resources to support public basic-education provision is well established and widely accepted across the globe. However, since 1990 there has been a noticeable shift in the traditional ways that provision of higher education and, to a lesser extent, secondary education is regulated. In different contexts there are new financing strategies being implemented in the pu…
International comparisons of student achievement involve assessing the knowledge of elementary and secondary school students in subjects such as mathematics, science, reading, civics, and technology. The comparisons use test items that have been standardized and agreed upon by participating countries. These complex studies have been carried out since 1959 to explicitly compare student performance …
The international baccalaureate (IB) diploma program is a curriculum whose time has come. Growing out of a perceived need in the 1960s, the IB diploma–as it is commonly known–has gone from strength to strength in creating a role for itself as a major player on the world education stage. The IB diploma was first developed in international schools and, in particular, the International …
An official bilateral development or aid agency is responsible to a single government. It is usually a ministry or part of a government ministry dedicated to advancing foreign policy goals while contributing to the economic and social development of recipient countries. This discussion will review the history, legacy, importance, and current role of some of the more important bilateral agencies wi…
In the late 1970s a course on international education at the University of Chicago included a series of readings that seemed to fall into the following types of materials. First, there were references to some of the nineteenth-century travelers–Horace Mann, Mathew Arnold, Joseph Kay–who brought back impressions of education in foreign lands for domestic consideration. Second, there w…
The term international agreement refers to an international treaty, declaration, or recommendation adopted by the governments of many different countries in order to set out certain principles or courses of action in a selected field, or set of fields, of mutual interest. Countries sign international agreements on many things, such as travel and health regulations, telecommunications, air and ship…
Comparisons between the education system in the United States and the systems of other countries have become an established element of the public discussion about education policy and practice in the United States. Publications aimed at the education profession often include articles describing approaches in other countries that are relevant to education in the United States, such as a discussion …
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, there was a major gap between industrialized and developing countries in terms of their access to information and communications technology (ICT). This gap has come to be known as the digital divide and is illustrative of the vast differences in development among nations resulting from the process of globalization. While most industrialized countries were l…
Children of lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups tend to perform worse in school than upper SES groups, and they tend to stay in school for a shorter time. In addition, these children tend to be underrepresented in higher education. These patterns exist regardless of region of world, sociopolitical system, and level of economic development of a country. This article examines the universality of…
The International Reading Association (IRA) is a nonprofit professional organization that seeks to promote high levels of literacy by improving the quality of reading instruction. The association works to achieve this mission by studying the reading process and teaching techniques, serving as a clearing-house for the support and dissemination of reading research through conferences and publication…
Formerly known as the National Society for Programmed Instruction, the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) is dedicated to improving performance in education and industry through a better understanding and use of evolving technology and methodology. It draws on the expertise of individuals from academia, the military, and industry, aiming for a truly multidisciplinary organiza…
Formerly referred to as foreign students, international students are students from abroad who are enrolled for courses at American schools, colleges, or universities and admitted under a temporary visa. These students' primary intent is to obtain an American undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree and return to their home countries. The number of international students studying at A…
A large majority of teachers' unions and associations around the world are represented internationally by one unified organization, Education International (EI). Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, EI was created by the merger of two major teachers' organizations in 1990. It includes 310 teachers' organizations from 159 countries, with a membership of more than 25 million teac…
Historically, education has provided the medium for transferring knowledge and skills to a global society. Research by the World Bank has demonstrated that education is "essential for civic order and citizenship and for sustained economic growth and the reduction of poverty" (1996, p. 1). As the Independent Commission on Population and the Quality of Life states, "education is…
Internships, along with cooperative education, field studies, service-learning, and practica, are part of the field of experiential education. Internships require students to apply classroom learning, theories, and experiences to professional settings. Internships or other forms of practical learning for undergraduate, as well as graduate, students have been part of American higher education since…
Islam has, from its inception, placed a high premium on education and has enjoyed a long and rich intellectual tradition. Knowledge ('ilm) occupies a significant position within Islam, as evidenced by the more than 800 references to it in Islam's most revered book, the Koran. The importance of education is repeatedly emphasized in the Koran with frequent injunctions, such as "…
William James was the American philosopher whose work in psychology established that science as an important element in the revision of social and philosophical doctrines at the turn of the nineteenth century. Thereafter it was no longer possible to erect systems in purely deductive fashion. All thought must take account of the deliverances of current natural science, and particularly the branch r…
African-American supervisors of teachers in the rural south from 1908 to 1968, Jeanes teachers (formally called Jeanes supervising industrial teachers) worked toward improving the communities of schools. They reported to the county school superintendent and the state agent for Negro education. Jeanes teachers were mostly women and were paid in part from a fund established in 1907 by Anna T. Jeanes…
Throughout history, the Jewish people have been a minority culture and religion. In times of peace, Judaism thrived; in times of hostility, Jews protected themselves from outside forces. In the United States today, Jews face relatively little hostility. Jews are allowed to live wherever they please, they can study and engage in any profession, and they may practice their religion openly. Fighting …
Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 by educational pioneers who abandoned the traditional roles of the American college and forged a new era of modern research universities by focusing on the expansion of knowledge, graduate education, and support of faculty research. In 1873 Johns Hopkins, a childless bachelor, bequeathed $7 million to fund a hospital and university in Baltimore, Marylan…
Founder of the School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama, Johnson won international recognition as a child-centered Progressive educator. She was born near St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up as a twin in a close-knit farming family. After attending public schools in St. Paul and graduating from the state normal school at St. Cloud in 1885, she taught in rural elementary and secondary schools,…
When the Journalism Education Association (JEA) celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1999, it noted that the organization's name and location had changed several times, but the goals are still very similar to those of its founders–to support secondary school journalism teachers and media advisers. According to its mission, JEA supports free and responsible scholastic journalis…
Journalism in American secondary schools began at approximately the same time journalism programs appeared in colleges. The first known high school journalism class was in Salina, Kansas, in 1912. But student newspapers are not always tied to a class, so not surprisingly they appeared long before this date. The first recorded one, The Student Gazette, was handwritten by the students of William Pen…
The juvenile court and its philosophy of treating minors who violate the criminal law differently than adults is barely a century old. Historically, juvenile criminals were treated the same as adult criminals. Punishment was the central criminal law philosophy in English common law. A conclusive presumption that children under seven could not form criminal intent eliminated the youngest from the c…
A pioneer in the field of comparative education, Isaac Leon Kandel conducted extensive studies of educational systems around the world. Kandel was born in Botosani, Romania, to English parents. He attended the Manchester Grammar School and earned his B.A. in classics in 1902 and M.A. in education in 1906 at the University of Manchester. From 1906 to 1908 he taught classics at the Royal Academical …
Educational leader and administrator, Francis C. Keppel was born in New York City. He was raised in an atmosphere of liberal reform; his father, Frederick P. Keppel, served as a dean at Columbia University and in 1923 was appointed president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Among the elder Keppel's many interests was the role of education in achieving social equality, and one of his…
A dominating figure in the German Progressive education movement, Georg Kerschensteiner gained an international reputation as promoter of activity schools, civic instruction, and vocational education. Born into an impoverished merchant family, Kerschensteiner taught at elementary schools (Volksschule) before he attended gymnasium and university, passed the state examination for secondary school te…
Progressive educational philosopher and interpreter of John Dewey's work, William Heard Kilpatrick was born in White Plains, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. Educated in village schools, he graduated from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, moving on to do graduate work in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. Kilpatrick served as a public school principal in Georgia before retur…
In what is coming to be called the "knowledge age," the health and wealth of societies depends increasingly on their capacity to innovate. People in general, not just a specialized elite, need to work creatively with knowledge. As Peter Drucker put it, "innovation must be part and parcel of the ordinary, the norm, if not routine." This presents a formidable new challeng…
Due to the wealth of information, the knowledge explosion, and the rapid development of information and communication technologies at the start of the twenty-first century, it is essential to handle complex information and knowledge intelligently and responsibly. Therefore, it is necessary to manage knowledge on an individual as well as on an organizational level. Knowledge management basically en…
Lawrence Kohlberg virtually developed the fields of moral psychology and moral education through his pioneering cognitive developmental theory and research. Kohlberg's work grew out of a lifelong commitment to address injustice. After graduating from high school at the end of World War II, he volunteered as an engineer on a ship that was smuggling Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine th…
Lou L. LaBrant served as a language arts teacher and a Progressive-education leader from 1906 through 1971. Born in Hinkley, Illinois, LaBrant began her teaching career in public high schools and experimental schools throughout the Midwest during the first two decades of the twentieth century. She completed an undergraduate degree in Latin at Baker University (1911) and, after making a final commi…
America's land-grant colleges and universities were brought into being through the Morrill Act of 1862. This unprecedented federal legislation supported a new vision for higher education flowing from a confluence of agricultural, industrial, scientific, political and educational interests in the years before the U.S. Civil War. By 1873, 26 land-grant colleges and universities were in operat…
Almost every human child succeeds in learning language. As a result, people often tend to take the process of language learning for granted. To many, language seems like a basic instinct, as simple as breathing or blinking. But language is not simple at all; in fact it is the most complex skill that a human being will ever master. That nearly all people succeed in learning this complex skill demon…
Language arts is the term typically used by educators to describe the curriculum area that includes four modes of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Language arts teaching constitutes a particularly important area in teacher education, since listening, speaking, reading, and writing permeate the curriculum; they are essential to learning and to the demonstration of learning in ev…
In discussions of language and education, language is usually defined as a shared set of verbal codes, such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, and Swahili. But language can also be defined as a generic, communicative phenomenon, especially in descriptions of instruction. Teachers and students use spoken and written language to communicate with each other–to present tasks, engage in lear…
Some nations across the globe are becoming more linguistically diverse as a result of the transnational migration of peoples. Others are experiencing an increase in their language diversity as a result of differential growths of their populations, resurgence of language and ethnic nationalism, language revitalization movements, and the official recognition and promotion of multiple languages. Gove…
Latchkey child was a term coined to describe children who wore or carried house keys to school so that they could let themselves into their home when they returned from school. Those children were at home without adult supervision until their parents returned from work, school, or other occupations away from home. Currently, the term self care is used to refer to elementary and middle school child…
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) that are undergoing (or expecting to undergo) rapid economic growth are in need of better-trained workers, but the education system in these countries is still far behind the developed world. Latin American nations have tried hard to advance toward universal education and to increase enrollments in secondary and higher education, but they have not…
Since it was first instituted as a formal course of study–first for Roman children, and then for members of the ever-expanding Roman Empire–Latin has been a staple of formal curricula. And for almost all of that time, controversy has swirled around the methodologies that should be used to teach Latin, its precise role in the curricula, and the aims and goals of teaching Latin. As the…
The law deals with all aspects of human life in its individual and collective expression, searching for economic and social justice, addressing past injustice, and ruling on divisive issues. As dynamic as the society it represents, the law changes as the zeitgeist or spirit of the times reflects emerging interests and concerns. Those interested in a career in law will find it a route to understand…
The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is the halfday, standardized entrance exam required by the 198 law schools (184 in the United States and 15 in Canada) that constitute the membership of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) as of July 2001. The LSAC, a nonprofit corporation located in Newton, Pennsylvania, is the sole administering body of the LSAT. The LSAT is administered to large groups o…
Analogy plays an important role in learning and instruction. As John Bransford, Jeffrey Franks, Nancy Vye, and Robert Sherwood noted in 1989, analogies can help students make connections between different concepts and transfer knowledge from a well-understood domain to one that is unfamiliar or not directly perceptual. For example, the circulatory system is often explained as being like a plumbing…
Educational observers have long argued that student involvement is important to student education. Indeed a wide range of studies, in a variety of settings and of a range of students, have confirmed that academic and social involvement, sometimes referred to as academic and social integration, enhances student development, improves student learning, and increases student persistence. Simply put, i…
The term learning disability was first introduced in the early 1960s. Up until that time, children with relatively normal intelligence who experienced learning difficulties were referred to as minimally brain injured, slow learners, dyslexic, or perceptually disabled. Despite their learning problems, these children had not received special attention in schools. Parents' unyielding efforts t…
Since the time of the Greek philosopher Socrates, educators have realized that teachers cannot possibly teach students everything they need to know in life. Thus, a major goal of educational systems has been to prepare students for a lifetime of learning. To this end, a large part of the educational endeavor involves teaching general skills and strategies that can be applied to a variety of proble…
Learning theories are so central to the discipline of psychology that it is impossible to separate the history of learning theories from the history of psychology. Learning is a basic psychological process, and investigations of the principles and mechanisms of learning have been the subject of research and debate since the establishment of the first psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt in Le…
A tort is a civil wrong–a violation of a duty–that causes harm. In the U.S. judicial system, an individual who is injured by a breach of duty can sue the other person to collect compensation for that injury. There are basically three types of civil wrongs. Some intentional torts also can be crimes, and a tort-feasor can be required by a civil court to pay money damages to compensate …
Rather than emphasizing a specific course of study or professional training, liberal arts colleges aim to expose students to a wide breadth of courses in the humanities and both physical and social sciences. Although the curriculum varies from college to college, a student's coursework at a liberal arts school would include many or all of the following subjects: history, philosophy, religio…
As higher education continues to attract an increasing number of adult students, many colleges and universities are developing programs to meet their distinctive needs. These students, age twenty-five and over, comprise 38 percent of the undergraduate population, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1999, and bring with them rich clusters of college-level knowledge gleaned from a variety …
Lifelong learning is a broad, generic term that is difficult to define with specificity. Its overlap, or its interchangeable use, with other closely related concepts, such as lifelong, permanent, recurrent, continuing, or adult education; learning organizations; and the learning society (society in which learning is pervasive), makes this even more true. For some it includes learning from childhoo…
The Lincoln School (1917–1940) of Teachers College, Columbia University, was a university laboratory school set up to test and develop and ultimately to promulgate nationwide curriculum materials reflecting the most progressive teaching methods and ideas of the time. Originally located at 646 Park Avenue in New York, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city, the Lincoln S…
One of the foremost applied statisticians and educational testing pioneers of the 1900s, Everet Franklin Lindquist received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1927 and was a member of the faculty there from 1927 until his retirement in 1969. During his long professional career, he made substantial contributions to the field of education in the areas of test development, test-scoring technolo…
William Teale and Elizabeth Sulzby coined the term emergent literacy in 1986 from Mary Clay's dissertation title, "Emergent Reading Behavior" (1966). Their term designated new conceptions about the relationship between a growing child and literacy information from the environment and home literacy practices. The process of becoming literate starts before school intervention. I…
Literate practices are learned within dynamic cultural systems that structure roles and scripts (alphabetic, pictographic), privilege modes of reasoning, and offer tools through which such practices may be carried out. In modern, often Westernized, societies, these tools include books, newspapers, magazines, film, digital technology, and television. Historically, the advent of new technologies…
The terms literacy and reading, though related, are neither synonymous nor unambiguous. Typically reading is subsumed by literacy, with the latter term referring to reading, writing, and other modes of symbolic communication that are valued differently for social, economic, and political reasons often imposed by a dominant culture. Simply broadening the definition, however, does not alleviate the …
American higher education can mark the beginning of living and learning centers (LLCs) with the founding of the Harvard house program in 1926, made possible by a gift from William Harkin. The intent of this gift was for Harvard to develop a residential experience similar to those at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Yale University established a similar housing program in 1933, and a few years la…
Looping is a practice in which a teacher stays with the same class for more than one year; it is a multiyear placement for both the students and the teacher. For example, a teacher begins with a group of first-grade students and rather than sending those students on to a new teacher continues with them through second grade. Looping can occur for two or more consecutive years. In this example, the …
Viktor Lowenfeld, professor of art education at the Pennsylvania State University, helped to define and develop the field of art education in the United States. His life and career have been a continuing topic of study in the field. Lowenfeld was born in Linz, Austria, of Jewish parents. He taught art in the elementary schools in Vienna while attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, which he fou…