Importance of School Health Education An Interview with Dean Joyce Hopp

Joyce W. Hopp is Dean of the School of Allied Health Professions at Lorna Linda University. Program development in response to market demands is her forté Dr. Hopp is also a Professor of Health Promotion and Education in the School of Public Health at Loma Linda University, a position she has held for 30 years.

Dr. Hopp began her career in healthcare as a nurse. Her primary interest is health education in Seventh-day Adventist educational institutions. The interview addresses her educational progression to a Ph.D., her experience in training healthcare professionals, and her philosophy of Christian education. Also included are her suggestions for future research in Christian health education.     

Black Mountain College: A Creative Art Space Where It Was Safe to Fail

Black Mountain College is remembered as an artistic utopian alternative to institutional learning. Its faculty and students included some of the most important creative thinkers of the 20th century. Its foundation was built on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” But what made Black Mountain such a dynamic educational environment? Today, the financial burden of higher education places a lasting strain on students that inhibits creative growth. Does the educational structure of the college system impede our learning? Black Mountain was a legendary educational experiment, which offers a model for contemporary art education.     

The Politics of Identity and the Experience of Learning: Insights for Pluralism from Western Educational History

The eight short explorations in the first part of this paper attempt to identify some crucial developments in the history of Western learning which eclipsed pluralist educational practices in their (Socratic) infancy and thereafter, and which contributed to the widespread employment of education as a force for cultural uniformity, or assumed superiority. Drawing together the lessons of the first part with contemporary insights from hermeneutic philosophy, the second part sets forth briefly the promising educational possibilities for human self-understanding and co-existence which are furnished by a newly-inspired reclamation of the long-eclipsed heritage.     

Seventh-Day Adventist Teachers’ Perceptions of Inclusion Classrooms and Identification of Challenges to Their Implementation

This qualitative study investigated the perceptions and challenges of Seventh-day Adventist teachers towards inclusion classrooms in the United States. For this study, 17 participants were interviewed using two 12-item interview protocols. The analysis of the teachers’ responses revealed five key perceptions. First, teachers have positive attitudes towards inclusion. Second, accommodations help students who are mildly disabled succeed in the regular classroom. Third, inclusion classrooms can be Christian based. Fourth, school personnel need to develop policies for accepting students with disabilities. Finally, Adventist teachers can identify children with special needs. Participants identified two challenges for implementing inclusion classrooms, first, developing policies and resources for use by teachers, and second, providing needed training to help teachers succeed in an inclusive classroom. The article concludes with recommendations for developing a successful inclusive educational program in Christian schools and recommendations future study.     

The Miyagi Method: a new vision for religious educators

This article proposes and develops an analysis of Mr Miyagi's educational philosophy in The Karate Kid. It suggests that this fictional tale, this story of an especially intense learning experience, captures and expresses an important synthesis of both traditional and more recent developments in educational theory, and that it also points the religious educator into a new realm of considerations. After a brief introduction, the author considers two influential scenes from the film and discusses four prominent Miyagi standards. Through these general principles, and through a look at the resource selection methods used, the author links the method under investigation to the ‘sage‐disciple’ pattern of study and reflects on the usefulness of this approach for contemporary religious educators.     

Teaching Strategies and Adaptations of Teachers in Multiculturally Diverse Classrooms in Seventh-day Adventist K-8 Schools in North America

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of Adventist teachers—their training, their use of instructional strategies, and the challenges they encounter when teaching students of different cultures. Banks' multicultural paradigms was the theoretical framework from which a survey was developed and sent to all K-8 Adventist teachers in the United States and Canada. Strategies relating to the self-concept development and ethnic additive paradigms were used most frequently by Adventist teachers while those associated with the language paradigm were used the least. Almost half of the teachers subscribed to the goal that “students are individuals with distinct personalities regardless of their background” while about 10% of the teachers considered the goals relating to “protection of diverse groups” the most important. Their strategy use was not related to their most important goals (Nels) for multicultural education. Forty percent of the teachers had no training in multicultural education and the study recommends training so that Adventist teachers will have more effective strategies for relating to diverse students.     

生存论转向与马克思的实践哲学

生存论转向是在清理当代哲学的主题转换及其问题时,结合当代人类生存实践活动、社会结构以及文化传统的当代变迁与转型的剖析,进而形成的对当代哲学存在论转换及其方向的理论追求的创构努力。古希腊的存在(tobe)及存在论(Ontology)中所蕴含的生存及生存论的丰富内涵,被此后的实存(exsistere)及实存论取代生存主义哲学开启了生存论转向,但此转向作为一项历史性使命,绝不限于此。当代西方浓厚的语言哲学以及后现代相对主义背景表明,仅仅在西方范式下推展的生存论转向已走向终结。在这一情形下,内在地超越于西方并蕴含着人类性哲学方向的马克思的实践哲学在生存论转向中的重要意义将会彰显出来,马克思实践哲学以及其中蕴含的实践一生存论实际上有理由被看作“-3代哲学生存论转向的真正目标,只不过,在人类解放论的理论预设内,生存论转向作为人的不断生成、自我超越和创造的历史性的存在,本身就存在着一种未竟性与不可终结性。     

Family Therapy Education and Higher Education Administration Policy: Facing New Challenges

Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) education programs are not immune to the financial pressures associated with providing quality educational programs. In this article, the author discusses the current higher education economic environment, explores contemporary trends in higher education management, and considers their effect on MFT educational programs, an area that is virtually unaddressed in the literature. Finally, the author describes how one MFT training program is responding to the challenges brought forth by the fiscal complexities embedded in the contemporary higher education economic environment. The discussion offers useful and practical administrative policy information to MFT educational programs and their leaders.     

Job Satisfaction Among Teachers in Seventh-day Adventist Schools and Its Relationship to Commitment and Selected Work Conditions

A survey was conducted among teachers in Seventh-day Adventist schools to determine the degree of job satisfaction and its relationship to commitment and selected work conditions. The population for this study included teachers in Adventist schools in the Midwestern region of the United States. It was found that (1) Adventist teachers are generally satisfied with their work. They chose to work for the Adventist church because of their commitment to the church. (2) Commitment to the teaching profession was highly related to job satisfaction among male teachers; whereas, commitment to the church organization was highly related to job satisfaction among female teachers. (3) Faith dimension was the most important work-condition factor related to commitment to the church organization; whereas, personal significance was related to commitment to the teaching profession.     

Mahatma Gandhi and Character Education in Non‐Violence: Its Relevance in Religious Studies Today

This essay presents educational principles of Mahatma Gandhi, specifically principles of character education, as a model for strengthening non‐violence in students. Its major concern is to show that Gandhi's ideal of non‐violent character education is important for university teaching in disciplines including religious studies, and that Gandhi offers methods for fostering non‐violent character, namely the teaching of world religions, service learning, and setting an example. The effectiveness of Gandhi's views, moreover, finds some support in contemporary teaching practices, including my own experiences in the classroom.     

(Un)Fixing Education

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system.     

The Educational Thing

In this essay, I argue that education should be conceived of as a thing in itself. To lift this view, I present aspects of Graham Harman’s philosophy, a speculative realism that can be seen as a radical break with social constructivism and similar approaches. Next, I attempt to outline a rough sketch of an educational “thing”, drawing on concepts such as protection, love, swarm, tension and shadow. Finally, I briefly discuss some implications of this vision for philosophy of education. In particular, I think that my discussion point to philosophy of education as the basic discipline in an educational science.     

new options for college study

In an effort to meet the changing demands American society is placing on educational institutions, colleges and universities have begun reexamining their educational practices and philosophy. Here the author discusses two alternatives to traditional classroom learning: (a) universities' acceptance of standardized examination results as evidence of learning and (b) “external degree” programs, which involve a reorganization of the higher education system. She discusses one such program in detail. Both of these changes will encourage and enable more people to pursue college degrees; they will also demand new or redefined roles for counselors in and out of the academic community.     

Rethinking Emancipation,Rethinking Education

In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and argue that these words are only meaningful within the myth of schooling and not in a language of education/emancipation. The second part of the paper discusses different but related conceptions of emancipation by exploring its ambiguous nature. In the third part of the paper I specify the role and place of emancipation within a philosophy of education that seeks to articulate its social value.     

Life and Death of Music as Education: A Philosophical Overview

Abstract

This essay contemplates the role of music as education (as opposed to music education) in the Western World since Ancient Greek philosophical inquiry and throughout early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and Modernism. It regards music as a potential tool for instruction and knowledge exchange. In particular, this essay examines post-Enlightenment philosophical trends that reshaped Western understandings of music. Finally, this paper explores music education within the Seventh-day Adventist educational system as influenced by both nineteenth-century thought as well as informed by the reformative attempts that followed in the twentieth century.     

Is Act-Utilitarianism the ‘Ethics of Fantasy’?

Act-utilitarianism is often criticised as an unreasonably demanding moral philosophy that commits agents to a life of ceaseless and depersonalizing do-gooding. In this essay I argue in Sidgwickian vein that the strenuousness of act-utilitarianism has been greatly exaggerated, and that the practical demands of the doctrine in the contemporary world are closer to those of common-sense morality than such critics as Derek Parfit and Brad Hooker allow.     

Defending the bad against the worse: Education and democracy

Recent writings in philosophy of education have expressed pessimism about the possibility of educating students to think for themselves. Similarly, recent writings in political philosophy have expressed pessimism about the possibility of attaining democracy. In this paper, I suggest that such pessimism is premature and may be alleviated, if not removed, by interpreting both educational enlightenment and the democratic ideal as processes, rather than end states. They are, moreover, processes which exist in symbiotic relationship with one another. Thus educational practices may improve the prospects of attaining democracy, and political practices may strengthen education.     

Political Realism and Fact-Sensitivity

Political realists complain that much contemporary political philosophy is insufficiently attentive to various facts about politics yet some political philosophers insist that any critique of normative claims on grounds of unrealism is misplaced. In this paper I focus on the methodological position G.A. Cohen champions in order assess the extent to which this retort succeeds in nullifying the realist critique of contemporary political philosophy. I argue that Cohen’s work does not succeed in doing so because the political principles that we are prepared to endorse are hostage to various fact-sensitive judgements about how they apply to the political domain. I then argue that this discredits various philosophical approaches to political theorising which begin by utilising non-political thought-experiments, such as Cohen’s own Why Not Socialism?     

关于另类科学哲学的思考

A prominent phenomenon in contemporary philosophy of science has been the unexpected rise of alternative philosophers of science. This article analyses in depth such alternative philosophers of science as Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, summarizing the similarities and differences between alternative philosophies of science and traditional philosophy of science so as to unveil the trends in contemporary philosophy of science. With its different principles and foundation, alternative philosophy of science has made breakthroughs in terms of its field of vision, scope, and methodology, and its relationship with science has become more humanistic and pluralistic. Attention should be given to alternative perspectives in the contemporary philosophy of science, and research should be expanded into the fields of the epistemology of science and cognitive science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific anthropology, the scientific cultural philosophy, and scientific ethics.     

Introduction: education and migration

ABSTRACT

This introduction expounds educational problems that arise from transnational migration. It argues that it is high time to critically analyze normative issues of and in education under conditions of globalization because dominant approaches in normative philosophy of education tend to suffer from both a nationalist bias and a sedentary bias. The contributions to this special issue address normative problems pertaining to migration-related education from a variety of ethical and philosophical perspectives, including analytic applied ethics, continental philosophy, care ethics, Hegelian philosophy, the capability approach and theories of distributive justice. They discuss the education of both citizens and migrants in the receiving society as well as in the country of origin, focusing on ethical issues pertaining to access to education as well as to the content of educational programs.