Digital Commons Network^™

Cooperative Learning On Mathematical Problem Solving: Reflections By A Traditional Teacher And Her Students, Diana Metsisto

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

As our society becomes more technologically complex, the educational system preparing our students to become citizens of this society must adapt to met changing demands. Mathematical literacy of the 21st century will require a different model of mathematics education than that which served in the past. This thesis argues for a model of mathematics education which includes as key components: problem solving, question posing, cooperative learning, concrete manipulatives, and teaching for thinking. This new model sets forth guidelines for a facilitative approach to the teaching of mathematics as opposed to the more traditional, authoritative model. This facilitative model is based …

News & Views - Vol. 09, No. 04 - December 19, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Merging Instruction In Thinking And Writing, Victoria L. Morse

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Two largely independent bodies of literature exist on both teaching to promote students' critical and creative thinking abilities and teaching to promote the shift between novice and more expert writing. The author looks closely at both bodies of literature and merges common principles to create an extended curriculum unit designed to teach simultaneously toward expert thinking and expert writing. The unit contains such diverse activities as: 1) an acrostic puzzle; 2) reading articles on themes related to Hamlet; 3) the use of dialectical notebooks; 3) an explicit investigation into the nature of problem solving; 4) using emphatic role-playing to bring …

Critical Thinking In Reading: A Whole Language Approach, Deborah Anne Adkins

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

The importance of good instruction in reading education has long been recognized. What constitutes good instruction and what materials should be used have been the focus of much debate, however, over the years. Two relatively new movements in education have recently added fuel to that debate, namely the movements in critical thinking and whole language. The fundamental purpose of the thinking skills movement is the development of higher level thinking in students. In the area of reading this means that students should be challenged by questions and problems in literature which cause them to go beyond a literal understanding. They …

News & Views - Vol. 09, No. 03 - November 21, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 09, No. 02 - October 12, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

After The Revolt: A Framework For Fiscal Recovery, Joseph S. Slavet, Raymond G. Torto

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

Despite the injection of new taxes in the amount of $1 .2 billion in fiscal 1991, and recently announced cuts in the budget of approximately $464 million, the Commonwealth's fiscal condition - irrespective of the outcome of CLT's petition -is precarious. Although the political juices are flowing in Massachusetts, with an eye on November 6th, Massachusetts decision-makers have not faced up to the problems inherent in the long-term, structural spending patterns of the state's budget.

Our five-year budget projection indicates that if expenditure trends continue without dramatic restructuring - particularly in the "non-discretionary" accounts - the Commonwealth faces a steady …

Implementing General Education: Initial Findings, Sandra Kanter, Howard London, Zelda F. Gamson

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

The article reports on the first year activities of the Project on the Implementation of General Education. The project, conducted by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE), is funded by the Exxon Education Foundation. The focus of the research is to examine how general education curricula is actually developed and implemented on college campuses that have limited resources.

New Concepts Of Professional Expertise: Liberal Learning As Part Of A Career-Oriented Education, Ernest Lynton

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

The nature of the expertise needed in most professions and higher level occupations is broadening because of changing organization and content of work. Today, a competent practitioner must be more than a narrow specialist. Curricular reviews aimed at ensuring liberal learning should abandon the false dichotomy between career-oriented and liberal education and begin by reexamining and broadening the major.

Assessing Faculty Shortages In Comprehensive Colleges And Universities, Zelda F. Gamson, Dorothy E. Finnegan, Ted I.K. Youn

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

In the last two years, the national media and higher education publications have begun warning of faculty shortages. In the fall of 1989 Edward Fiske and Elizabeth Fowler wrote in the New York Times that colleges and universities would be facing major faculty shortages in the humanities and social sciences (Fiske 1989; Fowler 1989). A few months earlier, Joseph Berger (1989) warned in the New York Times that the "Slowing Pace to Doctorates Spurs Worry on Filling Jobs." The Chronicle of Higher Education has been running a series of articles on various aspects of the faculty labor market --concerning the …

The Academic Workplace (Fall/Winter 1990): Faculty Shortages: Are They Here? What Can We Do About Them?, New England Resource Center For Higher Education At The University Of Massachusetts Boston, Zelda F. Gamson, Dorothy E. Finnegan, Ted I.K. Youn

The Academic Workplace

No abstract provided.

Recent Changes In The Structure And Value Of African-American Male Occupations, Jeremiah P. Cotton

Trotter Review

The occupational structure of black men has undergone major changes in recent years, shifting from largely blue-collar to white-collar and service occupations. At the same time there has been a decline in both the relative and absolute value of black male occupations. Moreover, it appears that labor-market discrimination still plays a significant role in the disparity between black and white male occupational earnings.

The Foundation Of American Racism: Defining Bigotry, Racism, And Racial Hierarchy, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Despite the fact that current surveys reveal a decline in the level of white prejudice towards blacks, however, the number of hate groups and incidents of racial harassment and violence is rapidly increasing. In addition, while black and white Americans seem to be interacting more in the work place, residential segregation continues to be a major problem. Furthermore, there are indications that the political attitudes of blacks and whites are not only different on many philosophical and economic issues, but are becoming increasingly divergent.

Back Matter: Trotter Review, Vol. 4, Issue 3

Trotter Review

Includes information about the Ph.D. Program in Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and about the Trotter Institute's six-volume series entitled The Assessment of the Status of African-Americans.

Front Matter

New England Journal of Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Remarks Made At The Second Circuit Judicial Conference, September 8, 1989, Thurgood Marshall

Trotter Review

For many years, no institution of American government has been as close a friend to civil rights as the United States Supreme Court. Make no mistake: I do not mean for a moment to denigrate the quite considerable contributions to the enhancement of civil rights by presidents, the Congress, other federal courts, and the legislatures and judiciaries of many states. It is now 1989, however, and we must recognize that the Court's approach to civil rights cases has changed markedly. The most recent Supreme Court opinions vividly illustrate this changed judicial attitude. In Richmond v. Croson, the Court took …

Jfk: The Education Of A President, Nigel Hamilton

New England Journal of Public Policy

What goes into the making of a president? To what extent are the mind and character of the American commander in chief determined by his background, his family — and his education? This article represents a transcript of two lectures Nigel Hamilton presented in the spring and fall of 1989 at the Massachusetts State Archives. They were derived from the preliminary sketches for the author's full-scale biography of John F. Kennedy, to be published by Houghton Mifflin in 1992 on the anniversary of the birth of the thirty-fifth president.

The Presidential Primary: A Faulty Process, Douglas A. Fraser, Irving Bluestone

New England Journal of Public Policy

The system of presidential primary elections has in effect created a nonsystem for selecting party candidates for the highest office in the nation. Personality has become the substitute for program content, and campaign spending coupled with the influence of the media counts for more than the candidates' experience, knowledge, expertise, administrative ability, and attachment to the policies and programs of their respective political party. In large measure the current presidential primary system has failed in its objective to advance the democratic process within the political parties while undermining the effectiveness of the parties and the importance of activists, the party …

On Being A Republican In Massachusetts: Notes Of A Party Chairman, Andrew Natsios

New England Journal of Public Policy

In the 1970s the Democratic and Republican national and state parties initiated efforts at party renewal in order to reverse their declining institutional power. Between 1980 and 1987 the Massachusetts Republican Party undertook a renewal effort modeled after that of the Republican National Committee under William Brock. This model emphasized the provision to candidates and to the grassroots party organization of campaign sendees such as literature design, polling, direct mail fund-raising, telephone banks, and campaign schools. The Massachusetts Republican Party concentrated these services to candidates for the state legislature, achieving the largest net gain in seats since 1962. Campaign technology …

The Vision Thing, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In "The Vision Thing," Shaun O'Connell reviews a number of books whose subject matter is not merely the presidential election of 1988, but the impact of image politics in the age of the thirty-second sound bite. He quotes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death: "Just as the television commercial empties itself of authentic product information so that it can do its psychological work of [pseudotherapy], image politics empties itself of authentic political sustenance for the same reason."

The works discussed in this article include: All by Myself: The Unmaking of a Presidential Campaign, by Christine M. Black …

Who Was That Woman I Didn't See You With Last Night?, Norman W. Merrill

New England Journal of Public Policy

The 1988 presidential campaign elicited numerous complaints about negative campaigning. But compared to the vicious rhetoric popular at the birth of the republic the rhetoric of the latest campaign was quite mild. Invective rhetoric was employed by the Founding Fathers, men like John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Callender. The partisan press of the time contributed greatly to the harsh tone of politics. All participants felt free to make acerbic remarks directed at the man rather than the issue, a tradition that continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Many of the charges made by American politicians were …

The Nowhere Man: When The "Miracle" Turned To Mush, David Nyhan

New England Journal of Public Policy

He didn 't steal money, go to jail, become embroiled in a personal scandal, or appoint a pack of thieves to high office, as other Massachusetts politicians have on occasion. But his fall was as dramatic as if he had done any or all of the above. From winning reelection in 1986 with 69 percent ofthe vote, then capturing the Democrats' presidential nomination, his fortunes sank like a stone.

Michael Stanley Dukakis, the stoic son of Greek immigrants, became a figure of ridicule in his third term. Thanks to the regional economy's sharp recession and the lingering effects of the …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

"Of all the difficulties facing the historian in his task of understanding and discussing the past, none can be greater than that of emphatically recreating the popular 'mood' defining any particular event or period," writes Paul Kennedy. This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy is about mood and politics and how synergistic interplay of the two in recent years reflects both the national and local psyche.

Front Matter: Trotter Review, Vol. 4, Issue 3

Trotter Review

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

New England Journal of Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Sports Notes: Blacks And Private Golf Clubs, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

This past summer racial progress in the United States ran head first into the issue of "freedom of association" in the form of private clubs that prohibit membership to "other" folk, i.e., blacks and women. The specific issue in the case of the Shoal Creek Country Club of Alabama was the appropriateness of holding a Professional Golf Association (PGA) tournament at a club that did not accept blacks as members and was so bold as to say so to the press.

News & Views - Vol. 09, No. 01 - September 15, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Howth Castle - Vol. 06, No. 01 - 1990-1991, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Howth Castle (1985-1993)

No abstract provided.

Critical Thinking Through Literature: A Dialogue Teaching Model, William H. Hayes

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Many traditional approaches to teaching literature depend on lecturing and asking pointed or leading questions which require correct answers. Through such lessons have their value, they do not engage students in earnest and thoughtful discussions of literature. Such methods may be useful for reviewing material, but they are not sufficient to foster critical thinking. The Dialogue Teaching Model evolves in eight phases. It allows students to respond to literature at their own level of understanding by giving students the opportunity to interpret readings on their own. Using a dialogue approach, the teacher has students make judgments or decision about their …

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 12 - July 11, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.