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Books
General Education
Key Concepts in EducationProvides students with essential themes, topics and expressions that Education students are likely to encounter, both during their courses and beyond in professional practice.
Key Concepts in Teaching Primary MathematicsCovering the key principles and concepts in the teaching and learning of mathematics in elementary schools, this text provides trainee and practicing teachers with a quick and easy reference to what they need to know for their course, and in the classroom.
Early Education
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child DevelopmentAn authoritative, accessible and up-to-date account of all aspects of child development. Covers everything from prenatal development to education, pediatrics, neuroscience, theories and research methods to physical development, social development, cognitive development, psychopathology and parenting. It also looks at cultural issues, sex differences and the history of child development.
Special Topics
Gender and Education: An Encyclopedia by Barbara J. BankEducators explore the intersection of gender and education. Their entries deal with educational theories, research, curricula, practices, personnel, and policies, but also with variations in the gendering of education across historical and cultural contexts.
International Handbook of Giftedness and TalentProvides a comprehensive review and critical synthesis of significant theory; a unique cross-national perspective; significant contributions from scholars working in related fields; an increased focus on empirically supported scholarship; and is arranged for quick and easy reference.
Terms and Concepts
General
Education: Topic PageProcess, beginning at birth, of developing intellectual capacity, skills, and social awareness, especially by instruction. In its more restricted sense, the term refers to the process of imparting literacy, numeracy, and a generally accepted body of knowledge.
Philosophy of EducationFrom Dictionary of World Philosophy
Philosophical inquiry dealing with the ends and ideals of education, as well as with pedagogy, which focuses on educational methods and procedures.
Technology in EducationFrom Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
Philosophical thinking about technology in education, such as it exists, may be placed into three categories: substantive, instrumentalist, and pluralist.
Multiculturalism in EducationFrom Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
An educational reform movement that aims to equalize educational opportunities for diverse racial and ethnic groups.
Electronic Learning/E-LearningFrom The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
Online training delivered to personal computers over the Internet, with the advantage that classes can be taken at any time and in any place, so that students are able to learn at their own pace.
School: Topic PageTerm commonly referring to institutions of pre-college formal education. It also properly includes colleges, universities, and many types of special training establishments.
LearningFrom The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics
Learning is the ‘acquisition of knowledge’, or perhaps the development of skills in the application of already existent knowledge.
Terms and Concepts
CurriculumFrom Key Concepts in Education
In schools, it usually means the full range of subjects taught, taken as a whole experience.
Illiteracy: Topic PageInability to meet a certain minimum criterion of reading and writing skill.
Intelligence Test: Topic PageTest that attempts to measure innate intellectual ability, rather than acquired ability.
Intelligence: Topic PageIn psychology, the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to new situations.
LiteracyFrom Key Concepts in Education
Most children learn to talk fairly easily. In contrast, learning to read and write is a laborious process. It is the ability to read and write which makes a person ‘literate’, with varying degrees of fluency.
PedagogyFrom The Social Science Jargon-Buster
Pedagogy focuses on strategies, techniques, and approaches used to facilitate learning.
Peer TutoringFrom The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Any use of students to coach or tutor one another is usually called “peer tutoring,” although when their ages differ, the students are not really members of the same peer group.
School Vouchers: Topic PageGovernment grants aimed at improving education for the children of low-income families by providing school tuition that can be used at public or private schools.
Teacher Training: Topic PageProfessional preparation of teachers, usually through formal course work and practice teaching. Although the concept of teaching as a profession is fairly new, most teachers in industrialized nations today are college or university educated.
History
Educators and Theorists
Frederick Barnard (1809–1889): Topic PageAmerican educator and mathematician, b. Sheffield, Mass. During his long administration (1864–89), Columbia grew from a small undergraduate college of 150 students into one of the nation's great universities, with an enrollment of 1,500.
Catherine Beecher (1800-1878): Topic Page
Educator and writer, born in East Hampton, New York, USA. After her fiance’s death (1823), she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, launching a life-long campaign as lecturer, writer, and advocate for women’s education.
John Dewey (1859-1952): Topic PageDewey’s belief that the method of enquiry, the scientific method, should be applied to practical problems lent philosophical support to the rise and the vogue of the social sciences.
Charles W. Eliot (1834–1926): Topic PageAmerican educator and president of Harvard, b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1853. Under Eliot's 40-year administration, Harvard developed from a small college with attached professional schools into a great modern university.
Paulo Freire (1921-1997)From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
(1921-1997) radical educationalist. His best known work Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated into English in 1972. Freire used learning to facilitate the development of consciousness amongst oppressed and marginalised groups.
Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852): Topic PageGerman educator and founder of the kindergarten system. Froebel stressed the importance of pleasant surroundings, self-activity, and physical training in child development.
Ivan Illich (1926-2002)From The Dictionary of Alternatives
A radical educationalist and social thinker. His first and most famous book, Deschooling Society (1971), argued for the replacement of prison-like institutions for education by lifelong learning webs.
Horace Mann (1796–1859): Topic PageAmerican educator. Was made secretary of the newly created (1837) state board of education at a time when the public school system was in very bad condition.
Maria Montessori (1870-1952): Topic Page
Maria Montessori was a physician, an educational reformer, and an advocate for children and peace. She is best known for designing the educational system known as the Montessori Method, which flourishes today in more than 8,000 schools on five continents.
Jean Piaget (1896-1980): Topic PageAlthough Piaget is internationally known for his work in child psychology, he regarded his work as a contribution to genetic epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge directed upon the development (genesis) of knowledge.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): Topic PageSwiss-French philosopher, author, political theorist, and composer. What was new and important about his educational philosophy, as outlined in Émile, was its rejection of the traditional ideal: education was not seen to be the imparting of all things to be known to the uncouth child; rather it was seen as the "drawing out" of what is already there, the fostering of what is native.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915): Topic PageAmerican educator, b. Franklin co., Va. Under his direction, Tuskegee Institute became one of the leading African-American educational institutions in America.
Emma Willard (1787-1870): Topic Page
In the history of women’s education in the United States, Emma Willard was one of the first to advocate high schools for girls and the establishment of women’s colleges.
General History
Auto-DidacticismFrom The Dictionary of Alternatives
A term meaning ‘self-education’ or ‘self-directed learning’. The great age of auto-didacticism in England was during the formation of radical working-class organizations and movements at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Liberal ArtsFrom The Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance
Those arts which, according to a classification made first in antiquity, were worthy of study by a free (Latin liber) man.
Monitorial SystemFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
Method of elementary education devised by British educators Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell during the 19th cent. to furnish schooling to the underprivileged even under conditions of severely limited facilities.
QuadriviumFrom Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
The term “quadrivium” refers to a more advanced grouping of four of the seven liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
TriviumFrom Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
The trivium was a division of the seven liberal arts that included the three elements of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
Desegregation
Affirmative Action: Topic PageIn the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women.
Brown v Board of Education: Topic PageCase decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black.
BusingFrom Dictionary of American government and politics
Busing refers to the assignment and transport of children to schools beyond their immediate neighbourhoods in order to obtain racial balance.
Civil Rights: Topic PageThe rights guaranteed by the state to its citizens. It incorporates the belief that governments should not arbitrarily act to infringe these rights, and that individuals and groups, through political action, have a legitimate role in determining and influencing what constitutes them.
Desegregation: Topic Page
The process of ending separation or isolation of a group who were restricted by law or custom to separate living areas, public facilities, educational institutions, etc.
Racism: Topic PageRacism can be described as an extreme form of ethnocentrism (i.e., seeing one’s language, customs, ways of thinking, and material culture as preferable).
Institutions
Institution Types
Charter School: Topic PageAlternative type of American public school that, while paid for by taxes, is independent of the public-school system and relatively free from state and local regulations.
Community CollegeFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
Public institution of higher education. Community colleges are characterized by a two-year curriculum that leads to either the associate degree or transfer to a four-year college.
KindergartenFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
Friedrich Froebel designed (1837) the kindergarten to provide an educational situation less formal than that of the elementary school but one in which children's creative play instincts would be organized constructively.
Library: Topic Page
A collection of books or other written or printed materials, as well as the facility in which they are housed and the institution that is responsible for their maintenance.
MadrasahFrom Dictionary of World Philosophy
Literally meaning a “place of study,” this term designated a school of higher study in the Islamic world. Its higher-study ranking presupposed that its students had memorized the entire Quran.
School: Topic PageTerm commonly referring to institutions of pre-college formal education. It also properly includes colleges, universities, and many types of special training establishments.
Sunday School: Topic PageInstitution for instruction in religion and morals, usually conducted in churches as part of the church organization but sometimes maintained by other religious or philanthropic bodies.
University: Topic Page
Institution of higher learning for those who have completed primary and secondary education.
Universities
Cambridge UniversityFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
At Cambridge, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world.
Columbia University: Topic PageMainly in New York City; founded 1754 as King's College by grant of King George II; first college in New York City, fifth oldest in the United States; one of the eight Ivy League institutions.
Harvard University: Topic Page
Mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college.
Oxford UniversityFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
At Oxford, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world.
Rutgers University: Topic PageMain campus at New Brunswick, N.J.; land-grant and state supported; coeducational except for Douglass College; chartered 1766 as Queen's College, opened 1771.
Yale University: Topic PageAt New Haven, Conn.; coeducational. Chartered as a collegiate school for men in 1701...
Museums and Libraries
British Museum: Topic PageThe national repository in London for treasures in science and art. Located in the Bloomsbury section of the city, it has departments of antiquities, prints and drawings, coins and medals, and ethnography.
Library of Congress: Topic PageNational library of the United States, Washington, D.C., est. 1800. Thomas Jefferson while Vice President was a prime mover in the creation of the library, and he supported it strongly during his presidency.
Museum of Modern Art: Topic Page(MoMA), New York City, established and incorporated in 1929. Its present collection represents one of the finest groups of modern and contemporary art in the world, and its 1999 merger with P.S. 1, a contemporary art space in Long Island City, Queens, gave MoMA a greater connection to avant-garde art.
New York Public Library: Topic PageFree library supported by private endowments and gifts and by the city and state of New York. It is the one of largest libraries in the world.
Alternative and Special Education
Alternative Education
Apprenticeship: Topic PageSystem of learning a craft or trade from one who is engaged in it and of paying for the instruction by a given number of years of work.
Auto-DidacticismFrom The Dictionary of Alternatives
A term meaning ‘self-education’ or ‘self-directed learning’. The great age of auto-didacticism in England was during the formation of radical working-class organizations and movements at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Charter School: Topic PageAlternative type of American public school that, while paid for by taxes, is independent of the public-school system and relatively free from state and local regulations.
Distance LearningFrom The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
Form of education using technology to teach students who are dispersed geographically.
Domestic EducationFrom Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
Any education at home, for home life, or about home life. Political, social, and economic theorists have conceived in various ways of the educational importance of home and family.
Electronic Learning/E-LearningFrom The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Online training delivered to personal computers over the Internet, with the advantage that classes can be taken at any time and in any place, so that students are able to learn at their own pace.
Home SchoolingFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
The practice of teaching children in the home as an alternative to attending public or private elementary or high school. In most cases, one or both of the children's parents serve as the teachers.
Religious EducationFrom Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
Traditionally, the concept of religious education has been used to refer to the faith-nurturing activities of a community of faith.
Vocational Education: Topic PageTraining designed to advance individuals' general proficiency, especially in relation to their present or future occupations. The term does not normally include training for the professions.
Educators and Institutions
SummerhillFrom The Dictionary of Alternatives
A Democratic school, originally founded in Hellerau near Dresden by A. S. Neill (1883–1973) in 1921. Neill was the headmaster at the Gretna Green school in Scotland, but left to pursue his idea that happy, free children are more likely to learn, and less likely to suffer the various problems associated with coercive education and emotional repression.
Ivan Illich (1926-2002)From The Dictionary of Alternatives
A radical educationalist and social thinker. His first and most famous book, Deschooling Society (1971), argued for the replacement of prison-like institutions for education by lifelong learning webs.
Paulo Freire (1921-1997)From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
(1921-1997) radical educationalist. His best known work Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated into English in 1972. Freire used learning to facilitate the development of consciousness amongst oppressed and marginalised groups.
English as a Second Language
Second Language AcquisitionFrom
The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other LanguagesThe term second language acquisition (SLA) refers to the processes through which someone acquires one or more second or foreign languages.
Second Language Learning and InstructionFrom Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
Despite general agreement that reading, writing and speaking a second language involve much more than the mastery of vocabulary and syntax, little attention has been directed towards understanding the sociocultural contexts of learning and the discursive practices that occur in classrooms and communities.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other LanguagesFrom A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics
North-American term, usually found as the acronym TESOL. TESOL is a general term for the teaching of English to speakers of other languages in a range of contexts.
Special Education
InclusionFrom Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology
In educational terms, it is the opposite of ‘exclusion’ – instead of trying to get rid of difficult or problematic youngsters, it means including all types of learners, whatever their background, difficulties or disabilities.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)From Encyclopedia of Special Education
Two major features of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA; 2004) are in place to ensure the most appropriate education of children with disabilities.
MainstreamingFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
Mainstreaming was the popular term used for the legal doctrine of least restrictive environment (LRE).
Remedial InstructionFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
Corrective and remedial instruction are both forms of academic assistance provided to students who need special help in various areas of instruction.
Reverse MainstreamingFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
Reverse mainstreaming is a procedure that introduces nondisabled students into special classrooms to work with students with severe disabilities.
Special EducationFrom Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology
Special education is a service provided to students with educational disabilities.
Special Education: Issues
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Topic Page(ADHD), formerly called hyperkinesis or minimal brain dysfunction, a chronic, neurologically based syndrome characterized by any or all of three types of behavior: hyperactivity, distractibility, and impulsivity.
Autism: Topic PageOne of a spectrum of disorders defined by problems with communication, imagination, and social interaction. The symptoms may be present from birth or may develop in early childhood, around the third year.
Blindness: Topic PagePartial or complete loss of sight. Blindness may be caused by injury, by lesions of the brain or optic nerve, by disease of the cornea or retina, by pathological changes originating in systemic disorders (e.g., diabetes) and by cataract, glaucoma, or retinal detachment.
Deafness: Topic Page
Partial or total lack of hearing. It may be present at birth (congenital) or may be acquired at any age thereafter.
Developmental DisabilitiesFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
A term representing an umbrella category referring to a diverse group of physical, cognitive, psychological, sensory, and speech impairments that begin anytime during an individual’s development up to 22 years of age.
Down Syndrome: Topic PageCongenital disorder characterized by mild to severe mental retardation, slow physical development, and characteristic physical features.
DyslexiaFrom Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development
Although the majority of children learn to read without difficulty, a substantial minority (between 4 and 10 percent) have significant problems.
Learning DisabilitiesFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
Children and adults classified as learning disabled (LD) are those individuals who are of normal intelligence but suffer mental information processing difficulties.
Mental Retardation: Topic PageBelow average level of intellectual functioning, usually defined by an IQ of below 70 to 75, combined with limitations in the skills necessary for daily living.
Physical DisabilitiesFrom Encyclopedia of Special Education
A variety of interchangeable terms have been used to describe persons with physical handicaps.
Teen PregnancyFrom Encyclopedia of Women's Health
Currently, approximately 15 million girls under the age of 20 in the world have a child each year.
Adult Education
General
Adult Education: Topic PageExtension of educational opportunities to those adults beyond the age of general public education who feel a need for further training of any sort, also known as continuing education.
Institutions and Methods
Community CollegeFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
Public institution of higher education. Community colleges are characterized by a two-year curriculum that leads to either the associate degree or transfer to a four-year college.
Distance LearningFrom The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
Form of education using technology to teach students who are dispersed geographically.
Library: Topic PageA collection of books or other written or printed materials, as well as the facility in which they are housed and the institution that is responsible for their maintenance.
Open UniversityFrom The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
Institution established in the UK in 1969 to enable mature students without qualifications to study to degree level without regular attendance.
Models of Adult Learning
AndragogyFrom Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide
Do adults learn differently than children do? What distinguishes adult learning and adult education from other areas of education?
Experience and LearningFrom Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide
In addition to there being different dimensions to experiential learning, there are different theoretical conceptualizations of this type of learning.
Self-Directed LearningFrom Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide
Since Tough's work on adult learning projects was published in 1971, self-directed learning has captured the imagination of researchers and writers both inside and outside the field of adult education.
Transformational LearningFrom Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide
Transformative or transformational (terms used interchangeably in the literature) learning is about change—dramatic, fundamental change in the way we see ourselves and the world in which we live.
Collaborative learningFrom Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
Forms of cooperative or collaborative learning have been used for centuries and a variety of peer learning techniques have emerged. The underlying premise of these techniques is that learning is enhanced by peer interaction.
Educational Philosophy
Related Philosophies
ConstructionismFrom The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies
A generic name given to anti-essentialist theories that stress the culturally and historically specific creation of meaningful categories and phenomena.
ConstructivismFrom The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
In traditional philosophy, the commodity that goes by the name of knowledge, whether based on information conveyed by the senses or on insights of intuitive reason, is always expected to represent an external reality in some way analogous to the way pictures represent what they are supposed to depict.
Epistemology: Topic Page[Gr.,=knowledge or science], the branch of philosophy that is directed toward theories of the sources, nature, and limits of knowledge.
Experiential LearningFrom Business: The Ultimate Resource
A model that views learning as a cyclical process in four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation.
HumanismFrom The Columbia Encyclopedia
Philosophical and literary movement in which man and his capabilities are the central concern.
IntentionalityFrom The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
The cardinal principle of phenomenology, the concept of intentionality originated with the Scholastics in the medieval period and was resurrected by Brentano in the nineteenth century.
Interactionist perspectiveFrom The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology
As a major theoretical perspective within sociology, the interactionist perspective focuses on the concrete details of what goes on among individuals in everyday life, as distinct from the larger focus on social systems found in the conflict and functionalist perspectives.
MutualityFrom Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
The requirement in an agreement that each party do something to or for the other. Absence of mutuality makes an agreement unenforceable at law, so that a contract ‘without consideration’ is nugatory.
Philanthropy: Topic PageThe spirit of active goodwill toward others as demonstrated in efforts to promote their welfare. The term is often used interchangeably with charity.
Situated cognitionFrom Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
heories of situated cognition maintain that intelligent human action has evolved within and is shaped by and adapted to the specific forms of activity within which it occurs, and that cognition must therefore be understood and studied as an aspect of embodied practical activity.
Notable Figures
Jane Addams (1860 - 1935): Topic PageU.S. social reformer, feminist, and pacifist, who founded Hull House, a social settlement in Chicago: Nobel peace prize 1931.
Jerome Bruner (1915 - ): Topic PageJerome Bruner's contributions can be anchored in three concepts which are concerned with how we learn to mean and to understand others’ meanings. These are intentionality, thinking and culture.
John Dewey (1859-1952): Topic PageDewey’s belief that the method of enquiry, the scientific method, should be applied to practical problems lent philosophical support to the rise and the vogue of the social sciences.
George Kelly (1905 - 1967)From Biographical Dictionary of Psychology
George Kelly grew up in Kansas and obtained his undergraduate education at Friends University and at Park College, Missouri. In the 1930s, in Kansas, he founded and directed a unique traveling psychological clinic for teachers, parents and children.
Maria Montessori (1870-1952): Topic PageSingle-handedly revolutionized teaching methods for preschool and infant children.
Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980): Topic PageSwiss psychologist, noted for his work on the development of the cognitive functions in children.
Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934): Topic PageLev Semeonovich Vygotsky grew up in Gomel, near Belarus's borders with Russia and with the Ukraine. His early life and education were those of a well-to-do Jewish family of the time.
Terms & Concepts
Terms & Concepts
CommunityFrom The Social Science Jargon-Buster
A group of people who share a sense of belonging based on commonalities such as residential area, culture, race, religion, profession or interests.
Community actionFrom The SAGE dictionary of leisure studies
This is a term used to describe the organization of localized direct collective action, which sets out to achieve change through organization, mobilization and negotiation, in ways that can be both unconventional and unconstitutional.
Community workFrom Collins Dictionary of Sociology
A distinct movement aimed at stimulating local schemes for development, particularly of education, which started in colonial societies in the aftermath of World War II.
Community involvementFrom Business: The Ultimate Resource
programs through which organizations aim to make a positive contribution to the local community by identifying problems and initiating practical action in order to address them in partnership with local people.
MentoringFrom Dictionary of Youth Justice
Mentoring provides a popular means of working with ‘disaffected’ young people that typically involves a relationship between an older, more experienced mentor and an unrelated young protégé (mentee).
ResponsibilityFrom Key Concepts in Education
Responsibility is a concept and a value with multiple but intuitively well-understood meanings.
Social changeFrom The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology
Social change is any alteration in the cultural, structural, population, or ecological characteristics of a social system such as a society.
VolunteerFrom The Macquarie Dictionary
someone who enters into any service of their own free will, or who offers to perform a service or undertaking for no financial gain.
Educational Concepts
AutocritiqueFrom Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Critical self-reflection: a fundamental requirement of all genuinely critical and reflexive investigations. To make autocriticism a normal feature of intellectual life requires the production of texts, discourses and forms of instruction that admit their own contingent status, that encourage dialogue and insist on being superseded.
Civic educationFrom
Philosophy of Education: An EncyclopediaCivic education refers to education that is concerned with the development of citizenship or civic competence.
Collaborative learningFrom Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
Forms of cooperative or collaborative learning have been used for centuries and a variety of peer learning techniques have emerged. The underlying premise of these techniques is that learning is enhanced by peer interaction.
Dialogical reflexivityFrom Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Dialogic (or dialogical) reflexivity is self-reflection and reflexive transaction occasioned by the reciprocal encounter of self and other, particularly in the mutual argumentative disclosure characterizing reflexive communication and interpretive interaction.
PraxisFrom The Social Science Jargon-Buster
The process by which a theory becomes part of lived experience and empowers individuals to become critically conscious beings.
Community Needs
Addiction: Topic PageState of dependence caused by frequent and regular use of drugs, alcohol, or other substances. It is characterized by uncontrolled craving, tolerance, and symptoms of withdrawal when access is denied.
Alcoholism: Topic PageDisease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Child abuse: Topic PageThe deliberate injury of a child. Child abuse can take several forms: neglect (including failure to provide adequate shelter, food, or medical treatment), physical abuse (including beating and poisoning), emotional abuse (including verbal abuse), and sexual abuse.
Child welfare: Topic PageServices provided for the care of disadvantaged children. Foundling institutions for orphans and abandoned children were the earliest attempts at child care, usually under religious auspices.
Depression: Topic PageDepression is commonly used as a definition of an emotion like despondency, dejection or gloom. As a diagnosis, depression is part of a cycle or syndrome (also called a depressive illness) which used to be called melancholia because of its association with low spirits.
Environmentalism: Topic PageMovement to protect the quality and continuity of life through conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and control of land use.
Homelessness: Topic PageHomelessness is the lack of residential shelter or the prevalence of that lack within a population. Homelessness has conventionally been conceived of as distinct from indigence.
Housing: Topic PageIn general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban populations expanded.
Illiteracy: Topic PageInability to meet a certain minimum criterion of reading and writing skill.
Mental Health: Topic PageWell-being and soundness of mind, not only in terms of intellectual abilities, but also in terms of the capability to deal with everyday problems, and the capacity to get on well with other people and to form and sustain relationships.
Obesity: Topic Page
Condition resulting from excessive storage of fat in the body. Obesity has been defined as a weight more than 20% above what is considered normal.
Poverty: Topic PageCondition in which the basic needs of human beings (shelter, food, and clothing) are not being met.
Prostitution: Topic PageAct of granting sexual access for payment. Although most commonly conducted by females for males, it may be performed by females or males for either females or males.
Social Welfare: Topic PageOr public charity, organized provision of educational, cultural, medical, and financial assistance to the needy....
Standard of living: Topic PageLevel of consumption that an individual, group, or nation has achieved. The evaluation of a standard of living is relative, depending upon the judgment of the observer as to what constitutes a high or a low scale.
Unemployment: Topic PageLack of paid employment. The unemployed are usually defined as those out of work who are available for and actively seeking work.
Vagrancy: Topic PageIn law, term applied to the offense of persons who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work.
Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia by 
Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts by 
Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children by 
Key Concepts in Early Childhood Education and Care by 
The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English
Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of the Handicapped and Other Exceptional Children and Adults by 
Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide by 
The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
The Praeger Handbook of Latino Education in the U.S. by 