Education Resource Guide

Leader in the social settlement movement, social worker, progressive reformer, suffragist, pacifist, and educational thinker.

Philosopher and scientist; for twenty years, student and member of Plato’s Academy; from 348/47, teacher of philosophy, first in Assos, next in Mytilene, and then tutor of Alexander at the court of Macedon. In 335/34, he founded a school of philosophy in Athens, the Lyceum.

American education developed from European intellectual traditions and institutions transplanted to the New World and modified by contact among different colonial groups and between new settlers and indigenous peoples. Of the European groups that settled in North America, the English majority had the most influence on education.

As a public education advocate, abolitionist, congressman, and president of Antioch College in Ohio, Horace Mann was one of the most influential social reformers in America during the early nineteenth century.

The foremost English philosopher of the nineteenth century. His thought and example have been inspiration to subsequent thinkers and reformers, including those in the field of education.

One of the world’s preeminent poets, a political theorist, theologian, teacher, author of textbooks on grammar and logic, and educational reformer.

The Transcendentalist educator Elizabeth Peabody, a warm and eccentric woman, contributed in no small way to the intellectual life of Boston during the 1840s and 1850s and was later a pioneer of kindergarten education in the United States.

From 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.

Bertrand Russell, who helped define the nature of philosophy and mathematics during the twentieth century, was also a major contributor to the philosophy of education. Russell wrote two books on teaching and learning as well as many essays on education. In the 1920s, he and his wife founded a school that applied his principles of educational theory.

The American faith in the power of formal education to diffuse knowledge, enhance personal mobility, and promote social stability owes much to the nineteenth century. Between the decades following the American Revolution and the turn of the twentieth century, the nation built an increasingly comprehensive system of public schools, especially outside of the South; southern states also made notable educational strides after the Civil War.

American educator whose textbooks provided the first uniquely American perspective on education, and whose dictionary became America’s standard. Webster graduated from Yale in 1778 and formulated a plan for textbooks that would make America independent of British products. He published the Speller in 1783, the Grammar in 1784, and the Reader in 1785.

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. She also promoted the idea of coeducational colleges and universities in a wider vision of women’s improved social responsibilities through education, although she saw these as being confined primarily to the separate domestic sphere

English writer and political radical often identified as the first major feminist theorist, whose Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) argued that women and men have the same capacity for developing reason and therefore should be accorded the same rights and educated similarly.

From Key Concepts in Education
In schools, it usually means the full range of subjects taught, taken as a whole experience.

Process, 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.

From 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.

Inability to meet a certain minimum criterion of reading and writing skill.

Test that attempts to measure innate intellectual ability, rather than acquired ability.

In 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. MORE

From 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.

Children and adults classified as learning disabled (LD) are those individuals who are of normal intelligence but suffer mental information processing difficulties.

From 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.

From Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
An educational reform movement that aims to equalize educational opportunities for diverse racial and ethnic groups.

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
Pedagogy focuses on strategies, techniques, and approaches used to facilitate learning.

From 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.

Term commonly referring to institutions of pre-college formal education. It also properly includes colleges, universities, and many types of special training establishments

Government 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.

Professional 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.

From 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.