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A closer look might provide insight into how this experience will assist in Rachel's development: Positive emotions are created from the established lap reading routine that generates an intimate closeness and feeling of security. Interactive social dialogues between Rachel and her mother build on prior knowledge and provide immediate feedback as they discuss each animal as the story progresses. The language they use to label, compare, explain, and classify creates a supportive context for structuring the processes of thinking and concept formation. Each of the domains of development—linguistic, cognitive, social, and emotional—is affected during Rachel's experience, and all play an important role in her development

As Rachel began to internalize the actions and language of her mother, she began to use these tools to guide and monitor her own processing behavior until she is now able to take over much of the responsibility for reading the book (Dorn, French, & Jones, 1998)

A framework for understanding the interrelated nature of the cognitive, social, emotional, linguistic, and literacy development of children; social interaction; and literature selection in grades K-4 is provided in the appendix. The purpose of the framework is to provide a general guide for teachers, parents, and other caregivers in the appropriate selection of books that takes into consideration the importance of child development.

A teacher’s proficiency is manifested by the ability to look at the subject from a learner’s point of view, to foresee the critical junctions in learning, and to design teaching to meet learners’ information acquisition and collection processes (e.g., Zombylas, 2007).

van Manen (1991) claims that as teachers embrace all children, regardless of their characteristics they become real educators, and thus, educators’ pedagogical love becomes the precondition for pedagogical relations to grow (p

Individualistic features, position, nationality, gender, abilities, race, or language do not determine a human being’s value. Those differences based on skills, intelligence, or knowledge are insignificant compared with that basic human presence that is the same for all people: the right and need to be loved, accepted, and cared for as well as the right and need to grow and develop (Bradshaw, 1996; Lanara, 1981; Sprengel & Kelly, 1992).

In the meantime, I've written a book, from which this article is drawn, about all that I've learned from my research. In my book, I focus on what I identify as seven myths, or widely held beliefs, that dominate our educational practice. I start with the myth that teaching facts prevents understanding, because this (along with my second myth, that teacher-led instruction is passive) is the foundation of all the other myths I discuss. These myths have a long pedigree and provide the theoretical justification for so much of what goes on in schools. Taken together, all seven myths actually damage the education of our pupils. But here, let's focus on facts and the role knowledge has in our understanding.

Why Is It a Myth? My aim here is not to criticize true conceptual understanding, genuine appreciation of significance, or higher-order skill development. All of these things are indeed the true aim of education. My argument is that facts and subject content are not opposed to such aims; instead, they are part of it. Rousseau, Dewey, and Freire were wrong to see facts as the enemy of understanding. All the scientific research of the last half-century proves them wrong. The modern bureaucrats and education experts who base policy and practice on their thinking are wrong too, and with less excuse, as they have been alive when evidence that refutes these ideas has been discovered. Rousseau was writing in the 18th century; Dewey at the turn of the 20th; Freire in the 1970s. Research from the second half of the 20th century tells us that their analyses of factual learning are based on fundamentally faulty premises.

If we want pupils to develop the skills of analysis and evaluation, they need to know things. Willingham puts it this way:23 Data from the last thirty years lead to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that's true not just because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).

The first course carrying the name MOOC was offered in 2008, so this is new phenomenon. Second, the pedagogical style of the early courses, which we shall call cMOOCs, was based on a philosophy of connectivism and networking. This is quite distinct from the xMOOCs now being developed by elite US institutions that follow a more behaviourist approach. Third, the few academic studies of MOOCs are about the earlier offerings because there has been no time for systematic research on the crop of 2012 xMOOCs. Analysis of the latter has to be based on a large volume of press articles and blogs. Fourth, commentary on MOOCs includes thinly disguised promotional material by commercial interests (e.g. Koller, 2012) and articles by practitioners whose perspective is their own MOOC courses.

The term MOOC originated in Canada. Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander coined the acronym to describe an open online course at the University of Manitoba designed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, was presented to 25 fee-paying students on campus and 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge (Wikipedia, 2012a).

Can xMOOCs make money?

The Enrichment Triad Model was designed to encourage creative productivity on the part of young people by exposing them to various topics, areas of interest, and fields of study, and to further train them to apply advanced content, process-training skills, and methodology training to self-selected areas of interest. Accordingly, three types of enrichment are included in the Triad Model (see Fig. 2). Type I enrichment is designed to expose students to a wide variety of disciplines, topics, occupations, hobbies, persons, places, and events that would not ordinarily be covered in the regular curriculum. In schools - that use this model, an enrichment team consisting of parents, teachers, and students often organizes and plans Type I experiences by contacting speakers, arranging minicourses, demonstrations, or performances, or by ordering and distributing films, slides, videotapes, or other print or non-print media. Figure 2. The enrichment triad model. [Click on the figure to see it as a PDF file.] Type II enrichment consists of materials and methods designed to promote the development of thinking and feeling processes. Some Type II training is general, and is usually carried out both in classrooms and in enrichment programs. Training activities include the development of. (1) creative thinking and problem solving, critical thinking, and affective processes; (2) a wide variety of specific learning how-to-learn skills; (3) skills in the appropriate use of advanced-level reference materials; and (4) written, oral, and visual communication skills. Other Type II enrichment is specific, as it cannot be planned in advance and usually involves advanced methodological instruction in an interest area selected by the student. For example, students who become interested in botany after a Type I experience might pursue additional training in this area by doing advanced reading in botany; compiling, planning and carrying out plant experiments; and seeking more advanced methods training if they want to go further. Type III enrichment involves students who become interested in pursuing a self-selected area and are willing to commit the time necessary for advanced content acquisition and process training in which they assume the role of a first-hand inquirer. The goals of Type III enrichment include: providing opportunities for applying interests, knowledge, creative ideas and task commitment to a self-selected problem or area of study, acquiring advanced level understanding of the knowledge (content) and methodology (process) that are used within particular disciplines, artistic areas of expression and interdisciplinary studies, developing authentic products that are primarily directed toward bringing about a desired impact upon a specified audience, developing self-directed learning skills in the areas of planning, organization, resource utilization, time management, decision making and self-evaluation, developing task commitment, self-confidence, and feelings of creative accomplishment.

Several of our speakers were able to shed light on the cause of this rising tide of faculty opposition to computer mediated instruction. Andrew Feenberg of San Diego State University summarizes the situation in the opening paragraph of his "Distance Learning: Promise or Threat" (1999) article: "Once the stepchild of the academy, distance learning is finally taken seriously. But not in precisely the way early innovators like myself had hoped. It is not faculty who are in the forefront of the movement to network education. Instead politicians, university administrations and computer and telecommunications companies have decided there is money in it. But proposals for a radical "retooling" of the university emanating from these sources are guaranteed to provoke instant faculty hostility."

The implementation of online education shows both promise and peril. Computer mediated instruction may indeed introduce new and highly effective teaching paradigms, but high-quality teaching is not always assured. Administrative decisions made without due consideration to pedagogy, or worse, with policies or technology that hampers quality, may cause much wasted time, money and effort of both faculty and students.

In training, a particular package of knowledge is imparted to an individual so that he or she can assume work within a system, as the firefighters do for example. According to Noble, training and education are appropriately distinguished in terms of autonomy (Noble, 1999). In becoming trained, an individual relinquishes autonomy. The purpose of education, as compared to training, is to impart autonomy to the student. In teaching students to think critically, we say in effect "Student, know thyself." Education is not just the transmission of knowledge, important as that is, but also has to do with the transformation of persons (and the development of critical thinking skills).

In reality, what most teachers and students seem to lose sight of is the fact that ‘knowledge of the grammatical system of a language [grammatical competence] has to be complemented by understanding (sic) of culture-specific meanings [communicative or rather cultural competence]’ (Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 4).

Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. (Kramsch, 1993: 1)

According to them, the teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing them: To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviours. To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave. To help students to become more aware of conventional behaviour in common situations in the target culture. To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language. To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence. To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture. To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people.