Teachers Without Borders

Radio frequency chips in "intelligent uniforms" let a computer know when children enter school and it sends a text message to their cell phones. Parents are also alerted if kids don't show up 20 minutes after classes begin with the following message: "Your child has still not arrived at school."

A group of French parents and teachers have called for a two-week boycott of homework in schools, saying it is useless, tiring and reinforces inequalities between children. They say homework pushes the responsibility for learning on parents and causes rows between themselves and their children. And they conclude children would be better off reading a book.

Gary R. Plaford's Bullying and the Brain: Using Cognitive and Emotional Intelligence to Help Kids Cope is aimed at addressing such questions.  "Numerous books have been written about bullying, but most of them deal only with external intervention-those that suggest teaching students more appropriate social skills," asserts the back cover of Plaford's book.  This summary goes on to list important expansions that this work targets including: "internal interventions"; strategies for "monitoring and controlling bullying behaviors"; the "latest research on the brain and emotional intelligence"; new insights into managing "emotional triggers"; as well as cultivating "connections and an outward focus" among students (Plaford, 2006, back cover).

Background/Context: Bullying within schools continues despite thoughtful and well-researched anti-bullying strategies deployed against it. The bulk of research targeted toward understanding and eradicating bullying within schools is of an empirical nature. In other words, through data collection, questionnaires, interviews, ethnography, observation, case studies, etc., researchers have sought to carefully assess bully/victim characteristics as well as the social processes that fuel bullying within schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This project considers educational transformation (i.e., how we might transform those we educate) through a variety of pertinent, yet diverse, lenses. Specifically this paper is situated in the conviction that in order to stop bullying we must affect desire. We ask, then, how philosophical theories of transformation, specifically those regarding changes in dispositions, might contribute to our understanding of school bullying and current strategies aimed at reducing it. In short, the driving question underlying this project simply asks: how can we help the bully to no longer desire to bully?

From her compelling opening quotation of a teen's suicide note to her final words about opportunity for commitment to the well-being of children, author Shaheen Shariff takes the reader on a remarkable journey through the complex landscape of emerging technologies and the phenomenon of cyber-bullying.

But South Korea, among the world's most wired nations, has also seen its plan to digitize elementary, middle and high school classrooms by 2015 collide with a trend it didn't anticipate: Education leaders here worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more. Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full rollout won't be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and second-graders, government officials say, probably won't use the gadgets at all.

The joint INEE-GIZ Pan-African Knowledge Hub, established in March 2012, focuses on international funding for education. The Knowledge Hub is part of the "German BACKUP Initiative -- Education in Africa" (or BACKUP Education), a programme of GIZ ("Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH"), and is implemented by the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE). The Knowledge Hub is based out of Nairobi, Kenya, with coverage of the entire Africa region. It is managed by a Coordinator and Deputy Coordinator who are part of the INEE Secretariat.

Teacher Leader Model Standards

In the case of Abu Ghraib, this was a real question. Were the people who committed the abuse at Abu Ghraib just bad people, bad apples? There's this wonderful book written by a very prominent psychologist named Philip Zimbardo called The Lucifer Effect. He made a very good case that it's not bad apples who generally are responsible. There are bad apples out there, but almost all war crimes, abuse and atrocities and so forth, are a product of the environment of what he called the "bad barrel," of a situation that almost forces people to act violently and cruelly toward others.

Investments in education create a multiplier effect that extends beyond the benefits of learning alone - with more education comes increased health, economic growth, civil societies and food security. USAID is committed to furthering the basic building blocks of education through a five-year education strategy.

The Report of the Nova Scotia Task Force on Bullying and Cyberbullying    

Teacher training in Ontario will be bumped up to two years starting in 2014, says the provincial government. The Liberals, who promised the move during the 2011 election campaign, began consultations with education groups on Wednesday about the change. Three to four additional sessions are planned for April and May. Teachers typically earn a four-year undergraduate degree and then spend another year at university completing their bachelor of education. (Ten of the 13 universities with education programs also offer the degrees concurrently so students can complete the two at the same time.) The Liberals have said more training is needed given the challenges and increasing demands teachers face. The expanded program, the details of which have yet to be finalized, will include more practical, in-class training for new teachers.