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A provost is the senior academic administrator at many institutions of higher education in the United States, Canada and Australia, the equivalent of a pro-vice-chancellor at some institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Additionally, the heads of certain colleges in the UK and Ireland are called provosts. In this sense, a provost is the equivalent of a master at other colleges.

Duties, role, titles, and selection[link]

The specific duties and areas of responsibility for a provost vary from one institution to another, but usually include supervision and oversight of curricular, instructional, and research affairs.

The various deans of a university's various schools, colleges, or faculties generally report to the provost or jointly to the chief executive officer (variously called president, chancellor, or rector) and the provost, as do the heads of various interdisciplinary units and academic support functions, such as libraries, student services, the registrar, admissions and information technology. The provost, in turn, is responsible to the institution's chief executive officer and governing board or boards (variously called the board of trustees, the board of regents, the board of governors, or the corporation) for oversight of all educational affairs and activities, including research and academic personnel.

In many but not all North American institutions, the provost or equivalent is the second-ranking officer in the administrative hierarchy. Often the provost may serve as acting chief executive officer during a vacancy in that office or when the incumbent is absent from campus for prolonged periods. In these institutions, the title of provost is sometimes combined with those of senior vice president, executive vice president, executive vice chancellor, or the like, to denote that officer's high standing.

Provosts are often chosen by a search committee made up of faculty members and are almost always drawn from the 'tenured faculty' or 'professional administrators' with academic credentials either at the institution or from other institutions.

At some North American research universities and liberal arts colleges, other titles may be used in place of or in combination with provost, such as chief academic officer (CAO) or vice president for academic affairs (or rarely, academic vice president or vice president for education). At smaller independent liberal arts colleges, the chief academic officer may carry the title "dean of the college" or "dean of the faculty" in addition to or instead of provost. For example, at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the Dean of the Faculty is also the Vice President for Academic Affairs and is the second highest administrator, directly beneath the President.

Provosts often receive staff support or delegate line responsibility for certain administrative functions to one or more subordinates variously called assistant provost, associate provost, vice provost, or deputy provost. The deputy provost is often the right hand person of the provost who assumes the provost's responsibilities in the provost's absence.

Other titles and uses[link]

State university systems in the United States are the state universities operated and funded primarily by the state government. (They may include multiple administratively independent campuses, or an integrated multi-campus state university). In some state university systems, provost may be the title held by the head of branch campus. For example, until recently the chancellors of the Newark and Camden campuses of Rutgers University in New Jersey were known as provosts.

Sometimes the chief academic officer or chief medical officer of a university medical center (also academic medical center) holds the title of provost.

In some universities, the chief administrative officer of a large academic division may hold a provostial title. Finally, in some colleges and universities, the title of provost (and the function of deputy to the president or chancellor) may be separate from the function of chief academic officer.

Provost is the style of the heads of University College London, Royal College of Art; Oriel, Queen's and Worcester Colleges at Oxford; King's College at Cambridge; and Trinity College at Dublin. The chairman of the governors of Eton College is also called a provost.

History[link]

The first use of the title provost in American and Canadian higher education is unclear. At the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, the title provost dates to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, respectively. At the University of Pennsylvania, the administrative head of the university was titled provost until the 1930s, when the Board of Trustees created a separate office of president and re-designated the provost as chief academic officer and subordinate to the new presidency. At Columbia University, the Board of Trustees established the office of provost in 1811, only to abolish it five years later. The Trustees and the president of the university re-established the office of provost in 1912. Although the precise title of the office has changed over time, the responsibility as Columbia's chief academic officer has remained constant.

Other North American universities and colleges created provostships during and after World War II when dramatic increases in undergraduate enrollments (due to the G.I. Bill) and the increased complexity of higher education administration, led many chief executive officers to adopt a more corporate governing structure. By the 1960s, most of the other Ivy League institutions (Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and Brown) had provosts (or equivalents), as did other private research universities such as the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Rice University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Emory University, Wake Forest University and Duke University.

At Harvard University, the office of provost has had two distinct incarnations. The office's first incarnation was during World War II and the immediate postwar era. James Bryant Conant, the president of the university from 1933 to 1953, asked the Harvard Corporation (the more senior of the two governing boards) to create the office of provost in October 1945, at time when he (Conant) spent a great deal of time in Washington, D.C. as chairman of the National Defense Research Committee. Conant appointed historian Paul Herman Buck, the dean of the Faculty of Arts of Sciences (FAS), to concurrently serve as provost. (The original legislation required that the provost be concurrently dean of FAS.) As provost and dean, Buck had oversight of FAS (which includes Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Extension School, the Summer School, and what is now called the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) and its affiliated laboratories, research centres, and museums. However, he had no authority over Harvard's professional schools (at that time, the Divinity School, the Law School, the Faculty of Medicine, the School of Public Health, and the Graduate Schools of Business Administration, Design, Education, and Public Administration). The provost's office was eliminated when Conant retired from Harvard's presidency in 1953. During the presidencies of Nathan Marsh Pusey (1953–1971) and Derek C. Bok (1971–1993), the deans of Harvard's nine faculties reported directly to the president, with the dean of FAS being primus inter pares. The second incarnation began in 1993, when then-Harvard President Neil Rudenstine asked the Corporation to recreate the provostship as a second university-wide academic officer other than the president. A section of Harvard's 1997 Re-accreditation Report for the New England Commission of Colleges and Schools reads:

"The Provost at Harvard acts as an extension of the President. He is the second academic officer, after the President, having purview of the entire University. The Provost has special responsibility for fostering intellectual interactions across the University, including the five Interfaculty Initiatives (environment, ethics and the professions, schooling and children, mind/brain/behavior, and health policy). The Provost also acts to help improve the quality and efficiency of central services organized at Harvard under the aegis of the Vice Presidents."

See also[link]

• Director (education)
• Postgraduate education
• Principal (university)
• Professor
• Undergraduate education

References[link]

• Freeland, Richard M. (1992). Academia's Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945–1970. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Keller, Morton & Keller, Phyllis (2001). Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lloyd, Mark. "A History of Penn Provosts". Penn Archives and Record Center. http://www.upenn.edu/provost/history.html
• "History of Cornell's Provosts". Cornell University Office of the Provost. http://www.cornell.edu/provost/history.cfm
• "Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs." Trinity College (Connecticut) http://www.trincoll.edu/Academics/DeanOfFaculty/Dean.htm

Children in a kindergarten classroom in France

Children at an elementary school in Xinjiang, China

Girls at a secondary school in Iraq

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next.^[1] Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrow, technical sense, education is the formal process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, customs and values from one generation to another, e.g., instruction in schools.

A right to education has been created and recognized by some jurisdictions: Since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. At the global level, the United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees this right under its Article 13.

Etymology[link]

Etymologically, the word education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō (“A breeding, a bringing up, a rearing) from ēdūcō (“I educate, I train”) which is related to the homonym ēdūcō (“I lead forth, I take out; I raise up, I erect”) from ē- (“from, out of”) and dūcō (“I lead, I conduct”).^[2]

Systems of schooling[link]

School children line, in Kerala, India

Systems of schooling involve institutionalized teaching and learning in relation to a curriculum, which itself is established according to a predetermined purpose of the schools in the system.

Purpose of schools[link]

Examples of the purpose of schools include:^[3] develop reasoning about perennial questions, master the methods of scientific inquiry, cultivate the intellect, create positive change agents. The purpose and goal of the school is to teach pupils how to think.

Curriculum[link]

School children in Cape Town, South Africa.

In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive, and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard.

An academic discipline is a branch of knowledge which is formally taught, either at the university, or via some other such method. Each discipline usually has several sub-disciplines or branches, and distinguishing lines are often both arbitrary and ambiguous. Examples of broad areas of academic disciplines include the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, humanities and applied sciences.^[4]

Educational institutions may incorporate fine arts as part of K-12 grade curriculums or within majors at colleges and universities as electives. The various types of fine arts are music, dance, and theater.^[5]

Preschools[link]

The term preschool refers to a school for children who are not old enough to attend kindergarten. It is a nursery school.

Preschool education is important because it can give a child the edge in a competitive world and education climate.^{[citation needed]} While children who do not receive the fundamentals during their preschool years will be taught the alphabet, counting, shapes and colors and designs when they begin their formal education they will be behind the children who already possess that knowledge.

Primary schools[link]

Primary school in open air. Teacher (priest) with class from the outskirts of Bucharest, around 1842.

Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first 5–7 years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six or eight years of schooling starting at the age of five or six, although this varies between, and sometimes within, countries. Globally, around 89% of primary-age children are enrolled in primary education, and this proportion is rising.^[6] Under the Education For All programs driven by UNESCO, most countries have committed to achieving universal enrollment in primary education by 2015, and in many countries, it is compulsory for children to receive primary education. The division between primary and secondary education is somewhat arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about eleven or twelve years of age. Some education systems have separate middle schools, with the transition to the final stage of secondary education taking place at around the age of fourteen. Schools that provide primary education, are mostly referred to as primary schools. Primary schools in these countries are often subdivided into infant schools and junior school.

Secondary schools[link]

Students in a classroom at Samdach Euv High School, Cambodia

In most contemporary educational systems of the world, secondary education comprises the formal education that occurs during adolescence. It is characterized by transition from the typically compulsory, comprehensive primary education for minors, to the optional, selective tertiary, "post-secondary", or "higher" education (e.g. university, vocational school) for adults. Depending on the system, schools for this period, or a part of it, may be called secondary or high schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, middle schools, colleges, or vocational schools. The exact meaning of any of these terms varies from one system to another. The exact boundary between primary and secondary education also varies from country to country and even within them, but is generally around the seventh to the tenth year of schooling. Secondary education occurs mainly during the teenage years. In the United States, Canada and Australia primary and secondary education together are sometimes referred to as K-12 education, and in New Zealand Year 1–13 is used. The purpose of secondary education can be to give common knowledge, to prepare for higher education or to train directly in a profession.

The emergence of secondary education in the United States did not happen until 1910, caused by the rise in big businesses and technological advances in factories (for instance, the emergence of electrification), that required skilled workers. In order to meet this new job demand, high schools were created and the curriculum focused on practical job skills that would better prepare students for white collar or skilled blue collar work. This proved to be beneficial for both the employer and the employee, because this improvement in human capital caused employees to become more efficient, which lowered costs for the employer, and skilled employees received a higher wage than employees with just primary educational attainment.

In Europe, the grammar school or academy existed from as early as the 16th century; public schools or fee-paying schools, or charitable educational foundations have an even longer history.

Indigenous education[link]

Indigenous education refers to the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, models, methods and content within formal and non-formal educational systems. Often in a post-colonial context, the growing recognition and use of indigenous education methods can be a response to the erosion and loss of indigenous knowledge and language through the processes of colonialism. Furthermore, it can enable indigenous communities to “reclaim and revalue their languages and cultures, and in so doing, improve the educational success of indigenous students.”^[7]

Alternative education[link]

Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, is a broad term that may be used to refer to all forms of education outside of traditional education (for all age groups and levels of education). This may include not only forms of education designed for students with special needs (ranging from teenage pregnancy to intellectual disability), but also forms of education designed for a general audience and employing alternative educational philosophies and methods.

Alternatives of the latter type are often the result of education reform and are rooted in various philosophies that are commonly fundamentally different from those of traditional compulsory education. While some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, others are more informal associations of teachers and students dissatisfied with certain aspects of traditional education. These alternatives, which include charter schools, alternative schools, independent schools, homeschooling and autodidacticism vary widely, but often emphasize the value of small class size, close relationships between students and teachers, and a sense of community.

Alternative education may also allow for independent learning and engaging class activities.^[8]

Systems of higher education[link]

The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning.

Higher education, also called tertiary, third stage, or post secondary education, is the non-compulsory educational level that follows the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school or secondary school. Tertiary education is normally taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, as well as vocational education and training. Colleges and universities are the main institutions that provide tertiary education. Collectively, these are sometimes known as tertiary institutions. Tertiary education generally results in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees.

Higher education generally involves work towards a degree-level or foundation degree qualification. In most developed countries a high proportion of the population (up to 50%) now enter higher education at some time in their lives. Higher education is therefore very important to national economies, both as a significant industry in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy.

University systems[link]

University education includes teaching, research and social services activities, and it includes both the undergraduate level (sometimes referred to as tertiary education) and the graduate (or postgraduate) level (sometimes referred to as graduate school). Universities are generally composed of several colleges. In the United States, universities can be private and independent, like Yale University, they can be public and State governed, like the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, or they can be independent but State funded, like the University of Virginia.

Liberal arts colleges[link]

A liberal arts institution can be defined as a "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting broad general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum."^[9] Although what is known today as the liberal arts college began in Europe,^[10] the term is more commonly associated with Universities in the United States^{[citation needed]}. Examples include St. John's College, Reed College, Carleton College, and Smith College.

Community colleges[link]

Open Education[link]

A growing system of higher education is open education through the internet.^[11]. It is an approach to learning that gives students flexibility and choice over what, when, at what pace, where, and how they learn. Open learning system often includes aspects of e-learning.There are numerous universities and organizations that create open educational resources for self motivated students to access anywhere, at any time. Unlike other, more traditional forms of higher education, open education generally does not offer recognized degrees. However, there are organizations developing academic badges that would serve a similar purpose to a traditional degree.^[12]

Adult education[link]

Adult learning, or adult education, is the practice of training and developing skills in adults. It is also sometimes referred to as andragogy (the art and science of helping adults learn).Adult education has become common in many countries. It takes on many forms, ranging from formal class-based learning to self-directed learning and e-learning. A number of career specific courses such as veterinary assisting, medical billing and coding, real estate license, bookkeeping and many more are now available to students through the Internet.

Learning modalities[link]

There has been work on learning styles over the last two decades. Dunn and Dunn^[13] focused on identifying relevant stimuli that may influence learning and manipulating the school environment, at about the same time as Joseph Renzulli^[14] recommended varying teaching strategies. Howard Gardner^[15] identified individual talents or aptitudes in his Multiple Intelligences theories. Based on the works of Jung, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Keirsey Temperament Sorter^[16] focused on understanding how people's personality affects the way they interact personally, and how this affects the way individuals respond to each other within the learning environment. The work of David Kolb and Anthony Gregorc's Type Delineator^[17] follows a similar but more simplified approach.

School girls in Afghanistan

It is currently fashionable to divide education into different learning "modes". The learning modalities^[18] are probably the most common:

• Visual: learning based on observation and seeing what is being learned.
• Auditory: learning based on listening to instructions/information.
• Kinesthetic: learning based on hands-on work and engaging in activities.

Although it is claimed that, depending on their preferred learning modality, different teaching techniques have different levels of effectiveness,^[19] recent research has argued "there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice."^[20]

A consequence of this theory is that effective teaching should present a variety of teaching methods which cover all three learning modalities so that different students have equal opportunities to learn in a way that is effective for them.^[21] Guy Claxton has questioned the extent that learning styles such as VAK are helpful, particularly as they can have a tendency to label children and therefore restrict learning.^[22][23]

Instruction[link]

Teacher in a classroom in Madagascar

Instruction is the facilitation of another's learning. Instructors in primary and secondary institutions are often called teachers, and they direct the education of students and might draw on many subjects like reading, writing, mathematics, science and history. Instructors in post-secondary institutions might be called teachers, instructors, or professors, depending on the type of institution; and they primarily teach only their specific discipline. Studies from the United States suggest that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor affecting student performance, and that countries which score highly on international tests have multiple policies in place to ensure that the teachers they employ are as effective as possible.^[24][25] With the passing of NCLB in the United States (No Child Left Behind), teachers must be highly qualified. A popular way to gauge teaching performance is to use student evaluations of teachers (SETS), but these evaluations have been criticized for being counterproductive to learning and inaccurate due to student bias.^[26]

Technology[link]

One of the most substantial uses in education is the use of technology. Also technology is an increasingly influential factor in education. Computers and mobile phones are used in developed countries both to complement established education practices and develop new ways of learning such as online education (a type of distance education). This gives students the opportunity to choose what they are interested in learning. The proliferation of computers also means the increase of programming and blogging. Technology offers powerful learning tools that demand new skills and understandings of students, including Multimedia, and provides new ways to engage students, such as Virtual learning environments. One such tool are virtual manipulatives, which are an "interactive, Web-based visual representation of a dynamic object that presents opportunities for constructing mathematical knowledge" (Moyer, Bolyard, & Spikell, 2002). In short, virtual manipulatives are dynamic visual/pictorial replicas of physical mathematical manipulatives, which have long been used to demonstrate and teach various mathematical concepts. Virtual manipulatives can be easily accessed on the Internet as stand-alone applets, allowing for easy access and use in a variety of educational settings. Emerging research into the effectiveness of virtual manipulatives as a teaching tool have yielded promising results, suggesting comparable, and in many cases superior overall concept-teaching effectiveness compared to standard teaching methods.^{[citation needed]} Technology is being used more not only in administrative duties in education but also in the instruction of students. The use of technologies such as PowerPoint and interactive whiteboard is capturing the attention of students in the classroom. Technology is also being used in the assessment of students. One example is the Audience Response System (ARS), which allows immediate feedback tests and classroom discussions.^[27]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a “diverse set of tools and resources used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information.”^[28] These technologies include computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony. There is increasing interest in how computers and the Internet can improve education at all levels, in both formal and non-formal settings.^[29] Older ICT technologies, such as radio and television, have for over forty years been used for open and distance learning, although print remains the cheapest, most accessible and therefore most dominant delivery mechanism in both developed and developing countries.^[30] In addition to classroom application and growth of e-learning opportunities for knowledge attainment, educators involved in student affairs programming have recognized the increasing importance of computer usage with data generation for and about students. Motivation and retention counselors, along with faculty and administrators, can impact the potential academic success of students by provision of technology based experiences in the University setting.^[31]

The use of computers and the Internet is in its infancy in developing countries, if these are used at all, due to limited infrastructure and the attendant high costs of access. Usually, various technologies are used in combination rather than as the sole delivery mechanism. For example, the Kothmale Community Radio Internet uses both radio broadcasts and computer and Internet technologies to facilitate the sharing of information and provide educational opportunities in a rural community in Sri Lanka.^[32] The Open University of the United Kingdom (UKOU), established in 1969 as the first educational institution in the world wholly dedicated to open and distance learning, still relies heavily on print-based materials supplemented by radio, television and, in recent years, online programming.^[33] Similarly, the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India combines the use of print, recorded audio and video, broadcast radio and television, and audio conferencing technologies.^[34]

The term "computer-assisted learning" (CAL) has been increasingly used to describe the use of technology in teaching. Classrooms of the 21st century contain interactive white boards, tablets, mp3 players, laptops, etc. Wiki sites are another tool teachers can implement into CAL curriculums for students to understand communication and collaboration efforts of group work through electronic means.^{[citation needed]} Teachers are encouraged to embed these technological devices and services in the curriculum in order to enhance students learning and meet the needs of various types of learners.

Education theory[link]

Education theory can refer to either a normative or a descriptive theory of education. In the first case, a theory means a postulation about what ought to be. It provides the "goals, norms, and standards for conducting the process of education."^[35] In the second case, it means "an hypothesis or set of hypotheses that have been verified by observation and experiment."^[36] A descriptive theory of education can be thought of as a conceptual scheme that ties together various "otherwise discrete particulars. . .For example, a cultural theory of education shows how the concept of culture can be used to organize and unify the variety of facts about how and what people learn."^[37] Likewise, for example, there is the behaviorist theory of education that comes from educational psychology and the functionalist theory of education that comes from sociology of education.^[38]

Economics and education[link]

Students on their way to school, Hakha, Chin State, Myanmar

It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth.^[39] Empirical analyses tend to support the theoretical prediction that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries because they can adopt cutting edge technologies already tried and tested by rich countries. However, technology transfer requires knowledgeable managers and engineers who are able to operate new machines or production practices borrowed from the leader in order to close the gap through imitation. Therefore, a country's ability to learn from the leader is a function of its stock of "human capital". Recent study of the determinants of aggregate economic growth have stressed the importance of fundamental economic institutions^[40] and the role of cognitive skills.^[41]

At the individual level, there is a large literature, generally related back to the work of Jacob Mincer,^[42] on how earnings are related to the schooling and other human capital of the individual. This work has motivated a large number of studies, but is also controversial. The chief controversies revolve around how to interpret the impact of schooling.^[43][44]

Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis famously argued in 1976 that there was a fundamental conflict in American schooling between the egalitarian goal of democratic participation and the inequalities implied by the continued profitability of capitalist production on the other.^[45]

History[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2010)

A depiction of the University of Bologna, Italy

The history of education according to Dieter Lenzen, president of the Freie Universität Berlin 1994, "began either millions of years ago or at the end of 1770". Education as a science cannot be separated from the educational traditions that existed before. Adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master and eventually pass on. The evolution of culture, and human beings as a species depended on this practice of transmitting knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling continued from one generation to the next. Oral language developed into written symbols and letters. The depth and breadth of knowledge that could be preserved and passed soon increased exponentially. When cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond the basic skills of communicating, trading, gathering food, religious practices, etc., formal education, and schooling, eventually followed. Schooling in this sense was already in place in Egypt between 3000 and 500BC.

Nowadays some kind of education is compulsory to all people in most countries. Due to population growth and the proliferation of compulsory education, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years more people will receive formal education than in all of human history thus far.^[46]

Philosophy[link]

John Locke's work Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written in 1693 and still reflects traditional education priorities in the Western world.

As an academic field, philosophy of education is a "the philosophical study of education and its problems...its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy".^[47] "The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline."^[48] As such, it is both part of the field of education and a field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive, and/or analytic) to address questions in and about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few.^[49] For example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between education theory and practice.

Psychology[link]

A class size experiment in the United States found that attending small classes for 3 or more years in the early grades increased high school graduation rates of students from low income families.^[50]

Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Although the terms "educational psychology" and "school psychology" are often used interchangeably, researchers and theorists are likely to be identified as educational psychologists, whereas practitioners in schools or school-related settings are identified as school psychologists. Educational psychology is concerned with the processes of educational attainment in the general population and in sub-populations such as gifted children and those with specific disabilities.

Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology in turn informs a wide range of specialities within educational studies, including instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks (Lucas, Blazek, & Raley, 2006).

Sociology[link]

School children in Laos

The sociology of education is the study of how social institutions and forces affect educational processes and outcomes, and vice versa. By many, education is understood to be a means of overcoming handicaps, achieving greater equality and acquiring wealth and status for all (Sargent 1994). Learners may be motivated by aspirations for progress and betterment. Learners can also be motivated by their interest in the subject area or specific skill they are trying to learn. In fact, learner-responsibility education models are driven by the interest of the learner in the topic to be studied.^[51]

Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potentialities.^[52] The purpose of education can be to develop every individual to their full potential. The understanding of the goals and means of educational socialization processes differs according to the sociological paradigm used.

Education in the developing world[link]

World map indicating Education Index (according to 2007/2008 Human Development Report)

Universal Primary Education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals and great improvements have been achieved in the past decade, yet a great deal remains to be done.^[53] Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute indicate the main obstacles to greater funding from donors include: donor priorities, aid architecture, and the lack of evidence and advocacy.^[53] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.^[54] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as one would expect as governments avoid the recurrent costs involved and there is economic pressure on those parents who prefer their children making money in the short term over any long-term benefits of education. Recent studies on child labor and poverty have suggested that when poor families reach a certain economic threshold where families are able to provide for their basic needs, parents return their children to school. This has been found to be true, once the threshold has been breached, even if the potential economic value of the children's work has increased since their return to school.

But without capacity, there is no development. A study conducted by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning indicates that stronger capacities in educational planning and management may have an important spill-over effect on the system as a whole.^[55] Sustainable capacity development requires complex interventions at the institutional, organizational and individual levels that could be based on some foundational principles:

• national leadership and ownership should be the touchstone of any intervention;
• strategies must be context relevant and context specific;
• they should embrace an integrated set of complementary interventions, though implementation may need to proceed in steps;
• partners should commit to a long-term investment in capacity development, while working towards some short-term achievements;
• outside intervention should be conditional on an impact assessment of national capacities at various levels.

Russia has more academic graduates than any other country in Europe. (Note, chart does not include population statistics.)

^[when?]

A lack of good universities, and a low acceptance rate for good universities, is evident in countries with a high population density. In some countries, there are uniform, over structured, inflexible centralized programs from a central agency that regulates all aspects of education.

• Due to globalization, increased pressure on students in curricular activities
• Removal of a certain percentage of students for improvisation of academics (usually practiced in schools, after 10th grade)

India is now developing technologies that will skip land based telephone and internet lines. Instead, India launched EDUSAT, an education satellite that can reach more of the country at a greatly reduced cost. There is also an initiative started by the OLPC foundation, a group out of MIT Media Lab and supported by several major corporations to develop a $100 laptop to deliver educational software. The laptops are widely available as of 2008. The laptops are sold at cost or given away based on donations. These will enable developing countries to give their children a digital education, and help close the digital divide across the world.

In Africa, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has launched an "e-school program" to provide all 600,000 primary and high schools with computer equipment, learning materials and internet access within 10 years. Private groups, like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are working to give more individuals opportunities to receive education in developing countries through such programs as the Perpetual Education Fund. An International Development Agency project called nabuur.com,^[56] started with the support of former American President Bill Clinton, uses the Internet to allow co-operation by individuals on issues of social development.

Brazil has implemented the New Enem, PROUNI, Fies, ENADE, SISU educational programs.^{[clarification needed][57]}

Internationalization (Globalization and Education)[link]

Education is becoming increasingly international. The most represented case is the spread of mass schooling. Mass schooling has implanted the fundamental concepts that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background and gender differences. The system has also promoted the global rules and norms of how the school should operate and what is education^[58]. Though the system can have variations in local, regional, and country level, the similarities - in systems or even in ideas - that schools share also enable the exchange among students at all levels which are also playing an increasingly important role in globalization process. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Program^[59] stimulates exchanges across European universities. Also, the Soros Foundation^[60] provides many opportunities for students from central Asia and eastern Europe. Programs such as the International Baccalaureate have contributed to the internationalization of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of whether one system is considered better or worse than another, experiencing a different way of education can often be considered to be the most important, enriching element of an international learning experience.^[61] The global campus^[62] online, led by American universities, allows free access to class materials and lecture files recorded during the actual classes. This facilitates the globalization of education.

See also[link]

	Education portal
	Schools portal
	University portal

• Glossary of education-related terms
• Index of education articles
• Outline of education
• Homeschooling

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Education on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Education at the Open Directory Project
• Educational Resources from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics: International comparable statistics on education systems
• OECD education statistics
• Planipolis: a portal on education plans and policies
• IIEP Publications on Education Systems

Videos[link]

• The Meaning of Educational Quality

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2011)

Earl Lewis is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs^[1] and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies at Emory University. He is the university's first African American provost and the highest ranking African American administrator in the university's history.

Early career[link]

Before joining the Emory faculty in July 2004, Lewis served as dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and vice provost for academic affairs/graduate studies at the University of Michigan. He was director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies and also the Elsa Barkley Brown and Robin D.G. Kelley Collegiate Professor of History and African American and African Studies. From 1984 to 1989 he was on the faculty in the department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Published work[link]

Lewis, trained in history and psychology, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1984. He is author and coeditor of seven books, among them In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in 20th Century Norfolk (University of California Press, 1993) and the award-winning To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2000). Between 1997 and 2000 he coedited the eleven-volume Young Oxford History of African Americans. Lewis coauthored Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, published in 2001 by WW Norton. His most recent books are The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present, coedited and published with Palgrave (2004), and the cowritten Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan, published by the University of Michigan Press (2004).

Other published material[link]

Lewis has also written essays, articles, and reviews on different aspects of American and African American history that have appeared in many academic journals.

Positions currently and formerly held[link]

He is a current or past member of a number of editorial boards and boards of directors, including the Graduate Record Exam, Southern Spaces, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the past chair of the board of directors of The Council of Graduate Schools and is National Chair of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation's Responsive Ph.D. Project. Lewis’s research and projects have been funded by the Rockefeller, Ford, Mellon, and National Science foundations.

Awards[link]

In 1999, Lewis was a recipient of Michigan's Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Biography at Emory University Department of History

Carlos Teixeira (born March 11, 1976) is a volleyball player from Portugal, who plays as a libero for the Men's National Team. He became Best Digger at the second 2008 Olympic Qualification Tournament in Espinho, where Portugal ended up in second place and missed qualification for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, PR China.

Honours[link]

• 2002 World Championship — 8th place
• 2008 Olympic Qualification Tournament — 2nd place (did not qualify)

References[link]

• FIVB biography

This biographical article relating to volleyball in Portugal is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

For the civil engineer, meteorologist, and storm chaser of the same name, see: Timothy P. Marshall.

Tim Marshall (full name, Timothy John Marshall), born in 1959, is Foreign Affairs Editor for Sky News). He has reported from Europe, the USA and Asia. Having served in the RAF prior to his journalistic career, he has reported from a number of war zones. His most notable work for the channel is perhaps a six hour unbroken broadcast during the first Gulf War.

He spent most of the 1999 Kosovo War reporting from Belgrade, being one of very few western journalists allowed to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids. When the Nato troops entered Pristina, Tim was there to greet them as they arrived. His one (brief) return trip to the UK during the Kosovo conflict was to get married. More recently, he reported from the front line during the invasion of Afghanistan and has spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq, reporting on the country's transition to democracy. In August 2005 he covered Israel's Gaza disengagement.

He has also been Middle East Correspondent and Europe Correspondent for the channel, and regularly contributes to the channel's World News Tonight international news bulletin (including as stand-in host).

He went to school at Prince Henry's Grammar School, Otley.

Prior to joining Sky News, he reported for IRN, and has also worked in various capacities for the BBC.

His blog, which can be viewed on the Sky News website, was short-listed for the Orwell Prize 2010.

He is a supporter of Leeds United.

External links[link]

• Sky Interview
• Official Sky News bio

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