Editor's Note, June/July 2008
Elizabeth Haller
PhD Candidate and Instructor, Kent State University
E-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com
We invite your continued perusal and encourage you to submit articles, poetry, and fiction for consideration in future issues of AEE. Please review our Call for Papers on this site for more details on submission requirements. If you are unsure whether your contribution would be suitable under the terms of our Call for Papers, please send along an inquiry, and I will be happy to respond forthwith. As always, do not forget to check out Grist for the Mill for possible submission ideas.
Columnist Lynne Fukuda will return with a new contribution to her column “The View from Here” in our August 2008 issue.
The opening feature of this issue, “In the Beginning”, is the first installment of an ambitious poetry project that comes to us from Dan Lukiv. According to Lukiv, these poems:
make poetic statements about the themes, imagery, symbolism, and people in the 50 chapters of Genesis. I plan to continue the project throughout the rest of the Bible (1139 chapters to go!). According to my calculations, I may complete the multi-volume work in about two decades.
Authors Wendy B. Dickinson and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie bring us the second feature of this issue titled, “Standardized Achievement Within Florida Title I Schools: Longitudinal Analysis of Third-Grade Performance”. Dickinson and Onwuegbuzie state:
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) was incepted in Florida to (a) assess students’ high-order cognitive skills represented in the Sunshine State Standards (SSS) in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, and Science; and (b) compare the Reading and Mathematics performance levels of students in Florida to levels of students nationally. However, scant independent, empirical research has been conducted on the FCAT. Moreover, prior research has not focused on the longitudinal FCAT performance of Title I students. This study examined FCAT Reading and Mathematics scores among third graders over a four-year period at every Title I school in Florida. Findings revealed that FCAT Reading scores increased linearly over these years; FCAT Mathematics scores increased quadratically. Socioeconomic status was a significant predictor of both FCAT Reading and Mathematics scores.
The final feature of this issue is titled “What Can We Teach When We Teach Ethics?” Author Carla R. Payne states:
There is an essential equivocation in the stated purposes for which some ethics courses are included in college curricula, as well as problems with their content and the methods by which progress toward their objectives is to be evaluated. Most descriptions of basic courses restrict themselves to offering an introduction to critical analysis of ethical theories and their application to situational cases, but there are others which suggest that moral improvement or growth is a course objective. Here they are inconsistent with recent philosophical practice. What outcomes can reasonably be expected from an introductory philosophy course in ethics? The stated objectives of several such courses are examined in this article, as well as some of the ambiguities and issues inherent in them. An attempt is made to establish the reasonable expectations we may have in teaching ethics as philosophers.
The first of this month’s Poet’s Corner contributions is titled “Why We Run” and comes to us from Geraldine Rose Daniels. Daniels states this poem “is about all the emotions we run from every day because for whatever reason we are unable to deal with them.”
Matilda Naputi Rivera provides the final contribution to this issues Poet’s Corner titled “Educational Technology.” According to Rivera, this poem, “is meant to be an inspirational poem for educators to be abreast of the wonderful world of technology. It invites educators to embrace it so that they can be endowed with the educational technology that undoubtedly enhances learning and so much more.”
READ, ENJOY, AND CONTRIBUTE!
You are invited to join AE Extra staff!
Send your ideas and/or writing sample
to the Editor-in-chief:
Elizabeth Haller
Kent State University (e-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com)
Academic Exchange Extra invites reader response to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.
