another benefit of being bilingual

There’s a piece in Newsweek currently on findings concerning cognitive benefits of bilingualism. (Click the image at left for the article on thedailybeast.com. Yes, I know the Arabic is backwards. It should be right-to-left — مرحبا , I think .) The article reports that According to several different studies, command of two or more languages bolsters […]

genetic factors in political orientation?

An article by Jim Giles published in New Scientist, and posted by the Center for Genetics and Society, surveys a variety of studies leading some people to see genetic factors in political inclinations, including liberal v. conservative, and likelihood to participate or not. The studies include twin studies, gene studies and personality studies. This calls […]

Zimbardo: Abu Ghraib, Milgram, Prisoner Experiment (BookTV)

Zimbardo cites the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and draws on the findings of his Stanford Prison Experiment, in which a group of student volunteers were arbitrarily divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a simulated prison environment.

Curriculum & the post-(cognitivist) synthesis

If “cognitivism” is an ideology that represents learning and understanding as matters that can be understood, in a reductive way, as being, in their essence, just matters of “cognition,” it does not follow that advancing beyond cognitivism would mean taking up a newer ideology of “postcognitivism.”

constructivism v. postpositivism

I am very interested in the general question of constructivism v. postpositivism, however, and I have a paper coming out soon that the reader would be interested in, I think. It should be published sometime this spring, and the citation will be: Whitson, James Anthony. “Education À La Silhouette: The Need for Semiotically-Informed Curriculum Consciousness.” Semiotica 164, no. 1/4 (2007): 235-329.