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The handy alliterative language of a “digital divide” continues to dominate discussions of access to information and communication technologies and their importance for educational, employment, and other life opportunities. Certainly, it must be a topic of crucial public concern if a resource so central to life chances is reinforcing other dimensions of social advantage and disadvantage. And yet, almost as soon as the term gained currency, with its metaphorical imagery of a gulf between technological “haves” and “have nots,” it began receiving criticism for conceptualizing the nature of the problem of technological inequalities in a misleading fashion. This essay reviews the debate over the meanings of the “digital divide,” various attempts to reconceptualize the issue, and why, in our view, the discussion still by and large misses key aspects of the problem.

David M. Marcovitz suggests that public education has not changed very much in the last 100 years, in spite of information and communication technology (ICT). Is ICT simply another educational fad or will it have a lasting impact on K-12 education? Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch and Sharon Smaldino maintain there have been several examples of effective uses of technology in K-12. However, the inability of public schools and higher education to properly train teachers has severely limited the success of using computer technology in most public schools. Sharon Tettegah, Diana Betout, and Kona Taylor describes cyber-bullying, as a phenomenon that is creating difficulty for educators and has led to the humiliation of many students across the nation. David Williamson Shaffer and Kurt D. Squire argue that researchers of educational technology should study Pasteur's Quadrant for “use-inspired basic research” to create better models to evaluate educational practices and the use of technology. John Keller and Matthew J. Stuve discuss teacher quality, a topic that has taken on greater importance since NCLB. They also talk about the use of “teacher as brand” as a construct to further affect teacher quality. In connection, branding has been a very successful venture in the commercial context.

A number of theoretical paradigms provide a networking space for the trio and complementary fields of comparative, international, and development educational (CIDE) research. Critics periodically attribute the field's lack of a sound theoretical base or commitment to one area of scientific research or another as a primary weakness in the field.¹ Espoused theoretical paradigms often provide the knowledge debate arena in which academic fields interact and build together. In an alternative perspective from this criticism, we argue that the strength of the CIDE field resides in its ability to combine multiple theoretical perspectives that offer researchers a variety of potentially fruitful metatheoretical analyses. Thus, we do not view this lack of theoretical specification as a weakness; it is the very fabric that enables CIDE educationists to study and represent increasingly complex global and local education systems.

Diana Betout is a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She is studying teacher education. She plans to pursue her career as an elementary teacher.

Care is by no means a new topic to those involved in philosophy of education. However, I wish to (re)make the case that we ought to care as educators, despite the many risks and uncertainties. I draw on the work of contemporary philosophers to explore the connection between teaching and care in an attempt to (re)focus our understanding of the why and how we care (the process that brings us to caring action and practices to enhance normative practices of education) and the ethical considerations that accompany such a caring approach in education. I will engage in an exercise of praxis in an attempt to foster teaching that promotes things as they ought to be through Björn Freter's (2017a) conceptual work regarding the “existential experience of and the existential need to exercise care” (p. 5).

Using the framework developed by Freter, I point out that, despite normative uncertainties, educators should engage their concern, volition, and practice in order that what ought to be for students can be sought. How this theoretical exploration of caring is extrapolated into classroom practice is found in a synthesizing of Nicholas Burbules and Susanne Rice's (1992) concept of communicative virtues, Nel Noddings' (2012) work on caring as a relational dialogue, Schmitz, Müllan, and Slaby (2011) thoughts on affective involvement, and Barbara Thayer-Bacon and Charles Bacon's (1996) philosophical investigation into a model of caring educator. I will then humanize my contribution by adding personal testimony and philosophical conceptualization of particular experiences with pedagogical practices of care as an educator in primary, secondary, and tertiary educational settings. I conclude with some discussion on the risks and uncertainties inherent in such an endeavor.

This chapter discusses a form of pedagogy of reflection suggested to be defined as the dialogical-reflective professional-development school (DRPDS) – a framework that develops and empowers students by engaging them in a process of continual improvement, responding to diverse situations, providing stimuli for learning, and giving anchors for mediation. The pedagogy of reflection relates to dialogue not only from a theoretical historical context but also by way of example – that is, it offers empowering dialogues within the traditional teacher-training framework. This chapter outlines the importance of the pedagogy of reflection in the multicultural educational space of the preservice education field in Israel, analyzing the first university PDS model. The pedagogy of reflection in the context of the educational dialogue of educators is outlined as a tool for student empowerment, achieved through a community of learners who dedicate space to the development of their whole personality within the profession, taking a moral stance toward the educational discourse, minimizing judgmentalism and prejudice, creating national/gender equality with the goal of examining the fundamental question of educational performance, and reinforcing their sense of organizational belonging within the system. In these contexts, the chapter is based on the elements of dialogical philosophy exemplified in the thought of Burbules, Nelson, Isaacs, Bohm, and Heckmann and the reflective basis of educational and organizational performance exemplified in the writings of van Manen. The chapter also presents two examples from a project in which teaching units based on dialogue and reflection were developed within a dialogic community that represents in its very being collective empowerment, the possibility of coping with problems that are too large for an individual to solve on his/her own, and an alternative to sealed and alienated organizations.

The authors of this volume present a wide range of perspectives, case studies, and theories on partnerships for international development. The authors discuss the leadership approaches, principles, frameworks, and elements needed to develop effective university partnerships for international development. In the age of globalization, these types of international partnerships are an essential element to drive political reform, social development, and economic growth, and as such, they have become an essential element in today’s global system of higher education. Within the context of a rapidly changing higher education system, international collaborations encourage diverse and inclusive learning environments. Readers of this volume will also understand the principles for making international joint activities structurally sound and socially oriented.

In this paper, we present a proposed information environment (PROPIE) for enhanced interaction and value‐adding of electronic documents (e‐documents). The design of PROPIE was based on a thorough user needs and requirements assessment in interacting with information through well‐documented findings, and a focus group with twelve participants to elicit features that were deemed desirable in future interactions. The design was also based on an earlier work which reviewed the advancements in various user interface (UI) technologies, visualisation and interactive techniques, and a consideration of novel information structuring and organisation techniques that pose important implications for the design of more advanced UIs. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that can be flexibly combined, PROPIE allows users to apply multiple novel ways to query intuitively and navigate information in an e‐document. The querying and browsing processes in PROPIE are supported by various interactive and visualisation techniques. Users work within a visually sovereign, integrated environment for information gathering and organising, based on navigable, fractional information objects that are also affiliated with rich metadata and additional layers of value‐adding information. A set of interface mock‐ups was developed to demonstrate the potential of the environment in supporting the design of a new generation of electronic journals (e‐journals). We report here empirical results from a study conducted to obtain representative users‘ feedback with regard to using PROPIE for interacting with e‐journals. Twenty‐two participants from a variety of academic backgrounds participated in the evaluation. Overall, PROPIE was found to have the potential both for enhancing the user’s interaction with information captured within e‐journals and for adding value to e‐documents in various ways.