Part I. The Discourse of Education: 1. The discourse of education 2. Educational theory and educational reform Part II. Schools as Institutions: 3. Rediscovering institutions 4. School as a bureaucratic institution 5. Institutionalized knowledge and personal belief 6. Science and schooling as documentary practices 7. The Psychology of persons in institutions Part III. Schools as Pedagogical Environments: 8. The rediscovery of the mind 9. Understanding and the growth of knowledge 10. Some preliminaries to the history of schooling 11. Some preliminaries to the history of pedagogy 12. Pedagogy as a bridge from the subjective to the normative Part IV. Prospects for the Study and Reform of Education: 13. Responsibilities for teaching and learning 14. The achievement and assessment of virtue 15. A framework for educational theory 16. Coda: psychological theory and educational reform.
Olson, preeminent Canadian developmental psychologist, is best known to educators and researchers for his research and theorising on the distinct characteristics of written and spoken language. His current research is on the relation between the oral conversational language of preschool children and the formalised language of written texts. We spoke with Professor Olson during his recent visit to James Cook University.
Preeminent scholar David Olson opens this symposium with a reflection on the decades-long debate concerning the relationship between written and oral discourse. His essay is followed by a series of responses by leading literacy researchers, including David Bloome, Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul Gee, Martin Nystrand, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and Gordon Wells. The symposium concludes with a further essay by Professor Olson, in which he offers his reflections on these scholars’ comments and looks to the continuing conversation.
Klein and Olson argue that the effects of electronic technology on students’ thinking and learning may be much less than some technophiles would have us believe.
Alprazolam is a widely used antianxiety agent, yet relatively little is known about the relationship between chronic oral doses and steady-state plasma levels. This study examines the relationship over a wide range of therapeutic doses. We conducted a parallel, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 36 patients with agoraphobia with panic attacks, or panic disorder with limited phobic avoidance based on DSM- III criteria. Patients received alprazolam (N = 25) or placebo (N = 11) beginning at 1 mg/day and increased weekly until either a maximum tolerated dose or 10 mg/day was achieved. Dosages were then gradually tapered according to a predetermined schedule. The entire study period lasted 14 weeks. Laboratory and clinical assessments were conducted weekly. Doses up to 6 mg/day were tolerated by 80% of patients on alprazolam and doses of 10 mg/day were tolerated by 40% of patients. Twenty-seven percent of the placebo patients reached 10 tablets/day. In the alprazolam group, the principal cause of intolerance was sedation. Throughout the study no significant changes in vital signs or laboratory parameters were observed. Steady state alprazolam, 4-hydroxy alprazolam, and α-hydroxy alprazolam plasma levels were linearly related to dose. A 1 mg dosage increment produced, on the average, a corresponding 10 ng/ml increase in steady state level of the parent drug. Significant response was observed in subjects who achieved concentrations greater than 20 ng/ml, with a maximum of 81% of the samples classified as re- sponders within the 60 ng/ml and above group. During taper, no severe withdrawal symptoms were noted; 12 of 25 alprazolam patients, however, reported rebound anxiety (anxiety rating scale scores higher than baseline), which occurred most commonly at the reduction from 1 mg to 0 mg.