Critical Issues in Education: Dialogues and Dialectics

There is a great need for critical thinking in schools, and by teachers. Current educational reform efforts emphasize student testing on basic information and rote memorization. What is lost is education that involves critical thinking, creativity, and consideration of alternatives. The essential framework for this book is the stimulation of critical thinking―to include dialogue and dialectic approaches.

Critical Issues in Education includes opposing sides of the issues presented and illustrates, through competing essays on each topic, how critical thinking, dialogue, and dialectic approaches improve understanding and the evaluation of available evidence and reasoning.

Jack L. Nelson a professor of education at Rutgers, obtained his doctorate from the University of Southern California. He is experienced teacher in schools at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels; his university teaching experience includes California State University, Los Angeles; the State University of New York at Buffalo; San Jose State University; and Cambridge University. Nelson has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University, University of Colorado; and Curtin University and the University of Sydney in Australia. Critical Issues in Education is his sixteenth book; he has also published about 150 articles and reviews. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and Contemporary Authors.

Stuart B. Palonsky is professor of education and director of the Honors College at the University of Missouri-Columbia. A former public school teacher in New York and New Jersey, Palonsky earned his doctorate at Michigan State University. His publications include 900 Shows a Year, an ethnographic study of high school teaching from a classroom teacher’s perspective. In addition, Palonsky has published numerous articles and reviews in educational and social science journals, and has presented scholarly and professional papers on educational issues at national association conferences.