Policy Implications of Education Informatics

Abstract

Background/Context This concluding article identifies the policy implications of education informatics and explores impacts of current copyright laws, legislative structures, publishing practices, and education organizations. Synthesizing the discussions in the preceding articles, this article highlights the importance of designing information systems to promote open access to information in order to support scholarly communications and provide for the application of scholarship to practice within the field of education. Specific steps are proposed to further advance education informatics and to anchor it within constantly changing technologies in order to address pedagogical, curricular, and policy issues within education. Purpose This article is designed to propose future directions for the development of the field of education informatics and promote additional research. Research Design Information in this article is based on a brief literature review and an analysis of the interrelated implications of the articles in this issue for policy development in education informatics. Conclusions Although education informatics as a term has been used since at least 1980, there is limited literature about this term. This lack of discussion about the integration of education informatics principles and content in copyright and other legislation, in formal education, and in information dissemination practices indicates that education informatics has had little impact as a field of study within the discipline of education. Policy changes at the federal and state government levels and within educational organizations and associations will be needed to promote the development of education informatics as a core part of the discipline of education. Full development of the field of education informatics will require diverse policy changes by multiple audiences. One specific policy change that will be needed is strengthening collaborative copyright as part of the Copyright Commons. This and other changes should focus on improving access to current and historical education literature from both formal and informal channels for scholarly, practitioner, community, and policy audiences. Additionally, schools and colleges of education should create programs of study in education informatics. Consideration of user needs and mobile access to information should drive policy changes in the organization of classrooms, learning, and teacher educator programs. Most of all, policy changes need leadership that is guided by a commitment to the alignment of federal, state, regional, and local data distribution and to the creation of partnerships to align policy with practice and a vision of the role of education informatics in the discipline and practice of education.

Morally literate: Forging communities of moral sensitivity and care through Theatre Pedagogy

“…The aforementioned reasoning skills are not exercised only verbally, through plain discussion, but in the realm of the aesthetic, where semiotic cues abound, diffusing morally charged information, either through corporeality or the meaningful use of props. Indeed, moral thinking directly connects with aesthetic perception (Abowitz, 2007), while the aesthetic dimension has a direct engagement with the affective and the emotional aspect of moral development (Carr, 2013). Being verbally implicated in a moral reasoning process through dramatic engagement is certainly found to be effective (Freebody, 2010), yet non-verbality plays a pivotal role refining and enhancing reasoning, as it may relate body posture with character and intentionality, position in space with disposition towards one or another opinion, tone of voice, facial expression and gesturing with emotions, theater props with insinuation, finally the explicit with the implicit.…”