Robert A Davis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3787395 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert A Davis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert A |
| FAMILY NAME | Davis |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIS R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1929 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
‘Look on my works ye mighty…’: Iconoclasm, education and the fate of statues
In pursuit of an alternative perspective on the so-called ‘statues controversy’, this essay brings recent interpretations of the enduring ‘power’, ‘gaze’ and ‘magic’ of statues into alignment with critical histories of iconoclasm, sacred and secular, and New Materialist accounts of our multiple entanglements with the object histories of inherited monuments. Opening with a close reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley's renowned 1818 sonnet, ‘Ozymandias’,…
Schools as Factories: The Limits of a Metaphor
This essay examines a longstanding and recurrent metaphor in the representation of schools in modern society: the school as factory. Tracing this figure to the rise of philanthropic schools provided by factory owners from the early stages of the British industrial revolution, the essay surveys its uses both in the historical sources and in later critical‐theoretical analyses commonly informed by the work of Michel Foucault. While acknowledging th…
Postliberal education
The 2014 INPE McLaughlin Lecture explores the emergent concept of the ‘postliberal’ and the increasing frequency of its formal and informal uses in the languages of educational theory and practice. It traces the origins of the term ‘postliberal’ to certain strains of modern Christian theology, maps its migration into liberal democratic theory and examines its important role in the discussion of religious schooling as led for a time by Terry McLau…
Mother–child relations and the discourse of maternity
In the critical assessment of the rise of what Jameson has termed the modern centred subject ... the lived experience of individual consciousness as a monadic and autonomous centre of activity, significant attention has been devoted to the impact of the institutions of the late eighteenth century ‘bourgeois cultural revolution’ such as the family and the school. Less consideration has been given in this history of regulated subjectivity to the em…
Brilliance of a Fire: Innocence, Experience and the Theory of Childhood
This essay offers an extensive rehabilitation and reappraisal of the concept of childhood innocence as a means of testing the boundaries of some prevailing constructions of childhood. It excavates in detail some of the lost histories of innocence in order to show that these are more diverse and more complex than established and pejorative assessments of them conventionally suggest. Recovering, in particular, the forgotten pedigree of the Romantic…
Philosophy as a Basis for Policy and Practice: What Confidence Can We Have in Philosophical Analysis and Argument
The purpose of this article is to suggest how philosophy might play a key, if precisely delineated, role in the shaping of policy that leads educational development. The argument begins with a reflection on the nature of confidence in the relationship between philosophy and policy. We note the widespread resistance to abstract theorising in the policy community, disguising the enormous potential of a philosophical approach. Defending a philosophi…
Music Education and Cultural Identity
Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centralit…
Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: The Trickster as poet and teacher
(2002). Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: the Trickster as poet and teacher. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 255-272
Children and Spirituality in the Context of a Traditional Festival: Halloween
This paper examines some of the contemporary cultural practices associated with the traditional festival of Halloween as it is celebrated by children in Britain and the United States. Using ethnographic evidence from a variety of sources, the authors seek to explore the range of activities which constitute the modern Halloween, particularly as it is mediated to children through the forms of consumer culture. The paper analyses the changing social…
Planning teacher‐made tests
sures of achievement only when they are carefully planned in relationship to other elements in a learning program. These other elements relate to subject matter, kinds of learning, and learning activities. Do the test items cover subject matter the student has had reasonable opportunity to learn? Do the items measure the kinds of learning expectd? Are the learning activities appropriate for cultivating the expected kinds of learning? Building tes…
Short answer and essay examinations
Short answer and essay examinations are deeply rooted in teaching practice. During their long history their values as measures of learning have been frequently questioned, especially during the second quarter of this century, when the objective test reached its height in popularity. But they have persisted and are still the principal means of measuring achievement in the high schools and colleges. What kinds of learning do shortanswer and essay e…
Writing a thesis in education
W RITING A THESIS in education includes not only preparation of a comprehensive report of one's investigation of a worthwhile problem but all activities beginning with the initial selection of such a problem. One's ability to make a constructive contribution begins to increase at the moment when he first explores his interest in search of a problem which has not been completely solved. When that state of developing a thesis arrives at which defin…
The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills
(1943). The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 243-250
Mastery of a Constant Task Versus Cumulative Progress as a Technique of Studying Learning
Personality Traits and Conduct of Institutionalized Delinquents
This study attempts to determine the relationship between certain personality traits and conduct of institutionalized delinquents. The Bernreuter Personality Inventory was administered to 152 State Industrial School and 181 State Reformatory inmates in Colorado.2 Although industrial school inmates range from 10 to 18 years of age, only those 15 years and over at the time of testing are used since these are fairly comparable with the high school p…
Guidance of Graduate Students
T OGETHER with many other institutions the University of Colorado in recent years has faced the problem of providing adequate graduate-study programs and guidance for an increasingly large number of candidates for the Master's degree in education. The situation, which has arisen in almost all American universities, has strained almost to the breaking point the limited facilities for graduate instruction and has led in nearly all instances to some…
Methods of Measuring Retention
(1935). Methods of Measuring Retention. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 144-155
Topical Summaries of Current Literature: Mental Hygiene and Personality Tests
The effect of institutional life on character traits as evidenced by the Downey Group-Will Temperament Test
Brilliance of a Fire: Innocence, Experience and the Theory of Childhood
This essay offers an extensive rehabilitation and reappraisal of the concept of childhood innocence as a means of testing the boundaries of some prevailing constructions of childhood. It excavates in detail some of the lost histories of innocence in order to show that these are more diverse and more complex than established and pejorative assessments of them conventionally suggest. Recovering, in particular, the forgotten pedigree of the Romantic…
Music Education and Cultural Identity
Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centralit…
The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills
(1943). The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 243-250
Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: The Trickster as poet and teacher
(2002). Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: the Trickster as poet and teacher. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 255-272
Philosophy as a Basis for Policy and Practice: What Confidence Can We Have in Philosophical Analysis and Argument
The purpose of this article is to suggest how philosophy might play a key, if precisely delineated, role in the shaping of policy that leads educational development. The argument begins with a reflection on the nature of confidence in the relationship between philosophy and policy. We note the widespread resistance to abstract theorising in the policy community, disguising the enormous potential of a philosophical approach. Defending a philosophi…
Methods of Measuring Retention
(1935). Methods of Measuring Retention. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 144-155
The effect of institutional life on character traits as evidenced by the Downey Group-Will Temperament Test
Methods of Measuring Retention
(1935). Methods of Measuring Retention. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 144-155
Topical Summaries of Current Literature: Mental Hygiene and Personality Tests
Mastery of a Constant Task Versus Cumulative Progress as a Technique of Studying Learning
Personality Traits and Conduct of Institutionalized Delinquents
This study attempts to determine the relationship between certain personality traits and conduct of institutionalized delinquents. The Bernreuter Personality Inventory was administered to 152 State Industrial School and 181 State Reformatory inmates in Colorado.2 Although industrial school inmates range from 10 to 18 years of age, only those 15 years and over at the time of testing are used since these are fairly comparable with the high school p…
Guidance of Graduate Students
T OGETHER with many other institutions the University of Colorado in recent years has faced the problem of providing adequate graduate-study programs and guidance for an increasingly large number of candidates for the Master's degree in education. The situation, which has arisen in almost all American universities, has strained almost to the breaking point the limited facilities for graduate instruction and has led in nearly all instances to some…
The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills
(1943). The Function of Mental Practice in the Acquisition of Motor Skills. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 243-250
Writing a thesis in education
W RITING A THESIS in education includes not only preparation of a comprehensive report of one's investigation of a worthwhile problem but all activities beginning with the initial selection of such a problem. One's ability to make a constructive contribution begins to increase at the moment when he first explores his interest in search of a problem which has not been completely solved. When that state of developing a thesis arrives at which defin…
Short answer and essay examinations
Short answer and essay examinations are deeply rooted in teaching practice. During their long history their values as measures of learning have been frequently questioned, especially during the second quarter of this century, when the objective test reached its height in popularity. But they have persisted and are still the principal means of measuring achievement in the high schools and colleges. What kinds of learning do shortanswer and essay e…
Planning teacher‐made tests
sures of achievement only when they are carefully planned in relationship to other elements in a learning program. These other elements relate to subject matter, kinds of learning, and learning activities. Do the test items cover subject matter the student has had reasonable opportunity to learn? Do the items measure the kinds of learning expectd? Are the learning activities appropriate for cultivating the expected kinds of learning? Building tes…
Children and Spirituality in the Context of a Traditional Festival: Halloween
This paper examines some of the contemporary cultural practices associated with the traditional festival of Halloween as it is celebrated by children in Britain and the United States. Using ethnographic evidence from a variety of sources, the authors seek to explore the range of activities which constitute the modern Halloween, particularly as it is mediated to children through the forms of consumer culture. The paper analyses the changing social…
Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: The Trickster as poet and teacher
(2002). Transgression, Transformation and Enlightenment: the Trickster as poet and teacher. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 255-272
Music Education and Cultural Identity
Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centralit…
Philosophy as a Basis for Policy and Practice: What Confidence Can We Have in Philosophical Analysis and Argument
The purpose of this article is to suggest how philosophy might play a key, if precisely delineated, role in the shaping of policy that leads educational development. The argument begins with a reflection on the nature of confidence in the relationship between philosophy and policy. We note the widespread resistance to abstract theorising in the policy community, disguising the enormous potential of a philosophical approach. Defending a philosophi…
Mother–child relations and the discourse of maternity
In the critical assessment of the rise of what Jameson has termed the modern centred subject ... the lived experience of individual consciousness as a monadic and autonomous centre of activity, significant attention has been devoted to the impact of the institutions of the late eighteenth century ‘bourgeois cultural revolution’ such as the family and the school. Less consideration has been given in this history of regulated subjectivity to the em…
Brilliance of a Fire: Innocence, Experience and the Theory of Childhood
This essay offers an extensive rehabilitation and reappraisal of the concept of childhood innocence as a means of testing the boundaries of some prevailing constructions of childhood. It excavates in detail some of the lost histories of innocence in order to show that these are more diverse and more complex than established and pejorative assessments of them conventionally suggest. Recovering, in particular, the forgotten pedigree of the Romantic…
Postliberal education
The 2014 INPE McLaughlin Lecture explores the emergent concept of the ‘postliberal’ and the increasing frequency of its formal and informal uses in the languages of educational theory and practice. It traces the origins of the term ‘postliberal’ to certain strains of modern Christian theology, maps its migration into liberal democratic theory and examines its important role in the discussion of religious schooling as led for a time by Terry McLau…
Schools as Factories: The Limits of a Metaphor
This essay examines a longstanding and recurrent metaphor in the representation of schools in modern society: the school as factory. Tracing this figure to the rise of philanthropic schools provided by factory owners from the early stages of the British industrial revolution, the essay surveys its uses both in the historical sources and in later critical‐theoretical analyses commonly informed by the work of Michel Foucault. While acknowledging th…
‘Look on my works ye mighty…’: Iconoclasm, education and the fate of statues
In pursuit of an alternative perspective on the so-called ‘statues controversy’, this essay brings recent interpretations of the enduring ‘power’, ‘gaze’ and ‘magic’ of statues into alignment with critical histories of iconoclasm, sacred and secular, and New Materialist accounts of our multiple entanglements with the object histories of inherited monuments. Opening with a close reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley's renowned 1818 sonnet, ‘Ozymandias’,…
Psychology (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Political science (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Mathematics education (6 works) · Pedagogy (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works)