Caroline Pratt opened her Play School in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1914 with its unique curriculum featuring such unconventional activities as block building and field trips. The school continues to this day with its original principles and activities kept largely intact and has been highly regarded by many parents and educators; but it is also criticized for valuing child-centeredness at the expense of planning and structure. I will argue, however, that the school has a definite curriculum, and that the crucial part of it, the way Pratt conceptualized play as a means to assist children’s cognitive as well as social and emotional development, goes beyond the scope of child-centered education.

The purpose of the USU STARS! I GEAR UP Program is to increase the number of students who are prepared to enter and succeed in post-secondary education. Partnership grants are competitive six-year matching grants awarded by the United States Department of Education. GEAR UP grants support an early intervention component designed to increase college attendance and success and raise the expectations of students. GEAR UP grantees begin with a cohort of students in the seventh grade and follow the cohort through high school and to college entry. This paper describes the activities of the Utah State University USU STARS! I GEAR UP Program. It describes the successes of the program and discusses activities that have led to the support of students in preparation for post-secondary education.

There is an emerging international consensus on the importance of developing 21st Century capabilities as part of education curricula. Yet, educators are uncertain about the definitions of the capabilities, and how to teach and assess them. This paper offers integrated curriculum as an effective way to resolve some of the challenges associated with developing the C21 capabilities. We present an overarching curriculum framework - the Know-Do-Be. Next, we identify the capabilities as they are described in various jurisdictions. Then we offer a backward design planning process that allows for creative and coherent curriculum design. Models of integrated curriculum are explored followed by research on the effectiveness of integration. Finally, we show how bringing together the competencies and integrated curriculum can create a rich learning situation. The paper concludes with recommendations for facilitating the foregrounding of the 21st Century capabilities through curriculum integration.

In this paper I first show how a notion of pragmatism that follows from William James’ original formulation can be used to understand what John Dewey and Paulo Freire might have in common. The paper begins with an expository analysis of the relevant concepts and then moves into a speculative mode, suggesting what lessons educators might take from these main ideas.

Imagination is required in a lifelong learning society so as to make knowledge applicable in solving various problems. Imagination is a capability to configure unrealistic regions from the phenomenological perspective, and a creative function responsible for understanding and interpreting the world from the hermeneutic viewpoint. Cultural philosophy views imagination as an ability for symbol formation based on epistemological and esthetic functions. Considering narrative is a story, a mode of thinking, and a cultural toolkit for understanding and making human mind, the imagination from the narrative viewpoint is closely related to narrative thinking in charge of making plausible stories, changing and reinforcing cultural scripts, and communicating culturally and cross-culturally.