EDITORIAL 

Anne M. Galler 

We are pleased to include two excellent papers which were presented at the Education 
Division sessions during the 1992 SLA Conference held in San Francisco (June 6-11 ). The 
first speaker, Dr. John V. Ogbu, is an eminent anthropologist, with degrees from Nigeria, 
Zambia, Princeton and the University of California where he obtained his Ph.D in 
Anthropology in 1971. 

He has done extensive research in three major areas: 

1) Education and culture, especially comparative study of minority education; 
2) Cross-cultural human development; and 
3) Youth transition from school to labour force/adulthood. 

He is the recipient of many awards and grants and has published several books as well as 
articles in the field of anthropology. The paper he presented in San Francisco deals with 
Understanding Cui tural Differences and School Learning. A selected bibliography of his 
works appears at the end of his paper. 

We were also privileged to have as our second speaker, Dr. Bernard R. Gifford, 
whose paper deals with Knowledge Management, Research and Pedagogy in the Elec­
tronic Age. Dr. Gifford obtained his Ph.D. in radiation biology and biophysics from the 
University of Rochester Medical School, in 1971 and also spent a post-doctoral year at 
Harvard University, where he was a Kennedy Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of 
Government. He has published widely in a number of areas, ranging from applied physics 
to public policy. 

In recent years, however, Dr. Gifford has devoted most of his writing to exploring 
the barriers to educational change and reform, as well as the impact of personal computer­
based instructional systems on the teaching and learning enterprise. His column on 
"Educational, Technology and Public Policy" appears in both the Chronicle of Higher 
Education and Education Week. A selected bibliography of his writings can be found at 
the end of his paper. 

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