Today's English language teaching goes beyond the norms of English spoken and taught in native-English-speaking countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia. Increasingly, a variety of countries have established, formally or informally, a kind of English unique to their own populations, and English language teachers within…

Recent international policy literature on Education for Sustainable Development puts forward utopian concepts of sustainable development and transformed learning as objects for educational thinking and practice. This paper, drawing on three illustrative educational investigations with youth in a South African context, critically examines how we…

Often superintendents and boards of education employ an expert-based, school-centered, "decide and defend" decision making approach when dealing with critical school district issues. In the case presented here, involving what to do with an historic school building, it is an approach that did not yield the result the superintendent or board of…

Describes a federally funded project to establish neighborhood resource centers in the branches of the Seattle Public Library system to disseminate university research materials and technical assistance of a local nature to neighborhood patrons. (LLS)

What the author has learned, wandering around in the mists and fogs of the lowlands along the Potomac, is that nothing happens in Congress until there is a will, a consensus, and not just in the leadership, but in the rank and file of both parties that an issue needs to be addressed in a particular way. The problem needs to be explicated until it…

Describes how the testing of hypotheses about retail distribution can form the basis of local field work. A case study is presented involving the characteristics of a declining shopping area in Deptford, England. Tables, charts, and maps are included. (Author/DB)

Describes a state agency's approach to developing and improving the self-assessment and accountability of local programs overseen and funded by a large statewide program. This self-assessment approach to evaluating local tobacco control programs in California is "empowerment evaluation" in action. (SLD)

Illustrates the practical results of the five classification proposals presented in this volume. Each classification model has been applied to a common sample of colleges. Authors review the key implications of this collective exercise. Argues that local constructs demand a more sophisticated database at the national level. (Contains six tables.)…

Describes efforts to enlist community support for a bond referendum to build two new elementary schools in Lunenburg County, Virginia. Recommends (1) establishing a grassroots organization; (2) emphasizing moral issues; (3) stressing needs of the school system; (4) orienting the campaign toward the future; (5) starting the campaign early; and (6)…

This article illustrates how to integrate mathematics with social issues. Social issues discussed in the newspaper provide a rich context for connecting mathematical activities to the real world. The sample activities focus on measurement concepts. (Contains 2 figures.)

This article explores the connections between literacy, economy, and place through an examination of labor market intermediaries (LMIs). In particular, the article addresses the shifting role of LMIs over the past thirty years in Lake County, Indiana, and how they have developed as literacy sponsors. The article looks beyond the boundaries of…

Discusses various aspects of community work in Australia: national context, consensus politics, early community work, literature and training, current trends in Australian community work, localist programs, and community work politics. (CT)

Talking with local merchants helps sixth-graders explore the impact of change in their community. (Editor/SJL)

The authors examined Chinese college students' perceptions of internal (certainty, tangibility, complexity, significance, and danger) and external characteristics (personal knowledge, human responsibility, impact on personal life, and predicted trend) of 9 global and 8 local environmental issues. Subjects (N = 108) demonstrated by completing a…

In recent years, ELT researchers have begun exploring how teachers can link their lessons to student communities and student concerns; however, little attention has been given to the potential for explicit grammar focus in the context of such approaches. In this paper, it is proposed that language lessons structured around local issues and…