This article provides a "thick" understanding of how public school parents understand their decision to opt their children out of standardized tests. In it, Amy Shuffelton draws from qualitative research interviews with Chicago parents to explore how three mothers connected opting out of standardized testing to their broader commitments…

In this essay Robert Rhoads, Jennifer Berdan, and Brit Toven-Lindsey examine some of the key literature related to the open courseware (OCW) movement (including the emergence and expansion of massive open online courses, or MOOCs), focusing particular attention on the movement's democratic potential. The discussion is organized around three…

In this essay, Yuli Tamir argues that the growing interest in public education in the developed world in general and in the United States in particular is grounded in a fear of losing global hegemony. The most rational approach to slowing down these hegemonic shifts is to empower public education and allow the neglected human capital vested in…

The focus of this essay is the social functions of educational reform as part of the social and political outcomes of schooling. It argues against change which looks at particular events without considering issues that tie schooling to questions of history and power. (MT)

Overall aim of this paper is to identify and clarify a conceptual framework which can be used by educators to formulate a more adequate relation between public education and the democratic way of life. (Author)

A definition of profession incorporates two fundamental characteristics: (1) It is a self-regulating and self-disciplined voluntary association; and (2) it is based on a scientific framework. Discussions of the teaching profession are not addressing the matter of legal authority implicit in the concept of professionalization. (MT)