This article takes the educational vision of people's history an additional step, combining it with experiential approaches to democratic education that have developed over the past century and presenting the tools for students and adults to take control of their own historical study, control their heritage, and personalize the study of…

The author traces the origin of social work to the Confucian concept of Great Unity and social organization of traditional Chinese society. While professional social work started in 1921, its development was interrupted in 1952, but the practice of social work never stopped. Social work was revived as a discipline and profession in 1979 and has…

In this paper I raise and respond to the question: Is John Dewey's understanding of growth sufficiently responsive to problems associated with race and racism? I begin with a discussion of Dewey's essay "Racial Prejudice and Friction," and show that Dewey lets a major objection to his response to racism and prejudice stand…

This commentary explores how teachers can create a culture of tolerance by promoting reflectivity and reflexivity, and considers classroom processes and activities for doing so. "Reflectivity" is considered to be the use of personal values, experiences, and habits to make meaning and is a central tenet of inquiry approaches: to build…

Although ethical dilemmas are a constant in teachers' lives, the profession has offered little in the way of training to help teachers address such issues. This paper presents a framework, based on developmental theory, for resolving professional ethical dilemmas. The Four-Component Model of Moral Maturity, when used in conjunction with a…

Noddings's radical choice for a particular stance in life is both what makes "Happiness and Education" a thought-provoking book and what also leads me to have some reservations. First, I briefly outline some of these reservations and focus on what I think are two important difficulties "Happiness and Education" faces:…

John Milton Oskison (1874-1947) was a Cherokee writer, journalist, and activist and the author of novels and biographies as well as numerous short stories, essays, and articles about a great variety of subjects. Oskison thought of himself as "an interpreter to the world, of the modern, progressive Indian." The kind of representation Oskison gave…

Asking hard questions is just that--hard. But if we are truly committed to teaching for social justice, we need to encourage our children to find as many points of view as they can, and to ask questions we may never be able to answer, knowing that education for citizenship lies in the process of thinking critically about the many sides of a…

This article proposes that acculturation orientations are related to two sets of cultural values: utilitarianism (Ut) and traditionalism (Tr). While utilitarian values enhance assimilation, traditional values support language and identity maintenance. It is proposed that the propensity to either end of this value opposition can be measured by an…

Michelle Garcia Winner's Social Thinking Curriculum is widely used by schools across the USA and has garnered attention internationally. The curriculum addresses social language and behavior deficits among those on the autism spectrum. Although many embrace this curriculum without reservation, the emphasis on social conformity, including avoiding…

Some who read and research about Design & Technology (D&T) would say that the concept of value is key to understanding and defining D&T. Closer inspection reveals though that there are two ways in which values are defined in D&T: how values are taught and learnt about in D&T to use them to make judgments in D&T lessons, and…

Complex dynamic systems (CDS) theory offers a powerful metaphorical model of applied linguistic processes, allowing holistic descriptions of situated phenomena, and addressing the connectedness and change that often characterise issues in our field. A recent study of Kenyan conflict transformation illustrates application of a CDS perspective. Key…

Using theories of representation and democratic education, this article examines the impetus of parent trigger policies in the United States and their potential effects on public good goals for public education. The article also uses theories of representation and responsible democratic governance to assess the parent trigger policies, or what are…

After more than a decade of democratic citizenship education in public schools in South Africa, the Department of Basic Education (DoBE) has still not produced sufficiently plausible ways for how democracy and citizenship ought to be taught in classrooms. I argue that the recent "practical guide" on how to cultivate "responsibility…

This work is set against the backdrop of the Sub-Saharan African environment observed to be morally degenerative. It judges that the level of decadence in the continent that could even amount to depravity could be blamed upon the disconnect between the present-day African and a moral tradition that has been swept under the carpet through history;…