England's Education Action Zones and their forums seek to draw together diverse constituencies to develop and implement local plans for school improvement, thereby empowering parents and communities. This article, based on interviews with EAZ applicants and directors, explores EAZ's imperfectly realized potential to democratize schooling.…

The focus of this article is on the role that content and concepts drawn from the field of economics should play in education for self-government. How important is economic knowledge for the practice of effective citizenship in a democratic society such as the United States, and what core economic knowledge is required for effective civic…

This essay stems from previously reported critical ethnographic data regarding educators participating in graduate-level classes on whiteness. The metaphor of "faces of whiteness" is adopted here to signify that individuals occupy particular stances toward White privilege and its consequences in a dynamic and nonlinear fashion. The Torpified face…

Although many agree that theory, research, and practice should be intertwined to support the type of schooling (and society) that values rather than marginalizes, few scholars offer ground-breaking, pragmatic approaches to developing truly transformative leaders. From a critical theorist perspective, this article offers a practical,…

Research on parent-teacher relationships tends to relegate parents to visitor roles in schools and to reinforce student achievement as the primary goal of parent-teacher relationships. This article argues for the recognition of the importance of talk among parents and teachers both as a research methodology and as a desirable outcome in creating…

Recognizing the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse politically disengaged population along with the central role of schools in preparing democratic citizens, this study investigated how 3 skilled secondary social studies teachers taught about and for multicultural democracy to prepare students for active and effective citizenship through…

We describe a democratic citizen model of community organizing for mobilizing and partnering with families, using the overscheduling of children as a case example. We provide an overview of the growing body of research on this aspect of family time, describe the difference between a citizen model and program models for working with families, give…

Examinations of privilege have historically focused on gender and race. By placing privilege within the context of oppression, the authors offer an expanded view of the domains of privilege that include sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, differing degrees of ableness, and religious affiliation.

In this paper, the authors discuss the influence of democracy and law on music education in Sweden and Finland, and the potential for music education as training in democracy. The latter consideration can be instructive regardless of the nation, or its laws and paradigms of music education. The theoretical background is based on Jurgen Habermas'…

The Kingdom Come School in Linefork is now a public school, but it began its life in 1924 as part of the settlement school movement that was all the rage at the beginning of the twentieth century. The school was founded by Hiram Frakes, a methodist minister who wanted to create a community that valued education, and promoted opportunities for its…

This article, based on an interpretive study, examines what happens when a team of teaching fellows and their supervisor attempt to address what they have identified as a "pedagogical crisis" in a social foundations of education course. Student proclivities had resulted in extreme polarization regarding contested social issues. By using a…

Over the past twenty years several topics covered in "New Directions for Evaluation" (NDE) are relevant to underrepresented groups, including cultural sensitivity; cultural competence; stakeholder-based, responsive, democratic deliberation; and participatory evaluation theories, methodologies, and practices. Also, the topic of social justice and…

Civic responsibility as an ideal of higher education is rarely considered through a cultural and theoretical lens. Swidler's (1986, "American Sociological Review", 51: 273-286) framework linking ideology, culture and action was used in this ethnographic study of a research university (a) to understand dominant institutional beliefs about civic…

The name of Zoltan P. Dienes (1916- ) stands with those of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Edward Begle, and Robert Davis as a legendary figure whose work left a lasting impression on the field of mathematics education. Dienes' name is synonymous with the multibase blocks that he invented for the teaching of place value. Among numerous other things,…

The increasing ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and language diversity in nations throughout the world is forcing educators and policymakers to rethink existing notions of citizenship and nationality. To experience cultural democracy and freedom, a nation must be unified around a set of democratic values such as justice and equality that…