Does service-learning contribute to the privatizing or downsizing of citizenship practices, a claim recently leveled by Crenson and Ginsberg (2002), or can service-learning be understood and practiced as a vital antidote to this troubling trend? The author revisits a theme often raised within the service-learning and civic education literature…

This case concerns conflict over decision making in a high school and highlights major differences of opinion regarding the purposes of schooling and the democratic ideals of education. Faculty members who have worked toward greater heterogeneity are at odds with parents who want more honors classes. The school's faculty council has instituted a…

When schools react to contemporary events and focus on complex moral problems they commonly fail to make basic distinctions between the morally serious and trivial, the moral and the non-moral, and problems and dilemmas. We need to teach the distinction between moral and other values, and between what is intrinsically good, what is right in…

One important aim of social science research is to provide unbiased information that can help guide public policies. However, social science is often construed as politics by other means. Nowhere is the polarized nature of social science research more visible than in the heated debate over charter schools. In "Spin Cycle", noted political…

It is 40 years since Coombs (1967) first drew attention to the World Education Crisis, and specifically problems in the educational systems of countries in the developing world. Today, many of these problems remain, and are most visible in the educational systems of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. A large number of children remain out of school…

In the research about the educational experiences of refugee students, few articles describe how recently-arrived refugee students and their families make their transition to public schools in the U.S. and how they negotiate success in a formal schooling environment. In order to illuminate these processes, the author conducted an in-depth study of…

This volume is the first in a set of two to be published as the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook for 2008. Planning for the volumes began more than five years ago, when the Society's Board of Directors expressed an interest in taking steps to encourage a more expansive, robust, and inclusive dialogue about education in…

Looking back over three centuries of American higher education, one can see both strengths and weaknesses in the changing attitudes toward teaching goals. In this article, the author discusses the Truman Commission's (President Harry Truman appointed the higher education commission in July 1946, and charged the commission members to examine…

The year 2007 marks the 140th year of continuous efforts by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) to improve Southern education quality and opportunity for all of the region's people, especially those whose life chances are hobbled by poverty. SEF has played a critical role in the South's long circuitous march toward realizing the American Dream…

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between test anxiety and parenting style. Method: Democratic attitude of parents, acceptance of parents by the child, parental attitude regarding academics, parental expectations and gender stereotyped perceptions of parents regarding academics were evaluated in the domain…

This study discusses my attempt to improve educational experiences of fifth-grade students living in public housing. The context of a social justice-oriented classroom is revealed through reconstruction of my thought processes while teaching and learning with students. The narrative portrayal that emerges demonstrates the impact our theorizing…

Background/Context: While the arts are being elbowed out of school curricula, new community-based education venues for the arts are emerging in cities across the country. This article describes Richard Hugo House, an arts center for creative writing in Seattle, which attracts people of different ages and sociocultural backgrounds who participate…

In this article, the author discusses the practical, theoretical, and empirical rationale for linking diversity with the central educational and civic mission of higher education. While these links may be obvious to some, oftentimes diversity and race issues are conspicuously absent from discussions about learning and civic education. This…

This volume begins with an essay by Noelle McAfee, a contributor who is familiar to readers of Higher Education Exchange (HEX). She reiterates Mathews' argument regarding the disconnect between higher education's sense of engagement and the public's sense of engagement, and suggests a way around the epistemological conundrum of "knowledge…

The current debate between liberals and communitarians in the field of political theory helps to explain the magnitude of the forces aligned against significant change regarding the communal dimensions of schooling and to expose current schooling practices that are most destructive of the possibility of vibrant community life. This essay notes the…