This case study investigated the impact of academic capitalism on academic culture by examining the perspectives of faculty members in an American academic department with significant industrial funding. The results of this study indicate that faculty members believe that the broad integrity of the academic culture remains unaffected in this…

Neo-liberal policies and programs regarding higher education operate to fulfill either one of two main goals. The first is the privatization of public education. The second objective is the creation of an "iron cage" of economic rationality and standardization, which functions to regulate the production of human capital in the public education…

According to the California Department of Education's Curriculum Framework, the secondary curriculum for grades nine through twelve is geared toward students who are beginning "to develop [an] abstract understanding of historical causality--the often complex patterns of relationships between historical events, their multiple antecedents, and…

Some effects that formal education can have on a social system are to a) undermine and destroy it, b) strengthen and perpetuate it, c) refine and improve a social order, d) build a new social order, and e) develop persons able to formulate the best type of social order in a given situation. (Author/JA)

Critical social theory is a multidisciplinary knowledge base with the implicit goal of advancing the emancipatory function of knowledge. It approaches this goal by promoting the role of criticism in the search for quality education. Through critical social theory in education, quality is proportional to the depth of analysis that students have at…

The model of learning best suited to the future may be one which sees learning as the process of managing the different kinds of participation an individual might have in complex social systems. Learning capability and engagement is thus dependent on the relationship between an individual identity and social systems. We report on the incorporation…

The last few decades have seen an unprecedented transformation in business involvement in education, particularly in Western industrialized societies where privatization, commercialization and neo-liberal discourses continue to dominate educational thinking and practice. This paper foregrounds the growing perception of math and science as…

Education serves many valuable social functions. Among these functions are the development of skills among students that can be used later in the labor market, the passing of societal history and culture from one generation to the next, and the inculcation of important societal norms and values so students have the opportunity of becoming…

Objectives: The study described in this paper sought to identify the social, cultural, and political factors that effect African unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors' (UASM) vulnerability to sexual maltreatment in England. It aimed to illuminate how child protection measures could be strengthened for this highly marginalized group. Methods: A mixed…

The injustices of "allowing certain people to succeed, based not upon merit but upon the cultural experiences, the social ties and the economic resources they have access to, often remains unacknowledged in the broader society" (Wacquant, 1998, p. 216). Cognizant of this, the authors argue that education requires researchers' renewed examination…

As part of a critical analysis of Paulo Freire's work, this paper argues that, Freire's critical, liberatory pedagogy as conceived in "Education as the Practice of Freedom" (P. Freire, 1982a), coherently systematized in "Extension or Communication" (P. Freire, 1982b) and carried out through "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (P. Freire, 1974) into his…

This issue is devoted to the publication of a doctoral thesis by Dr. David McKenzie, one of New Zealand's leading educational historians. The research in this essay was completed over 30 years ago. Inevitably, the standpoint from which it was written has altered with the passage of time. No one then, for example, could have predicted the strength…

This research study seeks to understand the current state of Holocaust education in Romanian classrooms and the variety of forces that influence its treatment. By identifying obstacles, challenges, and successes, this study provides a generative knowledge base for curriculum proposals, symposia, and other initiatives that seek to disrupt reticence…

The changing demographic landscape of the United States calls for a reassessment of the societal impacts and consequences of so called "natural" and technological disasters. An increasing trend towards greater demographic and socio-economic diversity (in part due to high rates of international immigration), combined with mounting…