National Socialism, the German type of fascism, is analysed in this article with respect to the question of its ideological foundations, the ideology of the "Volk" community, and its consequences for a relevant type of social practice, "Volk" welfare. Under National Socialism the form of state social work intervention was…

This paper describes systems dynamics, reviews the literature of uses of systems concepts in distance education (DE), presents a preliminary model, and ends in a call to researchers to contribute to the building of a standard model of DE. (Contains 4 figures.)

In this article, the author states that because people are willing to kill us just for being Americans, we ought at least to know what being American is. Yet many of our students have been taught painfully little about our nation's history, purposes, or achievements. In America's original founding narrative, faith and reason work together. Both…

Free response question (FRQ) #5 in the 2002 Advanced Placement (AP) European history exam read as follows: "In what ways and to what extent did absolutism affect the power and status of the European nobility in the period 1650 to 1750. Use examples from at least 2 countries." This question, which is aimed at encouraging a comparative…

If farmers are to meet the new challenges facing agriculture (environment, rural development, etc.), appropriate knowledge has to be produced. But observations in six EU countries (France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) show that unexpected problems arise when technical support for agriculture is linked to market regulation,…

The concept of education as a social activity for training people is clear. In the past few years, connections between education and the economy have become increasingly close along with the development of the market economy. This is indeed a good thing, but it has also given rise to some misunderstanding. Some say education possesses the…

This article is an expansion of an earlier investigation that the authors undertook in the wake of the democratization process in South Africa while universities were struggling to redefine their aims, roles, and identities toward the end of the twentieth century. The authors' research commenced in 1994 as a genealogy, tracing individuals on an…

Children's spirituality has become a significant for-profit enterprise in North American consumer culture. This article explores the marketing of children's spirituality as an aspect of the larger construction of children as consumers in the context of late globalized capitalism. Playing off of parental anxieties over the need to avail their…

Although the history of Christianity in Russia dates back to the tenth century, the history of private Christian higher education in Russia is no more than a decade. This paper first explains the historical reasons for this fact and then describes the contemporary development of faith-based private education in Russia over the past decade. When…

At the location of alter-native researcher in US higher education, the author interweaves two Korean women's transnational narratives that intersect with her autobiographical route. Through this re-narrativization, the paper discusses the material and ideological specificities that place each individual differently in engagements with various…

Affirmative action in higher education remains a controversial topic in the US today, as it is tied in directly with citizens' varying conceptions of the larger society, and the importance of racial and other differences (in particular, socioeconomic class) in individual experiences and outcomes. This essay examines different arguments for and…

This third edition, now published by Pine Forge Press, features original readings and article excerpts by leaders in the area of Sociology of Education. With a wide array of theoretical perspectives, a broad range of respected sources, and inclusion of both classic and contemporary studies, this comprehensive, integrated text addresses key issues…

The history of organized international exchange and training programs for educators in Europe and North America is not very long. In the pre-World War II era, those programs were scarce and generally limited in their influence on both host and guest educational communities. In the study of the impact of short-term sojourns on teachers, Wilson…

This collection of essays examines the changes that have occurred in Russia since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. A historical perspective is used to show that many of the changes were underway during perestroika and that post-Soviet developments are an extension of those changes. The book is divided into four sections. Section 1, "The…

The model for school-linked services is based on the ideal of providing a coherent and seamless web among school professionals and other service agencies. However, schools are often organized around specialized functions that are not wholly aligned and coordinated in function and purpose. This paper examines the nature of schools as "aggregative"…