Discusses the status and prospects of the government's stated policy promoting institutional autonomy in Russian higher education. Institutional operations are currently fraught with serious problems. At least three areas are in jeopardy: institutional financial sustainability, decentralized government control, and internal balance of power. (22…

Reviews four recent books on academic women. Collectively, they suggest that new scholarship on academic women is more international, reflects a postmodern attention to difference and power, rejects "women's ways" feminism as a sufficient response, and seeks to reclaim issues of power, authority, and politics through attention to policy.…

Examines the possibility that parent-child relationships contain horizontal qualities paralleling comparable qualities in child-peer relationships. Argues that these qualities allow children to experience and practice horizontal skills later used with peers. Focuses on reciprocity and shared power, especially in parent-child play and control…

Explores an educator's attempt and failure to establish an indigenous school on a reservation in Brazil using art education and the language of the arts and illustrates historical, social, and cultural issues through narratives from individuals who participated. Indicates that the curriculum and instruction encouraged positive cultural identity in…

Principals play a key role in developing teacher leadership. To identify, develop, and support teacher leaders in their schools, principals should define teacher leadership, be comfortable with teacher leaders, encourage teachers to become leaders, help teachers develop leadership skills, and provide positive and limited constructive feedback.…

Argues that connecting classroom practice to writing center tutorials prepares students to generate dialogic and democratic tutorials. Describes a liberatory writing center (rather than a skill-and-drill site of remediation). Describes classroom practices that help students develop critical approaches to the power arrangements they encounter both…

Situates three young adolescents in their home, neighborhood, school, and peer cultures and analyzes their uses and interpretations of television contextually. Qualitative differences are found in their everyday learning within television culture as compared with their learning in local culture, although learning about social power across cultures…

Four levels of authority within the educational decision-making structure in seven European countries and states for primary and lower secondary education are analyzed, and results are presented from a study of decision making. This study indicates a slightly higher degree of school autonomy in England/Wales, the Netherlands, and Sweden. (SLD)

Examines the discourses of educational decentralization in present educational policy development (1994-1997) in South Africa with reference to the South African Schools Act (SASA). Explores the different understandings of educational decentralization; the notions of educational decentralization embedded in the SASA; and a manifestation of…

Investigates the effects of tutor gender in interaction patterns in postgraduate university seminars and focuses on the discourse patterns of two of these classes. The female tutor used more minimal responses and called on students more often by name and gaze than the male tutor; she occupied less floor-space than the male tutor, and her speaking…

Describes how three principles of leadership presented by Heifetz (1994) in "Leadership Without Easy Answers" can be translated into the leadership parenting of young children. Focuses on distinguishing between child-rearing issues that require parents to act as trainers versus those demanding a problem-solving role, on responding to…

Reflects on the nature of power and the value of collaboration in Writing Program Administration work. Argues that the WPA position is a contradictory one which contains within it the paradox of powerless power (having responsibility and little authority, having insider knowledge and being institutionally ignorant, and needing to cooperate and…

Presents a broad description of one particular version of critical literacy that has broad influences on how many Australian teachers teach reading and writing. Describes the move from theory to classroom practice; the "four resources model" of early reading instruction (social practices requisite for critical literacy); and a capsule…

Universities are "organized anarchies," with individual colleges and even departments pursuing independent objectives. The institutions themselves contribute to this organizational anarchy and to their own disintegration in how they organize themselves with regard to budget, in the incentives they give to colleges to raise their own funds, and in…

This chapter uses the classroom experiences of two black women professors as a lens to examine how transformational theory affects learning and teaching. It also explores the ways in which dimensions of power have an impact on student-teacher interactions.