The youth-led revolutions that rocked the Arab world earlier this year have refocused attention on the region's 100 million-strong youth demographic and its critical role in the transformation of existing political, economic, and social structures in the Middle East and North Africa. Youth under the age of 25 represent an estimated and…

Using a three-part theoretical framework, the cultural relevance cycle--which consists of (a) knowing community dynamics, (b) knowing how community dynamics influence educational processes, and (c) implementing strategies that reflect cultural knowledge of the community--we examined teachers' and students' perspectives on culturally relevant…

A key factor in learning to teach during student teaching is the cooperating teacher, who supports and mentors prospective teachers. In the apprenticeship that is student teaching, the cooperating teacher serves as a gatekeeper to the experiential learning of pre-service teachers. Although several studies indicate the significant influence…

Practice and inquiry into school-community connections have been guided by problematic assumptions about the role of neighborhood schools, community based institutions, and local economic development policies in the evolution of urban communities. Formal relationships between schools and urban neighborhoods grounded in these assumptions have been…

Qualitative research makes it possible to reveal the often invisible but no less real complexities of social structures and opens venues for knowing human and social life more fully. Drawing on data from two qualitative research studies that used critical incidents as a device for investigating the nuances of human interaction within two…

For most of American history, businesses were run to provide livelihoods and "reasonable" profit. In the last few decades, though, business and society in general have moved toward emphasizing profit maximization and individual self-interest. The shift from "reasonable profit" to profit maximization has significant implications…

This study examined the literacy practices of children ages 5-11 as they engaged in out-of-school use of virtual worlds. The purpose of the study was to explore the nature, purpose, and role of literacy in children's use of a virtual world. In this article, I reflect on how children's use of literacy practices in the virtual world constructed and…

Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community's economic, social, and civic health. Business owners and residents--in particular, those without school-aged children--may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools. Indeed, everyone--from car dealers and realtors to bank…

The major priorities that should guide leadership education in preparing leaders for their work of leading schools in a democratic society are: (1) Teaching leaders to understand the inequities of society; (2) Teaching leaders to serve as agents for social transformation; and (3) Teaching leaders to help each and every student learn and succeed.…

Children want to succeed academically and attend college but their actual attainment often lags behind; some groups (e.g., boys, low-income children) are particularly likely to experience this gap. Social structural factors matter, influencing this gap in part by affecting children's perceptions of what is possible for them and people like them in…

This research is a qualitative study of elementary students who have been retained in grade. A critical analysis of marginalization and stratification in education is illustrated through narratives and interviews. A review of the historical, social, and political context of educational bureaucracy and the reliance on grade retention to increase…

Self-determination theory identifies three dimensions of parenting--autonomy support versus control, involvement, and structure--as facilitating children's autonomous motivation in school. Research involving children of a range of ages--one-year-olds through adolescents--and from a variety of research labs supports this theory. This work is…

This paper explores the ways in which the concept of identity has been conceptualised and studied within science education. The Personality and Social Structure Perspective is used to examine the attention paid by researchers to three levels of identity analysis: "personality", "interaction" and "social structure". Tracing the development of…

The modernisation of the Western world during the last two centuries has been a mix of industrialisation/computerisation and urbanisation. Consequently, reports on the future of adult learning and adult education have been a mix on the one hand of the learning requirements that follow from industrialisation/computerisation and on the other hand,…

Against the background of current reforms in higher education, we analyze the traditional education of Japanese doctoral students in philosophy of education from Western and Japanese perspectives by focusing on learning as self-education, on being and learning with others, on the socialization into the profession, and on the study of the foreign…