The United Nations has placed a high priority on human rights education. Building on the foundation laid by the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), the UN General Assembly launched the World Programme for Human Rights Education in December 2004 "as a global initiative, structured in consecutive phases, to advance the…

The practice of "standardized" testing has been embedded in United States federal education policy since at least the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The roots of standardized testing in American education, grounded in Kantian "Modern Thought," can be traced to the U.S. Military Academy at…

This article examines the historic uses of the phenomenon recently defined as "Deep Politics" to shed light on the underlying realities of the contemporary War on Terror. Deep Politics describes the multiple uses of misinformation to marshal public sentiment in directions desired by dominant political and economic forces. Facing the reality of…

Background: Turkey is a fast-developing country facing a lot of different problems. One of the problems is inadequate education. A large project was started to improve Turkish elementary education. The project includes many different purposes from physical refurbishment of school buildings, to increasing technology use in education. The author of…

The challenges of contemporary multicultural societies have resulted in changing aims for religious education and the necessity to adjust teacher education accordingly. The processes of negotiation related to the coexistence of different religious and cultural groups are intertwined in the Finnish curriculum for religious education. This case…

In this column, the author presents an excerpt from the President's Address to the 35th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Education Association (CEA), September 1958, Victoria. In his address, the CEA president talks about how the world pressures are building up in the form of demands for more and better education; and these demands are rising from…

This paper attempted to reveal some inadequacies inherent in the Nigerian system of education and, how the pragmatic approach to education can help solve the problems of disfunctionality of the system. It does this by explaining the aims and features of the pragmatic philosophy of education. Furthermore, the paper gave answers to two basic…

This study reflects an autoethnographic conversation between two graduate students whose purpose is to explore the tensions teachers face in the classroom as they are confronted with the demands of a standards-based curriculum while striving to assert themselves as educators for democratic citizenship. These tensions manifest in the most…

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), founded on the seminal work of Vygotsky and evolving in the subsequent work of Leont'ev and Engestrom, continues to emerge as a robust and increasingly widely used conceptual framework for the research and analysis of the complex social mediation of human learning and development. Yet there remains…

Given that higher education systems everywhere have opened to the masses, this paper analyses to what extent this phenomenon has really been accompanied by an effective democratisation of access and success in Portugal and Brazil. It looks at the expansion of higher education and discusses how the political system and higher education institutions…

Problem Statement: Turkey's passive and task-oriented approach to citizenship education, which has endured since the Ottoman Empire period, has begun to change into more active and democratic citizenship education since Turkey joined the European Union. Identifying the practical problems as well as describing the challenges when practicing the…

Education is often seen as the key agency in international development and poverty reduction. Frequently the emphasis is on the economic and social role of education in development. This book, on the other hand, is unusual in explicitly examining the political role of education in development. In particular, it sets out the theories, evidence and…

The main point of this article is that the task of critical educators in the age of massive globalised immigration is to move beyond national essentialism and cultural purism. They have to transgress the restraints of methodological nationalism, omnipresent in the diverse aspects of education including the action of many educators. This implies…

Discussions on discipline in education often accentuate corporal punishment or measures to infuse moral fibre. In addition, many authors argue that inculcating a particular value system can promote discipline in schools. This could however be profoundly problematic in the light of the Constitution. We argue that positive discipline in…

Going to college is a familiar first step towards fulfilling the American dream for graduating high school students and their families. Yet for many in this country, the reality of their everyday lives is increasingly riddled with obstacles and tough choices about their future educational and career pathways. In light of these challenges, many…