This paper presents interviews with Dr. Jon Mueller and Dr. Paula Harris. Dr. Jon Mueller is a professor of Psychology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Dr. Paula Harris is a professor in the Department of Language, Literature, and Arts at Jackson Community College in Jackson, Michigan. In these interviews, they present a…

In post-Mao China, wide-ranging reform programmes have affected almost every sphere of life. History education has been no exception, and in addition to attempts to revise teaching, learning and assessment methods, there have been preliminary forays into textbook pluralism and gradual devolution of curriculum development. History education…

In this article, the author shares his experience being the "chair" of the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He also shares how this department proved to be an "ordinary" department at an "ordinary" liberal arts college. However, to conclude…

Higher education in Flanders has seen some major changes in the 1990s. One of the key elements of the new higher education regulations was the quality assessment system. This exemplified best the government's policy of granting all institutions of higher education autonomy, making them responsible for their policies, while still keeping the…

Advocates of racial preferences from the Harvard Civil Rights Project have criticized an initiative designed to provide race-neutral admissions to universities in Florida. George La Noue rejects their criticism, which, he says, confuses the definitions of affirmative action, establishes nonexistent criteria, and ignores crucial elements that…

Library and information studies education in Australia is characterised by unresolved tensions, some of which have persisted for several decades. Among its characteristics and conflicts are a multi-tiered system of qualification, a high number of schools per capita with a wide range of discipline affiliations, a wide acceptance of distance…

George Orwell, in the essay "Politics and the English Language," criticized pretentious doublespeak and technobabble that numb the consciousness and hide political power plays. Judith Butler defends the "nuanced" prose of her fellow postmodernists as necessary to convey the complexity of their thoughts. Stephen Roney contrasts the two and…

When the author left California for the University of Minnesota twenty-five years ago, he vowed never again to become involved in departmental or university politics. He'd had enough of that at California State, Los Angeles, and he was determined to devote his full attention, apart from teaching, to several scholarly projects that had simmered so…

In New York, state-level policymakers have invested considerable political and economic capital in new tests as both a measure of accountability and as a vehicle for increased educational standards. In this study, we look at how 9th and 10th grade global history teachers are making sense of the first administration of a new 10th grade global…

This article addresses risk and its minimization as a powerful rationality for driving leadership practices in contemporary schools. It explores risk-consciousness as "a moral climate of politics" (Giddens 2002) and as a management imperative that impacts on any contemporary organization, including schools. The impact of…

What fuels the push toward privatization of public higher education institutions? This article attempts to unravel the nine beliefs that underlie conversations taking place in state legislatures and on higher education campuses and then asks, Will privatization work? How will it work for the state's citizens, the states, and institutions? The…

This article explores four kinds of critical thinking. The first is found in Socratic dialogues, which employ critical thinking mainly to reveal logical fallacies in common opinions, thus cleansing superior minds of error and leaving philosophers free to contemplate universal verities. The second is critical interpretation (hermeneutics) which…

In the present paper we question how engineering education (and engineering) can support greater participation and inclusiveness in decision making and science and technology. We consider the work "relating" to engineering and society that is conducted by the scholars of science and technology studies, but which is rarely read or considered by the…

In this paper we discuss the idea of national education in Singapore. National education, broadly speaking, is a civics programme which seeks to instil a sense of place, identity and history in young Singaporeans with a view to developing national pride and commitment. We set this discussion against the backdrop of globalization and the idea of…

This paper seeks to reframe the idea of an educated public as construed by Alasdair MacIntyre in his lecture of 1985. Like MacIntyre, it locates the emergence of an educated public in the Scottish Enlightenment and its universities, but its focus is on aspects which are not brought into focus by MacIntyre's narrative. The paper argues, firstly,…