This commentary article focuses on the theme of "migration and communities." It raises a number of important concerns inherent in the report. The report mistakenly adopts the "sameness" approach, thus negating Britain's unprecedented super-diversity that is the result of increasing migration. It wrongly assumes that all migrants are the same and…

The year 2007 saw a discrete yet significant development in the sphere of "international education" in England: a doubling in number of state-funded schools offering the International Primary Curriculum. This curriculum had been developed in 2000 for the Shell Company Group of Schools. It first emerged in England in 2003; two years later…

The imposition of the audit culture on schooling has severely limited teachers' freedom and dignity, exacerbating traditions of teacher education and employment that are infantilizing. If teachers are to participate in the politics that determine curriculum and pedagogy, education programs must provide differentiated credentials that welcome…

State takeovers of local school districts represent one of the most recent kinds of education reform. Americans favor both local control over education and state takeovers of failing schools. African American leaders tend to oppose takeovers, but survey data suggest that African American citizens support greater state influence over local…

This paper explores the effects on social inequality in Germany of ongoing changes to the employment system and, thus, vocational education. Results based on an examination of the literature indicate that students from increasingly middle-class backgrounds with higher levels of general, rather than vocational, educational attainment are winning…

A framework for understanding the human side of leadership, especially wounding and leadership struggles, is described with an emphasis on stories of community college presidents. Practical advice and recommendations are offered to better equip aspiring and practicing community college presidents for leadership challenges. A key message is that…

This article considers policies and strategies employed to professionalise the early childhood workforce in England since the Labour government took office in 1997. The term "professionalisation" is associated here with moves towards creating a graduate early years workforce, which could have implications for training, pay and employment…

This response article written from "outside" the Swedish-Danish contexts of this special issue considers how we might highlight and make additional ecocentric meaning of some of the terms most frequently used in this collection. In the first instance my focus is on "meaning" but this is expanded to include other terms such as…

The expansion of compulsory schooling after the Second World War represented an important reform common to the majority of European countries. Specifically, over the period 1950-2000, the fifteen Western European countries considered in this study have extended the school-leaving age by one year or longer. Interestingly, this change in legislation…

The retention or abolition of national college entrance examination (CEE) has triggered a fierce controversy in academe. Although controversial causes and focus vary from time to time, the result remains the same--adopting uniform national examinations and making it innovative all the time. Since CEE has political, social and educational…

Research on political education in schools suggests that an emphasis on formal structure, constitutional principles, formal citizen rights, and debates on current issues is common. The Norwegian national curriculum on political education envisions a different political education emphasizing that students should be critical of political life and…

Two years after many colleges resisted attempts by the Bush administration to impose more rigorous methods of student assessment, a leading coalition of private institutions is pressing its members to adopt an increasingly popular standardized achievement test. The push to adopt the assessment comes as the test faces new questions over its…

In her three years as U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings has been a celebrity contestant on "Jeopardy!," a guest on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," and an occasional subject of Washington's best-read gossip column. Above all, though, she's been the nation's leading spokeswoman for the No Child Left Behind Act…

In recent years, the rigor and quality of educational research have drawn much attention. This increased interest has been driven by state efforts to collect student achievement data, the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the explicit call for"scientifically based research" written into the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act,…

Certain cultural customs and practices are viewed as abhorrent by many people, yet contemporary American counselors rarely criticize any specific culture. In this article, the authors explore why counselors abstain from such criticism. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that universalism, often regarded as a politically incorrect and an…