In this paper we examine state and indigenous education in Bolivia. Focusing on debates about the hidden curriculum, we conceptualize the school as a political space where tensions between the overlapping jurisdictional powers of the hispanicizing state and indigenous authorities are played out. Our analysis of these tensions highlights the…

This article begins by identifying a close relationship between the image of children generated by several sociologists working within the new sociology of childhood perspective and the claims and ambitions of the proponents of children's autonomy rights. The image of the child as a competent, self-controlled human agent are then subjected to…

In teaching introductory quantitative methods in sociology, I have used a controversial survey of mortality in Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion to highlight to students the power of simple questionnaires, the role of ambiguity in statistics and the place of politics in the framing of statistical results. This brief report summarizes Roberts…

Families of squatters who had settled in a quiet neighborhood of Paris wished to send their children to the local school. Our ethnohistorical inquiry explores how the mobilization in favor of schooling the children was embedded in other controversies and mobilizations that arose from the squatters' presence in the occupied building. Many…

In this article a humble attempt is made to bridge the gap between the history of education and the philosophy of education with reference to what has been called Disability Studies since the 1980s. After outlining some of the internal tensions within New Disability History concerning "critique", "power" and "history" the suggestion is made to…

The paper assumes that education is part of the process of discursive construction of society. The theoretical framework on which this argument is based includes Ernesto Laclau's theory of the "ontological impossibility and political necessity of society", and the role discourse and empty signifiers play in the establishment of political…

We present a case study of working with a group of students as researchers and policy makers in their school. We argue that there is much to learn about the location of gender and class within processes of inclusion and exclusion, specifically how student voice can reveal their experiences in ways that adults may not be able to or wish to. We…

The author, director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, tackles the following question: Should the United States have national standards with teeth, that is, a single set of standards tied to assessments and agreed to by the states? Proponents advance five main arguments for implementing such a standard. In his rebuttal, the…

Authentic political conversation entails identifying the work, bringing together stakeholders, providing information, framing questions, giving individuals a voice, being transparent, and acting on the values of the group's collective good. Through this process, we identify common core values and respond to the basic human need to be connected--to…

This paper discusses the collision between government guidelines on "kanji" use in public documents and Japanese naming practice that places significance on written forms. The tension between the state's need to control the legibility of its texts through allowable "kanji" character lists collides with people's rights and desires to name their own…

Educators are experiencing a knowledge crisis and, as a result, they are committing epistemological suicide. The crisis is born out of two different conceptions of teacher knowledge, each containing a limitation that generates fissures within the respective knowledge paradigm. Educators commit epistemic suicide when surveillance technologies,…

Being a skillful school leader presumes the competence to judge the ethical consequences of actions. This implies a need for all school agents to discover and analyze what values are at stake and, in turn, reconcile didactic rationality with ethical rationality. This article aims to explore ethical dilemmas in daily school practice, experienced…

Remodelling the school workforce is being rolled out across England with official purposes articulated around work-life balance, improving standards, and the need to efficiently and effectively deploy staffing. This is not new and can be related to ongoing policy thrusts designed to restructure the state as manifest in the haphazard construction…

A spate of recent dismissals and disciplinary actions taken by South African universities against outspoken faculty members signals a broad erosion of academic freedom in higher education, academics and civil-society groups say. Much of the negative attention lately has focused on the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where academics say they face…

In Spain, the existence of a central government and the governments of 17 autonomous communities, each with its own authority and control over educational matters, results in variation and inequality in educational policies toward Gypsies. The conservative or progressive tendencies of political parties in office and their influence on education as…