This article uses the example of the recent (ill-fated) experiment in the creation of a global education product--the UKeU--to explore how the concept of community in learning changes in this context. It uses a framework borrowed from the literature on changes in the welfare state to explain how the new economies of on line education distort the…

This article uses the political struggles that have enveloped the research assessment exercises (RAEs) to interpret the UK's current funding council model of governance. Ironically, the apparently widespread improvement in the research performance of British universities, as demonstrated by RAE 2001, has made it more difficult to distribute…

This column is about a city with two tales--one of spin and the other of sputter. No matter who occupies the White House for the next four years, the past four have borne witness to some of the most ludicrous uses of taxpayer money ever, as the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has tried to spin its message on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) across…

While history for most conjures up images of places and experiences far removed, for Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, the field provides a "wonderful medium" to illuminate contemporary issues as well. Much of Ogbar's current research centers on events occurring in the latter half of the 20th century, such as the civil rights and Black power…

This essay examines the shift toward a globally interdependent world, starting with the ontological premise that thinking, identity and action are subsumed by culture. The author explores the view that globalism, with its break from modernist constraints, may enable liberation. The post-Soviet borderless economy implies a shift of rule and a new…

The changing face of midwifery practice and education in Australia is challenging the previously accepted notions of the birth experience, the options of care that are available for women and their families, and the role of the midwife in that experience. The role of the midwifery educator is also challenged by the move away from a predominantly…

In the last two decades, there have been noticeable changes in the ranks of academic labourers, specifically the increasing reliance on part-time instructors. The use of part-time instructors can be attributed to, among other things, cutbacks in state funding to universities and colleges due to, or as a response to, globalization. This study…

This article reports on the aggressive and sometimes creative steps the Education Department has taken, since President Bush came to town in 2001, to promote its agenda to the public, including its support for school choice options such as charter schools and for Mr. Bush's signature program, the No Child Left Behind Act. The department has spent…

Struggling to jump-start education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the district school board has decided to reopen its first buildings not as regular public schools, but as charter schools. Indeed, the board's vote followed weeks of high-level talks among officials in the offices of the governor, the state schools superintendent, the state…

This article examines debates over teaching Australian history in schools and notes a pervasive anxiety about what "our children" should know. The article sketches some of these debates, and while noting the politics of history teaching both in Australia and abroad, argues that its heavily politicized discourse has been further…

The new directions in American political history have been ably described by the editors of "The Democratic Experiment." These are now freshly out of the gate, but it is clear that they will continue to unfold in the years ahead. The author read the book with distinct pleasure--so much so that she wondered--more than once--whether it was…

The North American Alliance for Popular and Adult Education (NAAPE) was a 21-year attempt to create a "civil society" organisation--an alliance--to connect North American adult and popular educators with each other, and also to be part of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), the main transnational non-governmental…

To advance the role of school psychologists in mental health prevention and wellness activities, in this article we describe (a) a social ecological theory for guiding school-based prevention research, (b) the role of schools in the development and prevention of depression, (c) a continuum of school-based support for meeting the needs of children…

This study employs a resource mobilization model to explain racial differences in congregation-based political activism. The fewer resources (i.e., members, income, clergy leadership, civic ties) that black congregations possess relative to white congregations largely accounts for racial differences in congregation-based lobbying and protest…

We evaluate the argument that Islamist terrorist attacks represent a distinctive "4th wave" of transnational terrorism that has supplanted Leftist terrorism. Drawing on ITERATE data for 1968-2003, the annual count of Leftist attacks has declined since the end of the Cold War while Islamist attacks have persisted and spiked upward in 2002-03.…