Discusses American Indian education in four critical areas: tribal control, focus and priority, language and culture, and research. These areas are complex and political due to treaty rights; sovereignty; and relationships between Indian tribes and federal, state, and local governments. Unity among Indians and making Indian education a priority at…

Reviews an ethnographic analysis of Teach for America, a 1990 educational reform program that illustrates how underlying assumptions about "marginal" urban and rural students and their "deficient" environments solidify existing power structures, acculturate students to middle-class norms, generate resistance to teachers, and…

Describes alternative educational innovations at all educational levels, developed by the Maori of New Zealand in response to the dual crises of educational underachievement and the loss of language, knowledge, and culture. Major intervention elements are validating cultural identity, incorporating culturally preferred pedagogy, mediating…

Reviews literature on English as a Second Language teaching in China, examining stereotypes of Chinese learners to highlight mismatches between Chinese students' learning dispositions and expatriates' teaching dispositions. A sociological analysis describes the construction of students as obedient at one Shanghai secondary school in the 1990s.…

To improve current civil society and achieve the possibilities globalization offers, we must incorporate an education-for-empowerment approach to lifelong learning. This chapter explores the potential, promise, and implications for local action and dialogue.

The schooling of Gypsy children has become a major challenge for the Spanish educational system. After centuries of, first, exclusion and then segregation in separate schools, an egalitarian policy and a sudden enforcement of compulsory schooling have resulted in difficulties and conflicts in numerous Spanish schools. The specificity of the Gypsy…

Hong Kong's economic fortunes have always depended on trade with China. By the mid-1980s, the colonial higher education system was catering to only 6% of the 18-20 age cohort and there was a backlog of adult learners who had been denied access. The Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong was launched in 1989 to overwhelming public response. It…

It is generally supposed that a curriculum should engage students with worthwhile knowledge, which requires an understanding of what it means for something to be worthwhile: a substantive conception of the good. Yet a number of influential curriculum theories deny or undermine one or another aspect of the key assumption upon which a meaningful…

If history teachers' aim is to teach students how to think, why not ask: What forms of thought do historians use, and what specific techniques will inculcate these forms? In this article, the author proposes a fundamental shift, from courses with a focus on the mastery of data to courses with a priority on learning the historian's craft. The…

This book shows how school leaders at all levels "from the most senior manager to the classroom teacher" can help to build learning communities through collaborating and negotiating with their colleagues, students and students' parents and carers, as well as with external agencies and local communities, to sustain and develop the…

This paper offers highlights from the final report of Stanford's School Leadership Study, which should be available in January 2007. It discusses various policy and resource factors that enhance or impede the implementation of exemplary programs that develop and support principals. Among the research questions that guided this study were a set…

The transition from faculty to administration is a cultural as well as organizational shift.

States have created "alternate" routes to teacher certification. Comparison of alternate and college-based programs reveals clear trends in recruitment but a mixed picture regarding development of expertise. Alternate certification represents a radical departure from the current norm of teacher preparation. Several factors have led to…

This book uses an examination of admissions policies, especially affirmative action, at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), to explore higher education and its role in public debates about access, equality, and social change. Chapter 1, "The Admissions Furor: Battle Cries or More Confusion?" casts the personal side of…

This book argues that efforts to improve the effectiveness of public schools are ironic and harmful to the family. It asserts that "pushing schools toward becoming one-stop service centers" whose mission is to care for the "whole child" is at the same time decreasing parents' responsibility to care for their children, turning schools into…