Presents framework for defining paradigms within the field of marital and family therapy. Describes paradigm crisis in marital and family therapy as resulting primarily from practical-theoretical, professional, and political concerns rather than scientific anomaly. Defines the psychomedical and the social systems paradigms according to basic…

Describes the difference between systemic and systematic as they relate to school reform and instructional design. Highlights include a history of systems theory; systems engineering; instructional systems design; systemic versus reductionist thinking; social systems; and systemic change in education, including power relationships. (LRW)

Clarifies concepts of linearity and circularity as applied to marital and family therapy. Defines distinct and theoretically legitimate meanings of linearity (proportionality, unilaterality, temporality). Redefines circularity into two distinct meanings (recursivity and holicity). Concludes with call for continued deconstruction of social systems…

Unrealistic as they may have been, television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet served important social purposes during an age of tumult and anxiety. The domestic sit-coms of the 1950s played an educative function by reinforcing and disseminating traditional values at a time when forces of change were becoming quite disruptive.…

This article arises from case studies in 2006 of 20 businesses in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), surveys of their up to 30-year-old employees (r = 419), follow-up interviews with eight of these employees, and matched samples in Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan). The main difference between education in Samarkand (and Uzbekistan in general) and…

Would large-scale, free-market reforms improve educational outcomes for American children? That question cannot be answered by looking at domestic evidence alone. Though innumerable "school choice" programs have been implemented around the United States, none has created a truly free and competitive education marketplace. Existing…

As a participant-observer, the author relates observations, interviews, and surveys from her experience in a Cuban Escuela al Campo ("School to the Countryside," or EAC) camp located on a collective farm outside of the city of Havana. The Pioneers, the youth section of the official Cuban Communist Party, organize the EAC program…

This book offers a fresh perspective from which to read, discuss, and debate recent critical interpretations of schooling and our world at present. The authors build upon past accomplishments of critical pedagogy and critique those elements that contradict the radically democratic orientation of the field. Ultimately, they argue that critical…

How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing…

This chapter presents an overview of studies investigating the role of the family while children cope with problems in their transitions to the labor market. Attention is paid to different support systems in a variety of European countries, depending on different state welfare models.

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.…

The [Chinese Communist] Party's Fourteenth Congress unequivocally confirmed the building of a socialist market system. The Third Plenary Session of the Party's Twelfth Congress in 1984 propounding the market led to economic reforms and the advancing of the theory of a socialist market economy. It constitutes a deepened understanding of the…

This paper addresses Appadurai's challenge to expand the research imagination. It follows Boaventura de Sousa Santos in suggesting a need to separate analytically the trajectories of capitalism and modernity. For Santos, this involves the recognition that we cannot solve the problems of postmodernity with the tools of modernity. The paper…

Since 1978 China's ruling Communist Party has moved China's economy increasingly toward capitalism and its foreign policy toward strategic partnership with its old enemies in the West. These changes have required Party leaders to reconcile the reforms rhetorically with continued homage to their predecessors, to Chinese traditions, and to…

This paper explores the similarities and differences between complexity science's and cultural-historical activity theory's understandings of human learning. Notable similarities include their emphasis on the importance of social systems or collectives in understanding human knowledge and practices, as well as their characterization of systems'…