A critical historical review of the tensions in American governance places the method choice debate in a broader perspective. This chapter reviews the factors that influence the evaluation questions posed to evaluators and, in turn, the methods choices that stem from it. Political and professional pressures on the evaluators also influence methods…

This report takes an in-depth look at how classroom practices in Rhode Island, Illinois, and Washington State have been influenced by state accountability policies and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It examines how teachers and administrators have responded to increased accountability and pressure to meet state standards. Drawing from case…

This article illustrates how Mapuche Indigenous knowledge (Kimun) and language (Mapudungun) incorporated into an Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) program of a school within a Mapuche context in Chile creates decolonizing counter-hegemonic narratives as forms of culturally relevant pedagogy. Based on a six-month school ethnography, this…

Although the United States has had a language requirement for citizenship (through the naturalization process) since the first decade of the 20th century, very little research and discussion has taken place in academic circles about this requirement, which has been enforced for the past two decades through a test and testing practice to which…

In this study, we explore the global effect of the Internet on democracy over the period of 1992 to 2002 by observing the relationships between measures related to democracy and Internet prevalence. Our findings suggest that while Internet usage was not a very powerful predictor of democracy when examining full panel data from 1992 to 2002, it was…

The polarized political mood engendered by the most sharply partisan Presidential election campaigns in recent memory has had an especially deleterious effect on the image of public education. This increased scrutiny has largely fallen on the shoulders of rank and file teachers who now face the most precarious moment in terms of job security since…

Data from 2008 Monitoring the Future were used to test how well religious, family, and cultural social capital influenced 8th and 10th grade student aspirations, future plans, and prior academic experience. This study focused only on a sample of 4,273 African American students. Results indicated a strong association between family social capital…

The main argument of this overview article is that the Bantu languages of South Africa should have a far more significant role in education. We contend that the strong preference for English as medium of instruction among black learners is largely responsible for their inadequate educational performance, particularly since most of these learners…

When governments and pressure groups attend only to research that suits their political purposes, it makes a mockery of the idea of evidence-informed policy and practice. In this article, the author cites examples of research that picked up weak and misleading evidence for political purposes. The author argues that researchers are tied in to the…

In the vast and diverse literature on determinants of life-satisfaction and happiness, there is a relative dearth of empirical research on the role of specifically political factors. We identify one such possible factor, the industrial welfare state, and assess its impact on how individuals perceive their well-being. The voluminous literature on…

This paper explores the relevance of extra local market linkages and local-level social capital to sustainable livelihood outcomes in two agrarian communities on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Contextualized by the specificity of Mexico's transition from state-directed rural development to neoliberally-guided rural development in the 1990s, findings…

This monograph examines the history and politics of educational reform in Ghana. Using data from interviews conducted with senior policy-makers, implementers and researchers, as well as documentary sources, to explore the drivers and inhibitors of change at the political, bureaucratic and grass-roots levels. The monograph explores the nature of…

This monograph appears midway through the development of a book on the future of teaching, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2010. The book is a team effort, undertaken by 12 accomplished educators from across the United States, who have agreed to systematically study and speculate about public education and the teaching profession in the…

The purpose of this study is to review how special education administration and leadership has been conceptualized over time and to examine the extent to which current calls for preparing educational leaders to address diversity, teamwork, and technology are manifested in the literature. To that end, the authors provide an analysis of 474 article…

Following World War II, fear rooted in Communist paranoia gripped America. This distress seeped into all aspects of American culture, including education. The American people became increasingly worried that Communist influences would infiltrate the schools and pervert the minds of children. At the forefront of this quagmire was Dr. Earl James…