The history of schooling for students with disabilities in the United States is marked by exclusion and, until the passage of the "Education for All Children Act" in the 1970s, a substantial number of students with disabilities were denied free public education and many more were poorly served by public schools. The requirement that all…

There has been a growing interest in and research on the construction of teachers' professional identity and parameters of practice among researchers worldwide. This piece examines the nature of teachers' perceptions about their professionalism and practice. It also explores teacher isolation stemming from assumptions related to…

When communities fall into decline, disabled people can find themselves alone and invisible in a society of indifferent individuals. Arendt offers an account of such a time in her discussion of the rise of a society of mass labouring and consuming. Bauman's insights into the fragmentation of life, in which established norms, traditional ties and…

In the context of public and policy concerns about human induced climate change, it is striking that dominant models and histories of English teaching marginalise the environmental significance of English as a school subject (Matthewman, 2010). This is in spite of a growing body of ecocritical work within English and cultural studies which has…

The field of rural education has not been significantly developed in Canada and the marginal status of the rural itself has contributed to this peripheral status. The emergence of geography and spatial thinking generally in social theory and in educational thought represents an opportunity to re-evaluate the importance of space and place in…

This paper engages with Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's response to the recent special issue of "Discourse" (Vol. 34, No. 2) that examined evolutions of markets and equity in education. We welcome Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's supplementation of the special issue with the genealogical analysis they provide of private school funding in Australia…

This article reports on a study that was conducted in 10 urban schools, situated in the city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The research explored the perceptions of school stakeholders with regard to the effects of power relations between teacher unions and school managers. It is assumed, within the context of this…

Teaching about the history and culture of aboriginal peoples in schools of white settler societies can serve as a counter to the dominant story that serves as the national narrative. Even though the actual teaching may well be among the least political and least disruptive type of curricular knowledge on offer, the inclusion of counter stories can…

Background: In anthropology and related disciplines, the term "assessment" refers to the everyday activities of ordinary people as they figure out what to do next given what others have just done. The assessments, in turn, constitute what is happening, whether in encounters between policeman and person in the street, or classroom lesson,…

This case was written for school leaders, specifically building-level principals and central office administrators attempting to implement school turnaround reform efforts. Often, leaders who embark on this type of organizational change work in intense environments that produce high levels of pressure to demonstrate improvement in student…

Professionalization is an important but overlooked dimension in education politics, particularly the politics of accountability. To isolate the importance of professionalization, this article compares accountability movements in K-12 education with similar movements in higher education. I draw on three pairs of reports that have sought to impose…

This article describes and discusses the development of lifelong learning policy in two EU member states, Denmark and Portugal. The purpose is to show how different societal and historical contexts shape the development and implementation of lifelong learning policies, even though these policies have significant common elements. As a basis for the…

This article deconstructs the language of the 2010 UK Coalition Government's White Paper, "The Importance of Teaching". It uses analytical frameworks related to rhetoric established by Aristotle and Cicero. It explores the mechanisms of language using both critical discourse analysis and content analysis, offering quantitative data on…

States serve a special role in the nation's public education system. Through elected legislatures, states have endowed their various state departments of education with powers over public education, which include granting authority to local entities--typically school districts--to run schools. In their oversight capacity, states--traditionally…

Broad inferences have been made that the election of a Black American President indicates that America now functions in a post-racist society. This optimism has fueled a major discussion for changes in American policies which directly affect minorities; in particular, those related to affirmative action in higher education are under attack. Due to…