These days politicians and scientists refer to the importance of consensus for understanding society's new ideological need, but the path to consensus is difficult. Political differences account for the wide variety of approaches to the problem. The United Russia Party supports a "conservative European" ideology, while the Communist…

The play, "Declassified: Struggle for Existence (We Used to Eat Lunch Together)," is based on the classic play "Antigone" and was written as part of a college-credit elective the author teaches at Queensborough Community College, geared toward local area high school students. The students were one day away from the scheduled…

The June party of Bayard Rustin Educational Complex was a boat ride on New York City's East River. Elsie danced with the principal. Everyone thought that was funny because they'd been fighting all year. He wanted her out of the school and she wanted to stay. Elsie and the author had been at this school almost 20 years, through seven principals.…

Epistemologies of situated knowledges, advanced by scholars such as Donna Haraway, Lorraine Code, and Maureen Ford, challenge mainstream epistemology's claim to be the gold standard in determining what counts as knowledge. In this essay, James Lang uses the work of these and other feminist theorists to explicate the notion of situated knowledges…

These are uncertain times for English further education. With the sector facing a 25 per cent cut in public funding over four years, the challenges are immense, but there are opportunities too, as institutions prepare for the introduction of tuition fee loans for study above Level 3 for students aged 24 and over, and ministers stress their…

This article presents the author's response to Bob Fryer's contribution to the June 2011 issue of "Adults Learning". At a time when education and the public realm in general are suffering reversals, it is heartening to know that those who have been committed to the struggle for the disadvantaged are prepared to stand their ground. This…

In this article the author is concerned with the intersection of two congruent phenomena: (1) an increasing number of references to borders in contemporary Native American art; and (2) an increasing occurrence of border-rights conflicts between Native nations and the governments of the United States and Canada. Focusing on the period roughly 1990…

The Coalition Government's education policies are ripe for criticism and equally ripe for controlled but principled derision. In the letters pages of the "Times Educational Supplement" and, to a lesser extent, "Education Guardian," Colin Richards has subjected them to a barrage of criticism, some couched as sardonic humour.…

Building upon a First Nations circle metaphor this paper explores how employing the interrelated concepts of pedagogy, poiesis, politics, and public positioning can provide a more holistic approach in designing and assessing arts-based projects be they for instructional and/or research purposes. It takes a "postmodern" stance (Giroux, 1991),…

CONFINTEA VI took place against the background of an uneven and contradictory social and economic impact of globalisation. This impact registered globally and locally, in both the political North and South, drawing new lines of inequality between "core" and "periphery", between insiders and outsiders of contemporary society. Financial turmoil in…

Teachers' unions find themselves on the defensive in states across the country, as governors and lawmakers press forward with proposals to target job protections and benefits that elected officials contend the public can no longer afford academically or financially. Many of those efforts are being driven by newly elected Republicans, who have…

Research has shown for decades that early childhood education contributes to long term increases in student achievement for all children, but what is motivating the current movement toward universal Pre-k? This study used a content analysis of five major print media sources to explore how the media is framing the public pre-K movement.We looked…

Although the study of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) politics appears to be widely accepted within political science, a recent survey of political scientists reported some skepticism about its legitimacy and scholarly worth (Novkov and Barclay 2010). This article examines potential concerns about LGBT studies and draws attention to the…

This paper represents a reflective account of a recent Cambridge University graduate, who critically assesses her successes and struggles in establishing herself as a social science researcher in Western academia. Reflecting on her various (sometimes conflicting and sometimes, in a paradoxical way, complementary) identities, the author explains…

Separate studies of Chinese and Western individuals have suggested that there are cultural differences in perceptions of creativity, particularly in an emphasis on meritorious salience versus aesthetic salience as bases for creativity, but cross-cultural studies are needed to substantiate that difference. In this study, undergraduates from Giessen…