On May 14, 2010, Sandra K. Soto was the faculty convocation speaker for the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. To a significant extent, she congratulated the parents and graduates and flattered the graduates by crediting them with having learned both skills and information, and urging graduates to make use of their…

TLRP's generic phase (1999-2009) is believed to have been the largest ever UK investment in educational research. This paper describes the critique from which TLRP emerged, its strategic positioning and the roles of successive directors and their teams in its development. The paper offers an early stock take of TLRP's achievements from the…

At the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA, 30 April to 4 May), the theme of re-imagining public education arose once again with the most compelling presentation from leading scholars in the field concerned with counter-hegemonic politics and democratic change. The session entitled "Re-imaging public…

This article presents the natural rights construct as the perspective used in civic education, by outlining its moral, theoretical, and curricular elements. Morally, the construct holds a liberal view of individual rights and liberty from subjugation. The theoretical element consists of a description of the political systems model, which…

This paper explores conceptions of curricular and extracurricular in UK higher education. Reporting on a case study of staff understandings of the extracurricular we argue that our data highlight the lack of debate about curricular matters. We found that there was considerable blurring of boundaries in conceptions of the curricular and…

This article presents the author's response to "Evolution, Biology, and Society: A Conversation for the 21st-Century Sociology Classroom" by Richard Machalek and Michael Martin. Their work serves as a reminder that the discipline is diverse and dynamic. The author appreciates the effort to urge sociology teachers to include genetic concepts in…

One Indonesian student first learned of the program while working as a street vendor selling handicrafts in Jakarta. Today, she works for a television station in her native country as a newsperson and anchor. Another student was so impressed and gratified by his good fortune that he designed, promoted, and raised funds for a peace statue to erect…

The use of stories in teacher education is ubiquitous; yet, the question regarding how stories help teachers make sense of their professional lives is more complex than it first appears. The authors draw from Adriana Cavarero's understanding of narrative relations as the political site where one's unique singularity is revealed in the desire to…

This paper begins by raising a question about the purposes of research in drama in education and reflects on aspects of discourse in the past concerning how and why writers about drama in education choose to describe its aesthetic processes. Whilst it recognises the debate about drama in education's place within the umbrella of applied theatre, it…

There is a notable absence in contemporary rural studies--of both a theoretical and empirical nature--concerning the changing nature of rural local government. Despite the scale and significance of successive rounds of local government reorganisation in the UK, very little has been written on this topic from a rural perspective. Instead research…

Since their creation in the latter part of the nineteenth century, women's colleges in America have undergone many significant changes. In 1960, over 230 women's colleges were in operation; over the next forty years more than 75 percent chose to admit men or shut their doors entirely (Miller-Bernal, 2006a). This chapter will shed light on the…

The massive flow of federal funding into schools has created a new and unfamiliar political dynamic in state elections this fall, with many candidates voicing concerns about the government involvement while acknowledging its role in saving jobs, propping up budgets, and supporting innovations in education. State elected officials have a long…

John Locke is often taken to be a staunch defender of parents' rights in the realm of education. In fact, Locke's pedagogical reasons for preferring home education to school education do not necessarily apply to similar choices in modern contexts. Locke's political argument for defining education as a duty of parents rather than the state does not…

School psychology exists in many countries around the world; however, it is far from ubiquitous. The extant literature offers limited empirical information addressing why school psychology may be present in some countries but not in others. The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative investigation examining four sociocultural and…

Dramatic increases in immigration pose challenges for democratic citizenship education to involve national members with different historical memories and current experiences of national belonging. The article draws on ethnographic research with Laotian refugees, who were the target of U.S. violence during the Vietnam War and later became…