Progressive education was pluralistic and often contradictory in its missions, motives, and degrees of success as was progressivism in general. The larger political progressive movement with its genesis in the latter half of the nineteenth century peaked in the Progressive Era at the beginning of the twentieth century. Until Lawrence Cremin's…

Our editor-at-large puts questions to a political scientist--the former higher-education advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq--who replies with skepticism about prospects for our efforts to restore a university system in Iraq and reconstitute that troubled society in our image. Building an informed democracy, John Agresto…

Qualifications have become academic currency. Apart from adding to the success and fluency with which people can move or be transferred from job to job, nationally and internationally, qualifications also serve to shape individuals' perceptions of their own worth because of their impact on their holders' expectations and prospects, as well as…

The aim of this paper is to present a better picture of the acceptability now enjoyed by the Ten-Year Programme on Education and Training (PDEF), the degree of involvement of the partners, who are both beneficiaries and actors of the school system, and the relationship between them. It presents a survey of the acceptability of the PDEF and of…

Although many instructors are now using simulations and other experiential pedagogies in their classrooms, the effectiveness of such tools has generally not been examined in a systematic way. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of a simulation of the legislative process in the U.S. Senate as a tool for teaching college students about the…

This essay explores the effects evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christian educators could have on the experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals in schools. Evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christian educators' beliefs about LGB individuals may be at odds with the goals of equity, social justice and activism a true multicultural…

In this article, I discuss a Canadian public school controversy and Supreme Court of Canada decision involving competing stakeholder rights to freedom of religion, safety and equality. Policy considerations that allowed one group of stakeholders to express their constitutional rights raised concerns among other stakeholders. A policy vacuum and a…

This study examined the influence of education, agency culture, and demographic attributes on the level of professional socialization of state administrators, using data from a national survey of 5,980 state administrators. It found a positive relationship between the educational attainment of state administrators and their orientations toward…

The Miscellaneous Studies Division of these Proceedings contains the following 13 papers: "A Trend, Imagined or Real? A Comparative Study of Development Journalism and Public Journalism" (Jiafei Yin); "Investigative Reporting about Minorities in America" (Tim Gallimore and Lillian Dunlap); "A Defining Moment: Who Says What…

This dictionary of higher education provides definitions of terms, organizations, abbreviations, and concepts specifically relevant to further and higher education in the United Kingdom. "Further education" is defined as below degree level education for students over age 16 and is often vocational. The dictionary also provides…

This ERIC Digest outlines what is meant by the phrase human rights and the origin of the concept. It also traces the delineation of the concept of human rights from the 17th century antecedent of "natural rights" to its eventual incarnation as inherent political or personal rights, such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, and…

This study investigated the value preferences of lay women and men who taught in Roman Catholic secondary schools in the Archdiocese of Miami. Questionnaires were sent to a stratified random sample of 353 full-time secondary school teachers, and a total of 168 lay respondents returned usable forms. Respondents were asked to complete a brief…

Recent efforts to improve schools through community democratic school decision making and practices conflict with ideas of some of the founding fathers of the U.S. Constitution. There are several differences between the ideas of some contemporary democratic education reformers and those of Publius (the pen name of the authors of the Federalist…

The Williamsburg Charter Foundation is a group a leaders from business, academic, political, and religious communities concerned about the importance of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty in public life and about the ability of people to live together in a spirit of civility despite deep religious differences. This document is a…

This exploratory study examines the issues connected with the civic participation of minority groups in Canada. Civic participation is service, either through appointment or election, on public boards and commissions other than those representing the participant's own ethnocultural group. Information was gathered from a literature review,…