Prospects for reforming assessment are dim. Persistence of the "education crisis" is chiefly attributable to the testing industry's profit margins and its distrust of teachers--a ploy to preserve the educational power structure. Schools should be accountable to local communities, not corporate entities, as a Nebraska initiative shows.…

Contends that professors of graduate seminars fail to provide the structure necessary for academic discourse. Describes four models for graduate seminars along with the disadvantages of each model. Discusses the issue of authority in graduate seminars. Provides an example of an effective graduate seminar. (CMK)

States that Paulo Freire distinguished between authoritarianism and the legitimate exercise of authority, aligning legitimate authority with the assurance of freedom. He also linked freedom with the process of struggle, indicating a strong relationship between freedom and social justice. (NB)

Presents findings of a study of Bangladeshi women's relations with their children's school in Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and the ways in which languages and literacies are regarded as thresholds of power between the minority-culture women and the dominant-culture institution. Mothers of 6-year-old children were interviewed about their…

This article explores the relationship between children's prior knowledge of spoken and written discourses and how this influences their attempts at examination writing. Particular emphasis is given to task demand in examination questions and how frequently this fails to acknowledge how prior knowledge might be realized in response to the…

This paper reports on an interview-based study which explored the implementation of a major policy initiative in Queensland, Australia, with particular attention to social justice issues. Interviews were conducted with key policy actors in three sections of the bureaucracy: strategic directions, performance and measurement; curriculum and…

This article reveals the intrinsic connection between the constructs normality, identity, meaning, cultural tracking, and school achievement. In particular, it illuminates the indirect connection between cultural tracking and a reduction in the meaningful engagement of school tasks. As documented elsewhere, learning proceeds in a meaningful…

Project-based team activities are commonly used in higher education. Teams comprised of members from different national cultures can be faced with unique challenges during the creative process. Hofstede's (1991) cultural dimension of power distance was used to examine one such design team's intra- and inter-group interactions in a graduate-level…

Violence begets violence and it is important to understand how cycles of violence are perpetuated if we are to find solutions to the global problems they present. A multi-disciplinary group of The International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement has developed a model of the cyclical events that perpetuate violence at all levels including…

Peer observation has become a feature of university practice over the last decade, the primary impetus for its introduction being the political drive to raise teaching quality via the development and sharing of 'good practice'. Peer observation within higher education (HE) involves observing colleagues in the classroom and has the further aim of…

The decision whether to keep or to change a university's nickname is an "intense no-win situation" for a new president. To some, the name is racist and insensitive; to others, it reflects great pride and tradition.

This article analyzes and discusses how Spanish education has evolved and departed from traditions, involving a complex array of cultural, historical, and political factors. Cultural and linguistic diversity have been significant factors in slowing the central state's progress toward its modern goals and ideology. During the past 25 years the…

This study focuses on the relationship between an individual's dissatisfaction with the level of power they have in their dating relationships, parental violence they experienced during their childhoods, and their dating violence perpetration. A sample of 352 male and 296 female undergraduate college students completed a dating violence survey,…

Almost 25 years ago, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) explained how educational systems foster a "misrecognition" of the part that schools play in social reproduction. They noted that it is to the advantage of the dominant elements of society and educators themselves to perpetuate a strong belief in the legitimacy of schools as institutions that…

The paper attempts to identify the extent to which modes of knowledge can be associated with different patterns of and assumptions about power. It discusses the meanings and scope of power itself, i.e. both within and beyond epistemic communities, as against "social robustness" implying more democratic or inclusive forms of evaluation. It analyses…