Based on experiences teaching a middle grades literacy course for pre-service teachers, this "Voices from the Field" article examines how challenging texts provoke adult learners to more closely attend to their reading experiences. By engaging with difficult texts, pre-service teachers experience frustration and confusion while reading.…

The purpose of a "Critical and Creative" approach to literacy is not to place the burden of our responsibility on students, but rather to liberate them from the feeling of being trapped by unmalleable, self-defeating circumstances. Through actual demonstration and experience, teachers need to give students the confidence that they are…

Argues for an acknowledgement of the rise in Euroracism, a combination of postcolonial racism, antisemitism, and fascism. Discusses the role of initial teacher education in combatting forms of inequality. Rejects nationalistic and multicultural approaches in favor of an empowering curriculum. Concludes that interconnections between all forms of…

Teaches an introductory course on issues of prejudice and discrimination. Assigns a two-essay autobiography and analysis of other student biographies. Encourages students to use their life experiences to articulate sociology's theoretical, conceptual, and substantive materials. Finds course effective in reducing ethnocentrism. (NL)

Discusses how the British colonial government in Kenya used the education system to strengthen political and economic power over the African majority. Describes the unequal allocation of education revenue, selective and punitive public examinations and a racially biased school curriculum. Concludes that Europeans' need to dominate Africans…

Reports on a study of trust expectancies among 113 Native American and Caucasian intermediate grade students in same-race and mixed-race schools. Finds that both racial groups had more trust expectancy of their own race. Also finds that this trust expectancy pattern was somewhat less evident in mixed-race schools. (CFR)

Researches student perceptions among Afro-Caribbeans, and Africans enrolled in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) departments in Great Britain. Students discover their courses fail to address racism issues; perceive the selection processes are discriminatory; and find racist attitudes among lecturers. (NL)

Discusses growing concern about negative attitudes toward Japan and Japanese people among secondary school and college students. Describes the use of quality control circles to bridge the cultural divide. Reports on the success of the program and argues that teachers have a responsibility to promote cultural understanding and diversity. (CFR)

Discusses the character and contributions of Thomas Jesse Jones, an early 20th-century educator and a pioneer in social studies and black education. Jones's inconsistent philosophy (he supported limited black education but believed in white supremacy) grew out of an unlikely combination of progressive Christianity and deep conservatism. (MJP)

Urges that history not focus on world history to the extent that the histories of people of color are ignored or lost in the larger world view. Suggests that contemporary accounts of U.S. history be rewritten to integrate the experiences of diverse groups of people. Argues that such change can help eliminate racism. (DK)

Tracks the intermittent appearances and variations of the historical concept of a "Pacific Age" from the 1890s to the present. Discusses the social, economic, and historical conditions that resulted in the term's heralding of either economic optimism or racist peril. Suggests these interpretations come in cycles. (MJP)

Investigates the connection between racism in the public school art curriculum and the ethnocentric ideas of George Zerffi. Zerffi lectured widely and taught art history to future art teachers in England, between 1868 and 1892. Although occasionally brilliant, his views reflected the ethnocentric ideology of Victorian England. (MJP)