Summarizes the issues, debates, and decisions that helped to shape "The Washington Post's" online service, Digital Ink. Highlights include: differences between online and print versions of the newspaper, structure of the user interface, organization of information, content, searching and navigation, and advertising. (JKP)

African-American teacher educator describes her educational experiences. Though elementary school peers and teachers were predominantly African-American, there was no focus on African-American history and diversity. Her secondary and postsecondary years in predominantly white schools showed her the need for multicultural education and helped shape…

A female college faculty member describes incidents and an overall climate of sexual bias, discrimination, and harassment, both overt and covert, at one university. The problems extended from professional peers to administrators who did not respond positively to her stated concerns. (MSE)

An educator's personal narrative describes how caring for a friend dying from AIDS led to caring about an essential theme in educational theory and practice: human historicity. The article examines pedagogical implications of raising children in a world filled with social ills, noting education's role in curtailing the ills. (SM)

A non-Native researcher describes undertaking an ethnography of perceptions about Native control of education among staff and students at a Native adult educational institution in British Columbia and discusses concerns about her role in the power struggle and the legitimacy and adequacy of such research. Contains 40 references. (SV)

The coordinator of a summer residential enrichment program for gifted Indian students reports their thoughts on Indian identity and peer and family pressures to suppress their abilities. Students outlined educational problems and solutions related to racial prejudice, high Indian dropout rates, few Indians in higher education, and high…

Describes high school students' use of the Internet based on experiences at a Canadian high school, including its use to obtain information for classroom assignments. Topics discussed include Internet Relay Chat; gender bias; collaboration; hackers and ethics agreements; control on the Internet; students teaching teachers; listservs and discussion…

Although often ignored by teachers and librarians, nonfiction books can make children want to read. Teachers can create effective assignments by moving beyond textbooks to use trade nonfiction that interests students. With fiction, nonfiction makes a total literature connection that introduces, reinforces, and reviews reading skills. (SLD)

Describes the reflective process of a group of teacher educators who examine the goals and strategies of their teacher education program. Each educator/author discusses the program from their own point of view regarding the power of collaborative reflection in the conceptualization and implementation of teacher education practice. (GLR)

Two urban university professors report on their experiences with use of new technologies in their American history classes, focusing on the crucial role of the teacher. The challenge for the first was to reconcile the enormity of the Internet with the need to make its resources available to students. The second found the technology enabled…

A husband and wife team of Montessori-trained teachers started a private school in Brewster (New York) that also serves as a home school resource center. Their practices include mixed-age grouping, learner-centered instruction, optional standardized tests, parents in the classrooms, and frequent field trips. They endured 3 years of dealing with…

Discusses aspects of the Family Narrative Consortium's multisite, multidisciplinary collaboration to study the effect of social context on family narratives. Considers the value of the study for developing a coding system for narratives that yields comparable results across research sites. Examines the measures, epistemological issues,…

Discusses how writing and analysis of life histories, identification and analysis of personal teaching metaphors, and action research can be powerful means for encouraging professional development in teachers. Recommends that teacher educators engage in self-study and life-history analysis to encourage students to do the same. (SM)

Examines the representations of mental functioning in terms of images and stories of gender relations. Suggests that the rational pole of the mind is often stereotyped as "hard" and "masculine," while the nonrational pole is considered "soft" and "feminine." Reviews evidence suggesting that these dynamics…

Underlines the importance of investigating development within concrete thinking. Points out the importance of taking seriously the need for epistemological pluralism respecting and rewarding the labor-intensive methods of inquiry that embody the kind of concrete, contextual thinking researchers try to understand. (AA)