In this commentary, James W. Fraser, a noted historian of education, cites examples from several teacher education programs at more than 30 universities partnering with the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships in various ways. Additionally, Fraser reviews decades of challenges to traditional teacher preparation, looks at some current reforms, and…

Over the last 15 years, the book review landscape has changed seismically. Reviewing is no longer centralized, with a few big voices leading the way, but fractured among numerous multifarious voices found mostly on the web. In turn, readers aren't playing the captive audience any more. Undone by economics, many traditional print sources have been…

This article presents the author's comments on Hisham Ghassib's article entitled "Where Does Creativity Fit into a Productivist Industrial Model of Knowledge Production?" In his article, Ghassib (2010) provides an overview of the philosophical foundations that led to exact science, its role in what was later to become a driving force in the modern…

A recent literature review by Smith and Boling (2009) critically examines the received view of instructional design in educational technology. Smith and Boling conclude that the foundational literature characterizes design in a way that leads to a constrained understanding of design, especially by novices. They suggest that as a field we move…

Storm, Tressoldi, and Di Risio (2010) rely on meta-analyses to justify their claim that the evidence for psi is consistent and reliable. They manufacture apparent homogeneity and consistency by eliminating many outliers and combining databases whose combined effect sizes are not significantly different--even though these combined effect sizes…

Although Almond argues that the contemporary West has lost touch with the value of tolerance, I argue that that value applied to those of different religions and sexual orientations is too minimal a standard for a pluralistic society. I suggest, in the spirit of the work of Charles Taylor and Tariq Modood, the more robust standard of respect and…

In this article, we respond to criticisms posed by McMillan (2011) of our recent paper, "Viewing Community as Responsibility as well as a Resource: Deconstructing the Theoretical Roots of Psychological Sense of Community." We clarify that the focus of our article was to explore the macro theoretical frameworks and second-order assumptions that…

South Africa's attainment of democracy in 1994 culminated in an educational reform anchored on an outcomes-based curriculum which was initially labelled Curriculum 2005 (C2005). The reform process and ensuing policy was rooted in labour movement debates and informed by the outcomes-based education (OBE) experiences in Australia and New Zealand.…

When I was contacted by the editors of "Gender and Education" to see whether I wanted to respond to this article, I was not particularly keen to do so. I generally believe that critique is a good thing, and that direct responses have a tendency to come over as precious, petulant, and petty. However, having read the article several times, and…

Edmundson states that if he could make one wish for the members of his profession, college and university professors of literature, he would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, they would give up readings. By "a reading," he means the application of an analytical vocabulary to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art.…

As a field, creative writing must reject its traditional image of "uselessness" and realize its anticapitalist, antiprivatizing potential as a creator of public space. In part, this move would involve teaching students to question traditional notions of influence, as well as the modernist concept of the author as a lone, autonomous individual.

In this article, the author aims to "discover" the actual Sacajawea. She intends to produce work that critiques colonialism in history and museums and to return the focus of the colonial gaze back to the colonizer. In this article, she talks about how colonial narratives of Sacajawea in popular culture justify conquest, heteropatriarchy, and the…

Recently, when preparing course materials for English graduate students on the practical skills and theoretical dimensions of teaching literature, the author surveyed the literature on the "state of the field" of literary studies in English (and the entire concept of a liberal arts education), ranging from high-profile monographs to various…

This article presents the author's response to R.J. Campbell's critique of the "Cambridge Primary Review," which was published in the autumn of 2009. The author argues that Campbell's description of the "Review's" central proposals on curriculum and pedagogy as "backward-looking and inadequately theorised" is so misjudged as to call for a…

Technology is supposed to be a good thing. If this is such a grand argument, then why do some researchers argue technology hurts more than it helps? This is certainly getting the public confused. This article will look at their reasoning behind their statements of how technology is not working. Also included will be an analysis and…