While whiteness studies at most institutions aims to expose the persistence of white supremacy to a disbelieving audience, whiteness studies within the College of Ethnic Studies (COES) at San Francisco State University (SFSU) begins with the assumption that racism still exists. The course then traces how whiteness is constructed and fortified to…

The author began his first year teaching at an open-enrollment university with the belief that "most students can learn to do intellectual work, if they are only given the opportunity." This belief is inspired by the research on teaching and learning and is rooted in the characteristic idealism of teachers. He had seen the principle borne out in…

It is 30 years since NAEYC published "Anti-Bias Curriculum Tools for Empowering Young Children" (Derman-Sparks & ABC Task Force, 1989). Since then, anti-bias education concepts have become part of the early childhood education (ECE) narrative in the United States and many other countries. It has brought a fresh way of thinking about…

As the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) marks its first century of existence, the Council and its members are rightfully looking back across the years in appreciation of what its members, and its collective members over time, have accomplished. In this article, the author shares his reflections on the role of NCTE in his life. The…

The past 100 years of "English Journal" have positioned students and teachers in a variety of ways. As the authors embarked on exploring issues in the constructions of students in "EJ", they found that some concerns that teachers raised about English and English education resonated in their own classrooms and experiences as students and teachers.…

This article explores how multicultural discourses impact the reception of Aboriginal teachers, and the Aboriginal knowledge, history, and experience they bring into Canadian public schools. The author argues that what happens to Aboriginal teachers in Canadian public schools as they attempt to include Aboriginal content and perspectives is a…

Across the globe many nations have found engaging young people in the post compulsory years of school to ensure their transition into economic citizens is challenging. Governments are focusing on developing initiatives and programs to connect young people in education and training as preparation for the workplace. In Australia the use of Applied…

Bloom and Webinger (2011) present an intuitively agreeable proposition: embedding topics within an engaging and meaningful context can promote many desirable learning behaviours and outcomes. As instructors, Fred Phillips, Nathalie Johnstone, and Brandy Mackintosh have seen this play out many times in their classrooms. Thus, in a sense, they were…

This autobiographical piece of collaborative discensus (Gershon, 2008; Gershon, Peel & Bilinovich, 2009) presents the authors' interwoven perspectives about the challenges they faced as they talked about race in a pre-service social studies class. Their work here serves two main purposes. First it is an opportunity for a teacher and two former…

Thomas E. Ludwig is the John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology at Hope College, where he joined the faculty in 1977 after receiving his PhD in development and aging from Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on developmental issues in cognitive neuropsychology. He is also the author or coauthor of more than a dozen sets of…

The author reflects on his experiences with standardized tests, emphasizing the dreadful consequences of our continued allegiance to them. In doing so, the author expounds on how public schools have kowtowed to a harmful societal preference for results regardless of processes, decision-makers' desires to quantify learning, and the desires of…

In this article, the author responds to Kathy Rentz. She happily joins forces for pedagogically defensible teaching conditions and gives a brief "activist" account from the European perspective. However, rather than "European," she emphasizes that for the most part, this response looks at business communication teachers'…

First, the author briefly outlines genre theory and sets out some broad definitions of genre. She also discusses how genre knowledge is acquired and how it has been taught in ESP and EAP. Following this, she highlights two challenges to using this pedagogy in a general EFL class. Finally, she argues that despite these challenges, teachers can…

There has been a great deal of groundbreaking research done on motivation during the last twenty-five years, and all of it points to the importance of intrinsic motivation. This research has very significant ramifications for teachers of English. In this essay, the author engages the issue of "aversion" that Linda Brodkey raises in her essay…

Legal studies faculty need to take the long view in their academic and professional lives. Taking the long view would seem to be a cliched piece of advice, but too frequently legal studies faculty, like their students, get focused on meeting the next short-term hurdle--getting through the next class, grading the next stack of papers, making it…