On a February morning, Ms. Nelson (all names pseudonyms) was preparing her eleventh-grade class for a new unit with the goal of crafting arguments about the people and issues present in the classic novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. As, teacher educators Eileen Shanahan and Min-Young Kim were observing in the classroom, it was…

This article analyses the film "Mean girls" (2004) as a window on popular notions of the moral life of American high schools, which straddles Kohlberg's Stage 2 and 3. The film presents loyalty to peer group cliques as a key value, even as it offers an individualist, relativist critique of that loyalty. Gossip is the main transgression in this…

The RAFT technique (Santa 1988) is a writing strategy that helps students understand their "Role" as a writer, the "Audience" they will address, various "Formats" for writing, and the expected "Topic" or content. This article discusses the RAFT writing strategy used by the students to address land development issues. The authors facilitated…