Young people who attend schools today are likely to hold future jobs that don't yet exist. While generative artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually automate hundreds of millions of today's jobs, people who are able to effectively use AI tools to complement skills like leadership, imagination, and creativity will certainly have an advantage in…

According to Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), the highest levels of abstract thinking and self-regulation in preschool development are established in "pretend play using object substitutions." An extensive research literature supports Vygotsky's empirical model of the internalization of self-guiding speech (social speech > private speech…

Taking a lead from recent articles in "The History Teacher," the author placed history, popular culture, and historical literacy at the core of a history course entitled "Enchanted Capitalism: Myths, Monsters, and Markets." Drawing on folklore, literature, popular culture, and economics, the course explored the rise of…

This article presents an interview with Karl Kroeber that was originally published in "English Department Updates" (Fall 2009), a semiannual alumni newsletter of the Columbia University Department of English & Comparative Literature. In this interview, Kroeber, who taught at Columbia for 57 years, discusses the range of courses he…

In 1903, in the introduction to his ground-breaking, seminal work, "The Souls of Black Folks", W.E. B. Du Bois calls for a vision of our country in which African Americans can become "co-worker[s] in the kingdom of culture." In this article I make the case that the use of a novel like "Gods Go Begging" by Alfredo Vea…

Western Europe has been constructed in the field of education abroad as a "traditional" location: in some sense or another that label is used to suggest that it has a kind of static or dormant significance. In reality, Western Europe is an enormously rich location for study abroad precisely because it is a fluid learning environment that…

Here I emphasize the applicability of the sociological imagination to an international audience by sharing my journey of teaching sociology in Japan. I found my own sociological imagination helpful in critically evaluating the literature on Japanese higher education and the construction of the Japanese student as a form of Orientalism. As I…

The author presents three fragments from the art work of a class of American elementary school children to illustrate the imaginative power of children's thought and language.

In interviews with several hundred business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and education leaders, the author identified seven "survival skills" that 21st century students need to succeed as workers and citizens: (1) critical thinking and problem-solving; (2) collaboration and leadership; (3) ability and adaptability; (4) initiative and…

As educators of both preservice and in-service teacher education students, 1 of the key questions we ask ourselves is how to prepare White students in rural areas of the United States to meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations of students. In this article, we discuss the conflicting research on how to meet goals of multicultural teacher…