Supporters of bilingual education are hoping that the election of Barack Obama as president will lead to a thaw in attitudes toward what they consider a proven educational method that has been ignored--or worse--by the Bush administration. Advocates are encouraged by the endorsement of bilingual education by President-elect Obama in the recent…

The merging of the Bologna and the Copenhagen processes into a single European education area appears appropriate, especially as general, vocational, adult and academic education are to be integrated in a future European Qualification Framework (EQF). This is the backdrop to the following description of the Bologna process, which was originally…

Education as an institution fulfils the key social functions of promulgation of knowledge and the development of future citizens. Rather than these key functions earning it respect, education and its practitioners are the targets of criticism and what Labaree calls "scorn". This article seeks to progress the work done by Labaree on the origins of…

This Issue Brief provides estimates of the number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States in 2007 and compares these estimates to those from 1999 and 2003. From 1999 to 2007, the number of homeschooled students in the United States increased, as did the homeschooling rate. In 2007, parents homeschooled their children for a…

What is service-learning and how can students and community benefit from it? With the pressure of covering all of the content, passing tests, meeting standards and making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), how is it realistically feasible to make learning more meaningful so that students are able to take it and utilize it in real life? There is no…

Multicultural education has been through many changes and controversies in the past 3 decades. During this time a number of multicultural approaches and materials have been developed. Some address the educational needs of students who experience cultural gaps between home and school and/or are the targets of the discrimination, others focus on…

This article presents a social ecological model to increase our understanding of the dynamic interplay between the home and school contexts of Mexican American children and to promote the engagement of their parents and families in the educational process. More specifically, the social ecological model is used to explain processes that occur…

Certain words or terms are used so promiscuously and show up in so many contexts that they lose their specificity and soon become devoid of utility. The I-words, namely "interdisciplinary" and "interdisciplinarity", are so powerful that it is difficult to oppose anything done in their names, and cynical speculations abound that a person or…

Experimental designs are distinguished as the best method to respond to questions involving causality. The purpose of the present paper is to explicate the logic of experimental design and why it is so vital to questions that demand causal conclusions. In addition, types of internal and external validity threats are discussed. To emphasize the…

At the celebration of the 35th anniversary of P.L. 94-142 this year, significant national progress has been made in ensuring the civil rights and providing equal access to education for all children with disabilities. During the 2007-08 school year, "IDEA"-mandated programs and services were provided to more than 6 million children and…

Schools serve as a setting in which students come to understand gender, but transgender students (those who transgress societal gender norms) are largely left out of discussions of education. The high level of harassment that transgender students face poses sizable obstacles to school success. If the field of education is committed to equity and…

The National Child Count of Children and Youth who are Deaf-Blind is the first and longest running registry and knowledge base of children who are deaf-blind in the world. Begun in 1986 on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education (Baldwin, 1993), it represents a thirty plus year collaborative effort between the National Consortium on…

Iranian educational methods and our own observations of physics students led us to devise a way of improving our students' ability to solve real-life problems. We designed a guided inquiry-based course "Physics by photography" which we implemented for approximately 250 students. This revealed that this type of course could motivate…

There is much interest in the effects of a larger parental role in schooling issues. That role can exist through voice--direct parental involvement in schools and participation in the political process that dictates schooling policies--or through choice from a menu of schooling options. This article addresses the limited understanding and…

Serious games open up many new opportunities for complex skills learning in higher education. The inherent complexity of such games, though, requires large efforts for their development. This paper presents a framework for serious game design, which aims to reduce the design complexity at conceptual, technical and practical levels. The approach…