Having professional learning communities in place enables teachers and staff members to provide targeted assistance to students who need it. This article discusses Chardon (Ohio) High School's professional learning community program which provides time and support for students and teachers. Through the program, the teachers meet every week during…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post-Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power…

This article will start with a description of a small, pedagogic event: a snippet of conversation recorded in a classroom as part of a research project on working in groups with postgraduate students. I will use these few minutes of data to illustrate several of the arguments I wish to make about the policy of increased international student…

In this article, the authors describe a classroom exercise designed to put women (and children and men) back at the center of the abortion debate, avoiding the standard rhetoric and engaging reflection on how everyone might find common political goals among the so-called pro-life and pro-choice sides. The exercise the authors offer in this article…

Music offers to language teachers benefits in terms of language exposure, cultural information, and multisensory appeal. This article describes how the use of music videos offers potential for exploring spiritual and moral concerns, especially as the intersections between words, sounds, and images are explored. Exploring how (in this case)…

Sierra Leone is only one of the more than 50 armed conflicts currently going on around the world. It is estimated that 20 million children were either refugees or displaced internally, and some 300,000 children under the age of 18 were used in hostilities at any given time as government or rebel soldiers, with about one-third reportedly fighting…

This article discusses how amusing mistakes can make for serious language instruction. The notion that close analysis of language errors can yield insight into how one thinks and learns seems fundamentally obvious. Yet until relatively recently, language errors were primarily treated as indicators of learner deficiency rather than opportunities to…

In her role with the School Administrators of Iowa leading Iowa's leadership grant from The Wallace Foundation, the author works with a coalition of individuals and groups striving to implement a cohesive leadership system for school leaders. Efforts to create a cohesive leadership system in Iowa for the past nine years have resulted in many…

A common (although not universal) goal of feminist teachers is to create a "safe environment" in the classroom. The meaning of that term, however, varies considerably--some hope students will feel they can share personal feelings and experiences without fear of judgment, some that students will feel they can state their opinions without fear of…

This article describes a countercultural approach to autobiography in comparison with three dominant uses of autobiography in religious education. It defines countercultural autobiographies as stories from the underside of society meant as tools for education for justice and as invitations for transformative dialogue in institutional and societal…

This paper presents some reflections on the process of creating research, from the point of view of a psychologist working in an academic environment in a developing country which is undergoing social transformation. It explores some tensions between global and local concerns in research, and reflects on the relation between research, art,…

This article discusses the implications and complexities of Canada's multicultural policies for aboriginal students in its post-secondary education systems. The author, a Pakistani-Canadian multicultural educator, interviewed an Aboriginal-Canadian multicultural educator, to discuss the cultural differences, divisions, and resistances between…

Many research studies have shown how students engage with historical documents, make sense of the past, and develop historical understanding to construct their own historical knowledge. Some of these studies have dealt specifically with empathy. The author defines empathy or historical imagination as the ability to see and judge the past in its…

"Teaching Business Ethics in the Age of Madoff" provides a brief overview of the field of business ethics, including a quick history, with particular attention to the role of scandals. The authors dispute four commonly held misconceptions about business: Markets are perfect, or at least efficient; human beings are always self-interested; economic…

In this article, we propose that one way of engaging pre-service and practicing high school Social Studies and English teachers in critical conversations about social class is through the use of life-based literary narratives. By expanding upon Phillion and He's (2004) work around the pedagogical and curricular potential of using life-based…