This article describes the struggles of two tough moms who team up to start their own company. Fed up with a lack of stylish, properly-fitting shoes for their children with cerebral palsy, they established "Keeping Pace" which currently offers a selection of stylish girls' and boys' athletic sneakers and casual dress shoes for boys, all sold…

Educating students to embrace diversity and value all people is a core value of educators in family and consumer sciences (FCS). For instructors in FCS, integrating the contributions of African Americans--particularly in textiles and clothing--can be an inclusive learning opportunity. The authors compiled resources on African Americans and…

Art instructors are ever mindful of the need to introduce and encourage the possibilities of careers in the art field. The longer the author has been teaching art, the more aware she has become of the many wonderful art-related jobs and careers that exist. Fashion design, marketing and retail are three areas in which many students--male and…

This paper considers how young children in early childhood education draw on popular texts and consumer goods in their constitution of subjectivities and social relations. The paper draws on poststructuralist theories of subjectivity, agency, consumption and power, to explore how performative practices of consumption figure in the constitution of…

Tight budgets and an uncertain economy did not diminish creativity for the 2009 CASE Circle of Excellence Award winners. In fact, judges gave 19 Grand Gold awards this year, a significant increase over recent years. The program received 2,800 entries from 690 member institutions, representing 13 different countries. Forty-four panels of volunteer…

The centennial of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) provides an opportunity to explore local as well as national aspects of the field. Studying events that shaped FCS and the women and men who provided early leadership reinforces the role of FCS in improving daily living conditions for the past century. Engaging…

This article describes results from interviews with Jewish teenagers about the tension between adherence to tradition and commitment to egalitarianism in relation to issues like women in the rabbinate, women wearing ritual garments like "kipot" and "talitot", and gender separation at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. For many…

Students gain a better understanding of war and economics when the variables come alive through stories, artifacts, and paintings. In this article, the author describes a short story about the fur trade which can generate lots of student questions about the fur economics, the Eastern Woodland Indians, trade artifacts, and war. The author also…

A multitude of reasons are given for banning various forms of symbolic clothing. The only thing that is clear is that there has not been a definitive way to proceed. The lack of clarity and ambiguity over what children should be allowed to wear in schools is apparent. Consequently, policies regarding symbolic clothing are inconsistent and erratic,…

We offer this piece as an essay, a dialogic, many-voiced attempt to represent the tensions and contradictions in our work and the work that goes on in London schools. Locating our work within a polyphonic, narrative-based tradition of inquiry into practice (Burgess & Hardcastle, 1991; Doecke & McClenaghan, 2011; Parr, 2010; van de Ven…

Business students should understand the relevance of professional attire as an indication of conformity. Of equal importance is the recognition that some companies have loosened their dress codes to a more flexible policy to recruit young talent. "Ugly Betty" could serve as a teaching tool to initiate the dialogue on conformity in a light-hearted,…

Arts resources available on the Internet and DVDs provide a flexible, richly resonant, student-friendly framework for a coordinated study of the connections between the style and structure of Proust's novel and the social and cultural worlds he depicts. "In Search of Lost Time", a product of an artistic revolution as well as a critical…

Geometry certainly is in fashion, at the Henrietta Barnett School for girls in North London. Within the project "Engaging mathematics for all learners", led and funded by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) looked into how mathematical tasks usually reserved for the "gifted…

In this article, the author presents the "Rags to Riches" design project she introduced to her students. She assigned each of her students one item from an array to thrift store goods which included old scarves, sweaters, jackets, and even evening gowns. The design problem was to imagine what a clothing tag might look like if the assigned item…

In an era where some parents seem unwilling or unable to draw the "clothes" line with their children, where pop culture influences kids' clothing choices as never before, and school safety--including gang violence--is at the top of everyone's minds, school uniforms and dress codes can play a significant role. What that role should be,…