Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork at a community-based organization (CBO) engaged in parent organizing for urban school reform, this paper examines how organizers engaged with the imperatives of neoliberal reform and the broader neoliberal policy context. It highlights organizers' agency but also shows how hegemonic discourse constrained their…

Humanizing Higher Education was the 2022 conference theme for the Association for the Study of Higher Education. This presidential address takes a forward look back on higher education within a global context and in the aftermath of a global health pandemic, making an argument for the need to humanize higher education. The address offers a…

The curriculum is a critical element in the transformation of higher education, and as a result, I argue for the inclusion of what I refer to as an African epistemic in higher education curricula in South Africa. In so doing, attention is directed at the decolonisation of the curriculum in higher education in South Africa, which aims to give…

The central proposition of this article is that Manitoba's faith-based higher education institutions have become more accepted by, and more closely integrated into, the mainstream post-secondary system in the province. Drawing on theoretical work explaining change in higher education systems, the article examines legislative and policy actions by…

Practices and policies of Japanese schooling for immigrant and marginalised students are examined through the lens of a primary school which serves one of the largest foreign student populations in Japan. Student families include Southeast Asian refugees, South American immigrants of Japanese descent, recent and longstanding Chinese and Koreans,…

Describes the fieldwork aspect of the British study "The Improving Schools Project." Identifies themes emerging from the first phase of the study in 13 secondary schools. Describes these themes: (1) multiple starting points; (2) the complex and interactive nature of school improvement; (3) missing instructional level; and (4 ) importance…

The Millennium Development Goal 2 has a target of ensuring that, by 2015, all children will complete a full course of primary schooling. This is consistent with the second goal of the Dakar Framework of Action for Education for All [EFA] that pre-dated it, except that the Dakar goal qualifies the Millennium Goal with "compulsory education of…

In this essay, Cathy Sandeen states that the new postsecondary landscape requires looking at higher education as a system that provides multiple pathways in and through the various parts of the system, all with the goal of helping students complete a postsecondary degree, credential, or certificate. Sandeen observes two strengths in professional…

It is important to be able to describe instructional practices accurately in order to support research on "what works" in education and professional development as a basis for efforts to improve practice. This report describes a project to develop procedures for characterizing classroom practices in mathematics and science on the …

A Lewinian orientation to educational problems fits current innovative thinking in education (e.g., models for making education multicultural), and provides the bases of important applied work on cooperative learning techniques and constructive ways of structuring conflict within educational settings. Lewinian field theory provides a broad…

The educational outlook for children of school age in low-income minority neighborhoods of New York City is discussed, drawing primarily on the researcher's observations in a field study in Central Harlem. The decline the neighborhoods have undergone is summarized; and the role of drugs, especially crack, is discussed. Some opinions of residents…

One year before the National Education Summit, Congress had reauthorized the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and created a National Assessment Governing Board to develop and oversee policy for the NAEP. In conjunction with the call to establish national education goals, efforts are being made to establish standards for…

The New Standards Project (NSP) is an effort to create a state- and district-based assessment and professional development system to serve as a catalyst for major educational reform. As part of a professional development strategy tied to assessment, 114 teachers, curriculum supervisors, and assessment directors, representing 23 states and…

Strategies for researching policy change in higher education from a political point of view are discussed, based on three assumptions: politics is not only power but also research for solutions to collective problems; explanation of policy change calls for configurative models to enlighten relationships between structural and individual factors;…

Geraldine Clifford and James Guthrie's book "Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education" is reviewed. They concluded that no school of education has been able to maintain a central place within a distinguished American university. Their recommendation that education faculty ought to de-emphasize the social science research model is…