Examines causes, strategies, and dynamics of U.S. excellence-era educational reforms, assessing economic, social, and political reform pressures. Examines major governmental, professional, citizen, and market policies promulgated across three promising, if problematic, reform periods characterized as intensification, restructuring, and reformation…

Culture represents the complex of social, emotional, intellectual, physical, and personal factors that individuals use to create meaning. When these are missing from instructional materials, achievement may be imperiled. Examples of how cultural variables can be incorporated into instructional decisions are presented to illustrate the potential…

The study examines how social and cultural factors mediate the teaching and learning of science in an Australian high school. Grade 10 students, many of them new migrants, often transient and from circumstances of economic hardship, were taught a 5-week unit on chemistry by a teacher with social and cultural histories similar to those of most of…

This article reports on the extensive qualitative and quantitative findings of a multi-method participatory study designed to assess urban and suburban youths' experiences of racial class justice or injustice in their schools and throughout the nation. Constructed as a letter to Zora Neale Hurston, who was immediately critical of the Brown…

This paper is intended to present a review of the literature on the socialization and teacher expectations of Jamaican boys, as well as an examination of how teachers are being prepared to address the gender issues that are implied. It is also hoped that this article can contribute to the search for possible policies and pedagogical strategies…

With the increase in state-mandated high-stakes testing across the USA, schools and school districts are considering ways of increasing instructional time for core curricular subjects such as mathematics, science, English, and social studies. One seemingly logical approach to improving test scores is to reduce the time spent in subjects that are…

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview and analysis of attitudes of Israeli K-12 educators and bible teachers toward religious studies. Teachers' attitudes toward bible teaching as a mandatory subject are, on the whole, positive throughout the country. The present study addresses the absence of systematic research into the opinions…

This paper explores the changing nature of expectations for teachers in British Columbia from the first formal teacher examinations to the present day. The 130 years can be broken down into five reasonably distinct time periods, each of which had different ideas of what constituted right-minded teachers. Discussing how succeeding generations have…

Since the end of the 1980s, education in Russia has been characterized by changes that were qualified as "reform" at first and then, later, as "modernization." These changes have been going on against the background of the profound transformation of society, one aspect of which is the transition from a relatively cohesive…

This article provides a brief review of the literature on the legal, social, and racial factors that affect and describe minority confinement in the juvenile justice system. To identify appropriate literature, the authors searched electronic resources through the University of Maryland library research system called Research Port. The findings in…

This article, based on work funded by the American Association of University Women, examines how personal and environmental factors shape non-college attendees' decisions to forgo college directly after high school. Group interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 48 racially diverse recent high school graduates (27 men and 21 women) who…

Understanding the history of cooperative efforts among blacks and whites for the social and economic advancement of African Americans and the development of harmony and fellowship in various religious communities has the potential to inspire good race relations in contemporary America. The book is organized around major themes that have been…

In this book the authors note that for too long teachers have been at the mercy of government programmes, which have emphasized the acquisition of literacy as a set of skills. They suggest that an exciting new theory coming out of the New Literacy Studies actually helps students to access literacy skills. They attempt to bridge the gap between…

Research into children's measurement conceptions is discussed, presenting a review of the literature in the field that includes studies conducted by J. Piaget and his colleagues and training programs that have been designed to support the development of measurement skills. This literature is used as a background to argue that new investigations…

Presents the case study of an online conference for students of English in a teacher education course. Argues electronic conferencing reveals the inadequacy of the concept of "reflective practitioner" to describe and analyze the complex process of teacher development. Demonstrates the social character of learning, highlighting the place…