Democratic education and the dignity it affords should create opportunities for students to achieve their most desired outcomes. Some of the current thought and rhetoric in the field of special education and disability studies impinges upon these opportunities by approaching the education of children with autism and other developmental…

Educational agencies are going through a difficult transition, with important consequences in terms of de-legitimacy of the social mandate historically assigned to the school. The reason for this widespread unease can be traced to the fact that today we live in a complex system. This paper arises within this problematic framework with the intent…

The focus of this article centers on three specific themes of disruption that are likely to affect the future of Christian higher education. The first theme examines the juxtaposition of faith-based institutional identity and its influence on a post-modern society. The second theme explores the disaggregation of traditional faculty functions and…

The negative emotional affects of standardized teaching and learning abound in public schools and work to create a melancholic, shared reality for teachers and students. The authors argue that teachers and students must acknowledge this melancholy and pursue shared inquiry around those emotions in order to help bring about understanding and the…

Making classes larger saves money--and public universities across the country have found it a useful strategy to balance their budgets after decades of state funding cuts and increases to infrastructure costs. Where this author teaches, in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Northridge (CSUN),…

This article explores the merits, possibilities and difficulties of making intra and trans-disciplinary"border crossings" essentially of an ideational kind. Drawing ideas from complexity literature, the article lauds the potential of "concept studies" as means of making such crossings and addressing enduring issues (e.g., of…

We argue the emergence of a shift in U.S. language education policy discourses from an equity/heritage (EH) framework focused on equity for English learners and non-English heritage languages, toward a global human capital (GHC) framework linked to neoliberal considerations of the language skills of individuals and nations. This discursive shift…

Elective Home Education is a legal, minority approach to the compulsory education of children. I review the potential contribution of the historical analysis of "domestic pedagogies", presented in this Special Issue, for home education practice in the UK. By drawing on narratives of a period at the cusp of the perceived normalcy of…

In discussing personal stances professionals might take towards their practice, Hoyle contrasts two orientations that can be placed at the ends of a continuum. The first pole, the so-called "restricted" stance, is characterised by teachers relying principally on experience and intuition, and focusing on daily classroom practicalities.…

The writing of this essay coincided with the author's first meeting as a member of the newly established Task Team for the Council on Higher Education (CHE)--an advisory body to the national Ministry of Education--to review the state of higher education in South Africa over the past twenty years since its transition to a post-apartheid society.…

In this reflective essay I examine the activity of a bus tour, organized as the result of an ongoing university and city partnership. I illustrate how riding the bus is not only symbolic for positionality in our society, but also how it can be a viable mechanism for initiating boundary spanning and promoting opportunities for place-based learning…

The inclusion of students with autism and other special needs into the general education curriculum continues to be a challenging process for school communities in the United States of America (US) and, increasingly, abroad. Although inclusion continues to be a challenging process for those involved, the global demand is growing. Traditionally,…

Does gifted education affect societal inequality, and does societal inequality suppress and/or distort the development of high ability? Drawing from several academic disciplines and current political discourse, a differentiated use of terms used to describe the highly able is explored in this article. A social evolutionary framework is proposed as…

Substance use and abuse are problematic in the lives of adolescents, including interpersonal problems and scholastic problems. Risk for substance use has commonly been assessed at the individual level. This paper examines risk of adolescent substance abuse as a variable impacted by environmental or contextual factors surrounding the individual.…

With its October 2014 day-long conference on competency-based education and Higher Education Innovation Challenge (HEIC), the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) is creating a space in which New England states and institutions can wrestle with the critical issues driven by abundant information. The HEIC lists multiple areas where the…