Context: Networks are seen as important vehicles for educators' professional development because they provide opportunities for educators to develop their teaching and leadership capacities and establish forums for educator resistance. Networks that also function as intermediary organizations provide spaces in which educators and network leaders…

Background/Context: Twenty percent of first-year students in public 4-year institutions and 42% of first-year students in public 2-year institutions in the United States enroll in remedial courses. Yet despite widespread remediation across U.S. colleges and universities, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about how remedial courses develop…

This article draws from a case study investigating the organizational characteristics of a college preparatory charter high school and the impact of that college preparatory climate on the postsecondary plans of the school's graduating classes. Although charters provide local communities with alternatives to existing educational institutions, many…

Educational reform literature is filled with criticism of the omniscient tone that teachers and textbooks assume in history classrooms. Such widely acknowledged criticism often accompanies calls for more ambitious pedagogy. The focus on teachers and texts essentially ignores the ritualized and traditional deference that students afford to the…

Background/Context: Despite recent gains from a number of students in U.S. schools, African American males continue to underachieve on most academic indices. Despite various interventions that have attempted to transform the perennial disenfranchisement, their school failure has persisted. Conversely, their failure in schools frequently results in…

Background/Context: Considerable controversy surrounds the issue of whether high-stakes statewide accountability programs have led to more equitable educational opportunities for all students. Some researchers suggest that these programs have focused attention on improving the achievement of students of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds.…

Background/Context: Recent sociocultural studies of detracking describe the ways in which notions of ability--local understandings of students' intellectual capacities--are at play in these settings, shaping both the politics and the practice of the reform. This study extends this examination into the classrooms of detracking schools. Purpose:…

Background/Context: School tracking practices have been documented repeatedly as having negative effects on students' identity development and attainment, particularly for those students placed in lower tracks. Despite this documentation, tracking persists as a normative practice in American high schools, perhaps in part because we have few models…

Background: Educational research shows differences in experience, access, and outcomes across racial groups with some groups advantaged and others disadvantaged. One of the concepts used to explain racial differences, racialization, is a taken-for-granted term that is yet to be fully defined in the context of the school. We differentiate the term…

Background/Context: Theorists of civil society often view civil society as a site for democratic education. Civil society is supposed to assist democratic practice by offering people contexts in which they practice promoting the common good. This article, following Nina Eliasoph's intervention, takes this to be a claim requiring ethnographic…

Background: Alternative teacher certification has become an increasingly popular strategy for addressing both teacher quality and teacher shortages. However, there is little agreement about what constitutes alternative certification, and there is little known about the types of programs that prepare highly qualified teachers. The debate over…

Background/Context: Responding to the challenges of the demographic imperative and calls for greater program coherence, social justice teacher education programs aim to integrate social justice in the professional preparation of teachers. Such programs intend to improve the preparation of teachers to teach students from diverse backgrounds, and in…

Background/Context: Given resistance to detracking and the need for strong professional development to support teachers that detracking research documents, it is interesting that little research has focused on teachers' perspectives in the context of professional development. This study addresses this gap in the literature by closely considering…

Background/Context: School districts are responsible for helping schools improve learning for students. However, many district initiatives conflict with each other or with existing instructional practices in schools. Recent research on urban school reform points to the value of program coherence in sustaining school change. Our paper addresses an…

This instrumental collective case study provides an in-depth description of the change that transpired in two multiple intelligence (MI) based graduate-level teacher preparation courses. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. Implications for MI in teacher education are discussed.