Used Tennessee Project STAR data to examine the impact of the duration of participation in small classes on K-3 students' later school performance. Year in which students started and number of years they participated in small classes were important mediators of benefits gained. Starting early and continuing for at least 3 years were necessary to…

Background: Scholars are bringing much-needed attention to the persistent problem of academic underachievement among African American children in the United States, who continue to lag behind White school children in all socioeconomic groups. This is especially true of impoverished African Americans. Although some link these outcomes to poor…

All educational authority is not contained within the schoolyard fence. Education and re-education are processes in which the authority underlying not just knowledge of things, but value orientations and even self-identity, should be created by communities that are much more enclusive than the profession of education. (CB)

Background/Context: While the arts are being elbowed out of school curricula, new community-based education venues for the arts are emerging in cities across the country. This article describes Richard Hugo House, an arts center for creative writing in Seattle, which attracts people of different ages and sociocultural backgrounds who participate…

Background/Context: There is much literature that examines how the desegregation literature had implications for majority teachers and its impact on students of color. However, little has been written about the experiences of teachers of color working in suburban desegregated majority schools. Focus of Study: This article examines how intergroup…

This article argues that the promotion of cognitive development in children is a heavily value-laden enterprise and that educators need to understand this so they can value and nurture an appropriate diversity of competencies in children. Nine claims about values and cognitive development are considered. (MT)

Child care and early childhood education should be fully integrated. The roots and consequences of the current separation are examined. A description is provided of the Kramer Project, a day care school. Obstacles to fully integrated day care and educational services are discussed. (IAH)

This study uses a poststructural analysis to explicate the social production of Whiteness in a college classroom. Whiteness scholars define Whiteness as reference to a set of locations that are historically, socially, politically, and culturally produced, and intrinsically linked to relations of domination. Using this framework of social…

This study explored the impact of attending a 2-year (vs. a 4-year) institution on African American male students' academic and social integration experiences in the first year of college. Descriptive and multivariate analyses of the 1996/1998 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study showed that African American males attending 4-year…

Background/Context: Policy documents such as Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB] (2001) direct schools and school systems to funnel resources to students based on their socioeconomic and linguistic status, as well as according to performance on standardized measures of achievement. Such conversations in the US about serving "at…

Background/Context: Bullying within schools continues despite thoughtful and well-researched anti-bullying strategies deployed against it. The bulk of research targeted toward understanding and eradicating bullying within schools is of an empirical nature. In other words, through data collection, questionnaires, interviews, ethnography,…

Research in the area of educational technology has often been critiqued for a lack of theoretical grounding. In this article we propose a conceptual framework for educational technology by building on Shulman's formulation of "pedagogical content knowledge" and extend it to the phenomenon of teachers integrating technology into their pedagogy.…

A review is presented of the legacy of Lester Frank Ward, widely recognized as the architect of environmentalism in American pedagogy and the creator of some of the most fundamental ideas about American curriculum. (CB)

Teachers are in the awkward position of exercising authority, yet have dubious control over the conditions within which they do so. The ideal teacher role is authority exercised in good faith and a commitment to the burdens and uncertainties of educational authority. (CB)

The problematic relationship of knowledge and social-political power, as it affects the standings and justification of educational authority, is probed. Ways in which knowledge claims may legitimately support some forms of authority in practice are discussed. (CB)