Background: Literacy-rich environments (LREs) reflect characteristics such as abundance of materials, daily literacy routine, and layout conducive for reading and writing. Shifting from previous conceptualizations, LREs are not confined to schools but are ubiquitous in formal and informal educational settings; they include libraries, museums,…

Background/Context: Little research has been done on higher education for women during the 1930s, even though scholars have pointed to this period as a turning point because the proportion of female students declined during this decade. The decline was only relative, however, as men's enrollments skyrocketed while women's increased more slowly.…

Background/Context: Though change is constant in organizations, determining how to successfully implement planned change has been a perennial challenge for both organizational scholars and practitioners. While the empirical knowledge base on planned change in schools and other organizations offers numerous insights, the inattention to activity, or…

Background/Context: The central role of hope in teaching has long been acknowledged by authors such as Sonia Nieto and Larry Cuban, but hope has received little focused attention from scholars. While books such as David Halpin's Hope and Education and Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy's John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope each…

Background/Context: Prior work on Hannah Arendt and education has focused on democratic education, multicultural education, and conservatism in education. Most of these studies have concentrated on her essay, "The Crisis in Education." While this study extends that work, it does so by taking up the lesser studied but equally relevant piece,…

Background/Context: The academic success and failure of low-income youth, and Black and Latina/o youth in particular, has received significant attention in the educational literature, particularly in relation to school dropout. Over the last decade, several studies have demonstrated that student-teacher relationships, committed teachers, and…

Background/Context: Financial aid is a critical policy lever for increasing college access, choice, and attainment. Even with the substantial investment in financial aid programs, however, inadequate financial resources continue to limit postsecondary educational attainment. The persistence of financial barriers despite the substantial annual…

Background/Context: If education centrally involves self-cultivation, and the teacher's own robust selfhood is necessary for inspiring self-cultivation in students, then teacherly self-cultivation is a necessary condition of education. But teaching is seen as a helping profession, where helping others always seems, in practice if not in principle,…

Background/Context: Research is presented on teacher-centered instruction and individual differences among students within a sociocultural perspective specifically, within a co-regulation model. Purpose of Study: To determine the utility of a co-regulation model for understanding teacher and student adaptation to the press of cultural and social…

Background/Context: Digital media seem to pervade all aspects of American youth's lives, from communicating with friends and family to learning about the world around them. Many educators and scholars celebrate the new opportunities for learning that Web 2.0 tools present, and empirical evidence suggests that computer-mediated communication…

Background/Context: Parents, policymakers, and researchers uphold that missing school has negative implications on schooling success, particularly for students in urban schools. However, it has thus far been an empirical challenge within educational research to estimate the true effect that absences have on achievement outcomes. This study…

Background/Context: This article is part of a special issue on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, "The Crisis in Education" and her book The Human Condition. Despite the proliferation of books and articles on Arendt's work since the mid-90s, "The Crisis in Education" does not figure all that much in writing on…

Background/Context: The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, "The Crisis in Education" and in facing the current transformation of public policy into "new public management." Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Based on Arendt's essay,…

Background/Context: The fulfillment of academic potential is an underdeveloped area of inquiry as it relates to explaining racial differences in academic outcomes. Examining this issue is important for addressing not only differences in the typical outcomes for African American and White students but also the severe underrepresentation of African…

Background/Context: Over the last three decades, considerable attention has been given to the social and educational conditions of Black males. Such observations have led to the accusation that Black males are "in crisis." Although such pronouncements call national attention to the needs of Black males, these discourses have helped to normalize…