Critically oriented forms of discourse analysis have focused largely on oppression and injustice. Signaling a new turn in the field, scholars have called for an analytic focus on moments of liberation and agency, referring to this orientation as "positive discourse analysis" (PDA). In this research, we turn our attention to a case study of agency…

Early on in her first tenure-track job at Michigan State University, in the late 1970s, the author happened to be riding the same train from Lansing, Michigan, to Chicago as the department chair who hired her, Alan Hollingsworth, who had since become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. It had taken her three years to land a tenure-track…

This article provides a critical analysis of the political significance of role modelling as it relates to envisaging a critical multicultural approach to educational reform. While not rejecting role modelling outright, it calls for a commitment to questioning the limits of common sense understandings that underpin the logic of gender and racial…

This study addresses how the autonomy of teachers in higher education, in relation to education policy and reform, can be understood. By taking a narrative-in-action approach, we studied health profession teachers' activities and reasoning within their ongoing practice during one year. The findings show how the teachers created their own policies…

President Obama sparked much debate in Washington with his plan to grant states waivers from provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), conditional on their willingness to embrace certain reform proposals sketched out in the administration's March 2010 proposal, "A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and…

This paper explores societal perceptions of a child's disability and bilingualism through the author's observations and reflections. Drawing from the observations of the child in different public schools in the United States, the author shares how the child has been viewed differently and similarly by school personnel. By reflecting on different…

The article discusses the issue of how to represent teachers' stories and narratives in the arena of performance management. It is argued that at a time when "teachers" voices are being enthusiastically pursued and promoted, teachers' work is being technisized and narrowed" (Goodson, 1998). Arguably, teachers' knowledge regarding their work…

This qualitative study explores the perceived impact of college-going capital gained during participation in a college access program. In three, semistructured interviews spanning the first-year college experience, 10 first-year college students who participated in a college access program articulate the value of access programming and also raise…

By exploring "the trumpet" as a metaphor, a successful mid-career instrumental teacher and a teacher educator jointly conducted a narrative inquiry into pedagogy used with a high school composition class. In particular, they focused on the dilemmas that arose when, within this class setting, the instrumental teacher implemented informal…

Reflecting on a personal journey as a geography student, an academic, an educator and a teacher trainer, the article provides a critical narrative of the state of school geography in Singapore and argues that its development has remained relevant to the changing issues at a global level. Using personal reflections and document analyses, school…

This narrative study is based on stories told by African American adolescents experiencing homelessness. It offers insights into their lived experiences and describes the challenges faced in negotiating the urban education system. African American youth are disproportionately represented in the adolescent homeless demographic. "Unheard and…

The number of Black women in the academy is small. Further, that number decreases as the academic and administrative ranks increase. Yet, these scholars and social agents play roles vital to education. This reflective essay describes the experiences of three Black female scholars at Predominately White Institutions. Using personal narratives as an…

This paper presents and discusses the results of a research project in Education Sciences, which aimed at identifying and understanding the effects of in-service teacher education carried out in schools, on the educational practices of a school of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (CBE). The training was organized with small project groups…

This paper challenges the celebratory uptake of human rights education (HRE) in postcolonial contexts by making visible the ideological and political entanglements of the discourse with neoliberal assumptions of citizenship. I draw evidence from, and critically reflect on, a specific HRE programme--a series of summer camps for girls entitled,…

Recent international education trends have witnessed a widespread push for promoting Western-originating "learner-centred" approaches, often without adequately considering the challenges involved in crossing cultures. Like many developing countries, India has been attempting to bring a paradigm shift from "teacher-centred" to…