Maintains that Schorr's provocative book omits consideration of the basic question raised: whether the social reform the book seeks is possible without a sea change in national politics. Suggests that the book's insights should spur policy makers, nonprofit sector leaders, agency officials, community builders, and philanthropists to use resources…

Analyzes political and economic context for divergent paths of two key education curriculum reform documents in New Zealand. Contrasts a centrally controlled, subject-based, achievement-oriented curriculum for compulsory education with a child-oriented, thematic, experimental curriculum for early childhood education. Suggests some reasons for the…

In this article we analyse the role given to education and training by policy-makers in France and Britain from 1980 onwards, in relation to their overall chosen economic (and social) strategies, and highlight conjunctions between education, exchange-rate regimes, and the level of economic openness. Britain opted for a monetarist route against…

Movements to reform teacher education are underway in many parts of the world, including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. These attempts at reform are motivated by various forces, but appear to reflect an international convergence toward uniformity, conformity, and compliance. Our purpose here is to analyze the forces and contradictions…

With special reference to the People's Republic of China (PRC), this paper examines relationships between law, education reform and social transformation that have been under-researched. The argument is that, despite national leaders' high expectations, the use of law to effect or consolidate educational reform in the PRC is affected by both legal…

Quietly, without attracting too much attention from educational sociologists in Europe, a massive process has been underway for five years that is expected to revolutionize European higher education to an unprecedented extent. Launched by a number of European governments and subsequently taken over by the European Commission, the so-called Bologna…

Creativity in human endeavours is being discussed and promoted in many fields and venues throughout the Western world. In this paper I discuss reasons for the current emphasis on creativity, especially in music education. I also describe some philosophical, psychological, cultural, and political/social/economic factors that have worked for and…

This article is a collage of ideas and thoughts born out of a contrapuntal reading of the effects of colonial imagination and postcolonial conditions on educational practice in the Caribbean. It is an article which sustains a pedagogy of hope and which uses the epistemological space of academic writing for conceptualizing postcoloniality as an…

This article focuses on the latest developments in higher educational policy in the Russian Federation and the influence of international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on these policies and education reforms. This article's primary purpose is to explore how the newly…

Three papers are included herein: (1) Pernicious Politicization in Academe (Luann Wright); (2) Victims of the One-Sided Campus (Mike Ratliff); and (3) Advocacy in the College Classroom (Anne D. Neal). Each paper was delivered on April 22, 2006 at a California Association of Scholars conference at the Annenberg School on the campus of the…

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to examine the process of transformation of education in the Czech Republic since the Velvet Revolution of 1989; and (2) to examine this experience within the framework of the educational change and reform literature, especially the work of Michael Fullan, to determine its utility within a Central European…

This book brings together ideas and strategies of prominent advocates of school reform. Discussing their experiences, especially in urban schools, in forming coalitions, framing court cases, and dealing with state politics in New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Alabama, Kentucky, and Washington, the contributors to this collection explore what…

Focusing on whether and how research actually contributes to the formation of public policy, this paper explores the critical problems in the linkage between science production and the systems that formulate educational policy. The authors suggest that the utilization of social research is limited more by problems of integrating research into the…

Educational planning is presently confronted by an identity crisis. As long as it was believed that educational expansion was a principal ingredient for securing economic growth, democratic political processes, and greater equality of economics and social participation, the tenets and practice of educational planning were rarely questioned.…

"Politics" is used in a broad sense to refer to the social, economic, political, and civil forces that impinge on the publicly financed school system. These forces are generated both from outside and inside the educational system. It is the author's view that the big cities and the school systems of most of these cities are in just enough trouble…