Comparative education lacks engagement with central theoretical debates about culture, current in anthropology. Recentered discourse on culture would recognize cultural inquiry's value, particularly for destabilizing taken-for-granted categories and truths. At the same time, comparative education might benefit from deeper critical engagement with…

In a course entitled "Field Methods for the Study of Education," three themes dominate: professionalism, Darwinian methodology, and application. Unifying these are the notions that the proper use of theory is critical to good ethnography and the natural history/Darwinian paradigm is the central core of the anthropological, ethnological…

This book presents six critical commentaries on the state of the discipline and practice of adult education. "The Critical Turn in Adult Education Theory" (Michael R. Welton) takes the position that the critical theoretical tradition from Marx to Habermas can provide a foundation for an emancipatory educational practice.…

By examining assumptions which comprise traditional sociological thought, problems, and criticisms of sociological practice, and current issues of feminist sociology, the document investigates ways in which sociology can be transformed to include feminist perspectives. Following a rationale for reformulating fundamental assumptions of sociology to…

Explores two dichotomies that depict moral education and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the four principal orientations to moral education. Provides an integrated theory of moral education that incorporates both sides of each dichotomy providing necessary dimensions to research, theory, and practice of moral education. (Author/DB)

Investigates the development of a perception of values in childhood. Perception of values is defined as being different than those of morality and conventions. Responses to seven scenarios are analyzed. Concludes that there is a distinct concept of values among children and that the instinct for this increases with age. (KO)

Aspects of the social theory of J. Habermas with implications for education are reviewed. Habermas had influenced thinking about pedagogical and administrative theory and about the societal role of education and educational practices. According to Habermas, critical social science requires mastery of the analytic and interpretive sciences, not…

Maintains that accounts of education policy in post-1945 Great Britain may be distorted by the race and ethnic discourses embedded in both the analytical frameworks that historians employ and the primary source materials with which they work. Criticizes a number of key works from the 1960s to the present. (MJP)

It is perhaps too easy to suggest that rurality in educational terms has been largely missing from the pages of educational research texts. A search of the past few AARE annual conference papers throws up few papers on this topic; although an issue of "Australian Journal of Education" includes a paper on long-staying rural teachers (Boylan &…

The locus of control in teacher education has been outside the hands of those who educate our nation's teachers for more than a century. Essentialists have long controlled the agenda for public schooling in America, and it is evident as well that their influence has prevailed in both the form and function of teacher education. The authors suggest…

Reviews historical and ideological roots that developed the teaching profession as a proper role for women. Includes research from a current study investigating the importance of domesticity in the personal and professional attitudes of male and female teachers and the general population of the state of Oklahoma. Includes 13 tables of data. (MD)

The sociocultural paradigm in educational research, emphasizing the situatedness of learning and the embeddedness of thought in cultural and linguistic practices, has called into question the plausibility of the enterprise of teaching general thinking skills. In this paper I argue that the sociocultural research programme needs an adequate…

This examination of the reproduction of cultural norms focuses on ways in which the hidden curriculum facilitates cultural reproduction. The conceptual framework outlined in this paper emerged from a five-month observation study of a tenth-grade social studies class located in a predominantly working-class school. During the on-going data…

Examines factors that contribute to changes in teachers over time and the meanings that teachers attach to such factors. Indicates, among other things, that students have a humanizing effect on teachers. Qualitative data are discussed in terms of Turner's theoretical discussion of self and symbolic interaction theory. (TRS)

This study examined how the promotion of choice in three schools affected the structure of early adolescent peer culture. The very structure of the roles and incentive systems in the schools, by failing to address the social context of individualism, fostered an ethos of possessive individualism. (RM)