In 2000 the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University received an award to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of a mid-western state's prisoner education program in reducing the recidivism rates of respondents. As part of this evaluation, researchers held several focus groups with ex-inmates in order to determine how useful the…

Feminist approaches to therapy with adolescents emphasize an empowering focus on the strengths of adolescents while simultaneously insisting that therapists become aware of their own biases toward today's adolescents. However, a review of the family therapy literature finds little mention of feminist approaches for addressing injustices (e.g.,…

Postsecondary education is rapidly changing. Virtually every kind of institution aspires to higher status, major internal restructuring continues on many campuses, and expectations for faculty productivity keep rising. The academic gender gap for women in the professoriate is characterized by smaller salaries for comparable positions,…

Messages in the consumer culture are often youth oriented, aiming at the prevention of the bodily decay associated with biological aging. In gerontological discourses, this has been hypothesized to generate negative attitudes toward embodied aging and old age. Studies about general attitudes toward old age show that younger respondents have more…

Since World War II, American women have gained much greater access to higher education, with women now 56% of undergraduates, and approximately half of medical and law school students, as well as attaining 49% of PhD's. Despite their greater representation, women pursuing professional careers still experience considerable stress. At the…

This essay examines Susan Moller Okin's writing on conflicts between religious freedom and sex equality, and her criticism of "political liberal" approaches to these conflicts, which I take to be a part of her lifelong critique of the public-private distinction. I argue that, while Okin ultimately accepted a version of the distinction, she was…

Objective: Behavior disorders are more prevalent among boys than girls, but the etiology of this difference is unclear. Studies have not tested for sex bias in ratings as a contributing factor to the differential sex prevalence rates. However, there are several studies showing "negative halo effects" in ratings of boys (i.e., the presence of one…

In this review the author explores whether school management councils (SMCs) reproduce prevailing norms of social participation or serve as a lever for change by challenging these norms and creating opportunities for subdominant groups to participate, thus enabling parents to take part in decision-making. The analysis highlights examples from…

The vocational education and training (VET) sector has experienced substantial change in the past decade, characterised by ascendant industry-driven needs and mantras of flexibility and responsiveness. A number of public policies underpin these changes and simultaneously point to the need to manage diverse employing bodies, industry standards,…

This paper describes the use of a simple survey followed by discussion in an online sociology course to create a setting in which undergraduate students may learn about inequality from the study of everyday life. The method described in this paper relies on the common experience of a gendered household division of labor and on the use of…

Feminist analyses of the "chilly climate" have documented the ways in which women have been and continue to be marginalized within institutions of higher education. Yet there has been little attention to the relationship between the "chilly climate" and the lived experiences of particular populations in specific educational…

Years of conflict and instability have taken a heavy toll on education in Afghanistan. While the government rebuilds its public education system, formal schools fail to reach many of the country's children. Girls remain particularly underserved as a result of the looming effects of the Taliban's sanctions against educating women. Among the reasons…

This article is based on a textual analysis of European Commission documents that, from 1993 to 2006, construct the discourses of lifelong learning and the knowledge economy. Exploring an apparent conceptual laxity, it finds absolute consistency in the construction of two categories of learner: the high knowledge-skilled learner…

Kyrgyzstan, like other countries of the former Soviet Union, traditionally occupied a relatively high position in the world from the standpoint of the average level of education of its population. Any gender inequality when it came to obtaining an education was insignificant by international standards. However, the conversion to market relations,…

Three issues concerning the relationship between research and practice are addressed. (1) A certain "prototype mathematics classroom" seems to dominate the research field, which in many cases seems selective with respect to what practices to address. I suggest challenging the dominance of the discourse created around the prototype mathematics…