What roles can and should teachers' unions play in the deliberations, debates, and conflicts over school reform in a time when education sits at the center of so much of our economic, political, ideological, and cultural tensions? Lois Weiner's new book, "The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice," speaks…

Handbooks denote representative authority, which gives their content normative value and through which editors and authors can emphasize certain views and orientations within a field. The representative authority of a handbook is reinforced in various ways, both obvious and subtle. The "SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction" is no exception…

This article presents a review of five chapters in "Part III, Section F: Inquiring into Curriculum" of "The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction" (F. M. Connelly, M. F. He, J. I. Phillion, Eds.; Sage Publications, 2008). These chapters ["Part III: Curriculum in Theory. Introductory Essay" (William H. Schubert. pp. 391-398); "Curriculum…

Reviews a collection of essays dedicated to MIT philosopher Sylvain Bromberger by his colleagues in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The prominent viewpoint emanating from these essays is one of nostalgia. (14 references) (CK)

Reviews a collection of articles written on Noam Chomsky. The collection consists of four volumes focusing on Linguistics, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Chomsky's impact on contemporary thought relative to disciplines influenced by generative grammar. (36 references) (CK)

Based on the premise that the most viable form of discovery for the ethnographer is the personal essay--which has been called "the expression of the self thinking" (Alfred Kazin) or writing as learning and thinking--this paper examines the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz in the light of that definition. Particular attention is…

Paper reviews a book of essays on interpretive approaches to educational policy making. The essays are categorized as mythological/practical, evolutionary/transformational, and normative/critical. Though the quality of the essays varies, the book is seen as useful as an introductory textbook for senior undergraduate courses in interpretive…

Reviews: a volume of 11 essays on the history of Sheldon Jackson Museum and its Eskimo, Aleut, Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida collections; and a book analyzing the geometric design, technique, and imagery of 15 "raven's tail robes," early Northwest Coast textiles predating the more familiar Chilkat blankets. (SV)

Reviews "Written Language Assessment" (WLA), a new standardized test to evaluate children's and adolescents' written language competence by having students write essays instead of answer multiple choice questions. Finds problems with the WLA in terms of interrater reliability. (RS)

In "The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies," pseudo-scholarly essays compiled by anthropologist James A. Clifton attack many recently emerged truths about Native America. Core essays dispute any legitimacy in Indian land claims, efforts toward self-determination, or attempts to publicize what has been done to…

The nine essays of this anthology attempt to apply some ideas of the French philosopher/historian Michel Foucault (1926-84) to past and present school practice. However, to follow Foucault's lead is to risk embracing a state of perpetual uncertainty about the fabrication of knowledge and power. (SLD)

Eighty-three Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) writing prompts administered via computer-based testing between July 1998 and August 2000 were examined for differences attributable to the response mode (handwriting or word processing) chosen by examinees. Differences were examined statistically using polytomous logistic regression. A…

Reviews Deborah Tannen's collection of essays, "Gender and Discourse." The review maintains that this collection is padded with anecdotes but provides little evidence of the research supposedly underlying this work. It is concluded that what is needed in a discussion of gender and discourse is a methodology in which linguistic features…

Paper reviews a collection of essays on the experiences of beginning teachers. The essays were written mainly by English and elementary school teachers after many years of successful teaching. All of the authors became effective career teachers. The authors write about the rewards of affecting and changing lives. (SM)

Clifton's collection of essays attacks recent pro-Indian "fictions" (including Native spirituality and the relationship between the Iroquois League and the U.S. Constitution) as politically motivated romanticism and nonsense. The authors are struggling to maintain white intellectual authority over definitions of Indian identity and interpretations…