Teaching and learning English in the US are complex processes that are not explained by language theories or methods alone. Concepts such as the relationship between language majority groups and language minority groups, language status, immigration, economics, language planning, and policies add to the complexity of language-learning situations.…

In the mainstream discourse on child development and education, 'school readiness' has been conceptualized as the skills and knowledge that children need when they enter school in order to learn effectively in the school environment. However, school readiness is an idea which is entwined with our beliefs about child development and child needs (E.…

Discusses the two theories that have contributed most to the development of the mediational approach to learning, Vygotskian sociocultural theory and Feuerstein's theory of Mediated Learning Experience. Both theories emphasize the importance of sociocultural forces in shaping a child's development and learning, and have generated a number of…

Prevailing socioeducational models--liberal educational theory, human capital theory, and critical reproductive approaches--do not address Latin American realities related to the struggle for educational access by marginal groups, the role of technical scientific knowledge in economic growth and social power, and effects of social forces on…

Management science, as it has been defined in behavioral-structural frames in educational administration, cannot encompass the realm of leadership. The frames themselves eliminate that which is most important, that is, the interaction/communication of the idiosyncratic and complex personal/character/interpersonal dimensions between leaders and…

Many assumptions of career counseling theory are rooted in a society based on mass production in an urban-industrial structure. Rural areas have developed social and economic structures which differ from this norm, as do the meanings of career-related concepts held by rural residents. Career development theory must enlarge to apply to the…

This article reviews sociocultural, multicultural, and critical pedagogical theories and suggests that an adequate and sufficient theoretical framework for professional development in special education must explicitly and directly address issues of power, discrimination, and relative status that underlie dilemmas of practice. It offers vignettes…

Maintains that within the qualitative paradigm there are related approaches with distinct disciplinary and intellectual traditions. Examines three genres: (1) educational connoisseurship and criticism; (2) ethnography; and (3) action research. Asserts that understanding the assumptions, methods, and contributions of these genres can expand art…

The German sociologist and communication theorist Jurgen Habermas' theory of communication as it applies to the problems of developing nations takes into account both the structural factors that hinder indigenous development as well as the individual psychology of the citizens of the less-developed countries (LDC). This paper details the…