This article presents an understanding of the context, nature and significance of Mary Gurney's educational career during the years 1863 to 1917. It is assisted in part by the conceptual lenses of feminist thinking and network theory. Despite neglect by past historians, Gurney's work was seen by contemporaries as equal in significance to that of…

This article introduces and explores the concept of the deficit aesthetic. Particular attention is given to how the deficit aesthetic was made and the extent to which it continues to be sustained in early art education, especially in the United States. For many children, particularly at this time, the deficit aesthetic factors as yet another…

The long history of Montessori education in India dates to 1915, and it was expanded through Maria and Mario Montessori's work in India between 1939 to 1946 and 1947 to 1949. The article characterizes a century of Montessori education in India as a series of "adapted, competing, and contested framings" with key disputes over Montessori…

In 2014, the popular conversation about safe space in the classroom tended to mock marginalized students seeking protection. Nearly a decade later, the discourse has become protectionist toward majority students allegedly discriminated against by being informed that they benefit from racism, sexism and heterosexism. What, then, does it mean to…

Some historians still hold back from assigning literature out of concern for historical accuracy, but using fiction and popular culture is no longer unusual and, if anything, using novels may be seen as outdated in some circles. The author suggests that one way to reinvigorate the use of the novel when teaching history is to center a class on only…

It has been more than 50 years since Clay (1966) first introduced the concepts about print (CAP). Emergent readers, aged 4-5, must acquire an understanding of basic and hierarchical concepts of letters, words, and sentences; they must also learn basic knowledge about texts and books; they must develop an awareness of book orientation,…

Pursuing a college degree--and the open future for young adults it is believed to secure--anchors what it means to be middle class in the United States today. Acting on the conviction that the rising generation can and should do better than their parents is a middle-class inheritance, and getting young adults to and through college is at the heart…

This chapter describes the community college challenge to support all learners to succeed in college and enter the middle class as citizens, parents, and workers.

In the two decades following World War II, a loose network of home economists at colleges and universities across the United States turned their attention to homemaking methods for women with physical disabilities. Often in consultation with physically disabled homemakers, these home economists researched and designed assistive devices, adaptive…

Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But David Labaree makes a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are built within a liberal democratic system, where the liberal pursuit of self-interest is often in tension with…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students everywhere are exhibiting gaps in their social-emotional development. Dance advocates propose the prioritization of dance classes as a way to facilitate social-emotional learning. This essay examines the logic behind these advocacy efforts, but also cautions readers that social-emotional learning, even in the…

The purpose of the paper is to develop the theory that structural or procedural changes in institutions precede changes in education in a society. It examines the development of pre-modern institutions in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and the influences this had on growth in literacy rates within these states. Literacy rates in…

The transformation of teacher education programs is needed. To be authentic and sustainable, efforts at transformation need to be grounded in shifting power and policy making away from just the university to shared decision making among stakeholders. This paper examines what are seen as first steps towards this objective. The effort described here…

In this memoir, I accounted several episodes of my childhood of a middle class family in early 1990s in a Chinese urban city. Two major discourses permeated my account: the nationalism and socialism discourse and the upward social mobility discourse. While my family and I cherish the comfort and joy of everyday life enjoyed in the era of…

Various sociological perspectives have been applied to facilitate school choice research over the past two decades, as showcased in this "2020 Yearbook of Politics of Education Association." Among them, Pierre Bourdieu's concepts and theories stand out as a catalyst for the field's sociological development. My first objective in this…