This paper is one of two which bring together leading educational researchers to consider some of the key challenges facing democracy and education during the twenty-first century, including rising social and economic inequality, political instability, and the existential threats of global pandemics and climate change. In this paper, key…

Underpinning many of the ongoing debates over the means and ends of teacher education are serious differences about the purposes of education in general and about the relationship between schooling and a democratic society in particular. At stake in these debates is the nature of what counts as "democracy," a word with multiple political meanings.…

Democratic schools are schools that result from explicit attempts by educators to put in place arrangements and opportunities that will bring democracy to life. These arrangements and opportunities involve two lines of work. One is to create democratic structures and processes by which life in school is carried out. The other is to create a…

This article combines discussions of the politics of education with personal story telling to remind us why the continuing struggle over schooling--over what is and is not taught, over how it is taught and evaluated, over how students with different characteristics are treated, over how teachers and other school employees are respectfully dealt…

Examines the complex ways that teachers experienced the September 11th attack, discussing its effects on pedagogy and on the urge to have schools participate in a complicated set of patriotic discourses and practices that swept the nation following the event. The paper asserts that educators must recognize their own contradictory responses to the…

Most educators in the United States have had to confront the changed reality brought about by the federal reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This represents a set of initiatives that can radically transform the federal role in policing and controlling core aspects of…

Neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups have become allies committed to redefining our ideas about democracy, equality, and the common good. This article examines how moral and biological arguments are being used to justify conservative policies in education and the larger society. Alternative progressive models are advocated. (26 references) (MLH)

This article describes and analyzes the encroachment of economic interests, ideologies, and procedures into the educational system, and discusses the impact of this encroachment on social equality in our society. (IAH)

The ideology behind the educational justifications for a national curriculum and national testing can damage members of society who have the most to lose. The paper analyzes the conservative agenda, discusses connections between national curricula and testing, increasing privatization, and choice plans, and notes resulting patterns of differential…

Situates the experience of Porto Alegre in the larger political and educational context of Brazil; presents normative goals of the Citizen School and examines the mechanisms that helped forge these goals; describes and explains some elements of the institutional design of the Citizen School; evaluates potential problems of the project; offers some…

Describes examples drawn mostly from urban areas that required the building of coalitions between schools and communities to create a new, more democratic context for curriculum development. Cited are the nationwide Vocational Education Project, the Southern Coalition for Educational Equity, and the "Rethinking Schools" progressive newsletter in…