This article explores how trust affects the nature and characteristics of civic engagement among university students in contemporary China. We draw upon empirical evidence from in-depth individual interviews involving 68 students born between 1993 and 1999. Four different types of civic activities, including associational membership with the…

This new analysis, which examines the political campaign contributions from those most active in education reform, finds that the movement is populated by individuals who support Democratic candidates for public office. The bottom line: The leading participants in the school-reform "wars" are mostly engaged in an intramural brawl, one…

In this article, we explore longitudinal video data from the student activist group Fossil Free UofT to analyze what it means to become politicized. We argue that politicization is a sociocultural learning process, not merely a process of conceptual development or cognitive change, but a simultaneous process of conceptual, practical,…

This research provides new evidence on the political activity and policy-setting agenda of the largest national teachers' union during a time of political change. Using a longitudinal dataset comprised of election outcomes and campaign contributions for all candidates for federal office and the National Education Association's (NEA) official…

This article studies variance in the political participation of adolescents depending on achievement in civic education. The aim is to discover whether low achievers represent a distinctive pattern of political participation, and whether this varies across participation types (i.e. horizontally) and across current participation in school and…

This article considers the nature and trajectory of the African National Congress's (ANC) education policy discourses from its founding in 1912, until its repatriation from exile by 1992. The broad issue that this article considers is how to explain why the ANC was inadequately prepared to address the educational challenges of a democratic South…

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

In this paper, the author outlines what No Child Left Behind policy might mean first in personal then in philosophical terms. First, the author will trace a bit of Obama's own educational development: how he was first set on a personal educational journey and how, proceeding along with that journey, he eventually came to successfully elicit…

The enormous changes that took place on American campuses during the 1960s not only opened those campuses to new constituencies and new ideas, but also created a powerful conservative movement that sought to reverse those changes. Along with the rising cost of higher education, the right's campaign against the academic reforms of the sixties has…

After nearly four decades of campaigning, faculty and academic staff union members across the University of Wisconsin (UW) System won the right to bargain collectively in June 2009 when the Governor signed legislation that modified state labor law. In this paper, I present historical and interdisciplinary analyses of the organizational structures…

In this essay, the author examines the digital circulations of representations of one Afghan women's rights organization--the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)--to demonstrate the importance of a global and digital field for feminist rhetorical analysis. Specifically, this analysis traces how women's self-representations are…

The history of the sixties at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is both typical of other large universities in the United States and, at the same time, distinctive within the national and even international upheaval that marked the era. Madison's history shows how higher education transformed in the decades after World War II, influenced…

This article examines how students from different class backgrounds at vastly different colleges interpret the role of social class in their past and future. It begins with a review of previous research findings based on freshmen and sophomore year interviews (2002-2004) with three groups of students: low income students at a state college; low…

A plea is made for teachers to become politically active participants in the 1980 state and federal elections. Support of the incumbent President is suggested. (LH)

Revision of paper read at the American Sociological Association Meeting, Denver, Colorado, August 1971. (NQ)