Alfredo Vea Jr.'s 1993 novel "La Maravilla" depicts a 1950s squatter community on the edge of Phoenix. The community, Buckeye Road, questions notions of U.S. American identity as middle-class, WASP, and heterosexual. Buckeye can easily be viewed as a romanticized utopia that offers an alternative to consumer capitalism, urban sprawl, the…

Recent reexaminations of adolescent literacy have expanded previous cognitive psychological models of reading to include views of the social and cultural aspects of literacy. The term critical literacy refers to approaches that focus on the social forces that influence the creation and interpretation of texts. When applied to the study of literary…

This article presents the author's comments on ""Lake Woebegone," Twenty Years Later" by J. J. Cannell, MD. J. J. Cannell's article on the so-called "Lake Woebegone" effect for K-12 educational testing systems is mostly an historical account of technical issues and policy considerations that led in part to development…

The issue of whether professional social workers make better child welfare workers than nonsocial workers is a considerably complex one. Simply determining better is itself a difficult undertaking. For example, does better mean reduced turnover among professionally trained social worker child welfare specialists, or should it mean better outcomes…

This article presents the author's rejoinder on commentaries of his article which illustrate the variety of perspectives with which people approach poverty measurement issues. Some of the comments highlight the theoretical concerns underpinning poverty measurement efforts, whereas others focus on empirical considerations. As a social scientist,…

This is a reply to Mark C. Schug and Richard D. Western's article "The Homeless Social Studies Teacher: How Muzak Progressivism Has Harmed Social Studies Education." The Schug and Western article breaks down into three distinct sections: (1) a quasi-satirical analogy of teaching to tax accounting; (2) a description of the problems of progressive…

This paper discusses aspects of Andrew Wright's version of a liberal, critical religious education and his criticisms of some other views of modern religious education. This is attempted not by examining these "other views" as such but by concentrating on the work of John Hick. The reason for this is that Wright, like Cooling (in his…

Phelan (2000) has produced a complex bibliometric analysis of the international contribution of Australian educational research based upon publications and citations reported in the journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information--the Standard & Poors of the academic world. This paper examines Phelan's analysis, showing its…

This article contends that the modern descendant of B. F. Skinner's experimental analysis of behavior, "behavior analysis," and as well his 1957 masterwork "Verbal Behavior," have rarely if ever been seriously contemplated by applied linguists for possible contributions to the field. Rather, a pat literature of dismissal has developed that…

The capability approach advocates that interpersonal comparisons be made in the space of functionings and capabilities. However, Amartya Sen has not specified which capabilities should be selected as the relevant ones. This has provoked two types of criticism. The stronger critique is Martha Nussbaum's claim that Sen should endorse one specific…

Purpose: This commentary, written in response to Alan Kamhi's paper, "Treatment Decisions for Children with Speech-Sound Disorders," further considers the "what" or goal selection process of decision making with the aim of efficiency--getting the most change in the shortest time. Method: My comments reflect a focus on the client values piece of…

Purpose: This paper is a personal reaction to Gillam and Gillam's treatise on evidence-based decision making in schools. This evaluation focuses principally on the costs and benefits of clinicians' search for external evidence, potential problems associated with efforts to grade that evidence, and the integration of this evidence with "internal"…

This article attempts to draw on the legal, policy, and educational experience that we have gained over the past 25-30 years to suggest directions for the future. It is uniquely timed, as we seem to have reached a period of retrenchment after a period of extensive activity. Ultimately, we have to move beyond the present and build on this past…

We tested the effects of writer immersion and the responses emitted by a peer reader across four male middle school participants diagnosed with behavioral disorders. The participants were chosen for this study due to their high structural errors and inability to write functionally in order to affect the behavior of a reader. Writer immersion and…

Reading workshop employs teaching methods to accomplish the goals of preparing self-disciplined readers who read and write by choice, motivating students to read and write because of a genuine interest, and developing students who learn to read and write by doing. Reading Workshop came into existence as a reaction to the disproportionate amount of…