After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for "saving sociology" from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president's "For Public Sociology" address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public…

Anyone can observe that rising social and political divisions have found their way onto the nation's campuses. In fact, the intensity of debates over issues such as war and peace, homosexuality, and affirmative action have transformed campuses--the marketplace of ideas--into an ideological battleground, with heated rhetoric in lecture halls and…

The purpose of this paper is to consider, in principle and at the most general level, a particular possible approach to educational policy-making. This approach involves an education-specific application of the notion of hypothetical markets first developed in Ronald Dworkin's book "Sovereign Virtue: The theory and practice of equality" (2000).…

In the past two years, considerable media and government attention has been directed towards the teaching of Australian literature in secondary schools. This article explores the main themes of this discourse, and considers recent discussions about Australian literature in the National English Curriculum in the context of this debate. By way of…

Experiments with active and cooperative learning techniques designed to develop critical thinking and writing skills in large introductory level sociology courses. Finds debate and essay writing effectively modify students' opinions on social issues and help students develop these skills. Notes ethical issues involved in teaching critical…

This study examines whether participating in competitive policy debate influences high school completion, academic achievement, and college readiness for African American male students. The analysis examines data from the Chicago Debate League from 1997 to 2006. Debate participants were 70% more likely to graduate and three times less likely to…

During December 2007, 35 professionals from research, policy, practice and the media were interviewed about a range of literacy issues. Interviewees were asked to indicate whether a certain topic was "hot" (i.e. currently a topic of debate and research) or "not hot" (i.e. not currently receiving a lot of attention). One of the…

In this article the author introduces the roles he created for two phases of a simulation on language planning in Malaysia. The first phase is a radio call-in show. This is followed by a debate before a panel of arbiters concerning a recent dispute related to English language teaching in Malaysian schools. The final phase involves debriefing (for…

Many students assume that history has nothing to do with them and therefore is a waste of their time, so finding a way to get involuntary history students truly involved in a topic is always the most challenging aspect of teaching it. As passive listeners they will remember little; as active participants they will remember more and--in at least a…

In this paper we present a framework for analysing when and how students engage in a specific form of interactive knowledge elaboration in CSCL environments: broadening and deepening understanding of a space of debate. The framework is termed "Rainbow," as it comprises seven principal analytical categories, to each of which a colour is assigned,…

There is a crucial debate concerning the nature of chess chunks: One current possibility states that chunks are built by encoding particular combinations of pieces-on-squares (POSs), and that chunks are formed mostly by "close" pieces (in a "Euclidean" sense). A complementary hypothesis is that chunks are encoded by abstract,…

Critical research in education is not what it used to be. It must now engage with a differently structured and globalized world with different social and material conditions for its peoples. This paper sets out to name the contemporary structure of feeling in which education researchers now work, particularly in terms of what now is to be the…

Classroom debates used to be familiar exercises to students schooled in past generations. In this article, the authors describe the technique called "intimate debate". To cooperative learning specialists, the technique is known as "structured debate" or "constructive debate". It is a powerful method for dealing with case topics that involve…

This is the second of two reports commissioned by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) intended to address the dire need for teacher preparation policy and programs to reflect recent advances in scientific knowledge of child and adolescent development. In the first report, "Principles and Exemplars for…

This paper focuses on the role that electronic mail, specifically CEDA-L (the Cross Examination Debate Association listserv) and NDT-L (National Debate Tournament listserv), play in the development of debate theory. The tabula rasa paradigm is chosen as the case study. Through a rhetorical analysis of the postings regarding tabula rasa and limited…