A case study examined ways to improve schools through democratic accountability, highlighting a principal's strategies to increase staff and student expectations in a low-performing middle school in rural Florida. Results gleaned from interviews and surveys suggest that leaders must build schools' capacity for sustaining achievement. (Contains 32…

Three key contributions of Iris Young to democratic political theory, and three challenges that have arisen in response to Young's theory, are examined here in relation to education. First, Young has argued that oppression and domination, not distributive inequality, ought to guide discussions about justice. Second, eliminating oppression requires…

In this article, education policy is analyzed from a welfare state perspective. The aim is to Analise the significance attributed to social-inclusive aspects of education in contemporary education policies of the Nordic countries, and the extent to which education is regarded as an element in welfare policies. Four aspects are addressed: (1)…

Recent work on distributed leadership extends an ongoing critique of conventional "heroic" leader portrayals. This article examines work in this area seeking implications for democratic school governance. With material from case studies of two Texas schools, it considers frameworks presented by Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond and by…

This article deals with central issues in the field of sociology and politics of education after the publication of the outcomes of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study for Germany. These outcomes serve to remind us of the old debate on politics of education in the 1960s. The main topic since then remains the reproduction…

This article addresses the issues of how cultural historical theory of activity can help design democratic teacher education classrooms aimed at developmental learning and dialogical, humanitarian thinking of students and prospective teachers. On the basis of retrospective analysis, the author begins by summarizing activity-based approaches to…

This article presents the Cyprus results, and proposes a model of home environment and school climate on the social participation of ninth graders based on the IEA 1999 CIVIC education study data. This study examined ninth graders' participation in social actions by means of a questionnaire; the data were analyzed using structural equation…

For emerging democracies civic education issues have special meaning. Often these issues play a vital role in the process of nation building and democratic consolidation, which makes the interplay between the school system and the socio-political environment particularly important. Estonia, which inherited from the half-century Soviet occupation a…

This article examines the historic character and mission of the REA with a view toward the role of this journal in the life of the Association. Early social influences are explored in relation to the Association's unfolding vision of "a democracy of God" in which religion would be a central enterprise of an educated citizenry. George Albert Coe,…

Organizing a classroom around principles of democracy is not new to American education. The principles that provide a background for this type of organization are found in classical Greek thought and more recently in the American colonial period (Smith 1984). This article discusses three principles of democracy: (1) liberty and freedom; (2)…

A central aspect of education has always been the passing on of norms and values. This task is not fulfilled if pupils only learn the meaning of established norms and values. It is also about making pupils believe in them and to act according to them. Thus, teaching is also a kind of political socialization. The values taught change historically…

In this article, I discuss a Canadian public school controversy and Supreme Court of Canada decision involving competing stakeholder rights to freedom of religion, safety and equality. Policy considerations that allowed one group of stakeholders to express their constitutional rights raised concerns among other stakeholders. A policy vacuum and a…

Describes Palestinian teachers' and students' emotional and cognitive conflicts when introduced to a problem- and case-based approach to democracy education. Observation and case study data indicated that participants sometimes held initial beliefs about democracy, student-teacher interactions, and appropriate classroom behaviors reflecting an…

It's tough to teach social studies and history to students who have trouble reading and understanding textbooks and other resources. But you can overcome those obstacles and motivate students to excel in social studies classes by using the concepts and research-based techniques in this guide. Renowned reading expert Donna Ogle teams up with two…

This article describes a participatory action research project undertaken as a partnership between student, teacher and nurse co-researchers at a Canadian alternative high school. A key purpose of this research was to explore and interpret the meaning of this partnership for mental health promoting nursing practices with adolescents. Following a…