Bell-curve thinking, as a model of distribution of success and failure in society, enjoys a perennial (ahistorical, objective, and law-like) status in education. As such it provides a rationale for sorting (tracking or streaming) practices in education, which has led many educators to criticize both bell-curve thinking and associated sorting…

The sociological literature on teaching and learning includes a number of discussions devoted to the importance of multicultural education. Much of this literature encourages educators to revise the curriculum and shows how the experience of multicultural education can stimulate student's sociological imaginations. To this end, some scholars have…

Prior research has shown that parental social cognitions are associated with child outcomes such as aggression. The goal of this study was to examine mothers' cognitions about relational aggression, and to explore linkages between mothers' attributions and normative beliefs about aggression and children's competence with peers. Participants…

Explaining that academia is undergoing intense scrutiny by legislators and the public with respect to its accountability, examines some common ethical boundaries in the profession of academia and opportunities for ethics failure to occur, suggests a typology of ethics failure, and explores the response to ethics failure and its consequences for…

Understanding the causes of a child's disruptive behavior and setting reasonable and firm standards can make for better teachers. This article describes how to understand the reasons behind why a child "always starts trouble," and suggests methods for teachers to use to set firm and reasonable standards in order to make the child aware of…

This article aims to contribute to the debate about the moral and ethical aspects of education for sustainable development by suggesting a clarification of ethics and morals through an investigation of how these aspects appear in educational practice. The ambition is both to point to the normative dangers of education for sustainable development…

Background/Context: Increasingly, instructional reforms in US schools place teachers in differentiated roles, such as literacy coach or data analyst. Not only do these roles hold promise for reforming instruction, but they also may make the teaching career more rewarding by offering teachers new challenges over time. In the past, teachers who held…

Previous research on psychological contracts has focused on whether or not employees feel their employers have fulfilled the promises made to them. Instead, here we examine how perceptions of the external labor market, particularly about whether present psychological contracts could be replicated elsewhere, influence employees' attachment to their…

There is little question that popular television shows influence the shaping of social norms, identities, and the ways we navigate daily life. High profile shows are also a common magnet for critical attention. No primetime television show has provoked as wide a range of reactions as Fox's "The Simpsons." From shock radio to public broadcasting…

Drawing on a larger ethnographic study of four high school young men, this paper foregrounds high school male-male friendships as a context for examining how heterosexism and homophobia operate to limit and delimit the ways masculinities are constructed. I begin this article by first highlighting an inconsistency between recent school initiatives…

American classrooms are experiencing the largest influx of immigrant students since the beginning of the 20th century (National Collaborative on Diversity in America's Teaching Force, 2004). The U.S. Department of Education says that of the more than 50 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools this year, one in every five has…

Feminist critiques of psychology have pointed to the strong tendency throughout the history of the discipline for researchers to assume one of two standards for human behavior: non-human primates, and men, more specifically, white, privileged men who often are college sophomores. Feminist scientists in other fields, as well as feminist…

A teacher of teaching methods reflects on the trauma of his own introduction to teaching young children. (Editor)

THE HYPOTHESIS THAT RATINGS ON CONGENIALITY AS A COWORKER GIVEN TO TEACHERS WILL BE IN PART A FUNCTION OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL STATUS OF THE RATER WAS TESTED. A SECONDARY PROBLEM WAS TO TEST THE HYPOTHESIS THAT DOGMATIC SUBJECTS MORE THAN NONDOGMATIC SUBJECTS WOULD EXHIBIT COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR WHICH INDICATED (1) GREATER DISTINCTION BETWEEN POSITIVE…