This paper locates the current technology related school reform movement in the backdrop of growing international debate and illustrates through discourse analysis why teachers and teacher educators need to engage in deeper levels of critical dialogue over the move to plug schools into the so-called knowledge economy. The objective is to raise…

In this article the author explores the seamlessness between children's online and offline worlds. For children, there is no dichotomy of online and offline, or virtual and real; the digital is so much intertwined into their lives and psyche that the one is entirely enmeshed with the other. Despite early research pointing to the differences that…

The history of distance education in Russia and in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is a history of dramatic change in ideology, conceptual framework, and approach. It can be divided into two main stages: initial formation and development into the world's largest system of correspondence learning, from the mid 1920s to the…

School and government officials, system administrators and other policymakers offer a variety of reasons for engaging in high stakes testing: to monitor student performance, to measure teacher and/or school effectiveness, to ensure accountability, etc. Some of these reasons are good; others not. But the best reason--one that is never offered,…

Focus group methods for studying opinions and perceptions of school violence are effective for understanding differences among individuals, but cannot report these differences in a concise manner. Traditional quantitative methods for analyzing data from school violence perception surveys allow for the concise reporting of data, but cannot…

The National Education Development Project (NEDP) is one of the most important attempts to improve the quality of teacher education in Turkey. NEDP focused on the development of practice in pre-service secondary school language teacher education in Turkey. NEDP supported this research to explore student, mentor, teacher educator, and mentor…

This study examines the characteristics of elementary schools that experience chronic teacher turnover and the impacts of turnover on a school's working climate and ability to effectively function. Based on evidence from staff climate surveys and case studies, it is clear that high turnover schools face significant organizational challenges.…

Complementing the need to leverage resources is the academic community's role in providing both academic and workplace learning opportunities and financial assistance to students--who traditionally work part-time, receive lower salaries, and generate fewer overhead costs than their full-time staff counterparts. It is not surprising, therefore,…

The family plays a primary socializing role in the lives of boys and girls. The quality of relationships within the family is a particularly important element in the development of adolescent behaviors. A great deal of research demonstrates that family interactions characterized by parental nurturance, warmth, and social support reduce…

Proformacao is a distance teacher certification course aimed at providing training to 27,000 uncertified teachers in 15 Brazilian states. This innovative program organizes human and technical resources for delivering distance education in a cost-effective manner. Different from other institutional systems--which typically employ their own…

After Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji is the second largest island nation in the South-west Pacific and the hub of the region. Nearly all Fiji Islanders have either Fijian or Fiji Hindi as their first language, in roughly equal numbers, while the former colonial language, English, with very few native speakers, has retained an important role,…

A professional development program which trained whole school staffs in the use of positive behavioral interventions for the purpose of reducing referral rates of students for misbehavior and special education evaluation. The program focused on training teachers and paraprofessionals in behavior management strategies to increase "high approval…

This essay discusses the achievements of early childhood educator, Vivian Gussin Paley, preschool and kindergarten teacher for more than 30 years, and author of 12 books portraying her work in the classroom with young children. It begins with a description of seven narrative tools she developed over the course of many years that became the means…

With the specter of No Child Left Behind hanging over their heads, educators should be wary of using disaggregated data to track selected populations of students and their progress through school. Such data can be misleading by showing that students are doing well, although they may be taking classes that are not challenging. Although the myth of…

Educators often ignore the political requirements of urban reform in their focus on the research and models that guide it. Conversely, political scientists frequently miss the differences among reforms in their focus on coalitions and resources. Integrating Clarence N. Stone's concept of "civic capacity" with an educator's view of reform…