Following the international trend in education towards democracy and decentralization, the Hong Kong government introduced a school-based management (SBM) system about two decades ago. It is widely recognized in the literature that decentralization, empowering school level management and marginalizing the influence of the intermediate level of…

There is an urgent need for leadership skills when facilitating communication and engendering acceptance and respect among people from culturally different backgrounds, opposing viewpoints, and vastly different experiences. Thus, when facilitating intercultural group dialogs, varying institutions, agencies, and businesses need culturally competent…

This response to Peterson's (2014) "Nonviolent Action as a Necessary Component in Educating for Democracy" enlarges the discussion of the role of the teacher/educator in deciding whether or when it is responsible to facilitate the engagement of students in acts of nonviolent dissent. Ultimately it would seem that the most important of…

For this study, the authors look specifically at cultural maps that the youth created in Student Involvement Day (SID), a program committed to youth empowerment. In these maps, youth identified spaces in their schools and communities that are open and inclusive of their cultures or spaces where their cultures are excluded. Drawing on critical…

The paper first examines the context that has given student engagement a very strong profile in higher education. It identifies neo-liberalism as the driving force in the present higher education context and argues that student engagement enjoys an elective affinity with it. While neo-liberalism is dominant, student engagement will be strong. But…

If we want talented young teachers to develop the capacity to get students excited about high-quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, we must develop a network of STEM teachers who can support teachers in their continued learning about their work and enable them to collaborate with others. If we want teachers to…

The focus of this article is methods for facilitating student voice and engagement in higher education, specifically participatory methods. Across the student voice and engagement literature there is a growing emphasis on promoting collaborative partnerships between staff and students. However, there is a lack of detail and criticality with…

This research review provides a synthesis of articles that analyse the impact of the educational system on families with special needs children and the potential ways that these families can be empowered and equipped. The articles selected focus on research participants and schools found in North America and Great Britain, in order to give the…

'Participatory' research is often presented as a means to 'empower' stigmatised groups by addressing shame and by promoting attitude changes. Drawing on experiences producing a 'participatory' docudrama with traditional Qur'anic students ("almajirai") in Kano, northern Nigeria, I reflect on the limits of 'participatory' research as a…

Since 2000, "New Leaders" have prepared outstanding principals to transform America's underserved schools and communities. Yet the role has become vastly more complex and demanding--and principals, no matter how heroic, cannot do it all alone. Great leaders, by definition, bring out the best in their people to create exceptional teams.…

In a nation and political climate where models of communication and respect for another's ideas are difficult to find, the authors take seriously their charge to support educational practices that prepare students to critically engage in a free and democratic society. As part of a summer high school outreach program, they sought to develop a…

Our work, based on two pieces of research, aims to show how we try to get the voice of persons with learning disabilities. In both pieces of work, the second of which is still under progress, we have used video as the means by which we can collect and show what people are saying in the context and situation in which they find themselves. As we…

In this paper I discuss some aspects of recent scholarship on rhetoric and the curriculum, making a distinction between approaches that use insight from rhetoric to analyse formal and informal curricula and approaches that develop programmatic suggestions for the conduct of education. In the paper I deploy an educational perspective which I…

Given its stance against organised religion, it is perhaps not surprising that Philip Pullman's award-winning trilogy "His Dark Materials" has, alongside the plaudits and praise, invited controversy and debate. Jacobs ("The Weekly Standard, 2000"), for instance, views the "anti-Christian" theme in Pullman's work as both misleading and dishonest,…

The purpose of this study is to analyse how the access to structures of empowerment by teachers in primary and secondary education impacts on their trust of the headmaster of the school management board. Using the theoretical framework of empowerment and trust in the context of companies, one adapted the constructs of these scales to the reality…