An attempt is made to wrestle with the question of critical pedagogy, trying to refine and make more explicit the author's political vision; the idea of pedagogy as a form of cultural politics; and teachers as cultural workers. Eight essays are divided into two sections. The four essays of Part 1 try to draw together a statement about efforts to…

This book reports on the outcomes of an international policy-research project concerned with how power is used in education to construct and discharge obligations among stakeholders. The collection of articles suggests how such processes might better serve educational ends. The research examines how the politics of education at the site and…

More research is needed to explore the ways in which education reform can be considered an international as opposed to a national phenomenon. To meet this need, an examination of the language of recent large-scale education reform in Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States is presented. The research looks at the main official…

Empowering grassroots efforts in literacy is paramount in the literacy education movement. Six issues face literacy work, research, and policy in the United States today: (1) although there are many exciting and innovative literacy projects being conducted, their lessons are unexamined and they are not part of a larger organizing strategy; (2)…

Part of a family of reports on the status of children researched by a bipartisan polling team, this publication presents voter profiles on Americans' opinions on the health, education, safety, and security of U.S. children. The results of a national survey, confirmed by representative samples of the electorate in 12 states, suggest intense and…

One of several reports on the status of children conducted for the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, this document is based on data obtained from 5,274 telephone interviews of registered voters conducted in 7 states and the District of Columbia during February, 1992. It reports voter opinion on issues affecting…

The meaning of "diversity" was at the core of the U.S. Senate debate of 1991-92 concerning continued Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) funding, a debate that was both reported on and fueled by a parallel discourse on the topic in the popular press. Ideas about the diversity of programming fell into three sub-dimensions: (1) political…

In April of 1990, a three-day conference was convened at which 76 men and women from 18 countries representing a spectrum of government, business, labor, academia, the media, and the professions gathered to discuss how the United State should reorient its policies and relations toward other countries and international institutions to preserve the…

This document consists of a packet of materials published in December 1990 and designed to assist citizens in forming study circles to discuss the crisis in the Persian Gulf. The resources are designed to be nonpartisan, fair, and balanced, and try to make the strongest possible case for four different options, reflecting a broad range of…

Writing courses which incorporate the tenets of "critical literacy" (such as the "difference" curriculum at the University of Texas at Austin) not only often fail to make students more aware of the role ideology plays in their culture, but also create profound new silences in the classroom--silences caused by political…

An investigation of college students' belief structures underlying their support or non-support of a nuclear freeze revealed a three-dimensional structure for beliefs in the areas of nuclear weapons and national defense. A questionnaire containing 25 belief statements concerning national defense and nuclear weapons and 4 media use questions was…

A study examined how use of different kinds of "involvement" measures (behavioral, cognitive, or affective involvement, gratifications sought, and cognitive effort expended) could help explain differences between people's knowledge of election information and whether the way that knowledge is measured affects conclusions about…

Locating the issue of abortion in a global public policy context, with the array of public health, human rights, and social questions that are implicated, is the aim of this paper. Abortion laws around the world have been liberalized since the 1950s, with a resultant decrease in abortion-related mortality among women. The proportion of the world's…

Support for the traditional principle of separation of church and state has eroded in recent years. Although a majority of citizens say they support church-state separation, opinion polls find they have difficulty with the issue. The report presents a summary of such church-state conflicts in 38 states. The conflicts are categorized as follows:…

The Australian education system is denying equity and social justice to ethnic minorities and women. This paper examines the development of Australia's educational policy for those two groups. It argues that the educational disadvantages they have experienced have been enhanced by the marginalization of the issues. Policies such as multicultural…