Objective: To explore the impact of teen-adult sexual relationships as a public health threat and the effectiveness of statutory rape laws in protecting adolescent children. Methods: A comprehensive review of current literature surrounding child abuse, teen pregnancy, and statutory rape was conducted. Results: Of one million teen girls who become…

All evaluators face the challenge of striving to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethical conduct. Translating the AEA's Guiding Principles and the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards into everyday practice, however, can be a complex, uncertain, and frustrating endeavor. Moreover, acting in an ethical fashion can require…

This article describes an educational experiment, a student-led course called "Learning in Sustainable Development" offered at the teacher training programme at Stockholm University, Sweden. Its purpose was to foster empowerment and action competence among teacher-students in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). The…

School decentralization, which has reshaped power relations in the educational system, has empowered teachers and parents. Taking Abbott's approach to professions, the authors examine teachers' perceptions of the implications of parents' empowerment for teacher--parent relations. In-depth interviews with homeroom teachers in affluent urban…

This article offers a critical analysis of discourses and power structures and the ways they operate in two instructors' adult education and ESOL classrooms. The instructors defined learner experience in specific ways and subsequently used those definitions and drew on their learners' experiences to define their curricula and pedagogy. They…

It only takes an hour or two of roaming the halls of Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) Tech Charter High School to detect an enduring attitude of accomplishment from both the teachers and the students. This atmosphere is intentional. The school, located in Chicago, was created specifically to hone the skills of individuals choosing…

Purpose: The article aims to use the globalization theory and the implications of democratization for social policy to analyze the school governance reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. Design/methodology/approach: The article describes the main features of decentralization policy in the school sectors in the two societies with a historical review…

The research reported here tested the factor structure of a measure for sense of community in community organizations, and it evaluated sense of community's potential as an empowering organizational characteristic within an organizational empowerment framework. Randomly selected community organization participants (N = 561) were surveyed as part…

In the last decade, the "Reflect" approach--an alternative to the "great divide" theory of literacy--has gained wider currency in developing countries because of its ability to deal with social, cultural and political issues by placing the identification and solution of local problems in the hands of local people. In Ghana,…

Public health is a major focus of government policy worldwide and an expanding area of practice that includes an array of professionals and disciplines. Since the 1980s "empowerment" of individuals and communities to gain greater control over the factors that influence their health has become the focus of many national and local policies…

The issues discussed in this article have arisen from 12 in-depth case studies of "successful" schools in England, which were carried out during the academic year 2006/2007. However the practices that have emerged from these case studies are universally applicable when one analyses the factors that enabled learners to develop…

The purpose of this article is to probe teacher beliefs about the cultures and curricula of mathematics classroom. By examining the case of a teacher in New York City--his teaching practices and the resulting learning environment fostered there--certain pedagogical and epistemological beliefs can be highlighted. The author first examines some…

The Commonwealth of Learning is proud to partner with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Higher Education and UNESCO to produce this "Quality Assurance Toolkit for Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes". The Toolkit has been prepared with three features. First, it is a generic document on quality assurance, complete with a…

The purpose of this case study was to better understand how Latina and Latino students experience their pre-collegiate program and learn whether or not they feel their experience has impacted or will impact their decision to continue their postsecondary pursuit. This case study focused on a single, specific pre-collegiate program. I used the…

The following essay is a dialogue between two high school English teachers at a small, progressive public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Throughout their dialogue, Jen, whose voice appears in italics, and Kim, whose voice appears in plain text, discuss the factors that motivated their decisions to become teachers, tell of the distinct…