A fundamental reason for the advocacy of women's literacy is its contribution to the attainment of citizenship, that is the claiming and use of public space and power. Following a presentation of basic trends and public policies in literacy, this article reviews the diverse theoretical understandings of literacy. It discusses normative arguments…

On the surface, learning and leading may appear to be opposites. Learners are commonly thought to be na?ve and innocent. Leaders are expected to possess special skills and knowledge. However, these apparent opposites may be like two sides of the same coin, a dynamic combination that generates powerful results. A Maine nonprofit has created a…

In this column, the author focuses on the ways that family counselors can use solution-based therapies (solution-oriented and solution-focused) to work with families with adolescents in individual and/or family therapy. The theoretical foundation for solution-based therapies suggests techniques that help families focus on solutions and not remain…

Urban writing programs help frustrated city youth to gain interest and find power through writing. Education leaders and urban writing programs along with classroom teachers will have to work collaboratively in order to motivate and empower students through the written words.

This study explores how adults learn from asynchronous written dialogue through the lens of psychological type preferences. We asked participants to discover their dominant and auxiliary psychological preferences using the Personal Empowerment through Type inventory. Participants then completed an open-ended survey in which they described their…

Deliberative democracy has attracted increasing attention in political science and has been suggested as a normative ideal for evaluation. This article analyzes to what extent evaluations carried out in a highly government-driven manner can nevertheless contribute to deliberative democracy. This potential is examined by taking the Organisation for…

In 1956, Andrew Sharp published "Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific," in which he hypothesized that the migration throughout much of Polynesia, including Hawaii, was accidental. Archaeologists and historians widely accepted Sharp's theory as a simple solution to how Polynesians crossed 2,200 miles of open ocean on the world's largest sea.…

In 1956, Andrew Sharp published "Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific," in which he hypothesized that the migration throughout much of Polynesia, including Hawaii, was accidental. Archaeologists and historians widely accepted Sharp's theory as a simple solution to how Polynesians crossed 2,200 miles of open ocean on the world's largest sea.…

Empowerment evaluation involves a program's stakeholders in designing and implementing an evaluation of their own program, thus contributing to the program's improvement and self-determination (Fetterman, 1994, 1996). It appeared to be an appropriate approach for evaluating a mental health drop-in center, which had congruent goals of collaboration…

If a viable curriculum is what determines how well students achieve, no teacher can leave the school's curriculum unexamined. Designing curriculum means defining and organizing what is taught to improve student learning. Empowering teachers as curriculum designers gives them the tools to make critical decisions about what to teach, how to teach…

Empowerment evaluation continues to crystallize central issues for evaluators and the field of evaluation. A highly attended American Evaluation Association conference panel, titled "Empowerment Evaluation and Traditional Evaluation: 10 Years Later," provided an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of empowerment evaluation. Several…

This paper studied the effect of perceived teacher influence over school policy on first-year teacher attrition. Data came from the National Center for Education Statistics' Schools and Staffing Survey 1999 - 2000 and Teacher Follow-up Survey 2000 - 2001. First-year teacher status and teacher influence over school policy were related to teachers'…

In teaching science today, the emphasis is on inquiry-based pedagogies, with the expectation that students in the science classroom will be exposed to the theories and practices of scientists in the science community. However, for many science teachers, implementing inquiry in the classroom is a daunting task. In the traditional classroom setting,…

The author critiques an article by Hipolito-Delgado and Lee ("Empowerment Theory for the Professional School Counselor: A Manifesto for What Really Matters," Professional School Counseling, v10 n4 p327-332 Apr 2007) in which they use empowerment theory as a springboard to determining "what really matters" in professional school counseling. He…

On a cold and wet Friday night in January of 2006, thirteen undergraduate students gathered together in a small room on campus at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) to found Students Informing Now (S.I.N.). S.I.N. was created to support the AB 504 students, labeled in this country as "illegal aliens." Inspired by Paulo…