The work reviews the ongoing controversy over work and play within the framework of a constructivist early childhood curriculum. Educators and parents with narrow perception of play view it as mere physical actions of walking, clapping and singing outside class work. However, educators who hold a constructivist epistemological view of child play…

Although money isn't the only thing that matters for student success--districts with similar funding levels and similar demographics can produce vastly different results for their students--inequities in funding are foundational to all sorts of other inequities in the nation's school system. A district with more resources, for example, can pay…

Five-year-old Michael lived on a small island in Micronesia. He was wonderfully creative in laying out a house on the sand with the sticks he gathered from a mangrove swamp. Akanina, a mother in the village, lost both her infant son and her own mother within a short time due to a lack of available health care and affordable medication. In Rino's…

This report examines the academic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students, with the goal of documenting achievement trends to provide leaders and policymakers with evidence to guide action to address educational inequities for BIPOC students. Using math and reading test data from 2.1 million BIPOC…

In sub-Saharan Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have far-reaching consequences for 550 million children under the age of 18. This UNICEF Child Alert examines how the disease and measures put in place to contain it are impacting the lives of children across the region, exacerbating existing threats like conflict, climate change and…

Engagement is widely recognized by higher education institutions, nation-states, and international organizations as the third pillar in the mission of university education. Despite the global reach of this concept, published research is disproportionately based on examples from the United States. This article brings to light the rich and extensive…

This study examines ecological level correlates of adverse peer relationships among early adolescents (ages 12-14). Data analysis was conducted using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The sample was drawn from the mother-child data set, which included youth who in 2002 or 2004 were living with their mothers and enrolled in school.…

The article seeks to contribute to working-class and social justice pedagogy by developing concrete angles on teaching/exploring some of the (a) short fiction, (b) journalistic-photographic work and (c) sociography of poverty by the Danish-born US immigrant, muckraker (http://goo.gl/6WeGtM) and social reformer Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914,…

The "criminalization" of school discipline has contributed to a number of negative outcomes for students and scholars have noted important racial, ethnic, and class disparities in school punishment. Yet, prior work provides little information in which to understand how the effects of criminalized school punishment may move beyond the…

This article introduces the concept of "co-impact" to characterise the complex and dynamic process of social and economic change generated by participatory action research (PAR). It argues that dominant models of research impact tend to see it as a linear process, based on a donor-recipient model, occurring at the end of a project…

This case study explores the presence of deficit thinking among social studies educators in the State of Florida. Included in this research is an analysis of semi-structured interview data that focused on pivotal experiences and participants' understandings of the connection between social class and academic achievement, mobility, and race and…

Despite their long history and importance in the American curriculum, music programs must constantly justify their place in the twenty-first century. Urban areas that are economically depressed sometimes may not be able to offer music instruction due to the emphasis on raising test scores as well as unfavorable economic conditions that may limit…

One in four children in the state of Georgia is food insecure. In the city of Athens, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, the number approaches one in three. More than 33 percent of residents have significantly limited access to healthy foods, living in areas of the city that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified as food deserts.…

This qualitative study intends to highlight social injustices that appear of the greatest concern to school leaders. Semi-structured interviews were used to glean data on principals' work contexts, their perceptions of social in/justices, and relevant anecdotes, stories, and examples. Twenty-one elementary and secondary school principals were…

Ten years ago, MDC's report, "The State of the South 2007: Philanthropy as the South's 'Passing Gear,'" (ED519455) examined how philanthropy can accelerate progress toward a South that is both equitable for all its residents and competitive with other regions of the country. A decade later, our second iteration, commissioned by the…