"Aussiedler" are ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries who are granted the right to resettle in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) if they can provide evidence of German ancestry, attachment to the German language and culture, and ongoing assertion of German ethnicity. This article outlines…

Reynolds describes the formal peer critique process students engage in for all major projects in her classes. Each student presents his or her project to the entire class and receives detailed suggestions and criticism from peers. Such critiques prepare students for the kind of frank exchange of feedback on the quality of work they will need to…

From very early in its history, the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) has supported a rich tradition of critique. This chapter argues, however, that in important ways, the magnitude and rapidity of social transformations since the late 1970s have largely overwhelmed the critical capacities of Canadian adult educators.…

The breadth and depth of the environmental crisis and the consequently wide and inclusive interpretations of "sustainable development" has promoted a disparate range of academic responses encouraging a loose interpretation of environmental education and Education for Sustainable Development. This in turn reduces the capacity for the…

In research with young people about their experiences of rural and urban environments, the authors were struck by how participants in their rural case study used fiction to explain their experiences. The participants' use of fiction lead the authors to an additional rich vein of empirical material and analysis not foreseen at the beginning of the…

Previous research has linked ethical caring, high expectations, and instructional practices relevant to student culture as three fundamental characteristics of exemplary teachers for children from ethnic minority groups in the American school system. Praise and criticism, as overt behaviors of care and expectations, were examined in a…

Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of sociocultural context in meaning making, criticisms have been levelled at communicative language teaching (CLT) for failing to effectively address this at the level of classroom practice. In fact, it has been argued that the way CLT presents content reveals a fundamentally reductionist view of…

Accreditation under the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has contributed to the professional decline of social work. The lack of scholarship of the Board of Directors of CSWE compromises its decision making. The quality of the professional literature suffers from the weak scholarship of editors and referees. The caliber of deans and…

The Social Intuitionist Model (SIM) of moral reasoning proposed by Jon Haidt and colleagues (Haidt, 2001; Haidt & Bjorklund, 2006) is criticized on the grounds that (1) its conclusions concerning moral reasoning are unwarranted by research reporting 'dumbfounded' responses by subjects whose initial judgments are challenged and judgments…

In his paper in "English in Australia" in 2002, Bill Green called for a literacy project of our own, and for the need to think again, and think newly about the place of literary literacy within contemporary curriculum. But what does literary literacy mean in curriculum that recognises a wide diversity of texts and literacies? If…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to critically review dominant conceptions of and approaches to quality in higher education. It suggests an alternative approach with potential to shift the focus of quality activities from accountability and control to improvement. Design/methodology/approach: The applicability and limits of quality concepts…

The purpose of this study is to explore teacher education policies in different countries of Latin America and North America through the comparison of policy documents. The training of teachers, a key component of education, faces educational challenges as a result of various reform policies in different countries. Critical discourse analysis…

Parody and related forms of political humor are essential resources for sustaining democratic public culture. They do so by exposing the limits of public speech, transforming discursive demands into virtual images, setting those images before a carnivalesque audience, and celebrating social leveling while decentering all discourses within the…

In this article I examine New Labour's approach to the transformation of education by focusing on Michael Barber's account of policy delivery, and I show that while historical analysis is relevant to policy processes it is absent in the reality of design. I provide a critical evaluation of knowledge claims underpinning policy in England before I…

In this article, the author engages in a lively interactive discussion with Paul Woodford's text, "Democracy and Music Education." He questions Woodford's criticism of Praxial Music Education (PME)--particularly his dismissal of PME as a "performance alone" notion. PME, this author asserts, is fundamentally multidimensional, contextually reflexive…