This article discusses how Mary Curran-Hackett, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Cincinnati in the English Literature and Composition and Rhetoric Departments, was determined to hook her students on reading. She wanted to find a topic on which every single student would undoubtedly have an opinion, and if not a preconceived notion,…

According to this author, race has been largely forgotten in Western philosophy's self-narrated identity. A stereotypical criticism of much of traditional academia is that it only studies "dead white males." Narrative structure of identity recognizes that all experience comes to us through an inherently selective interpretive framework.…

In this article the author situates the analysis of two popular children's books in theoretical frameworks emerging from American Indian Studies. Using a new historicist lens, she discusses Anne Rockwell's (1999) "Thanksgiving Day" and Laura Ingalls Wilder's (1935/1971) "Little House on the Prairie" and suggests that these…

In this article I use the occasion of farewelling my Year 12 students at the end of their schooling, some intertextual references to "Hamlet", and some conceptual frames of Derrida, to reflect dialogically on the role of critical literacy in Australian English curricula in the past, the present and into the future. (Contains 11 notes.)

This essay seeks to intervene in critical discussions about Arturo Islas's 1984 novel "The Rain God", as well as to suggest the potential for synthesizing discourses heretofore deployed in disparate conversations about disability, sexuality, and ethnicity. I first demonstrate how the novel's queer characters, Miguel Chico and Felix, pose critical…

In this article, the authors comment on Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle's "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions." As Downs and Wardle note, a one-year academic writing course will not prepare students to write in all fields, and evidence suggests limitations on the transfer of skills. The authors agree, in addition, that the study of…

This paper argues that the new science of positive psychology is founded on a whole series of fallacious arguments; these involve circular reasoning, tautology, failure to clearly define or properly apply terms, the identification of causal relations where none exist, and unjustified generalisation. Instead of demonstrating that positive attitudes…

Recent teacher effectiveness research supports the notion that students learn best from teachers who can be characterized as managing both the craft and the artistic dimensions of learning. Additionally, there is a body of research that has examined possible strategies instructional leaders might use to support the development of the craft…

In this paper Gewirtz and Cribb offer a response to Hammersley and Abraham's criticisms of their arguments about the place of values in social research published in this issue of BJSE. In doing so, they make clear that most of the positions that Hammersley and Abraham attribute to them are ones that they do not identify with and that, like…

This essay is a critical reflection on educational standardization, particularly the standardization of assessment flowing down from major international assessment projects like the OECD's Project for International Student Assessment to national and sub-national school systems. I argue that the establishment of an increasingly uniform metric to…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores still wield a mighty force in American culture and in the psyches of teenagers, even though 760 American colleges and universities have made standardized testing an optional part of the admissions process. Three years ago, after the new writing portion of the SAT was unveiled, the author's college, the College…

Few pieces of GLBTQ fiction have received the popular and scholarly acclaim awarded to Alex Sanchez's "Rainbow Boys" series. Although "problem novels" are rarely taken seriously as literature, the books--the first novel in particular--have joined the few pieces of GLBTQ literature incorporated into educational discourse and curriculum. In this…

With the rapid increase in information freely and easily accessible on the web to those who have access to a computer and the internet, there seems to be a corresponding decrease in critical evaluation of the sources of this information. All sources are taken to be sources of information and seem to be uncritically considered to contain reliable,…

This study assessed the main and interactive effects of perceived parental expectations and perceived parental criticism on 180 young talented athletes' perfectionistic tendencies and level and reported fluctuation in self-esteem. A potential quadratic effect of perceived parental expectations on the targeted dependent variables was also tested.…

Ruby Payne, CEO of aha! Process, Inc., and author of "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" (2005), has become one of the most influential figures in the U.S. public education milieu. Payne's framework, built largely upon understanding the "culture" of poverty, instructs educators on the values and mindsets poor students carry into the classroom…