I examine the state policy context of implementing an initiative that transforms the training and role of today's school counselors. This is essentially a story of political process. Like the implementation of many initiatives, the Transforming School Counselor Initiative (TSCI) is a process of gaining support and then institutionalizing a…

The reflections developed in this text on the reconstruction of professionalism in teaching are located within a historical and social dimension, given that it is only within the boundaries of the coordinates of the spirit of historic time and the present culture ("Zeitgeist") that proposals for professional reconstruction can be fully understood.…

This case describes the work of two educational leadership professors who have been asked to serve as outsider reviewers of an educational leadership department at a large urban university. The department has a number of problems, and the university's provost seems intent on closing it. The provost's view of the department has been shaped in part…

Until recently, charter schools have served a small percentage of public school students in any given community, but that is changing. Recent data indicate that the market share of public school students enrolled in charter schools is climbing. The growth of the charter school movement behooves us to consider how such a change in the educational…

Along with the rest of the education sector universities have been encouraged to develop strategies for educational improvement. The strategies that have emerged have been heavily influenced by the policies and priorities of the government and government agencies, such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council, and…

This article takes as its focus the "and" in discourses of teaching and learning. Drawing upon the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I argue that the "and" signifies a complex, sticky relationship between teaching and learning, and that we can radicalise our conception of "and" to bring forward a range of different discourses. The argument suggests…

Edward Said is deservedly well known for his literary insights on Orientalism. Yet, his work on the nature of the intellectual is equally important and particularly critical for navigating this moment of political, cultural, and economic retrenchment. In this essay I will explore the contours of Said's work on the intellectual. I argue that Said…

When testing dominates decisions about instruction in public schools, complex interactions significant to how students actually learn are often ignored. Teachers who critically interrogate conflicts between institutional policies and practices, such as testing and instruction, position themselves as informed, active, and professionally responsible…

This essay explores the fluctuations in and short-lived nature of urban school reform through a study of the Education Action Zone (EAZ) programme of Britain's New Labour government. Using the notion of civic capacity as a theoretical framework, the essay looks at this reform from the perspectives of its government proponents, critics outside of…

Advocates for education reform are becoming increasingly frustrated with the pace of progress in school districts across the United States, especially those in urban communities. Low student achievement appears to be a fact of life in most of these districts, particularly among poor students and students of color. Results of the National…

This essay offers a history of a basic writing course that began at a public ivy campus in the 1970s. Relying on principles of universal design and on insights derived from his school's studio program about ways the institution's selective functions can impact curricular matters, the author describes how the basic writing course was merely…

This article, discusses Brown University's slavery report, a 106-page narrative examination of the early connections between Brown University and slavery, that has been greeted--so far--with silence. The report, done at the behest of Ruth J. Simmons, Brown's president and herself a descendant of slaves, is an unsparing look at a shameful side of…

This article reports on the final congressional approval given by the U.S. Senate to a school voucher initiative for the nation's capital. Supporters vowed to have the program up and running by fall, while opponents pledged to do their best to derail it. In a move billed as historic by proponents and disgraceful by critics, the Senate passed the…

This essay contends that there are fundamental connections between a nation's political arrangements and its educational efforts on behalf of youth. Though the common school architects of the nineteenth century recognized these connections, they were profoundly forgotten in a later Darwinian milieu that suggested--our allegiance to democracy…

This retrospective study used the language of political ecology to describe the dynamics of a school board decision to hire a nontraditional superintendent. Those dynamics were described as contextual variables that existed within the community as well as mediating variables that were negotiated among the key players who were part of the selection…