This paper reports that the story of peace education in New Zealand has been one of extremes. While there has been some interest in the subject for decades, it was only in the 1980s that there was any serious activity and widespread debate. In 1984, the conservative National government, which had ruled the country for 9 years, was replaced by a…

This paper presents two central themes: (1) communicative symbols teachers use are often inextricably linked with their personal politics; and (2) the present media obsession with "political correctness" (PC) offers a valuable opportunity for teachers to critically evaluate their practices and reflect on their own values, beliefs, assumptions, and…

This book recounts how a community of teachers, parents, and students took charge of a conventional school and created an unconventional one. It describes the challenges faced by the Bethlehem Lab School--from its inception in 1988 to the graduation of its first senior class. The school was conceived as a performance-based-assessment school, and…

Although Ontario's Ministry of Education and Training has been overseen by two different parties since 1995, the direction for education in the province has been steady. An overview of two bills that are guiding education reform, Bill 104 and Bill 160, and their financial implications is presented. Bill 104, the Fewer School Boards Act, purports…

The book examines approaches to moral education, first attempting to understand each one sympathetically, then highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and finally formulating the problems and issues uncovered in the analysis. The work concludes with the author's own version of a postmodern "patchwork" pedagogy of moral conversation. The…

Based principally on data collected for a broader 11-city study of civic capacity in urban education, this report provides an account of the durability of judicially supervised consent decrees in the school reform arena and explains why judicial intervention may be sought and sustained in the 1990s, often in the absence of evidence that schools…

This document is a collection of Education Commission of the States notes that address a wide array of education issues. The notes provide brief overviews of state legislation passed or pending on specific education issues. It analyzes such matters as performance-based accountability systems; state-level policies regarding accreditation in public…

This report provides an extensive picture of factors often thought to be associated with promoting good citizenship among youth. In particular, it focuses on the civic development of 9th- through 12th-grade students. Broadly speaking, student characteristics, family influences, the role of schools, media factors, and the possible benefits of…

This study guide is designed to be used by any group of people interested in examining and strengthening the ways in which politics works tody. An argument is made that politics suffers because U.S. society largely has lost a strong sense of public life--a challenging, diverse, and dynamic arena beyond one's immediate family and friendship…

Findings from a study that examined the effects of partisanism on suburban school board elections in Canada are presented in this paper. The study focused on the effects of formal political parties and more loosely organized political slates on political aggregation in school board elections. Questionnaires were completed by 11 partisan school…

Findings of a study that examined patterns in coalition-building for school restructuring are presented in this paper, which focuses on the adoption and early implementation stages of educational change. A case study analysis of two high schools and one district involved in school restructuring was undertaken through site observation and…

Establishing constitutional government involves not simply the creation of a written document that purports to create the political structure of a nation and guarantee rights to its people, but "constitutionalism" in the sense of meaningful and effective adherence to constitutional norms of democratic organization and the protection of…

Ways in which the current economic crisis is articulated politically into the logic of Australian education are discussed in this paper. A major argument is that the dominance of Australian government by the ideology of economic rationalism has facilitated the development of a comprehensive, technical model for the reorganization of the basic…

Findings of a case study that examined how nonincremental policy changes occurred in Ohio education are presented in this paper. Specifically, the paper applies Mazzoni's two arena models of policy innovation to understand the 1989 passage of S.B. 140, or the Omnibus Education Reform Act. In the first model, policy innovations occur when the…

This document discusses the shift in democratic countries toward the allocation of responsibility for the organization and control of education in the public system by decentralization from the center to the local community and beyond, to the governing bodies of individual schools, and to the parents who are represented on school councils. This…