What do we know about education and diversity, and how do we know it? This two-part question guided the work of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel, which included the eight scholars named above. The panel's work was sponsored by the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington and the Common Destiny Alliance at the…

Drawing on socio-cultural theory, we understand the norms regulating the practices within the mathematics classroom as resulting from the social representations of the socially dominant groups and of the school culture related to what constitutes learning mathematics. Immigrant students, having their own personal histories as members of particular…

The second of a two-volume report on the study of sex equity in classroom interaction presents three chapters that detail the use of the APPLE observation system used in the study, describe student and teacher measures, and present data related to gender differences in teacher-student interaction. The two-year study (1980-82) involved 38 fourth-…

Multicultural group work represents a powerful tool for helping and healing in the context of human diversity. This article summarizes multicultural group work, including task, psychoeducational, counseling, and psychotherapy groups, and describes a group work model for multicultural assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning. Group work…

The purpose of this paper is to explore avenues for achieving pluralistic leadership cultures and present three principles: (1) awareness of identity, positionality, and power conditions; (2) acknowledgment of multiple descriptions of campus leadership and personal philosophies of leadership; and (3) negotiation among multiple descriptions of…

This practicum was designed to bring together first and third generations in a caring, supportive, mentoring classroom atmosphere. The study was conducted in a co-educational K-5 public elementary school with 90 percent white enrollment. The subjects were from three fourth-grade classrooms, each with 28 heterogeneous students. Volunteer, retired…

This case study examined how representatives of one high-profile partnership worked to influence their associated school. Analysis drew from the "power-influence" perspective of educational policy analysis, a "microcosmic" approach that illuminates the political dynamics of an organizations by analyzing how people in organizations interact…

This report describes a classroom intervention for improving the social skills of fourth-grade students in an urban school. Children in the school were exhibiting poor social skills, as evidenced by lapses in self-discipline and by incidences of inappropriate behavior as noted by teacher observation and anecdotal records. After examining the…

A staff development process that uses group-building activities to foster staff collegiality is described in this paper. As schools become involved in restructuring, cooperation and positive working relationships become more crucial for effective school teams involved in participative decision making. Five characteristics of group-building…

This paper discusses the problems encountered in applying rational and participatory models to school reform and presents an alternative model based on action research. The group processes of a school-improvement team (SIT) at a high school are examined. Data were collected through participant observation, interviews with three faculty members,…

This document is a curriculum module on the theme of tolerance for upper elementary and middle school students. The lessons provide opportunities for students to develop knowledge about issues and events of intergroup relations, increase student awareness of the dynamics of intolerance, and help students build a framework for developing their…

Findings of a study that examined the teacher-administrator relationship from a micropolitical perspective are presented in this paper. Data were derived from interviews with 12 new administrators from school districts within a 50-mile radius of a major metropolitan area in the eastern United States. The micropolitical analysis identifies power…

The purpose of the Commons Game is to teach students how social traps work; that is, that short-term individual gain tends to dominate long-term collective gain. Simulations of Commons Dilemma have grown considerably in the last decade; however, the research has used small face-to-face groups to study behavior in the Commons. To compare the…

This paper proposes examining cooperative learning from an anthropological perspective and presents a theoretical framework for doing so. The paper first briefly reviews the psychological theory and research underlying cooperative learning. The paper uses data from a pilot ethnographic study of cooperative learning in a fourth-grade classroom to…

A systems design framework for the transformation of education is presented in this paper. A systems approach views education as a system of interdependent problems and the design process as one of four parts of organizational inquiry. A framework for educational design is presented, which is composed of three dimensions--focus for change, scope…