This article uses ethnographic research from two Year 8 classes in two middle-sized secondary schools about a kilometre apart in a Swedish west-coast town to examine how new policies for personalised learning have developed in practice, in the performative cultures of modern schools in a commodity society. One school stands in a predominantly…

This paper, based on the findings of a qualitative study, discusses the influence of Ghana's recently introduced English-only language-in-education policy on pupils' classroom communicative practices and learning generally. It highlights how the use of English--an unfamiliar language--creates anxiety among students and stalls effective classroom…

An article entitled "Pupils Persevere" covered the front page of Madison's local newspaper in February 2005. Highlighting the plight of four alternative programs in Madison's public school system, the article both angered and pleased students at this school. Although the central point of the front-page article was a plea for a larger physical…

Successive Australian governments have adopted neo-liberal ideological imperatives of engaging with globalisation. This has been particularly noticeable in the policy areas of employment and higher education. Frame analysis and sensemaking are deployed to examine the ways in which neo-liberalism has influenced the perspectives young people…

This phenomenological study investigated the nuances of understanding motivational factors with respect to the problem of academic underachievement among African American males (AAM). This research is compelling because AAM still under perform as they progress through the educational system despite more than a decade of interventions targeting the…

To help assess the effects of school-based random drug testing programs, the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) contracted with RMC Research Corporation and Mathematica Policy Research to conduct an experimental evaluation of the Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing (MRSDT) programs in 36 high schools within…

Education as an institution fulfils the key social functions of promulgation of knowledge and the development of future citizens. Rather than these key functions earning it respect, education and its practitioners are the targets of criticism and what Labaree calls "scorn". This article seeks to progress the work done by Labaree on the origins of…

In this article, the author explores some particularly "luminous" paradoxes that have emerged from qualitative material gathered as part of an ethnographic study carried out over the last five years. The research, now a doctoral study, grew initially out of the author's own contradictory experiences of running learning provision in the…

This study highlights the efforts of a U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools Partnerships in Character Education Program grant awarded to an Appalachian region state education agency to study the effect of the integration of character education models into rural schools. More specifically, this study focuses on data…

This paper addresses current and fundamental issues in the classroom and raises some important issues and perspectives commonly ignored by practicing teachers, their student counterparts and existing literature. This position paper is, essentially, a report of a troubling phenomenon among students, their mindset and motivations, which, if true,…

This article presents an interview with Leon Botstein, longtime president of Bard College, as well as music director and conductor of the American and Jerusalem symphony orchestras. Botstein talks about his book entitled "Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture" and his views about teens and high schools in America.…

If education is to make a difference it is widely acknowledged that we must aim to educate for understanding, but this means being clear about what we mean by understanding. This paper argues for a concept of personal understanding, recognising both the commonality and individuality of each pupil's understandings, and the relationship between…

The study seeks to find out the impact of the supervisory power bases on subordinates' satisfaction with supervision in industrial settings. The influence of educational orientations of superiors and subordinates was also examined. The results indicated that referent power, expert power and reward power showed positive relationship with…

The authors interviewed more than one hundred high school students in three regions of China about their knowledge and perceptions of the United States and China. The authors' findings suggest the following: (1) students possess extensive knowledge about the United States in terms of its history, geography, socioeconomic system, and education, and…

In this chapter, the author addresses one important issue of contemporary campus life: parental involvement in the lives of today's college students. There seems to be broad consensus that the institution-parent relationship is changing, and at its most extreme manifestations presents the helicopter parent phenomenon. However, it is important not…