This article draws on oral history testimonies to examine the experiences of participants in the inaugural 1990 cohort of Teach For America (TFA)--a group of young people dubbed the "best and brightest" of their generation and tasked with "saving" urban education. For 25 years, TFA has operated according to the principle of the…

Emerging from popular education movements in Latin America, "ecopedagogy" is a critical environmental pedagogy which focuses on understanding the connections between social conflict and environmentally harmful acts carried out by humans. These connections are often politically hidden in education. Ecopedagogy, while being pluralistic, is…

It is all too easy to be discouraged, indeed, outraged, by the continuing state of socio-economic inequality and the fragility of "the neighbourhood" (our world) in a deteriorating, conflict-ridden environment. As educators, we struggle with the perceived lack of educational quality, relevance, and ethics of policy and practice.…

In critiquing our paper on "The literacy performance of ex-Reading Recovery students between two and four years following participation in the program: Is this intervention effective for students with early reading difficulties?", Schwartz argues that we have engaged in pursuing political and ideological agendas as part of our ongoing…

Teacher agency is a dynamic catalyst in the process of inclusion, emancipation and social change through school education. This article highlights three key curricular practices in the structure, content and method of a process-based elementary teacher education curriculum aimed at enabling the emergence of this agency that characterise the…

School readiness is currently a strong focus for education policy in England. However, understanding what it means to be ready for school, and how this is reflected in policy and enacted in practice, are sites of contention. This paper explores the genesis of the current disparity in understandings in the context of the English education system. A…

Background/Context: Traditional adult education in Spain treated the learner as a mere object that could be shaped by the educator. Although current practices of the democratic adult education movement in Spain reveals a completely opposite standpoint on adult education, there has been little analysis of the several influences converging and…

This article examines the web 2.0 blogging experiences of one 8-year-old travel blogger. The research question is centred on 'What does the interactive function of a web 2.0 blogging experience make available in terms of a child's pedagogic rights?' This instrumental case study is made up of 56 written and photographic travel blog posts covering…

In an era of normative austerity in US higher education, composition is being transformed by budget cuts, retrenchment, and marketization. Nevertheless, the field’s scholarship continues to compartmentalize questions concerning the material terms of practice away from questions of curricular philosophy. Because composition has not developed a…

Not-with-standing the current topoi of the Knowledge Society, a particular "fact" of modernity is that power is exercised less through brute force and more through systems of reason that order and classify what is known and acted on. This article explored the system of reason that orders and classifies what is talked about, thought and…

The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber," meaning "free," and describes a mind unencumbered by either prejudice or indoctrination. The adjective "liberal," however, has become, at least in some circles, synonymous with anti-capitalism, anti-business, and therefore anti-American. This author has…

The thought on many an academic's mind today is how to stop it. The "it"? The barrage of reports, papers, and interviews stating that higher education needs to embrace "disruptive change," treat students like customers, and become more entrepreneurial. In short, colleges must adopt a business model, or like blacksmith…

Philanthropic involvement in education politics has become bolder and more visible. Have foundations changed funding strategies to enhance their political influence? Using data from 2000, 2005, and 2010, we investigate giving patterns among the 15 largest education foundations. Our analyses show growing support for national-level advocacy…

Changes in the public service sector during the last stages of the twentieth century contributed to an international reconfiguration of state-centric governance. Supported by the discourses of individualism, marketization, national governance, and competition, this (re)shaping of governance presents a specific dilemma for the political identity of…

Special Education 2000 (SE2000), New Zealand's first official special education policy, declared the aim of achieving a "world class inclusive education system". It would seem that, by implication at least, the intention of the policy was to achieve full inclusion of all disabled children in mainstream educational settings and thus,…