An intriguing experiment is afoot in some of the nation's struggling public schools. New "Parent Trigger" laws passed in California and on the agenda in New York, Ohio, Colorado, and Chicago, allow parents of chronically failing schools to unseat the schools' leadership and staff. But the initiative has pitfalls. It's easy to mobilize…

A diverse faculty is a goal of all social work programs. However, recruiting and retaining diverse faculty is often a struggle. In this article, narratives of 3 recent doctoral graduates are analyzed to identify the role that diversity played in their academic job searches. Autoethnographic analysis revealed 2 broad themes: identity and…

Using the case of Chinese schools in post-Second World War Hong Kong, this paper explores the unintended consequences of an incomplete hegemonic project. After World War II, anti-imperialist pressures and rising educational demands in the local setting propelled the colonial authorities to be more active in providing and funding Chinese schools.…

Recent debates on situated knowledge highlight the issue of the researcher's position in the research process, challenging the traditional assumption of the insider/outsider dichotomy. Drawing on my fieldwork among Korean immigrant parents in an American school, I describe my shifting positions in negotiation and scrutinize the ways my reflexivity…

A central theme that dominates most studies on gender and leadership in education is the emerging tendency towards mitigating pervasive forms of discrimination against females. Yet, women still remain, for the most part, a minority within leadership positions in education. Despite policy initiatives emphasising gender equity, discrimination,…

Social, educational and political theorists increasingly portray today's world as one in which the globalization of Western forms dominates social, political and educational processes everywhere. According to this view, nation-building, though important in the West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is no longer an important…

Research based on randomized experiments (along with high-quality quasi-experiments) has gained traction in education circles in recent years. There is little doubt this has been driven in large part by the shift in research funding strategy by the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences under Grover Whitehurst's lead, described…

This article is based on a keynote address given on the last day of the 2011 International Society for Culture & Activity Research (ISCAR) Congress in Rome. The first part reflects on the kind of work being presented at the conference. It was exciting and stimulating to learn about a rich range of new research in many different venues during the…

Education is for anarchism, and what can very broadly be termed "autonomism"--that is, the many different schools of non-Leninist Marxism--of paramount importance in creating a society worthy of humanity, but this is not a simple formula of countering the dominant mode of institutional indoctrination known as schooling with libertarian…

This article undertakes a critique of the aims and objectives of "Thinking Skills", one of the most widely and internationally used curricula in the teaching of thinking, offered by the University of Cambridge International Examinations. By engaging in a critical discourse analysis of how political and class biases are (re-)produced in the forms…

The agenda of "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future," "commissioned," "funded," and "nurtured" by the U.S. Department of Education, is nothing less than an attempt to implement a "transformation" of America by "transform[ing] current academic norms about what counts as…

On the night of November 11, 1817, nineteen-year-old Rufus Choate rushed to Dartmouth Hall from his Hanover boarding room to answer a call of alarm from his classmates. Professors from Dartmouth University, an institution recently created by legislative action, "had violently attacked" the student library under Choate's care "and, after an…

The 1957 launch of "Sputnik" and the 1983 publication of "A Nation at Risk" shifted national education policy. Music educators promoted an "intrinsic value" of music philosophy following "Sputnik" and music advocacy through politics and public performances following "A Nation at Risk." Examining the history of both the intrinsic value philosophy…

This article contributes to the growing social realist literature in the sociology of education. A world systems approach is used to explain the shift to the various forms of localisation, including the emphasis on experience in the curriculum, as a strategy of globalisation that contributes to the decline of universal class consciousness and…

Many municipalities, armed with research showing the immense benefits of early education, are struggling to ensure children have the opportunity to attend quality preschools (Barnett, 2012; Magnuson, Ruhm, & Waldfogel, 2007). Birmingham, the largest city in Alabama, is no exception. In developing a profile of Birmingham's efforts to provide…