Demands for workforce flexibility and lifelong learning can endanger or marginalize older workers, whose access to training and promotion opportunities may be limited. A marked change in employer attitudes toward older workers is needed. (SK)

Creation of technologically based "virtual education" has been portrayed as a means of widening access to lifelong-learning opportunities for those currently excluded. An examination of these claims in light of UK nonparticipants' characteristics and common barriers reveals that technological fixes will solve some problems, create…

"Critical" sociology of education has abandoned equality of educational opportunity as an imperfect objective, recognising it as one fully compatible with the competitive ideology of liberalism and, in as much as it is not even realised, one that serves principally to sustain the myth of equality in an unequal society. In this article, the author…

The existence of social differences in educational achievement as a social fact presents the sociology of education with a challenge to which it has responded with indifferent success. It is argued that contemporary explanations that dismiss the existence and relevance of differences in cognitive performance arising as a consequence of class…

This article investigates the multimodal affordances presented by music software and how it can provide new opportunities for students to engage with composition work in the classroom. It seeks to broaden the scope of current research into classroom composition using technology, through a study of students' environments and compositional processes…

During Earth Science Week (October 8-14, 2006), millions of citizen scientists worldwide will be sampling groundwater, monitoring weather, touring quarries, exploring caves, preparing competition projects, and visiting museums and science centers to learn about Earth science. The American Geological Institute organizes this annual event to…

The goals for this article are consistent with common models of delivering services to students with disabilities in high school and postsecondary educational settings. In the broadest sense the goal is to help teachers and other service providers recognize their roles to ensure that students consider educational opportunities available once they…

This chapter discusses results of a fifty-state study conducted through the Academic Pathways to Access and Student Success initiative, and identifies curricular, instructional, and organizational approaches that increase opportunities for underserved students to attend college. (Contains 1 table.)

This article describes the results of the first Practice Research Network (PRN) survey conducted by the National Association of Social Workers, a collaborative project funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. The objectives of the PRN survey were to develop broad knowledge about social work practices and more specific knowledge about…

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) constitute only 3 percent of U.S. colleges and universities, yet they enroll 28 percent of all African American students in higher education and educate 40 percent of the black Americans who earn doctorates or first professional degrees. Just fifteen HBCUs accounted for half of the institutions…

The new learning opportunities that feed mind, body and soul helps the senior students develop the resiliency and intellectual qualities they need to make a healthy transition to post-high school life. The Monsignor Donovan High School in Toms River, New Jersey, has provided creative learning opportunities to seniors, which has planted in them the…

This paper explores economic competition in higher education in both the national and global dimensions, up to and including the likely effects of the Nelson reforms, reflecting on the implications for the equality of opportunity project. The history and application of the principle of equality of opportunity in tertiary education in Australia…

Many forms of intervention, across different domains, have the surprising effect of widening preexisting gaps between disadvantaged youth and their advantaged counterparts--if such interventions are made available to all students, not just to the disadvantaged. Whether this widening of gaps is incongruent with American interests and values…

The study reported in this paper surveyed eight campus deans in the Louisiana Technical College Greater Baton Rouge/Northshore District II Service Delivery Area about the institutional infrastructure for providing workforce training and continuing education to their respective communities. Study results indicated that while all campuses in the…

Open and distance learning provide particular (and sometimes overlapping) contexts for discussions of student retention. This paper argues that the environment for learning created by distance learning tutors is a key factor in student retention, whether retention is taken to refer to student completion of a single course or student persistence…