Sweden's present school curricula emphasise personal flexibility, creativity, responsibility for learning and suggest new understandings of quality in learning, where individual freedom of choice is meant to help produce creative, motivated, alert, inquiring, self-governing and flexible users and developers of knowledge. These curriculum changes…

This article explores the impact of market metaphors and mechanisms on higher education in Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon recent anthropological literature on the local meanings of market reforms in post-socialist contexts, as well as work in the field of educational policy that has focused attention on the "local spaces" in which curricular…

This research explores connections between the ways in which an early childhood educator (ECE) identity is discursively formed within professional training and the marginalization of the ECE workforce. The underlying premise was that pedagogical discourses of the ECE regarded as "good" contribute to the formation of a particular kind of…

In an experimental writing course we taught at a northeastern state university, we explored "queer" and "writing," hoping to discover what students could create by merging these terms. How might queer theory help students use writing to reimagine and rearticulate various identity categories in ways that allowed them to reconfigure the mental map…

This ethnographic-case study explored the beliefs, context factors, and practices of three middle school exemplary teachers that led to a technology-enriched curriculum. Findings suggest that these middle school teachers believe technology is a tool that adds value to lessons and to students learning and motivation. Due to a personal interest in…

The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between life difficulties of international students at a Southeastern university in the USA and the self-concept of these students. The findings indicate that international students experience minor to moderate difficulty in studying in the United States. The current study also indicates…

In the past few years many states in the U.S. have moved toward full implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. In doing so, schools have adopted "research-based" early reading models to implement Reading First, a salient component of NCLB. Through structured observations and interviews, the study team examined the…

The professional discipline of strategic public relations offers many benefits to organizations. It helps them prevent and mitigate crises. It allows them to identify and manage issues that may interfere with their goals and objectives. It also leads them in building and maintaining quality relationships with strategic publics. However, can the…

The paper discusses the utility of constructing causal models in focus groups. This was experienced as a complement to an in-depth ethnographic research on the differing perceptions of caretakers and health professionals on child's growth and development in Peru and Bolivia. The rational, advantages, difficulties and necessary adaptations of…

This paper explores curriculum evolution processes in relation to sociocultural considerations with respect to a (teacher-of-English-as-a-foreign-language) TEFL program conducted in Singapore for inservice (English-as-a-foreign-language) EFL trainee-teachers from the People's Republic of China (PRC). It reports on how curriculum evolution was…

This paper reports on a research study that investigated the extent to which the Queensland secondary school subject Modern History adopts characteristics of socially critical environmental education. The study found that while the Modern History syllabus gives ample opportunities for students to focus their inquiries on "environment",…

Although each urban Indian community is distinctive, there are a number of common features or characteristics that are found in most urban Indian communities. The salient characteristics of the San Francisco Bay Area Indian community and many other urban Indian communities are that they are multitribal and therefore multicultural; dispersed…

Based on a broader qualitative study of organizational level changes in schools participating in Massachusetts' Safe Schools Program, the authors describe four roles that GSAs played in the twenty-two schools: counseling and support; "safe" space; primary vehicle for raising awareness, increasing visibility, and educating about LGBT…

In this case study of the impact of professional development (PD) activities in music on staff at a childcare centre, the researcher was also the provider of PD. The needs of the staff and their preferred mode of PD delivery were negotiated with the researcher, resulting in a number of sessions where new resources and teaching ideas were modelled…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the "international mindedness" (IM) of a group of pre- and in-service international school teachers. This included an analysis of their beliefs about teaching and learning successfully in international settings. Ninety respondents completed a 55-item survey, eight of whom then participated in eight-item…