This article examines the image of the nation in the history textbooks of post-Soviet Ukraine. Ukraine is an interesting case as it is the second most populous Soviet successor state--48 million inhabitants according to the 2001 census--and harbors a population with a complicated ethnolinguistic structure. This demographic portrait differs from…

Little is in print on the development in Britain of university disciplines including the academic study of education. This paper provides a historical narrative of the study of adolescence from the 1870 Education Act to the contemporary day. Adolescence textbooks are examined in the context of changes in the education system, such as the demand…

The role of the school curriculum in multicultural societies is a central issue in the sociology of education. One of the main debates has to do with the relationship between education for multiculturalism and the use of curriculum for shaping the collective memory and strengthening the national ethos. This article deals with the state of…

The authors examined the thinking processes in the use of a decision support system (DSS) by social workers in a human services agency to determine whether they used the system to improve their case reasoning. Information was obtained from in-depth interviews with eight social workers who used a DSS in their work and from content analysis of…

The new directions in American political history have been ably described by the editors of "The Democratic Experiment." These are now freshly out of the gate, but it is clear that they will continue to unfold in the years ahead. The author read the book with distinct pleasure--so much so that she wondered--more than once--whether it was…

This research study follows up on previous investigations of the ongoing curriculum reform in China and its repercussions (actual and potential) on the effectiveness of the teacher evaluation process there (Liu & Teddlie, 2004, 2005). With the full implementation of the new curriculum reform throughout the country, teacher evaluation is…

What kind of influence does the structure of an educational hypermedia system have on the way its users understand its contents and organize the knowledge they acquire through its browsing? In this article, this already much discussed question, situated at the boundary between semiotics and cognitive science, is revisited in the light of results…

Many school districts in recent years have chosen, or have been mandated, to initiate planning process components identical, or closely akin, to those found in strategic planning models designed for educational organizations. Several model components and concepts are universal to the planning models, while other components and concepts are…

The goals of this research were to describe the daily life of children and teachers in Chinese kindergarten programmes, to better understand how teacher-child interactions affect both teachers and children. The main assumption guiding this research was that teacher-child interaction is one of the most important processes in early childhood…

How many names of women from American history can the average, recent high school graduate come up with? How does this number compare with the number of males she or he can name? These are the kinds of questions that informed Janice Trecker's classic study of U.S. high school textbooks. They were also the basis for the research in Sadker and…

This article shows how to explore children's perceptions of physical activity through content analysis of their artwork. Ninety-one children drew pictures of what they perceived to be "physical activity" and created a slogan for promoting physical activity in their community. Drawing content revealed types of popular activities,…

This paper explores the concept of shame within the context of workplace bullying. Despite a decade or more of international research into bullying at work, there is little or no evidence for explicit exploration of shame amongst those who have experienced bullying. Based on content analysis from the narratives of 15 college and university…

"Message senders" include anyone and anything that provide information to us that we can then use to shape our understanding of others, events, and our surroundings. Textbooks are very influential message senders in the formal kindergarten through 12th grade school systems in the United States. The realities of students reading these…

In this article, the author demonstrates that the semiotic model proposed by Charles Morris enables us to optimize our understanding of technical communication practices and provides a good point of inquiry. To illustrate this point, the author exemplifies the semiotic approaches by scholars in technical communication and elaborates Morris's model…

In the early 1990s, scholars from a variety of disciplines encouraged greater inclusion of qualitative research methodology in the mental health field. Moon, Dillon, and Sprenkle (1990) hoped their paper "Family therapy and qualitative research" would serve as a stimulus for further development of qualitative research in the field of family…