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Amid debates about CRT in education, this paper critically analyses laws that have reportedly sought to expand ‘education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics’ with the hypothesis that there would be little evidence of anti-racist ideology in policies pertaining to curriculum. The research design thus leans on King and Chandler’s (2016) distinction between non-racist and antiracist stances, as well as Andreotti et al’.s (2015) social cartography that maps out ‘soft-reform’ and ‘radical reform’ spaces, to achieve a latent content analysis of 14 pieces of legislation across 13 states since 2020 to identify and analyse the ideological characteristics of these pieces of legislation. Only four of the 14 documents from four different states contain a significant anti-racist ideological leaning; the others express a liberal multicultural ideological position that celebrates difference and recognizes contributions, but does not examine systemic racism. Thus, among states that are legislating more ethnic studies, the vast majority do not legislate anti-racist positions. This paper concludes that there is little evidence of anti-racist ideas being legislated into primary and secondary education in the United States, and that most curricular reforms toe a non-critical ideological line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As American colleges and universities become more diverse, expanding our vision and working around what it means to be a legacy, especially at Predominately White Institutions, will be essential. This paper examines Black families' experiences at Churchill, a small liberal arts PWI in the Northeast. With the aid of Yosso's community cultural wealth and Bourdieu's notions of cultural and social capital, it examines how parents' experiences at Churchill and exposing their child to Churchill shaped and informed their child's decision to attend their parent's alma mater and the passing of social and cultural capital between the generations. Findings suggest that while navigational and familial capital passes between generations, Black cultural capital does not pass smoothly and impacts their child's experience at Churchill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy classifies and shapes people/subjects in particular kinds of ways. Focusing on the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), this paper analyses policy documents from Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Wales. We pay particular attention to how learners are represented within and across the three policy documents, and we apply Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' approach to guide the analysis. For us, problematization is a fruitful and positive process that enables educators to engage with a critical dialogue regarding the policies they are expected to enact. Our analysis highlighted that common across the policies were overlapping discourses of idealism, neoliberalism, healthism, and individualism, which serve to reinforce deficit language and a focus on what learners 'lack'. The problem of 'learner as lacking' is represented within the policies via at least three subject positions: 'the sedentary learner', 'the un-educated learner' and 'the naïve learner'. The findings suggest that the three policies were producing an ideal and perhaps impossible learner (subject) whilst at the same time representing the learner as a problem that the policy could 'fix'. This paper is important because it: (i) demonstrates how certain discourses and voices are amplified and silenced within curriculum policy documents and policy work more broadly; (ii) makes educational and health politics visible; and (iii) creates space for the profession to develop greater critical consciousness related to policy. In terms of future directions, we urge curriculum policy writers and other stakeholders to carefully consider how learners are categorised, represented and governed in and through policy. If curriculum policies, by their very nature, need to produce problems – in this case, the (im)possible subject - we invite educators to engage in critical conversations regarding the policies they are expected to enact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work focuses on the changes that the MeToo movement brought to tourism and the hospitality industry since its beginning in October 2017. Social media has been previously found as an important tool in tourism, but its impact on social change has been questioned. By applying the Google Advanced Search options and analyzing the Web of Science (WoS) database, the work analyzes news, websites, cases, blogs, academic papers and white papers. Following the PRISMA protocol for systematic reviews, the work shows how the MeToo movement selectively influenced employees, tourists and guests in different sub-sectors of tourism and hospitality in the United States. The changes were mainly related to the identity of the offenders. Solidarity with the victims was found as less relevant in this case. The hotel sector presents the most prevalent change, including policies and educational goals, followed by the restaurant sector, airlines and the event sector. Places outside of the USA, as well as single travellers and passengers, were found to be less protected by these changes, and may be at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the intense politicisation of education, many teacher educators are caught in the cross-hairs of government's reform agendas, university expectations and student teacher needs. This paper reports on a study of 28 literacy teacher educators in four countries (Canada, US, Australia and England). This paper reports on the broad question: How is politics affecting literacy teacher educators? Three specific aspects are considered: their pedagogies, identity and well-being. It describes how their pedagogy (goals and teaching strategies) has narrowed because of mandated curriculum and exit exams. It shows how their identity as academics is being complicated because they often do not have time for their research. And their well-being is compromised because of excessive external inspections and as their community in the university splinters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate of students switching from public schools to private schools because they received a scholarship and would not have switched without the subsidy ("switcher rate") is an integral factor for reliably estimating the net fiscal impact of private school choice programs. Switcher rates observed among students in control groups in random assignment studies can provide useful information for inferring switcher rates among program participants when conducting fiscal analyses. This paper identifies 27 estimates of switcher rates from eight lottery-based evaluations of six private school choice programs in the United States that report information about which types of school students enroll in after they apply to a choice program and do not win a lottery. Switcher rates for both full samples and subgroups of students range from 52 percent to 98 percent. Lower bound weighted average and median switcher rates from these studies are 84 percent. Upper bound weighted average and median switcher rates are 90 percent and 89 percent, respectively. Switcher rates are slightly higher for African American students participating in three privately funded school choice programs, where the average switcher rate for these students is 93 percent and the median is 94 percent. Switcher rates observed in these studies are remarkably stable across time and states, and they can provide useful information for inferring switcher rates in fiscal analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational paraprofessionals have had an increased presence in English state schools since the first decade of the 21st century, but research has been limited in terms of who undertakes paraprofessional roles, what they entail and how such work is perceived by others. This paper compares one such paraprofessional role, the learning mentor, with the 'community agent', found in the United States of America during the 1960 s. It identifies a number of similarities around the lived experience of this work in terms of status, career progression and policy assumptions about the efficacy of these roles. It argues that a historical analysis is invaluable in gaining a more complete understanding of how such roles have an air of impermanency, are subject to the vagaries of policy but nevertheless continue to be recycled as a limited and partial response to deepening social and educational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries around the world are striving to improve their educational systems with a view to improving their economy and society. In this global competition, national and international test results are of considerable interest. In this paper, we show that national testing in England and the USA have shown little or no improvement over the years. This finding is not isolated; it appears to be a global phenomenon. Data from large-scale international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS are remarkably stable over time. This paper reviews the trends from country-specific and international data and explores some of the reasons which have been offered for such stability. We argue that these explanations are insufficient and ways forward are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the body of literature around practicing teachers and policy (Knapp, Ferguson, Bamberg, & Hill, 1998; Kumar & Scuderi, 2000; Lortie, 1975/2002), little is known about the involvement of their preservice counterparts. Preservice teachers have limited exposure to policy-related coursework in their professional training (Floden & Meniketti, 2005) and scholarship is relatively silent regarding preservice teachers' experiences with educational policies and their sense-making process (Spillane, 2004; Weick, 1995; see Heineke, Ryan, & Tocci, 2015, for a notable exception). This paper examines preservice teachers negotiating and making sense of a particular policy, the Massachusetts' Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It addresses the following questions: First, what do preservice teachers know about policy in general and the RETELL language policy in particular? Second, how do preservice teachers make sense of the implementation of the RETELL policy in the various settings of their professional training? Third, in what ways do preservice teachers' experiences with the policy influence their orientations toward teaching emergent bilingual students? This analysis demonstrates that preservice teachers have limited general knowledge of educational policy process, and limited specific knowledge around the RETELL language policy. Yet, they learn important lessons about how to "do" policy from their field supervisors and play an important role in policy implementation. The impact of the RETELL policy on preservice teachers' beliefs about teaching emergent bilingual students is mediated by the lack of policy information they receive and by their experiences in the field. This paper adds to the limited literature around preservice teachers involvement in policy and offers recommendations for highlighting the importance of policy education in teacher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue exploring parents' responses to neoliberal policy changes, especially shifting notions of risk and responsibility, this article provides a historical account of local and national policy initiatives in the contemporary United States that have increased risk and placed responsibility for this risk on the shoulders of parents (as well as educators). The opening section of the paper reviews major recent policy documents and initiatives in the United States, from the landmark 1983 report 'A Nation at Risk' to the current age of test-based accountability. In the following sections, the paper explores what two Chicago parents themselves had to say about risk and responsibility in public schooling. What, in their views, were the actual risks? What did they think their responsibilities were, as parents? What did they do in response to the shifting policyscape? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal goal of this paper is to examine the transformation of the university policies in Azerbaijan as they are affected by UK and USA university discourses. I develop a framework that delineates modal verbs of very strong versus neutral stance and classify them according to (a) American and British Englishes, and according to (b) traditional and student-centred educational approaches. The above-mentioned categories of modal verbs are studied through various university documentations with a preliminary aim to analyse the frequency of modal verbs' occurrence and the cultural and ideological values they denote regarding power relationships. Based on the findings, the research provides a tentative theory of the effectiveness of modalities in interpreting educational policies, in particular with regards to the empowerment or manipulation discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author provides an American perspective on the five original papers published in the June 2009 issue of the journal. Discussing attitudes towards national educational testing in the U.S., he notes that in the U.S. education is legally in the hands of the states, but sees consensus building towards some kind of testing with stakes for individuals as well as political entities. He states the importance of designing a test around its stated purpose and sees problems in multi-purpose tests.

Recently, a series of popular economics “Invest in Kids” (IIK) reports in the United States has called for increased investment in children's early education. These national reports articulate a new concept, the “public finance value” of children, and argue for increased investment in preschool because of its positive impact on the long-term fiscal health of the nation. This paper analyzes the IIK reports from 2003-6 to assess their attention to the multidimensional aspects of early care and education (ECE) in the US. Although the reports evaluate increased investment in preschool, they fail to recognize the need for a comprehensive system of ECE that includes support for childcare and the unpaid care and education provided by parents. As a result, the reports undervalue the contributions of women and of the ECE sector itself. Feminist economics offers a broader perspective that would help the IIK authors avoid conceptual traps and recognize the need for more comprehensive reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Civil War (1861–1865), the United States faced a problem of “reconstruction” similar to that confronted by other nations at the time and familiar to the US since at least the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The problem was one of territorial and political (re)integration: how to take territories that had only recently been operating under “foreign” governance and integrate them into an expanded nation-state on common structural terms. This paper considers the significance of education in that process of state (re)formation after the Civil War, with particular attention to its role in federal territories of the US West. Specifically, this paper analyses the role that education-based restrictions on citizenship, voting rights and office-holding played in constructing formal state power in the cases of five western territories: Hawaii, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. A focus on the significance of education in these cases both advances and challenges literature on the “hidden” and decentralised structure of national policy-making in the US. It adds to that literature by illuminating how education served as an indirect tool of national policy in the West, effectively shaping the structure of power in other policy domains. At the same time, by focusing on the US West, the present analysis challenges the idea that national governance in the US was particularly “decentralised” or “hidden”. It highlights instead: (1) the role of colonial racialism in shaping national responsibility and authority for education in the US; and (2) the significance of education as both an alternative and a corollary to war in establishing US colonial power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a comparative analysis of national curriculum reforms in Australia and the USA, set against the backdrop of global trends since the 1980s. The analysis is driven by an interest in the reconstitution of national policy spaces in global times, and draws particularly upon Stephen Carney’s notion ofglobal policy-scapesas a way of understanding the complex and disjunctive flows of transnational policy ideas and practices. The paper begins by arguing that reforms since the early 1980s have been driven by global panics about globalisation, equity and market competitiveness. These global influences have underpinned parallel reform attempts in each country, including the development of national goals in the late 1980s, failed attempts at national standards in the early 1990s and rejuvenated attempts towards national consistency in the 2000s. Building on this, we argue that despite shared global drivers and broad historical similarities, reforms in each country remain distinct in scope and form, due to several unique features that inform the national policy space of each country. These distinctive national policy spaces provide differentconditions of possibilityfor reform, reminding us that despite global commonalities, policy reforms are relational and locally negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this critical reflection, we consider physical education policy research in the United States (U.S.) using a sociocritical lens. Our aim is to extend the discussion and critiques of physical education policy research by exploring how it is conducted in the U.S. Instead of asking 'What is physical education policy research?', we are more concerned with the complex, imbalanced, and unpredictable affects of physical education policy research in the U.S. Thus, we ask questions like, 'How is physical education policy research working in different contexts?', 'What counts as policy research?' and 'Who is doing policy research?' We examine how physical education policy research is being taken up across the U.S. and the orientation – or direction – those studies take. As such, we conclude by considering what directions, people, and elements are not included in the current orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dramatic increases have occurred in the number of children who speak languages other than English at home in the United States and English language learners (ELLs) need support both for becoming proficient in English and for maintaining their first language. In this paper, five types of bilingual education implemented in the United States are reviewed: submersion, English as a second language instruction; transitional bilingual education; maintenance bilingual education; two-way immersion (TWI), with TWI programs being the focus for most of the paper. A brief history of the policy evolution of bilingual education in the United States is provided. Research reviewed suggests that compared to students exposed to other programs, students in TWI programs are better off in terms of achievement and in L1 and L2 development. Although benefits of TWI programs are demonstrated, limitations of the current research also exist, and are discussed. Challenges implementing TWI programs are discussed and policy recommendation are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is designed to specify a set of new opportunities for educators, school administrators, and scholars to realize the practical aims and strategic advantages envisioned in magnet schools. The paper is divided into three distinct sections. In Section I, we examine the extensive research literature on parents’ choice patterns and school preferences in magnet schools and other school-choice programs. In Section II, we compare the reasons parents choose particular schools with the criteria school districts use to select magnet school locations (and themes). This section highlights desegregation goals and district-level magnet school policies pegged to the following questions: What is the policy context for siting decisions in districts with magnet schools? Are siting policies strategically aligned with what is known from the research literature about parents’ school preferences? Do neighborhood characteristics play a part in magnet school siting policies and specific decision-making? In Section III, we use geographic information system (GIS) tools to add both clarity and complexity to the convergence of parent choice patterns and sociodemographic diversity in our four selected school districts. The maps depict the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of the magnet schools in each district, as well as the demographic characteristics of surrounding census tracts (extended school neighborhoods). We conclude that GIS can be a viable option for improving the citing decisions for magnet schools, and that this can allow for the merging of parent choice priorities with educational equity and diversity goals of the district. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From Facebook-coordinated high-school walkouts to compelling Internet-based protest art that has accompanied recent teacher strikes, grassroots education activism in the USA has gone digital. Despite the proliferation of research on the mediatisation of education policy, few studies have explored the ways in which activists for public education engage with Web 2.0 technologies. This paper makes a contribution to this under-researched area by exploring selected activist accounts including Parents Across America, United Opt Out National, and the PS 2013 campaign in New York City. I draw on critical, feminist, and cultural studies theories of education and social movement media to analyse activist media practices in a policy and political milieu dominated by corporate media and neoliberal governance structures. The analysis reveals that progressive education activists strategically deploy digital media to amplify voice, build collective identity, and disseminate alternative knowledge to enable direct action. A situated analysis also reveals significant differences in activist media practice which are shaped by particular political histories and geographies. The paper concludes with a discussion about future lines of inquiry into the role of digital media in collective struggles for public education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Charter school legislation permits new actors to compete for public funds to provide education to K-12 students across the United States. Proponents of market-oriented policies predict that privatization cuts costs and improves service quality, by removing bureaucracy and boosting creativity. These schools were predicted to become laboratories of innovation that would use their flexibility from state and local requirements to improve public education. This study suggests that the less regulated service systems may have also propagated an environment susceptible to managerial and accountability inadequacies, if not outright integrity violations and corruption. Using systematic document review and the existing literature on corruption in education, a typology of integrity violations and corruption in the charter school sector is developed in this paper. A better understanding of the characteristics of the institutional environment that enable corrupt behavior is necessary to develop effective strategies to prevent corruption, protect children, and manage public funds effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of for-profit educational organizations in the predominantly public and not-for-profit K-12 US schooling system is being fiercely debated across our nation. Little empirical research is available to help policy-makers develop informed decisions regarding the educational value that for-profit schools provide to our students. This paper fills in part, for the first time in detail, this void. This paper uses a four-year panel of charter schools from the state of Michigan to estimate a school-level education production function and employ a random effects model that controls for student and district characteristics. The results find no evidence of a change in efficiency when a charter school is run by a for-profit company (versus a not-for-profit company). The analysis developed in this paper takes the debate one step further as well, and examines the role that the size of for-profit firms plays in the associated outcomes. There is some evidence that small for-profit companies are either less efficient or enroll a different type of cohort of students than not-for-profit schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the progress of educational programme evaluation over three decades through the lens of a group of evaluators primarily from the UK and the US who met periodically from 1972 to 2004 to review the state of the art of educational programme evaluation- what it could and could not do- in relation to the complexity of programme initiatives and the policy and political contexts of the times. These meetings came to be known as the Cambridge conferences as they were always held at a university college in Cambridge. They were sponsored in the main by the Nuffield Foundation and, in 2004, by the ESRC. The nucleus of original group membership was retained over the years for continuity with additional members joining as the specific focus of the conference changed and new ideas were sought. There have been six conferences. This paper first locates the contextual origin of and reason for the first conference and the manifesto that was written from it. Secondly it documents the revisiting of that manifesto at the sixth conference leading to the construction of a 'new' manifesto that reflects changes required in evaluation methodology in the socio/political context of the first decade of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an empirical analysis of education policy in England that is informed by recent developments in US critical theory. In particular, I draw on ‘whiteness studies’ and the application of critical race theory (CRT). These perspectives offer a new and radical way of conceptualizing the role of racism in education. Although the US literature has paid little or no regard to issues outside North America, I argue that a similar understanding of racism (as a multifaceted, deeply embedded, often taken-for-granted aspect of power relations) lies at the heart of recent attempts to understand institutional racism in the UK. Having set out the conceptual terrain in the first half of the paper, I then apply this approach to recent changes in the English education system to reveal the central role accorded the defence (and extension) of race inequity. Finally, the paper touches on the question of racism and intentionality: although race inequity may not be a planned and deliberate goal of education policy neither is it accidental. The patterning of racial advantage and inequity is structured in domination and its continuation represents a form of tacit intentionality on the part of white powerholders and policy-makers. It is in this sense that education policy is an act of white supremacy. Following others in the CRT tradition, therefore, the paper’s analysis concludes that the most dangerous form of ‘white supremacy’ is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo-nazi groups, but rather the taken-for-granted routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on federal education policy of U.S. published in the September 1982 issue of the journal 'Peabody Journal of Education.' Overview of federal activities in education since 1965; Strategies for the implementation of federal education policies; Criticism of federal purposes in education and the methods used to achieve them.

This paper explores the process of assessment in social work education programs throughout the United States. Following the guidelines of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS), social work education has switched from student learning outcomes to competency-based measures. Included in this study is a literature review on current assessment practices and results of a research project on assessment practices in social work education programs nationwide. The findings may be useful to social work educators in addressing programmatic changes and revisions based on the 2015 EPAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers insights into the referencing of Singapore within the US Obama Administration educational discourse, underscoring the political-material-discursive nexus of international educational benchmarking. Using critical discourse analysis, we find that an objectified Singapore functions as a rhetorical tool of US policymaker agendas, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international assessments as basis for truth statements. US policy discourses on Singapore’s education system perpetuate, rather than interrogate, PISA’s questionable underlying “truths” around socio-economic development, equity, and excellence, and thus on student achievement and underachievement. Singapore’s status as an “Asian Tiger” reference society intertwines with international assessments to form part of an emerging transnational regime of truth, homogenizing what to consider as factual or important, holding sway over views of reality by obscuring other more robust data, research, and lived experiences. In the process of constructing “high performance” around the role education plays in the international economic system, the notion of “low performance” is also discursively constituted and a schemata established for the disciplining of “low performing” bodies through neoliberal policy agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines education accountability as a mechanism of coercive neoliberal urban governance in the USA. Drawing on Gramscian theory of the 'integral state' as the dialectical synthesis of coercion, consent, and resistance, the author argues that as the crisis gives the state less room to win consent, it intensifies coercion as a strategy of governance. The author discusses three aspects of coercive state responses to the crisis in relation to education: (1) cannibalizing public education as a site of capital accumulation; (2) imposition of state austerity regimes and selective abandonment of education as a mechanism of social reproduction and legitimation in African-American communities that have become zones of disposability; and (3) governance by exclusion of African-American and Latino communities through school closings, state takeovers of elected governance bodies, and disenfranchisement. Systems of accountability are integral to this process as they make schools legible for the market, mark specific schools and school districts as pathological and in need of authoritarian governance, and justify minimalist schools in areas of urban disposability. This paper concludes with the potential of emergent resistance to dominant neoliberal education policy and argues that breaking with the framework of accountability and testing is critical to a counter-hegemonic alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current paper, we employ the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to calculate a lessbiased estimate of poverty on US achievement. The PISA was specifically chosen as it is an assessment removed from a specific curriculum and instead focuses on concepts that students should know in order to participate in a global economy. Using a propensity score matching approach, our findings suggest that US students in poverty have notable educational attainment deficiencies compared to a matched group of students who are not in poverty. In other words, when we select two students who have a great deal in common but for the fact that one comes from a poverty background, the student in poverty is expected to perform nearly 28 points, or about a quarter of a standard deviation lower, on the PISA assessment. In real terms, this puts math achievement for children not in poverty on-par with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, while children in poverty are well below the OECD average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is noted in school reform policy circles as the gold standard of academic excellence. While the presence of IB as a sought-after education vendor has grown in the past decade, the organization has attempted to shake off its image as an elite agency serving only private international schools with its longstanding liberal arts curriculum. As such its turn toward the public sector in the United States with a credential for vocational students appears perplexing and out of step with its product brand, but the newer Career Programme (CP) is marketed as meeting the needs of applied learners in secondary schools. This paper offers a case study of two schools in one US state that adopted the CP, generating IB school enrollments from among talented vocational students while elevating its ranking on the college and career readiness (CCR) score, an annual assessment of postsecondary success. The CCR policy reformers advocate curricular improvements so that all students receive the academic foundations and employability skills needed to thrive in the new economy. Yet the egalitarian discourse of CCR could not be attended to using the CP. In this case study only high-achieving students were advised to participate and enroll in the program. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses three separate educational projects which involved students working side-by-side with homicide investigators in an effort to conduct cold case investigations. Each project resulted in two different products, one for agency use and the other for public consumption. The cold case investigative reports produced for each case became part of the investigative file and are confidential documents. The video PSAs were for public consumption and were designed to provide additional exposure to the cases with the hope of generating productive tips. Each project was carried in collaboration with local Crime Stoppers programs, law enforcement agencies, and coroner’s offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the principles and practices that have influenced outdoor education in Aotearoa New Zealand find their genesis in the United Kingdom and North America. In recent times, many of these foundational assumptions have been called into question. This paper highlights how emerging ‘local’ voices are questioning and reframing how outdoor education is conceptualised and practiced. In large part this is due to a sense of distinctiveness borne from the bicultural foundations that underpin governance and policy-making. This paper explores how outdoor educators are developing pedagogies that acknowledge the particularities of our context, particularly the bicultural foundation of Aotearoa New Zealand. The paper highlights how social and cultural influences shape educational policy and how outdoor educators are responding, both theoretically and practically, to meet the needs of learners in an increasingly diverse society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper utilizes the work of Elise Boulding as a theoretical framework for analyzing the potentials and shortcomings of the US educational policy, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)1. The interrelated concepts of respect, solitude, imagination, and partnerships from Boulding’s scholarship are detailed. NCLB is summarized along with its historical context, based in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, its assumptions, goals, and the arguments of supporters and critics of the policy. Examples of how Boulding’s concepts are and can be employed in the US classrooms, even despite NCLB, are discussed. Concluding the paper, the contradictions between the assumptions and results of NCLB and Boulding’s framework are exposed to ultimately argue that No Child Left Behind must be largely dismantled in order to honor Boulding’s legacy and challenge of enabling peace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I critically examine the discourse surrounding response to intervention (RTI), a US-based education reform that has garnered a considerable amount of attention (as well as controversy) in a very short amount of time. A multi-pronged reform effort, RTI is a tiered approach to delivering instructional intervention to students at risk, an on-going and systematic model of monitoring student performance, as well as an alternative to the ability/achievement discrepancy model for identifying learning disabilities. In this paper, I argue, however, that RTI is not so much a reform but a tactic, aimed at returning to the status quo of segregated special education and reinvigorating many of the foundational assumptions of traditional special education practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The intent of this paper is to show that while ethnographic research for decades has helped to challenge one-dimensional, deficit-oriented perspectives about Black males, this work has also helped to reproduce essentialised racial motifs. I define a racial motif as a central theme or story used to make sense of the social and educational experiences of a racial group. I argue that long-standing racial motifs inform how ethnographic research is conducted within a historical context, and how the theories that come out of ethnographic research inform how we understand the social and educational concerns of African-American males in the present. In other words, past constructions and theories close off the kinds of questions one can ask within a particular historical period and limit how contemporary questions are explored. In this paper, I show how ethnographies written during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were constructed in a way that was aligned with the dominant tropes and theories about Black males during those decades. I additionally show how these same theories and tropes were visible in television programs and movies. I conclude by discussing both the challenges and the promise of ethnography, including how educational ethnographers can explore new questions that challenge historically entrenched racial motifs. I conclude this paper by suggesting that attention should be given not only to the institutional, structural, and pedagogical practices within schools that constrain and reproduce Black males' schooling experiences, but also to the historical and discursive constructions that have taken form throughout decades of ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on findings from a research project funded by the Scottish Executive which analysed the gender balance in teaching and explored the underlying reasons for the decline in the number and proportion of men, particularly in secondary schools. As in other developed countries, such as Australia, the USA and Canada, the proportion of men entering teaching has declined fairly rapidly over a ten-year period. At a time when women are participating in paid work in greater numbers than ever before, their concentration in certain areas of work, particularly in the service sector and the 'caring' professions, is increasingly apparent. Despite the clarity of this trend, it is evident that responses from academics and policy-makers have been very different, with some policy-makers linking the declining proportion of men in teaching with the problem of boys' underachievement and a perceived 'crisis in masculinity', whilst some feminist writers have questioned these views, drawing on recent gender theory which questions the utility of the binary categories of 'man' and 'woman', instead suggesting that gender is performed and may have little to do with the body of the person who is involved in the particular performance. Sex and gender thus become decoupled, with the focus on individual actors freely choosing the version of gender they wish to practice. This line of argument suggests that the sex of the teacher is irrelevant; what really matters is the way in which they perform gender in the classroom. Work on the gender balance in teaching therefore provides an opportunity to reflect on underlying tensions in gender theorising and policy-making. The paper begins by considering tensions between modernist and post-structuralist accounts of sex and gender. Having outlined the underlying theoretical tensions, it then goes on to consider the accounts given by teachers and students of the reasons for their own choice of teaching as a career, their experiences in teaching and their views of the reasons underlying the declining proportion of men in teaching. The aim is to consider whether students and teachers believe that sex is an important variable structuring their lives, including their decision to become a teacher and their experiences of working as a teacher, or whether they regard gender as something which is chosen from a wide repertoire of options and is relatively free from the constraints of embodiment. In relation to research on the gender balance in teaching, the paper concludes by suggesting that there is a need to make use of the idea of gender as performance, whilst at the same time holding on to the foundational concepts of 'woman' and 'man'. This is necessary to monitor and understand the career paths and underlying power relations of women and men in teaching and to transform these over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses recent policy statements around international education produced by US state boards of education and their international education advisory councils, and investigates policy developments in two US states, Ohio and Indiana, to better ground the discussion of education policy-making in the local political, economic, and educational environment. Since 2001, several US states have published policy statements encouraging the expansion of international education in public schools, particularly world-language study and student and teacher exchange programmes. However, this analysis of the broader aims of this push to internationalize curriculum suggests that they are grounded in local and state issues. Rather than expanding the goals and aims of education from the local to the global, this study argues that these policies establish clear boundaries that limit international education to local economic and national security concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I develop indices capturing business/market and nonprofit/mission characteristics of charter schools that can be used to explain many of their observed operational and political choices. This improves on earlier research using only a binary variable classifying charter schools as market or mission rather than letting them take on characteristics of both. Using data from a survey of charter schools, I construct market and mission orientation indices which I then use to reestimate a series of multivariate models published in earlier charter school research that used only the binary distinction between schools. These nuanced, nonmutually exclusive indices reveal aspects of school choices in terms of targeting student populations, recruiting staff, and engaging in political advocacy not uncovered with the original binary distinction. This demonstrates the importance of increasing the sophistication of our empirical measures in the study of charter schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002, based on a scientific research approach, attempts to measure and track teacher and administrator performance to achieve accountability for student outcomes on standardized tests of basic competencies. Although the NCLB Act attempts to transform school systems through rigorous student testing, integration of parental choice, improvement of reading comprehension, and use of best practices, it lacks a comprehensive basis for complete change. This paper compares the scientific research basis for NCLB with an open systems model of school change and notes weaknesses in theoretical assumptions, variables, and components of NCLB as well as in attempts to implement the model. The current NCLB model cannot adapt to changes within the internal as well as external contexts that affect instructional processes and outcomes. The paper asserts that reform envisioned by the drafters of the NCLB Act is more completely achieved through a systems approach that incorporates multiple research methodologies, broad participation among researchers, policymakers, administrators, and stakeholders, and sufficient technical support and resource allocations from legislators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets forth some Post Keynesian policy proposals concerning education. It first reviews U.S. education problems and the neoclassical solution to them, which relies on increasing competition and consumer choice. The paper then reviews the empirical literature on these topics, and concludes by setting forth a Post Keynesian approach to the U.S. education problems that is supported by these empirical findings. This approach would focus more on providing sufficient income to children of low-income households as well as additional educational spending. It would reject tracking students, and support standards and funding at larger levels of government than the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what does it offer educational researchers and practitioners outside the US? This paper addresses these questions by examining the recent history of anti-racist research and policy in the UK. In particular, the paper argues that conventional forms of anti-racism have proven unable to keep pace with the development of increasingly racist and exclusionary education polices that operate beneath a veneer of professed tolerance and diversity. In particular, contemporary anti-racism lacks clear statements of principle and theory that risk reinventing the wheel with each new study; it is increasingly reduced to a meaningless slogan; and it risks appropriation within a reformist “can do” perspective dominated by the de-politicized and managerialist language of school effectiveness and improvement. In contrast, CRT offers a genuinely radical and coherent set of approaches that could revitalize critical research in education across a range of inquiries, not only in self-consciously “multicultural” studies. The paper reviews the developing terrain of CRT in education, identifying its key defining elements and the conceptual tools that characterize the work. CRT in education is a fast-changing and incomplete project but it can no longer be ignored by the academy beyond North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War ended with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman Empires. In planning for the peace negotiations the allied governments considered not only the European boundaries but especially the national aspirations and future development of the peoples of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa and East Asia. American President Woodrow Wilson created a secret commission of academics and experts to prepare studies that would inform and support the American peace negotiators. Almost all of the studies on education, covering education in Austria, Prussia, Albania, the Ottoman Empire, Central Africa, Japan, and the education of minorities in Western Europe, were prepared by Paul Monroe, professor of history at Teachers College, Columbia University, with various assistants. There was a certain logic to Monroe's selection, since he had edited the five-volume Cyclopedia of Education, published 1911–1913, and was connected to a worldwide network of educational experts who had contributed to that project. Monroe's reports, like most of the expert reports prepared for the American commission, are in part compilations of ‘objective’ information, such as educational statistics, legislation and policies. But at crucial points they develop critical analyses of existing structures and define a proposed role for education—a kind of educational self-determination—in what we might call nation-building in parts of the collapsed empires and in the preliminary steps towards de-colonization in other parts. While Monroe's ideas about the role of education could play only a small part in contributing to the plans for the Treaty of Versailles, they had a continuing impact in shaping American efforts in international education in the 1920s. Monroe himself played a large part in bringing American educational ideas to bear on modernization efforts in China, the Middle East and other developing areas in the 1920s and 1930s. This paper is part of a larger biographical project on Paul Monroe and the spread of American influence in international education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in elder abuse definitions hinder the comparison of research and state elder abuse data (Jogerst, Daly, Brinig et al., in press). The purposes of this paper are to describe and summarize the cider abuse definitions in the state statutes and present current definitions used in practice, education, and research. The definitions of elder abuse for the 50 state and District of Columbia laws addressing protective services for domestic elder abuse were analyzed. No one single term describing elder abuse was used uniformly across all statutes. "Abandonment," "mental anguish," "exploitation," "neglect," "self-neglect," and "sexual abuse" were predominant terms used in the statutes. It is unlikely that legislation for the 50 states and District of Columbia would be implemented to change the statutes definitions of elder abuse but it is possible to develop a list of definitions that can be used as model definitions for researchers, practitioners, and for future policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views regarding relevance of advocacy groups, politics and research for education policies. Topics discussed include emergence of think tanks resulting from evolution in practice of knowledge producers, political culture and governmental structure of New Jersey leading to the state's listing in one of the corrupt U.S. states and constitutional responsibility incurred on states for providing education to students.

Knowledge production in US academic adult education (1945-70) altered significantly in the light of apparently pervasive and permanent post-war economic and cultural change forces that transformed both the individual and the social. This paper explores this in relation to a post-war knowledge explosion that equated knowledge with productivity in a way that raised serious questions around which knowledge was of most worth. It reflects critically on the cultural politics of field knowledge production, which equated building a techno-scientific knowledge base with building collateral to leverage dominant cultural space and place. From this perspective, the paper considers the status of social education. It examines the location of liberal education, the locations of history and philosophy as foundational knowledges, and the status of US adult educational research during the techno-scientific turn. It concludes with a postscript suggesting the cultural space and place of US academic adult education in 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the path-breaking work of Hofstede, it has been argued that management techniques can be exported between countries if fine-tuned to accommodate the host country's cultural values. This paper presents a case study of how a change program was developed to be compatible with the Danish value systems. Comparisons are made to what might have happened if the same change program had been conducted in two countries with quite different cultures: the U.S.A. and Republic of China (Taiwan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent educational policy reports in the U.S. have called for significant changes in teachers' work to increase their effectiveness. The paper examines the relationship between the restructuring strategies in two comprehensive high schools and teachers' engagement, which is defined as a multi-dimensional construct. In one school, the restructuring strategies focused on creating a supportive climate for students, and in empowering students and teachers; in the other, emphasis was on developing professional skills of the faculty and strengthening group cohesiveness. The implications of the strategies for teacher engagement are illustrated with case study data. The discussion points to several conclusions: (1) the effects of restructuring are more bounded than is often assumed; (2) a quality of work life framework drawn from the social scientific literatures is useful for analyzing the effects of reform policies on teachers' work; (3) teachers make trade-offs between different types of engagement in order to increase their work satisfaction; and (4) restructuring has potential for increasing teachers' engagement in schools with mixed socio-economic and racial populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author predicts how some education policy makers in the United States will react when the Programme for International Student Assessment results are announced in December 2016. Further, he dismisses the results of international tests in favor of other international rankings of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, youth organizing has emerged as an important strategy for social change, particularly within education policy; however, the ability of youth to influence policy is limited by the tendency of adults in positions of power to find reasons to distrust, discredit, or otherwise ignore them. This paper draws on interviews with 31 adult civic leaders in one American city to discern their views on a particular youth organizing group, Philadelphia Student Union (PSU), and to uncover the grounds on which they either dismiss or defend its work. Findings show that the tendency to doubt or deny the voices of youth organizers is not concentrated within any one institutional setting; that the most common reason for doubting or distrusting SFE's work is the belief that adult organizers manipulate the youth members; and that every reason adults offer to dismiss the youth organizers can be matched by a different reason other adults give to defend them, their work, and their place in the policy sphere. Implications for youth organizing groups, their adult allies, policy-makers, and the field are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 2011 and 2013 lawmakers in every state proposed, and often enacted, laws intended to impact codified state provisions related to teachers and teachers’ unions (author calculation). These new laws either worked against union interests (e.g., by prohibiting collective bargaining) or they aligned with union positions (e.g. by providing enhanced compensation benefits to teachers). In recent years scholars have paid more attention to the impact of teachers’ unions and collective bargaining. Few researchers have made an effort to understand state-level attempts to legislatively modify traditional union-protected rights. This paper is the first to explore these changes in detail. Using a self-collected dataset, I track the proposal and enactment of legislation related to teachers’ unions and their collective bargaining agreements in state legislatures between 2011 and 2013. I find that while large-scale attacks on public sector bargaining rights dwindled after 2011, smaller, more focused legislative proposals concerning the rights of teachers continued. Lawmakers succeeded in removing several job protections for teachers in ways that left both teachers and unions more vulnerable to the actions of school and district administrators. However, contrary to the popular media narrative, teachers actually made legislative gains, particularly in the area of compensation and benefits following 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to answer this question: what should ecoliteracy mean in a biocapitalist society? The author situates his analysis of this question within the general context of the neoliberal reconstruction of education in the US. Specifically, focus is given to the shared model of governmentality GE food industries and education policies both utilize to manage life in the field and classroom – one where optimizing the value of plants and people for ‘flat world’ economic competition is the defining goal. Given this landscape, I suggest that what some environmental educators have called ‘ecological literacy’ or ‘critical ecoliteracy’ must now include a dimension that rejects the ways both human and nonhumans are progressively being implicated into biocapitalist enterprises. I offer an example of how biocapitalist industries educate market understandings of life by looking at how the GE food industry’s educational projects attempt to teach students and the public to think of natureandthemselves as entrepreneurial actors. In the final section, I provide an example from my research using actor network theory in learning gardens as a way to develop a theory and practice of ecoliteracy that is capable of identifying and resisting the ways both human and nonhuman life are being captured and reconstructed within biocapitalist development ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]