bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Symposium: Fact and Fiction: Stories of Puerto Ricans in U.S. Schools
Authors: Nieto Sonia
Published: May 2015

Puerto Rican communities have been a reality in many northeastern urban centers for over a century. Schools and classrooms have felt their presence through the Puerto Rican children attending school. The education of Puerto Ricans in U.S. schools has been documented for about seventy years, but in spite of numerous commissions, research reports, and other studies, this history is largely unknown to teachers and the general public. In addition to the research literature, a growing number of fictional accounts in English are providing another fertile avenue for understanding the challenges that Puerto Ricans have faced, and continue to face, in U.S. schools. In this article, Sonia Nieto combines the research on Puerto Rican students in U.S. schools with the power of the growing body of fiction written by Puerto Ricans. In this weaving of "fact" with "fiction," Nieto hopes to provide a more comprehensive and more human portrait of Puerto Rican students. Based on her reading of the literature in both educational research and fiction, Nieto suggests four interrelated and contrasting themes that have emerged from the long history of stories told about Puerto Ricans in U.S. schools: colonialism/resistance, cultural deficit/cultural acceptance, assimilation/identity, and marginalization/belonging. Nieto's analysis of these four themes then leads her to a discussion of the issue of care as the missing ingredient in the education of Puerto Ricans in the United States.
Introduction: Symposium: Puerto Rican Education
Authors: Dobles Ricardo , Segarra Jose Antonio
Published: May 2015

When the writers and producers of the NBC television series Seinfeld, including Jerry Seinfeld himself, decided to burn the Puerto Rican flag on national television, they performed a great service for the Puerto Rican people. Albeit unwittingly, this singular event reminded Puerto Ricans of how poorly we are regarded in the American psyche. Puerto Ricans everywhere were forced to ask themselves, would the people of Seinfeld and NBC dare burn any flag other than the Puerto Rican flag? That act, committed presumably in the interest of humor, only poured salt on a hundred-year-old wound. Since October 18, 1898, the day the United States raised its flag on the island of Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans and their flag have been little more than a joke and an occasional nuisance to the American people.
Symposium: Nationalist Ideologies, Neighborhood-Based Activism, and Educational Spaces in Puerto Rican Chicago
Authors: Ramos-Zayas Ana
Published: May 2015

In this article, Ana Ramos-Zayas argues that schooling cannot be divorced from the political and socioeconomic forces governing neighborhood development. She focuses on the role of grassroots activists with a nationalist agenda (i.e., in favor of independence for Puerto Rico) in community-based educational projects in Chicago, particularly the Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS), a compelling example of the potential of an educational project based on a nationalist ideology. For Puerto Ricans, the question of the political status of the Island—future U.S. state, commonwealth, or independent nation—has been debated for the past one hundred years. For the students and teachers of PACHS, independence, and an education based on the principles of Puerto Rican self-determination, is the only option. Ramos-Zayas argues that an oppositional education based on such a political ideology is a powerful, yet largely untapped, resource for creating successful ethnoracial youth and popular education programs. She contends that, in a community considered among the poorest of the poor, where Puerto Rican youth continue to drop out of high school, join gangs, and experience the most inhuman consequences of poverty, such a successful social initiative must be considered carefully. She points out the irony that this nationalist ideology—which encourages critical appraisal of U.S. policies toward Puerto Rico and of the ideology of the American Dream—actually encourages high school students to pursue mainstream mobility routes, such as abandoning gangs, finishing high school, and enrolling in college. The powerful, positive presence nationalist activism among Chicago Puerto Ricans is undeniable, as is the sense of hope and possibility that students and barrio residents experience at Pedro Albizu Campos High School and other community development projects in Chicago.
Voices Inside Schools - Middle-Age Teaching: A Time of Vitality
Authors: Erdmann Abigail Brant
Published: May 2015

In this article, Abigail Erdmann reflects on her career as a classroom teacher. She shares her delight in discovering that middle age isn't, as she had once thought, a time of boredom or complacency. Instead, she finds it to be a time of growing vitality as her relationship to teaching deepens and changes. She realizes that her students have educated her as much as she has educated them, and reveals that this reciprocity is a primary reason why she continues to find teaching to be a vital and rewarding career. (pp. 584-589)
Further Comment - Hollow Theory: A Reply to Rajagopalan
Authors: Thomas Gary
Published: May 2015

I enjoyed reading Kanavillil Rajagopalan's article "On the Theoretical Trappings of the Thesis of Anti-Theory; or, Why the Idea of Theory May Not, After All, Be All That Bad: A Response to Gary Thomas" in the Fall 1998 issue of the Harvard Educational Review, and I am grateful to him for his thoughtful and detailed response to my article, "What's the Use of Theory?" (HER, Spring 1997). I am glad that we can agree on the pretensions of some kinds of theory and on its inhibiting effects on original thinking. I am pleased that he believes that I examine certain theories "with great skill and perspicacity" (p. 337), even if I am also guilty of "smug skepticism" (p. 346), "crypto-scientism" (p. 344), making an "impassioned harangue" (p. 336), and making a "fatal mistake" (p. 347) in my reasoning.

Rajagopalan's critique comes in two waves: in the first he tries to establish that theory's ambit is wide — indeed it is so wide that it encompasses anything to do with structured thought. A simple proposition follows: theory is any structured thought, ergo Thomas's structured thought is theory. Once this ground is established (that I'm a theorist), the way is easy for the second surge. Here, Rajagopalan claims that since I am a theorist I am guilty of grave contradictions and inconsistencies in my argument against theory.
Opportunities and Obstacles in the Competency-Based Training and Assessment of Primary Teachers in England
Authors: Hayes Denis
Published: May 2015

In this article, Denis Hayes discusses the competence model for teacher training in England in the 1990s. This model uses Circulars — policy guidelines that list competence statements — to outline the level of achievement that student teachers must reach before obtaining qualified teacher status. Hayes considers the impact that the competence approach to monitoring standards of achievement has had on teacher-training institutions and student teachers. He explores questions of terminology and examines the limitations of using a competence model, the difficulties of separating competences for the purposes of assessment and of structuring competence statements in a hierarchy that reflects the way that student teachers progress in their ability to teach. He presents a case study based on his own institution's attempt to develop a hierarchy of competence acquisition and cautions that a competence approach to the training and assessment of teachers is extremely complex. Hayes concludes that, in aligning their programs with the statutory competence model, teacher-preparation institutions must not neglect the developmental aspect of the skills that enable student teachers to reach the competences.
Modern and Postmodern Racism in Europe: Dialogic Approach and Anti-Racist Pedagogies
Authors: Flecha Ramon
Published: May 2015

In this article, Ramón Flecha discusses the growth of racism in modern-day Europe and the challenges it poses for education and educators. The author distinguishes between two kinds of racism: an older, modern racism and a newer, postmodern racism. The former is based on arguments of inequality and the existence of inferior or superior ethnicities and races. The latter holds that ethnicities and races are neither inferior nor superior; they are merely different. It emphasizes the impossibility of equitable dialogue among different races and ethnicities to establish common rules for living together. Although a tradition of anti-racist education exists in Europe, educators often do not have the intellectual and educational tools to combat this form of racism. Flecha suggests that educators have tried to combat racism by developing anti-racist pedagogies that use the relativist approach advocated by contemporary thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. He argues that this approach challenges modern racism but actually promotes postmodern racism. Drawing from works of dialogic theorists such as Paulo Freire and Jürgen Habermas, Flecha recommends instead that educators use the dialogic approach, which emphasizes the need for equal rights among all people, to develop effective anti-racist pedagogies that can deal simultaneously with both forms of racism.
Streets and Schools: How Educators Can Help Chicano Marginalized Gang Youth
Authors: Vigil James Diego
Published: May 2015

The relationship between streets and schools for Chicano gang youth is at the heart of this article. Author Diego Vigil argues that understanding how streets and schools intersect in ways that interfere with the learning and school performance of Chicano gang youth may be the key to offering them a more positive schooling experience. Using his multiple marginality framework, Vigil examines how gangs socialize Chicano youth to be gang members. He also examines how home and school are complicit in that socialization. Typically, street children exhibit behaviors in classrooms that interfere with their academic learning. In turn, educators are not well enough informed about gang culture to foster behaviors that result in successful academic performance. Vigil issues a call to parents and teachers to actively participate in the prevention, intervention, and suppression of gang activity. The author presents three Los Angeles–based programs as examples of how schools can successfully serve gang children. While Vigil argues that schools have exacerbated the problem, he remains convinced that schools — working in a concerted and respectful effort with the home and the community — present the best hope for countering street socialization.
The Mind Is Its Own Place: The Influence of Sustained Interactivity with Practitioners on Educational Researchers
Authors: Huberman Michael
Published: May 2015

In this article, Michael Huberman explores the effect of sustained interactions with practitioners on educational researchers. He focuses his study on two specific cases: 1) an elementary-level mathematics project, known as the Cognitively Guided Instruction project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and 2) a set of intellectual biographies of math and science education researchers. Using a social-constructivist paradigm, he describes the conceptual and methodological shifts that some researchers undergo when they are confronted with the realities, constraints, and opportunities of practice. In addition to these shifts, Huberman also discusses how interacting with practitioners influences researchers' view of teaching and of how research should be used. He discusses how the "micro-worlds" of research and practice interact, and through their interactions determine the flow of knowledge. It is the interaction between micro-worlds, rather than the actors alone, that is the crucial unit of analysis in this study. Huberman concludes by suggesting that sustained interactivity between practitioners and researchers may be beneficial to both parties. In particular, sustained interactivity may allow researchers to refine, even recast, their conceptual frameworks, their methodologies, their teaching, and their modes of exchange with various audiences.
Voices Inside Schools - Historical Perspective as an Important Element of Teachers' Knowledge: A Sonata-Form Case Study of Equity Issues in a Chemistry Classroom
Authors: Sconiers Zachary Dean , Rosiek Jerry Lee
Published: May 2015

In this article, middle school science teacher Zachary Sconiers and university researcher Jerry Rosiek introduce the sonata-form case study, a narrative structure designed to document teachers' understandings of how subject matter and sociocultural influences intersect in the classroom. Written in collaboration with the Fresno Science Education Equity Teacher Research Project, this case study is told from the perspective of Jerome Jameson, a fictional chemistry teacher, whose story is based on Sconiers's actual teaching experiences. Also integrated into the narrative are Sconiers's in-depth reflections on the connections between his commitment to science education and his commitment to promoting educational equity. The sonata-form case study is followed by an afterword, written by Rosiek and Sconiers, that describes this unique methodology for teacher inquiry in full detail. The writing process for the case study was extensive and iterative: the two authors worked closely over the course of a year to develop the narrative, with Rosiek taking the lead on revising and editing. With this case study, Sconiers and Rosiek highlight the critical need for a new form of educational research, one that "builds bridges between the discourses of educational excellence and educational equity, as well as between theory and practice."
"Improve the Women": Mass Schooling, Female Literacy, and Worldwide Social Change
Authors: LeVine Robert , LeVine Sarah , Schnell Beatrice
Published: May 2015

In this article, Robert LeVine, Sarah LeVine, and Beatrice Schnell develop and test a theoretical model of how women's schooling might contribute to social and demographic change. Drawing upon research from many disciplines, the authors propose that schooling leads to social change by imparting skills and fostering other individual changes that alter women's patterns of social participation. They argue that, in schools, girls acquire aspirations, identities, skills, and models of learning that eventually affect their decisions regarding reproductive, child-rearing, and health behaviors. Among other things, girls learn an academic register that, the authors argue, is the official language of all bureaucracies, including health and family-planning clinics as well as schools. Proficiency in using this academic language is advantageous in oral communication with the health bureaucracy, and may lead to greater utilization of health services and, thus, improved reproductive and health outcomes. After explaining their theoretical model, LeVine, LeVine, and Schnell present new findings from their research on maternal literacy in two very different settings, Nepal and Venezuela. The results of their quantitative analyses are consistent with the hypothesis that the literacy and language skills that women acquire in school provide an educational pathway to better health care.
Voices Inside Schools: The Poet, the CEO, and the First-Grade Teacher
Authors: Dakin Mary Ellen
Published: May 2015

Using the poetry of Walt Whitman (the Poet), an MIT graduation speech by Carleton Fiorina, the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard (the CEO), and the words of a teacher (the First-Grade Teacher), high school English teacher Mary Ellen Dakin shares with readers the transformation of her understanding of student achievement. Dakin expands her notions of intelligence and achievement to validate and incorporate ideas she had previously rejected. Through an introspective process, Dakin is able to find success in places she never thought to look. This essay encourages teachers to challenge and broaden the assumptions that they bring to teaching and learning. (pp. 269-284)
Poverty and the (Broken) Promise of Higher Education
Authors: Adair Vivyan
Published: May 2015

In this article, Vivyan Adair argues that educators committed to fostering social and economic equity through education must challenge themselves to understand how crucial postsecondary education is to low-income single mothers, to recognize that this student population is increasingly "at risk," and to work against legislation that at best discourages, and at worst prohibits, these students from entering into and successfully completing postsecondary degree programs. Integrated into her discussion of recent welfare reform legislation are findings from her research. She presents data from interviews, in which students describe their desire to further their education and the frustrating obstacles that make this endeavor difficult and often impossible. Adair demonstrates that low-income, single-mother students experience dramatic and enduring benefits from completing college degrees, but that the opportunity and support required to do so is increasingly limited. She concludes that we must take steps toward ensuring that education remains a truly democratic project that has the potential for enacting social change and fostering economic equity. (pp. 217–239)
Editor's Review of THE PLEASURES OF ACADEME: A CELEBRATION AND DEFENSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION and FAILING THE FUTURE: A DEAN LOOKS AT HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Authors: Hartley Matthew
Published: May 2015

U.S. higher education has arrived at the new millennium in an environment that might charitably be called "dynamic." A demographic incline is bringing a larger and more diverse student body to the doors of U.S. colleges and universities. New technologies are multiplying venues for education, but our institutions of higher learning are simultaneously facing enormous pressures from penurious legislatures, growing competition from for-profit universities, and regents and state boards of higher education flocking to the banner of greater accountability. In the midst of these challenges, James Axtell's The Pleasures of Academe and Annette Kolodny's Failing the Future offer compelling and ultimately competing visions of the state of U.S. higher education on the doorstep of the twenty-first century.
Structuring Failure and Success: Understanding the Variability in Latino School Engagement
Authors: Conchas Gilberto
Published: May 2015

Why do some low-income immigrant and native-born Latino students do well in school while others do not? Why are low-income Latino students less successful in school than their White peers? What are the effects of institutional mechanisms on low-income Latino school engagement? For the past two decades, the most persuasive answers to these questions have been advanced by the cultural-ecologists, who suggest that differences in academic achievement by race result from minority groups' perceptions of the limited opportunity structure. However, variations within the Latino student population remain — some Latino students succeed and some fail. In this article, Gilberto Conchas describes the results of a study that examined how school programs construct school failure and success among low-income immigrants and U.S.-born Latino students. The results of Conchas's study show that, from students' perspectives, institutional mechanisms have an impact on Latino school engagement, and he links cultural-ecological explanations and institutional explanations. The findings from this study extend our understanding of the fluidity and nuance of within-group variations in Latino student success in an urban school context. (pp. 475–504)
The Effects of Immigrant Generation and Ethnicity on Educational Attainment among Young African and Caribbean Blacks in the United States
Authors: Rong Xue Lan , Brown Frank
Published: May 2015

Despite speculation that immigrant and racial minority status may doubly disadvantage Black immigrant children in U.S. schools, researchers have rarely studied the educational attainment of immigrant Black youth. In this article, Xue Lan Rong and Frank Brown analyze 1990 U.S. Census data to examine the combined effects of generation of U.S. residence (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) and of race and ethnicity (Caribbean Blacks, African Blacks, and European Whites) on youths' total years of schooling and schooling completion at three levels — grammar school, high school, and four-year college. The results from their study show that these youths' educational attainment varies with race and pan-nationality, as well as with generation of residence. Based on their findings, Rong and Brown argue that as racial and ethnic identity is becoming increasingly complicated, educational practitioners need to move away from the conventional notion that equates each racial group with one culture and one ethnic identity. Using classic assimilation and acculturation theories as the framework for their analysis, Rong and Brown conclude that educators have to learn more about the process of assimilation and its relationship with youths' schooling and reconsider the common notion that more rapid assimilation is always better for immigrant children's education. (pp. 536–565)
Parents' Aspirations and Investment: The Role of Social Class in the Educational Experiences of 1.5- and Second-Generation Chinese Americans
Authors: Louie Vivian
Published: May 2015

In this article, Vivian Louie examines how social class influences Chinese immigrant parents' expectations, strategies, and investment in their children's education. Her findings suggest that, across social class, Chinese immigrant parents have high expectations for their children, reflecting both immigrant optimism and immigrant pessimism about their children's outcomes. However, Louie finds significant differences in the resources and educational strategies pursued by working-class parents and their middle-class counterparts. Louie concludes that the role of the immigrant family is more multifaceted than suggested by previous theories on Asian American educational performance. (pp. 438–474)
Afterword: Understanding and Serving the Children of Immigrants
Authors: Suarez-Orozco Carola
Published: May 2015

To date, demographers, economists, and sociologists who focus almost exclusively on adults have dominated the agenda of immigration scholarship. Immigrant youth, however, are now the fastest growing sector of the child population (Landale & Oropesa, 1995). Today, one in five children in the United States is the child of immigrants, and it is projected that by 2040 one in three children will fit this description (Rong & Prissle, 1998). Given the numbers involved, how these children adapt and the educational pathways they take will clearly have profound implications for our society. Thus, there is an urgent need to expand our knowledge in this field.
Against Repetition: Addressing Resistance to Anti-Oppressive Change in the Practices of Learning, Teaching, Supervising, and Researching
Authors: Kumashiro Kevin
Published: May 2015

In this article, Kevin K. Kumashiro draws on his experience as a teacher, teacher educator,and education researcher to analyze how anti-oppressive educators may operate in ways that challenge some forms of oppression yet unintentionally comply with others. Drawing on Butler's work, which views oppression in society as being characterized by harmful repetitions of certain privileged knowledge and practices, the author examines how theories of anti-oppressive education can help educators learn,teach, and supervise student teachers, and conduct educational research in ways that work against such harmful repetitions. Kumashiro describes incidents in which his students sought knowledge that confirmed what they already knew, and when he as the teacher unintentionally missed opportunities to resist this repetition and guide his students through an emotional crisis. Using the framework of repetition,Kumashiro challenges anti-oppressive activists and educators to disrupt some of their own unconscious commonsense discourses that serve as barriers to social change.
What Do We Know (and Need to Know) about the Impact of School Choice Reforms on Disadvantaged Students?
Authors: Goldhaber Dan , Eide Eric
Published: May 2015

In this article, Dan Goldhaber and Eric Eide consider what we do and do not know about the impact of school choice, focusing particularly on the potential impact of choice on minority students in urban school settings. They observe that many argue that school choice is a necessary component of any educational reform designed to improve educational outcomes for students. While public pressure has yielded a tremendous expansion of choice options, Goldhaber and Eide contend that the empirical evidence on the academic effects of school choice reforms is mixed. They propose that relatively little evidence exists that these schools are having a clear-cut positive or negative impact on the achievement of either the students who attend them or those who remain in traditional public schools. They conclude that the mixed evidence on choice suggests that choice in and of itself is unlikely to be the solution that revolutionizes urban school systems.
Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes
Authors: Gurin Patricia , Dey Eric , Hurtado Sylvia , Gurin Gerald
Published: May 2015

In the current context of legal challenges to affirmative action and race-based considerations in college admissions, educators have been challenged to articulate clearly the educational purposes and benefits of diversity. In this article, Patricia Gurin, Eric Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin explore the relationship between students' experiences with diverse peers in the college or university setting and their educational outcomes. Rooted in theories of cognitive development and social psychology, the authors present a framework for understanding how diversity introduces the relational discontinuities critical to identity construction and its subsequent role in fostering cognitive growth. Using both single- and multi-institutional data from the University of Michigan and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the authors go on to examine the effects of classroom diversity and informal interaction among African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and White students on learning and democracy outcomes. The results of their analyses underscore the educational and civic importance of informal interaction among different racial and ethnic groups during the college years. The authors offer their findings as evidence of the continuing importance of affirmative action and diversity efforts by colleges and universities, not only as a means of increasing access to higher education for greater numbers of students, but also as a means of fostering students' academic and social growth.
Special Education's Changing Identity: Paradoxes and Dilemmas in Views of Culture and Space
Authors: ARTILES ALFREDO
Published: May 2015

In this article, Alfredo Artiles identifies "paradoxes and dilemmas" faced by special education researchers and practitioners who are seeking to create socially just education systems in a democratic society that is currently marked by an increasing complexity of difference. He argues that the two primary discourse communities — inclusion and overrepresentation — must engage in a fuller dialogue and recognize the "troubling silences" within and between their respective literatures. Placing his analysis within the larger political context of current efforts and debates over educational reform, the author gives readers a broad overview of the literature on inclusion and overrepresentation. He then presents a multilayered analysis of culture and space that identifies the limitations of current research, while offering new possibilities and directions for the field. Artiles concludes that unless researchers and practitioners surface their assumptions about difference, as well as culture and space, the special education field will continue to perpetuate the silences that threaten the educational and life needs of historically marginalized students.
Developing Cultural Fluency: Arab and Jewish Students Engaging in One Another's Company
Authors: GLAZIER JOCELYN ANNE
Published: May 2015

In this article, Jocelyn Glazier introduces readers to the Arab and Jewish students and teachers of Gal Bilingual/Bicultural School in Israel. Glazier challenges traditional intergroup contact theories and the objectives of peace education centered on prejudice reduction, arguing that education should promote cultural fluency, which can be achieved by creating an environment that requires students to engage in one another's company. Glazier explicates the idea of "company" through a yearlong ethnographic study at the Gal School and details an educational model that fosters cross-cultural awareness in first graders.
Cultural Negotiations: Puerto Rican Intellectuals in a State-Sponsored Community Education Project, 1948–1968
Authors: KENNERLEY CATI MARSH
Published: May 2015

The Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (autonomous commonwealth), established in 1952, redefined the political relationship between the United States and its colony. The ambiguous political status — autonomy without sovereignty, self-government without self-determination—created new social, political, and cultural contradictions. The island's first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, was committed to promoting an essentialized Puerto Rican culture centered around the idealization of traditional rural life, while simultaneously creating a new democratic citizenship, both of which would bolster the new government's legitimacy before its people. In this article, Puerto Rican scholar Cati Marsh Kennerley explores the collective work done by the División de Educación de la Comunidad (DivEdCo), the government educational agency charged with promulgating Muñoz Marín's ideas about Puerto Rican culture and citizenship. Marsh Kennerley draws from a wide variety of sources to reconstruct an untold history, analyze its contradictions, obtain lessons from DivEdCo's negotiations, and point out its relevance for understanding contemporary Puerto Rican culture.
What Do We Know about the Motivation of African American Students? Challenging the "Anti-Intellectual" Myth
Authors: COKLEY KEVIN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Kevin Cokley challenges conventional wisdom about African American college students and the factors underlying their academic underachievement. In this quantitative study of students attending three historically Black colleges and universities and one predominantly White university, Cokley reviews and integrates existing research on the academic motivation and academic self-concept of African American students. He then introduces self-determination theory as an additional motivational framework to understand African American students' motivation. While Cokley finds that African American students are intrinsically highly motivated, this motivation is not related to how they perform academically or to their academic self-concept.
Why Romà Do Not Like Mainstream Schools: Voices of a People without Territory
Authors: CLAVERÍA JULIO VARGAS , ALONSO JESÚS GÓMEZ
Published: May 2015

In this article, Julio Vargas Clavería and Jesús Gómez Alonso argue that educational researchers have long ignored the Romà people and that this lack of attention has contributed to the persistence of educational inequity that the Romà endure throughout the world. The authors propose a new approach to Romaní educational research based on intersubjective dialogue, and the emergence of an egalitarian relationship between the researcher and the researched. This communicative approach considers the reflections of those researched and safeguards the voices of those studied. The authors contextualize their methodological and ideological discussion within a framework of Romaní history.
Further Comment: The Truth and the Truthful Sages That Spin It: A Review of Dorans
Authors: Freedle Roy
Published: May 2015

Freedle rebuttal to Neil Dorans response to his article, "Correcting the SAT's Ethnic and Social-Class Bias"
Hiding in the Ivy: American Indian Students and Visibility in Elite Educational Settings
Authors: JONES BRAYBOY BRYAN McKINLEY
Published: May 2015

In this article, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy explores how the experiences of Tom, Debbie, and Heather, three Native American students attending Ivy League universities in the 1990s, reflect larger societal beliefs and statements about the perceived place of Native Americans in higher education and U.S. society. Brayboy posits that Native Americans are visible in these institutions in ways that contribute to their marginalization, surveillance, and oppression. In response, the three Native American students exercise strategies that make them invisible to the largely White communities in which they attend school. These strategies help to preserve the students' sense of cultural integrity, but further serve to marginalize them on campus. At times, the students in the study make themselves visible to emphasize that they are a voice in the campus community. Brayboy argues that these strategies, while possibly confusing to the layperson, make sense if viewed from the perspective of the students preserving their cultural integrity.
Drawing on Education: Using Drawings to Document Schooling and Support Change
Authors: HANEY WALT , RUSSELL MICHAEL , BEBELL DAMIAN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Walt Haney,Michael Russell, and Damian Bebell summarize a decade of work using student drawings as a way to both document and change education and schooling. After a brief summary of more than one hundred years of literature on children's drawings, the authors point out that drawings have been little recognized as a medium of educational research in recent decades. Next they explain how the work reported here has evolved, recounting how they have used student drawings as a way to document educational phenomena. They then present reliability and validity evidence to support such use on a macro level. The authors go on to relate examples at the micro level of how drawings have been used to inform and change education and learning. Finally, they argue that student drawings, though only one form of inquiry, help illustrate the fundamental point that, if educational reforms are to succeed, we must treat teachers and students not just as the objects, but also as the agents, of reform and improvement.
The Assessment of Complex Performance: A Socially Situated Interpretive Act
Authors: BUTLER SHAY SUELLEN
Published: May 2015

Based on her study of the assessment and validation of final year projects in two academic departments — one located in a humanities faculty and the other in an engineering faculty of a South African university — Suellen Shay argues that the assessment of complex tasks is a socially situated interpretive act. Her argument centers on three questions. The first question explores the basis of assessors' "common ground" and is rooted in Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus and his analysis of how academics develop a "feel for the game." The second question "drills down" into these differences, using dissensus (lack of consensus) as another window on the interpretive process. Shay's data suggest that assessors' interpretations are powerfully shaped in predictable and unpredictable ways by their disciplinary orientations, years of experience, and levels of involvement with students. While these differences of interpretation are often resolved collegially, a careful analysis of these occasions illuminates the social- situatedness of assessment practices. Shay also argues that assessors' interpretations are constituted not only to sustain (or challenge) systems of belief, but also to maintain (or challenge) identities and interpersonal relations. The article concludes with a discussion exploring the implications of assessment as a socially situated interpretive act for academic communities of practice.
Pathways to Aggression in Children and Adolescents
Authors: WATSON MALCOLM , FISCHER KURT , BURDZOVIC ANDREAS JASMINA , SMITH KEVIN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Malcolm Watson, Kurt Fischer, Jasmina Burdzovic Andreas, and Kevin Smith describe and compare two approaches to assessing risk factors that lead to aggression in children. The first, the severe risks approach, focuses on how risk factors form a pathway that leads to aggressive behavior. Within this approach, an inhibited victim-aggressor pattern is hypothesized in which children who share certain characteristics — including high-conflict, low-cohesive families, high levels of harsh parental discipline, high levels of victimization by peers, and high behavioral inhibition — are at risk for developing defensive, reactive aggressive behaviors. The second, the cumulative effects approach, focuses on the accumulated effects of multiple risk factors in leading to aggressive behavior, irrespective of the particular risk factors involved. The authors assess both patterns longitudinally in a community-based sample that includes children from middle childhood to adolescence. They find strong evidence for both pathways.
Citizenship for All in the Literate Community: An Ethnography of Young Children with Significant Disabilities in Inclusive Early Childhood Settings
Authors: KLIEWER CHRISTOPHER , MAY FITZGERALD LINDA , MEYER-MORK JODI , HARTMAN PATRESA , ENGLISH-SAND PAT , RASCHKE DONNA
Published: May 2015

In this study, Christopher Kliewer, Linda Fitzgerald, Jodi Meyer-Mork, Patresa Hartman, Pat English-Sand, and Donna Raschke use ethnographic methods to explore literacy development in young children considered to have significant disabilities. The study settings included nine preschool and kindergarten classrooms across five programs, all of which involved children with and without disabilities learning side-byside. Over the course of two school years, the authors observed teachers emphasizing children's narratives, and in so doing effectively fostering the citizenship of all children in the literate communities of the classrooms under study. The authors describe several themes that appeared in their data related to fostering effective literacy development in children historically segregated from rich curricular opportunities. In this effort, defining literacy as making meaning and interpreting children with disabilities as competent meaning-makers was foremost.
Adjusting Inequality: Education and Structural Adjustment Policies in Tanzania
Authors: VAVRUS FRANCES
Published: May 2015

International economic forces increasingly affect policy at multiple levels and in multiple domains. The interplay of three levels — international, national, and local — are underresearched in the social and educational policy fields, which includes educational policy studies. In this article, Frances Vavrus employs ethnography to investigate how these interactions play out in a Chagga community in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. She examines how the lives of secondary students in Tanzanian schools are affected by structural adjustment policies, adopted by Tanzania at the advice of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in three domains: access to schooling, opportunities for employment, and the risk of HIV/AIDS infection. She makes a convincing case for the importance of understanding the local setting in the development of international and national policy, and for investigating the impact policy change in noneducational sectors has on educational realities. Vavrus's research also provides a glimpse into the multiple local consequences of the policy of user fees for school access that were implemented over the last fifteen years in Tanzania and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. She concludes with a call for the research community to consider the benefits of ethnography in the development and evaluation of policy.
Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform
Authors: WARREN MARK
Published: May 2015

In this article, Mark R. Warren argues that if urban school reform in the United States is to be successful, it must be linked to the revitalization of the communities around our schools. Warren identifies a growing field of collaboration between public schools and community-based organizations, developing a typology that identifies three different approaches: the service approach (community schools); the development approach (community sponsorship of new charter schools); and the organizing approach (school-community organizing). The author elaborates a conceptual framework using theories of social capital and relational power, presenting case studies to illustrate each type. He also discusses a fourth case to demonstrate the possibilities for linking individual school change to political strategies that address structures of poverty. Warren identifies shared lessons across these approaches, and compares and contrasts the particular strengths and weaknesses of each. Warren concludes with a call for a new approach to urban education reform that links it theoretically and practically to social change in America's cities.
Dropping Out of High School among Mexican-Origin Youths: Is Early Work Experience a Factor?
Authors: OLATUNJI ANANE
Published: May 2015

In this article, Anane Olatunji examines the effects of work experience on early high school attrition among Mexican-origin adolescents. He proposes a theoretical model that takes assimilation into account as a potential predictor of the consequences of work for this group. In order to estimate the effects of eighth-grade work experience on dropping out of school in 1990, he analyzed data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988. He begins this article with a brief review of literature on high school dropouts and youth employment. He argues that this topic is particularly salient for Mexican-origin youths because they not only comprise the majority of Hispanics, the nation largest ethnic minority group, but also exhibit an alarmingly low high school completion rate. Overall, the results support conventional models that researchers have used to predict outcomes of teenage employment. Among Mexicanorigin adolescents, however, girls were three and a half times more likely than boys to leave school, after controlling for work and other factors. He concludes the article with implications for future research, especially the role that gender plays in predicting early high school attrition among Mexican-origin youths.
No Longer Overlooked and Undervalued? The Evolving Dynamics of Endogenous Educational Research in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: MACLURE RICHARD
Published: May 2015

Multilateral donors like the World Bank and bilateral agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the British Department for International Development exert a great deal of influence in international educational development — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa — both in the programs they fund and the types of research they engage in. In this article, Richard Maclure investigates educational research in Africa and juxtaposes research done by large, exogenous, Western, results-oriented organizations with research performed by smaller, endogenous, local researchers aided by local research networks. Maclure argues convincingly that research that falls into the exogenous "donor-control" paradigm far too often is irrelevant to the African educational policy context and does little to develop local research capacity. The cases of two African research networks — the Educational Research Network of West and Central Africa and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa—are presented as exemplars of organizations that promote an alternative type of research that is endogenous, relevant to policy and the process of policymaking, and controlled by Africans. Maclure concludes with a call for increased support for and development of these types of networks, and for the development of the long-term solution to educational research in Africa — the university.
(In)Fidelity: What the Resistance of New Teachers Reveals about Professional Principles and Prescriptive Educational Policies
Authors: ACHINSTEIN BETTY , OGAWA RODNEY
Published: May 2015

In this article, Betty Achinstein and Rodney Ogawa examine the experiences of two new teachers who resisted mandated "fidelity" to Open Court literacy instruction in California. These two case studies challenge the portrayal of teacher resistance as driven by psychological deficiency and propose instead that teachers engage in "principled resistance" informed by professional principles. They document that within prescriptive instructional programs and control-oriented educational policies, teachers have a limited ability to implement professional principles, including diversified instruction, high expectations, and creativity. In this environment, teachers who resist experience professional isolation and schools experience teacher attrition. Through these two cases, Achinstein and Ogawa express concern about the negative impact of educational reforms that are guided by technical and moralistic control.
What Community Participation in Schooling Means: Insights from Southern Ethiopia
Authors: SWIFT-MORGAN JENNIFER
Published: May 2015

Community participation is a term frequently used and often cited in international educational development. In this article, Jennifer Swift-Morgan investigates the definition and impact of community participation in schooling in rural Ethiopia. Although national governments, development agencies, and nongovernmental organizations across the developing world increasingly encourage community participation, our understanding of this term remains vague due to a lack of detailed analysis. Swift-Morgan's qualitative study examines the form and scope of community participation. She finds that in rural Ethiopia, this range is complex, but a large portion of what is characterized as community participation is monetary contributions rather than involvement in decisionmaking or teaching and learning. Swift-Morgan also shows that there are particular challenges for the participation of women and the poor, and that financial incentives and technical assistance that encourage broad-based decisionmaking create incentives for broader community participation. Swift-Morgan concludes the article with policy implications, particularly with respect to how programs that attempt to encourage community participation can be made more effective.
Domesticating a Revolution: No Child Left Behind Reforms and State Administrative Response
Authors: SUNDERMAN GAIL , ORFIELD GARY
Published: May 2015

In recognition of the increased demands facing state education departments in this accountability-focused era, Gail L. Sunderman and Gary Orfield present results from a study on the response of these agencies to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this article, Sunderman and Orfield analyze issues of state capacity, compiling data from interviews, policy and program document analysis, and budget and staffing information. They find that state education departments, which are tasked with intervening in underperforming schools to ensure 100 percent proficiency for all students under NCLB, may not have the necessary human and financial resources or organizational capacity to adequately meet their increased responsibilities. In addition to issues of capacity, structural, functional, and political factors all limit the ability of state education departments to completely fulfill their new administrative roles. Sunderman and Orfield suggest that state education departments have shown good faith in their responses and suggest that the federal law turn its attention to necessary infrastructure improvement instead of further increased responsibilities.