This theme issue of "Educational Foundations" contains five articles that utilize an array of foundational perspectives that give reader insight into the organization of schools, the viewpoints of children and parents, the ideological and political nature of community organizing, and mathematics instruction in the Soviet Union. In "Cooperative Learning: Liberatory Praxis or Hamburger Helper," Mara Sapon-Shevin critically examines the incongruities between the assumptions informing cooperative learning practices and the institutional norms governing the organization of schools, universities, and colleges. Ruthanne Kurth-Schai's "Educational Systems Design by Children for Children" challenges scholars and researchers in educational foundations to allow children to influence processes of policy design and evaluation. Lorraine Harner and Helen Davis's work, "Points of View: Parent-Teacher Talk," is a dialogue and "meta-view" authored by a parent and a teacher, who each describe their recollections of the parent-teacher conference in which they had participated. In his essay, "Pedagogy, Community Organizing, and American Neopopulism," Stephen Haymes argues in agreement with critical theorists that pedagogy as a form of cultural politics involves defining and redefining an ideological map of the cultural territory. Haymes applies this notion to the process of community organizing to illustrate the "emancipating possibilities" of a "value-based" approach to community organizing. In "Educating Mathematicians in the USSR," Beverly J. Ferruci, Richard Evans, and Oleg V. Anashkin present their analysis of the mathematics program of study at Simferopol University as a "model to emulate." (DB)