This article examines how pre-service teachers can work effectively with Mexican and Mexican American students. Using the foundation of funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) and the critical race theory concept of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), the article weaves together these ideas to discuss how they can be…

A critical issue in teacher preparation today is that some candidates meet the criteria for admission to teacher education programs yet they struggle or fail to develop the levels of knowledge, skills, and/or dispositions required to complete the program. This article offers three different case studies to examine the monitoring process developed…

This article argues that carpentry is as much an intellectual as a physical activity. Terms are defined, the problem is outlined, examples are given, and some general conclusions are drawn for education. Some sketches are provided for graphic illustration of the examples. The interpretation in effect is pragmatic and cites Dewey on occasion to…

In this article Dennis Attick explores how a reliance on communication technologies, and the technorationality this has wrought, contributes to the "education spectacle today." Attick discusses how the spectacle of education, with its reliance on communication technologies, has come to define what is widely accepted as reality for…

In this article, F. Tony Carusi discusses the relationship between emancipation and oppression as one of the central pre-occupations of educational studies. Questions regarding the status of the oppressed within an oppressive system and their role in maintaining that system, as well as exploring theories and practices of emancipation in light of…

Western philosophy, from Plato on, has had the tendency to separate feeling and thought, affect and cognition. This article argues that a strong philosophy (metaphorically, with "guts") utilizes both in its work. In fact, a "complete act of thought" also will include action. Feeling motivates thought, which formulates ideas,…

This analysis is a philosophical exploration of Marilyn Frye's metaphor of the cage and Patricia Hill Collins' theory of intersecting oppressions. It argues that social structures and forms of oppressive knowledge make up the individual wires on each person's cage and that these work to confine individuals, particularly those in the…

One of the purposes of higher education is to promote citizenship and social justice. This article explores the way Aurora University is helping students to discover what matters through the impact of "Sleep Out on the Quad," which is an event that uses multiple pedagogies to impact student learning of homelessness. It serves as a call…

In this essay, the author argues that inquiry and engagement in the social foundations of education is fundamental to cultivating professionalism in education. As many commentators on the subject have noted, teaching does not meet many of the criteria of a profession derived from the sociological study of fields of work. As Joseph Newman observes,…

Nearly forty years ago, Jonathan Kozol wrote on the perennial question posed by children: "Why do I have to go to school?" Rightfully, in David Gabbard and Lori Flint's view, he admonishes those who would "act as though it were a foolish question." The authors of this article take issue, however, with his characterization…

In this article authors Kip Kline and Kathleen Abowitz write that the "new breed of accountability-driven schools is more interested in reaching some number at the end of the school year" than in actually constructing places where teachers can create meaningful learning experiences for students. In this article they argue that…

Eisner (1991) defines culture as a place for growing things. School constitutes an essential culture where students' minds can be grown and developed and where learning can be fostered. Teachers are in charge of developing and fostering young minds and because they participate in the culture called school they have many possibilities and…

Although education has seen trends of progressive ideologies that promote student and teacher empowerment (Ayers, 2011; Lyons, Catallozzi, & Benson, 1998; Spring, 2008), the dominant educational discourse mirrors a business model of efficiency expressed by the social economist Lester Frank Ward (1872). Evidence of contemporary education…

The foundations field cannot sustain itself in its present condition. A range of complex forces have combined to marginalize foundations over the past few decades. The decline of this field as a separate discipline in schools of education has been abetted by the fact that foundations is generally a "service provider" to other programs.…

One of the most discernable qualities of American society is the contradiction it holds between its economic and political systems, namely, capitalism and democracy. Despite scholars' efforts to reconcile both systems, the demands of both systems are incongruous with each other. Capitalism is driven by the logic of inequality, driven as it is…