Throughout history the United States has been constantly confronted with the responsibility of integrating diverse groups of people into its society. This paper uses current and historical ideas about the complex nature of indigenous groups, globalization, and education as vehicles for promoting the adoption of cosmopolitanism, a paradigm that…

UNESCO defines education for sustainable development (ESD) as covering a broad range of issues from natural resources and HIV/AIDS to poverty reduction. ESD thus becomes a term that must be subtle yet clear, holistic yet tangible. One option for ESD, in dealing with this complexity, is to simplify its content and narrow the issues it addresses.…

This paper examines sustainable development within the context of issues arising from the UN's declaration of a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), 2005-2014. Africa's mode of response to the ESD challenge could be gleaned from the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Nigeria already has a National Conservation…

Various approaches have been advocated and practiced to address sustainable development. Among these, education has been recognized as one of the key measures to achieving sustainability. In Nishinomiya, Japan, education for sustainable development (ESD) has been established through the Learning and Ecological Activities Foundation for Children…

In this paper, we discuss the challenges for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with respect to achieving an appropriate balance between the three pillars of sustainable development--economy, society and the environment. In order to do this, we focus on specific concerns confronting a number of developing countries in the Pacific where…

2005 marks the beginning of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), but awareness of this event is practically nonexistent in the New York City public high school where the author teaches English. A concerted effort to teach for--or even about--sustainability in mathematics, science, business and humanities classes is more…

This article argues that while social entrepreneurship shares concerns similar to those of social justice activism, the corporate and business ethos in the idea of entrepreneurship is not suited to the social concerns that teachers and other educators deal with in their everyday lives. The article points out characteristics of social…

Social entrepreneurship, with its focus on innovative leadership, mirrors current interest in leadership for change in the field of education. In countries where national governments lack the resources to meet the educational needs of their populations, social entrepreneurs can develop innovative ways of providing access to education, and…

This paper examines social entrepreneurship in a Burmese refugee community as it strives to provide primary education to its children. Despite facing discrimination and fearing Thai authorities, our project leaders exemplified social entrepreneurship, most notably building social capital and agency within the refugee community, and surprisingly…

An implicit normalization of the capitalist market model--in both the facilitation of human endeavors and our relationship to the earth--is clearly evident in the work of J. Gregory Dees, as it is in much organizational theory and education. To better understand the effects of this market mentality, a more critical approach to Social…

Since the 1970s, participatory development has become part and parcel of most practitioner-oriented development studies programs. This reflects a shift in the field of development that has been going on for the past few decades. "Participatory Rural Appraisal" (PRA) is one approach to participatory development that has received much attention and…

The purpose of this article is to explore the effects of community participation in school governance, as an element of development and humanitarian assistance programs, on social capital and civil society building. The first section describes different types of participation in education, its institutional forms, and the paradigms that support…

This article presents West and East African nonformal education projects as a platform from which to view the interrelationship of participation and transformation in the educational experiences of community, NGO, and state participants. In the context of neo-liberal pressures, carried by an international free-market movement in the 1980s, a wave…

This article analyzes South Africa's efforts to promote broader participation in educational decision-making through local school governance structures in which parents serve as majority members. We utilize the "theory of action" framework to understand both government policy and school-level actors' meanings of two dimensions of governance:…

This article critically examines the extent to which one emerging NGO facilitates the participation of its beneficiaries and other stakeholders in the decision-making processes at the identification, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of basic education programmes in Malawi. The author argues that despite the comparative advantage of this…